Park of the Canals

Last Wednesday we wanted to go out and do something but we didn’t want to do a big thing. It was Maya’s only day off after working two days and working yet another day. She actually gotten to the point that she’s having fun at work. It’s a balance thing. Where there are enough resources (time, mostly) to care for her patients as she’d like, it’s a good day. When time is taken up by minor details that someone else should have taken care of or by adding another patient to her load, it can be a terrible day. She’s been having more good days than bad recently. That’s part of the reason why she’s decided to extend our time here in Arizona. We just officially found out that we will now be staying through January. Hopefully that extra time will allow us to see more of what the Valley of the Sun has to offer.

Speaking of what the Valley of the Sun has to offer, we went to a public park over in the city of Mesa. Matt had found out about Park of the Canals that, as you might suspect, contains canals. This little park had shelters and a playground as are typical for public parks. They are set in between prehistoric Hohokam canals. There are three inside the park. One is hardly more than a ditch. The second is still quite well-defined, but of an average size. The third is huge! Instead of being dug down into the earth, it’s actually two walls running parallel to each other. While these canals are a run down and overgrown, knowing that these packed earth and clay constructions are 800-1,000 years old only make them all the more impressive. That anything has survived this long is impressive.

As with Phoenix itself, the original European settlers thought it was impressive too. And convenient! Mormon settlers were the founders of Mesa and after a little bit of renovation they used some of the canals in what is now Park of the Canals in their own irrigation efforts. Within the park’s 20 acres are supposed to be several ruins both from the early settlers and (one presumes) from the Hohokam. We didn’t go look at any of that, but there is network of trails for visiting the sites.

The other really interesting feature of Park of the Canals is that the people who donated the land to the city also wanted a desert botanical garden to be part of it. So there is. The Brinton Botanical Garden is a fairly nice little garden. We’ve seen several desert gardens at this point and for one that is free and open to the public, this one is impressive. While small it had a lot on display. Possibly inspired by this picture which was on display at the Phoenix Museum of History, Matt wanted his picture taken next to a large saguaro. We also saw golden barrels, lots of different types of cholla, bunny ear cactus, a Joshua tree and… a rabbit! There were at least two rabbits that we startled out of hiding. One took off like a shot across the dirt, through the fence and gone. The other hid under a different bush and we approached very carefully. We managed to get fairly close and took a shot of it hiding in the shadows. Rabbits are the best rabbits!
After the park we went and joined our local library. Maya has an absolutely voracious apatite for books. She has read all of her books that are along with us and all of Matt’s that she finds even remotely interesting. Rather than acquire more books that we’d have to move (and pay for) we just got a library card. She came home with a pile of Christopher Moore books. Yay libraries! When she went to work the next day a patient asked if she’d done anything fun on her day off. Maya said she’d been to the library to which the patient responded, “Oh, that’s okay,” in a very consoling tone. Some people just like books more than others.