Is it any wonder, after first moving here, my mother looked out the back door and wept, "There's nothing here but rocks!" The USG plant is visible between the houses. The road leading to Rice crosses the foothills of the Maria Mountains through a pass just beyond the north side of town. This view is from the back door of our first house.

Summers were searing hot with shimmering heat waves rising from rocks baking in the sun. Winters were just windy and cold. The sun still shone everyday, but the wind blew forever from the north. In fact, a cloudy day was so rare I found it a novelty to play outside without a shadow. If we were lucky, we would get enough spring rain to coax the desert into bloom. We had no fall. One night at the end of summer the wind would just shift to the north, and out came the blankets, the process just reversing itself in the spring.