She lives in the middle of nowhere, tapping out her tales on one of three manual typewriters. âĸ For more than four decades, Byrd Baylor has delighted children and adults alike with her stories about the Southwest, its people and animals. âĸ Her work, which has been translated into several languages, has earned her numerous awards. âĸ In March, Tucson's Museum of Contemporary Art honored her with a 2009 Local Genius award. âĸ Come visit this extraordinary woman and share a slice of her views, her writings and her eclectic lifestyle. Bonnie Henry
Byrd Baylor's adobe house near Arivaca is about as close as one could get to a writer's getaway.
With no television and no traffic to speak of, there's little to distract, save for the rattlesnakes that occasionally slither inside.
"I don't kill anything," says Baylor, who sold her house in Tucson and bought the property in the early '80s.
Why here, she isn't sure, other than she'd "been out here as a kid" while her father was looking for gold.
When the man she'd given money to build her home took off, she turned to friends and family who helped build the house, which features vigas from Mount Lemmon, some saguaro-ribbed ceilings, a fireplace and three wood-burning stoves.
One of the people who helped build her house was a man walking in from Mexico, just a few miles to the south.
"He asked for a job. We told him nobody was being paid. But he still picked up an adobe and started working. He loved doing that."
Water from her kitchen sink and shower runs outside, irrigating the trees. The kitchen holds a wood-cooking stove and a refrigerator that runs on propane.
She has a composting toilet and a shower whose windows look out to the desert. She heats water for her shower with a wood-burning water heater.
A wood-burning stove also heats up her office, tucked beneath her sleeping loft. "A pipe from that stove goes up to the loft," says Baylor. "It's one cozy place."
Come warm weather, she retreats to a covered porch out back, furnished with a real bed. "I sleep out here all summer," she says. There's also a hammock on the side porch, as well as a solarium filled with plants on a back porch that was added later.
Concrete now covers the home's original dirt floors. "I had them for seven years and I truly loved them. But it requires some work. You have to be willing to sprinkle and sweep every day."
She has a generator and a "little bit of solar," but she lights her nights with "more oil lamps than anything."
Here she has made her home for more than a quarter century. And while she is welcoming to visitors, not all can find her.
"I gave a conference in Boston. Some people from there went to the U of A and wanted to look me up. They got to the store in Arivaca and they drew them a map. They came part of the way and turned around. They said nobody could live this far out."
"I gave a conference in Boston. Some people from there went to the U of A and wanted to look me up. They got to the store in Arivaca and they drew them a map. They came part of the way and turned around. They said nobody could live this far out."
Byrd Baylor
