Az Travel

When I woke up in the Bisbee alley, I found someone had placed a blanket over me in the night. A nice blanket too. Thick wool with alternating stripes of red and Virgin Mary blue. It was late November, and we were at elevation, I might have gone hypothermic without it.
I tried to shield my eyes from the sun, already rising over the peak of the mountain at the edge of town, and stretched my back. It was already a wreck, and the night spent on the concrete had made it angry. I looked around, but could find no indication of the blanket's owner, so I rolled it up tightly and placed it against the old brick wall.
I staggered up the street towards the hotel I had spent far too much on to be sleeping in alleys. There were already a lot of people milling about on the street. Old hippies and young hipsters. Every single person had a smile on their face. Bisbee was much more full than usual, due to the music festival I had come into town for, but I was pretty certain that most of these early morning walkers were locals. There was a sureness in their step. Not the meanddering wonder of a tourist admiring the old buildings, but the clear assurance of a regular headed to the restaurant where they breakfasted every Saturday morning.
Bisbee is an old mining town in southern Arizona, built on the side of a mountain. In the early 70's, it was taken over by the flower children of the hippy revolution. It is now a thriving small town filled with breweries, music venues, and art stores.
When I woke up again, (this time in my room at the Copper Queen) I dressed and set off to meet my friends at a holistic coffee shop on Brewery Avenue, a street lined with bars and breweries. Music was already pouring out of each building, and I poked my head inside a few to watch the bands for a moment. I passed by my alley resting place on the way, and noticed the blanket gone, hopefully retrieved by its owner. My friends were sitting at a table in the back, having coffee with a local I hadn't met before. I asked him if he might know who my blanket bearing savior could have been.
“Could have been anybody.” He said. “We all look out for people around here.”
Then he bought me an herbal tea that he said would be good for my recovery, and winked knowingly.
I thought back on the smiling locals, the friendly bartenders, and the nameless blanket bringers I'd encountered, and realized that it isn't the history of a place, or the sights to be seen that makes a place worth visiting, it's the people