Bisbee New Years 2012

Last night’s clothes still intact and my Lady still sleeping deep beneath the sheets in the room we’d rented for a couple of nights, I snuck down the long stairway from the hotel room in the heart of Old Bisbee to step into the already daylight 7am sky of a New Year’s Eve on the Arizona / Mexico border.

It seemed like I’d missed sunrise, the town’s copper and turquoise adorned 19th century buildings already bathing in sunlight, but tucked away deep in the Mule Mountains, no sign of that giant burning coin in the sky could be found.

The streets were empty, no tourists by foot or car, the little park in the middle of town peculiarly absent of buskers and bums. The Copper Queen Hotel’s patio yet to be packed full of early partyers in search of Bloody Mary. I stood on the corner looking up Main Street and Subway, satisfied with all of the quiet.

Our hotel room came with two free coffees and so I slipped into the town’s coffee shop to made small talk with the barista in exchange for 12 ounces of wake me up. A flier in the window claimed tonight to be Bisbee’s first and last ball drop, what with the Mayan calendar apparently leading this tiny little piece of time trapped forever safely away from the 21st century strip mall this nation is becoming. If the world does end or change forever in 2012, Bisbee may just be tucked away enough in the past to never get the news.

Stepping out of the coffee shop, I looked to what I thought, mistakenly, was the South, when suddenly and quickly she came, the sun to rise over a low spot in the mountains. Within seconds she’d gone from the tiniest peak of of pinhead light to the fully risen brightness that she can be. Not a cloud in the sky, I had to look away.

Suddenly a delivery truck motored through town. A sheriff followed, then a man walking his dog greeted me good morning and Happy New Year as the local birds chimed in unison their morning tune. The desert is a beautiful place to be.