Guadalupe is a single square mile with South Mountain at its shoulder, and it wears its own character openly — the church at the center of town, the mercado nearby, streets that run tight and neighborly between Tempe and the Phoenix line. Evening light comes in low and orange off the ridge, and that is the hour the town steps outside. Paul Bunyan's Firewood mows the yards here, edges them clean along the sidewalk, trims where the mower stops, and takes the cuttings with it. A yard in a place this compact is seen by everybody who walks past, which is reason enough to get the borders right. Week to week, that steady care is what a small town looks like when it is doing well.