Do places have a personality? I think so. Each place I have lived in feels different in my memory. There were eleven of them. By places I mean towns, or cities, where you had a home. I left out places I stayed in as a prisoner of war.

Most of my places are of the plain vanilla variety, compared to my One Special Place. I feel privileged to have One Special Place in my life, one I can cherish. You might not find it that special, unless you too, have a special love for places like mine.

My One Special Place was not a city or a town. There were no side walks, there was not even a street address. People might have called it a lonely place, but lonely it was not, it teemed with life.

My wife and I lived at this place during seven winters after we had sold our house in Denver. We then had bought a motor home and lived in it as full timers. We were in our mid-seventies and the sunny winters in Arizona beckoned.

You can visit my One Special Place. It is about 18 miles north of Yuma, off the highway. Drive a dirt road for a short distance and find the sign that says ‘Snowbird Mesa’. You have arrived and you wonder what could be so special about this place.

Had you lived here as we did you would also have become a victim of its spell. Just walk here after dark has fallen. Feel the soothing solitude, listen to the quiet little noises of a desert night, be bathed in the clean, warm, caressing desert air.

Look upwards on a night when the moon is hiding her face and marvel at a coal black night sky where a million stars sparkle brighter than you ever saw them before. And when Miss Luna takes over the night she will paint a silvery sheen on every rock, every bush, every ocotillo. The common world will suddenly be transformed into a wonderland scene.

The burros might come and visit this place at night. You will hear their braying long before they arrive. But you might see them only as shadows, while you listen to the crunching of their hoofs on the desert sand.

On some nights an owl will break the stillness of this place with its unearthly cry. Some nights you can watch the night hawks patrolling the sky just after the sun has set. After that come the acrobats of the night, the bats, sweeping our place clean of any bugs that might be flying about.

A special place should have , and so it does. Just listen to the coyotes singing at night. They were very dear to me, they spoke to me. And I fervently hope that they, and the rest of my desert friends, will be able to have a home here for a long time to come, at My One Special Place.