They warned me this would happen: it got really hot down here in New Mexico. High eighties in early May? A sunburn before the summer solstice? Six months in, this cold-weather northerner continues to adjust to her new home.

The latest step: flipping the switch on my apartment’s swamp cooler.

My apartment’s swamp cooler. That’s right: I moved to a city whose summer highs average in the mid-nineties only to discover that my new place doesn’t have air conditioning. Instead it has a contraption on the roof whose name makes it sound like it’ll seep muggy vapors to the sound of frogs’ chirrups. Suffice it to say I was skeptical...