S INCE I’ve moved to Las Vegas, one compensation has been the walk along the three and a half mile boulevard that loops around the development in which I live. Its gentle ups and downs have the rhythm of a children’s roller coaster. At its heights I can see the mountains that rim Las Vegas, their khaki colour greening in the spring, browning in the fall. The dips focus attention on the concrete blocks that wall in the houses, the alternating patches of desert, dirt and gravel and the plants at the tips of the irrigation drips. Water here is parcelled out a drop at a time, once or twice a day, and at the end of each drip is a tree, a bush or a flower. There are none of the stately elms and oaks of my childhood, secure in the knowledge that the rain will always fall and the sun with always shine. The trees here are more modern, their limbs going first this way, then that as if never sure they will ever be in the right place in the right time. Many of these trees are bushes trimmed to look like trees: you can see their cousins out in the desert in the places where water gathers, uncut and in all their shrubbiness. Sometimes along the walk there will be a row of broad leafed plants. Leaves of the desert are thin, often lacy in order to limit the loss of moisture. These broad leaves seem almost vulgar, certainly extravagant, like cows where coyotes should be. They are as out of place as the lawn and petunias located at the entrance to each neighbourhood; plants watered not by drips but by sprays. Occasionally, too occasionally, the desert has been left alone: volcanic rocks almost an equal distance apart, looking like those first photographs from Mars, only the hills are greener, the boulders bolder (this is America, after all). My walk ends in a long descent, as I suppose all good roller coasters should, with a view of the entire Las Vegas basin: a million and a half people, at night every one with their lights on.
Al Donnell letter from Las Vegas
Al Donnell is an architect, recently moved from Calgary to Las Vegas.
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