Cole Burkhardt

there's a wash at the end of the road I live on, probably no more than 10 feet wide.

It's there to keep the rain from flooding the streets during the monsoon season, and the rest of the time it's a refuge for pop-up fentanyl dens and inner-city packs of coyotes looking for water.

Mostly, it stops the cars who occasionally drive through my neighborhood, thinking they can escape the traffic, only to find themselves facing a barrier they could have avoided entirely if they had just read the large, yellow, extremely obvious dead-end sign on the corner.

I see them get confused.

I laugh.

I get annoyed when they use my driveway as a turnaround, and then I don't think about it for the rest of the day.

When the mural appeared, however, I started paying more attention to it.

The painting was on the west wall of a decrepit strip mall on the other side of the wash, separated from it by a chain-link fence.

Whoever leased the building barely maintained it to the point where I was surprised it hadn't already been bulldozed several years ago.

But now, in the year 2025, someone had painted a mural on it, and had somehow done so without my knowledge.

I chalked it up to the fact that I had never been very observant, but the mural had so many vibrant colors that it was hard to imagine myself not noticing it until now, especially since I usually faced towards the wash while coming home every day.

The painting depicted a mother and her two children standing on a hill and watching the sunset over the Sonoran desert landscape.

The mother wore a traditional white Mexican dress with frills and intricate embroidery.

Her daughter wore something similar, as well as a collection of wildflowers embellishing the braids in her long, dark hair.

Her son wore a brightly colored woven serape and her ashes.

They faced away from the viewer towards the sunset, which painted the landscape in hues of fuchsia, vermilion, and gold.

This kind of thing wasn't out of place in Tucson.

Having lived there my entire life, the city's culture of murals was so normal to me, I almost didn't notice when I passed by them on my way to work.

It added a unique visual ambiance to what would otherwise be a concrete jungle.

So, when I first saw the mural across the wash from my house, I welcomed the addition to our bland suburban street.