Years ago I bought my first shade sail to protect the old faded junker that we park out front from the sun. The mesquite trees just weren’t providing enough shade. I spent hours suspending the sail in just the right space over the driveway. Tethered like a giant Dorito between the trees and the house it worked beautifully. Thus began my addiction.
The following season I noticed the space outside my studio door could use some shade. This time I bought a rectangle, suspended it in the sky, and lo, there was shade. And it was good. Today wildflowers flourish beneath it.
During a severe monsoon the heavy awning that protected my kid’s bedroom windows fell off the front wall and broke into pieces.
I could not have been happier. I did what any shade sailor would do. I tethered an XL “California Beige Genuine Hemp” shade sail over their windows.
The boys were grateful. “It’s stupid. We look like we live on Tatooine.” “Where’d you get it? Ringling have a tent sale?”
By next year I want our house to look like a ranch-style version of that office building in Monty Python’s “Meaning of Life” feature about the Crimson Permanent Assurance Company; the one that sprouts sails and pillages the financial district.
When the winds come I enjoy the kiting effect. Last summer a microburst filled the sails, lifted our house off the ground completely and parasailed it onto a street five blocks over. I felt like the old man from Pixar’s “Up.” It was awesome. After we crash-landed I looked outside our front door to see we had flattened a jackrabbit, two chuckwallas and a “bad” witch. Later that day we met some Munchkins who helped us move our house back to where it belonged.
We named our sails. Doesn’t everybody? We’ve got “Isosceles,” “Archimedes,” “Trapeze Net,” “Tortilla Chip,” “Equilateral Larry,” “Trampoline,” “Euclid,” “Prairie Wind,” “Flying Carpet,” “Mainsail,” “Jib,” “Note Pad” and “Business Card.” And that’s just the front of the house. On Google Earth our house resembles a dollhouse covered in post-it-notes.
Our neighbor, Flo Jenkins, once said, “Your house looks like some kind of pirate ship run aground on a desert island with all them sails of yours.” Flo was right.
I am proud to say we’ve got more sails on our little acre than the HMS Bounty, the USS Constitution and the Santa Maria, Niña and Pinta combined. I’ve begun to think we need rigging, a crow’s nest and a ship’s wheel to complete the look.
I’m leaning toward a nautical feel because I’m concerned my patchwork of shade sails gives our desert refuge too much of a Mad Max quality. That and the rain cisterns and the monster trucks parked out front with mounted flamethrowers and hood ornaments made from skulls with mohawks. At night when hot winds blow from the south, and the shade sails are billowing, I howl commands from atop our air conditioner to an invisible crew of post-Apocalyptic pirates. Summer can bake your sanity to a crisp.
Recently, one of our ancient olive trees lost half its branches to a microburst, exposing the thriving garden below to harsh sunlight. I didn’t want the flora that attracts the hummingbirds to perish! I love watching the nasty little pterodactyls spar with each other like angry mean girls.
So I plugged that glaring hole in the sky with an XXL “Kokopelli Khaki” shade sail. As the flowers were singing hallelujah, a stranger knocked on my door. He had a documentary film crew with him.
With a thick accent he said: “Ever zince I heard about your house I haff wanted to meet you. I am Christo, ze artist! I am from Bulgaria! I wrapped ze entire Eiffel Tower in Saran Wrap and I covered ze Pyramids with ze aluminum foil — but those pieces cannot compare with your magnificent shade sail house. It is outsider art, no?”
“It’s definitely outside, but I’m not so sure it’s art.”
He winked at me and gestured at his crew to keep filming. “I ’ope one day to drape all of Tucson under ze shade sails. You are a genius!”
He said I was a shade sail savant. I told him I’d love to talk some more, but a wind was coming up. It was time to raise the mainsail and batten down the hatches.
