Return to the Southwest

Sycamore II

Sycamore II © 2012 Bo Mackison

Forest and field, sun and wind and sky, earth and water, all speak the same silent language, reminding the monk that he is here to develop like the things that grow all around him. ~ Thomas Merton

I have returned. Returned to Pima County, a 9,000 square mile partition of the Sonoran Desert that spans two-thirds of the southern part of Arizona.

When I am in Wisconsin, and awaiting the day I return to the Southwest, I always say I miss the desert, that I am ready to return to the desert. But upon deeper reflection, it is not only the desert I miss. I miss the huge diversity that this small part of the country has to offer. The diversity of the southern Arizona habitats.

If I begin in the far western part of Pima County, perhaps I am visiting Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and Organ Pipe National Monument, and I then travel east to Tucson and ascend Mount Lemmon, I have traveled an equivalent distance of more than 2,200 miles in habitat. It is comparable to me traveling from northern Mexico to  southern Canada. And I can travel that in less than a half day’s time.

The part of the Southwest I call my home is part of the Sonoran Desert. Yes. But it is more than sand and cactus and rattlesnakes. It is an example of one of the most diverse ecological spaces on our planet. Not only does the area have over forty sky islands – tall mountain-islands surrounded by desert – but it is borders two diverse communities — the Rocky Mountain community to the north and the Sierra Madres to the south. Diversity abounds.

I can travel a few hours and explore six different communities — desert-scrubland (what most people call the ‘desert’), desert grasslands, oak woodlands, pine-oak woodlands, and coniferous zones, plus the riparian woodlands (seen in the picture above).

What an amazing place to explore with a camera in hand!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She had landed back in the Southwest and is adapting to the transition between a Midwest winter and a Southwest winter.

Rise Up Rooted

Sycamore III

Sycamore in Black and White ©2012 Bo Mackison

. . . if we surrendered
to earth’s intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God’s heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

-Rainer Maria Rilke from Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

I traveled into the mountains this morning, and walked along the edge of Madera Creek. The creek was dry, or so I imagined, when I began my descent at 5,000 feet. But by the time I had walked a half mile, I noticed damp Sycamore leaves, recently shed from the overhanging trees and dropped into the creek bed.

Another hundred yards and the creek pooled in deeper crevices. Dark and bubbly, it followed a circuitous route as it descended the mountain.

I watched the water swirling around large piles of leaves. Single leaves danced along, bobbing on the water’s surface. I listened to the creek’s song, low and splashing, accompanied by an occasional bird’s song.

The sounds of life, the language of nature.

As Rilke wrote, “if we surrendered to earth’s intelligence, we could rise up rooted, like trees.”

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She continues to explore some of her favorite places and read some of her favorite poets.

Arizona Sycamores in Autumn

Sycamore in Autumn

Arizona Sycamore in Autumn © 2012 Bo Mackison

I live in the desert, but I am only a fifteen minute drive from one of the Sky Islands, the Santa Rita Mountains. And in the riparian area of the Madera Canyon the sycamores are still dressed in their autumn colors.

Madera Canyon

Madera Canyon ©2012 Bo Mackison

Arizona sycamores grow in riparian habitats. In Arizona, these habitats bordering a river or other waterway make up only  one percent of the total land area. Yet these narrow strips along streams and canyon bottoms hold the greatest diversity of plants and animals of any habitat type. Birds and wildlife flock to these areas. Large numbers of plants live in these corridors that cannot survive in the more arid lands.

Madera Canyon

Red and Green in the Riparian Corridor ©2012 Bo Mackison

Riparian areas are often seen as green ribbons in the landscape. But in autumn, they take on a different character, a mix of green and red. The leaves are already falling though. Soon the riparian areas will return to their more typical green.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and the owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She has returned to her winter home in the Sonoran Desert and is already exploring her favorite places.

Hiking Madera Canyon – and Nature Journal Writing

Alligator Juniper

Alligator Juniper ©2011 Bo Mackison

Another report from one of Southeastern Arizona’s Sky Islands. I hiked the nature trail in Madera Canyon. It’s a well known area for birders from throughout the United States, but I was there in the middle of the day when there were only a few hummers and lesser yellow finches flying from tree to tree. Madera Canyon is in the Santa Rita Mountains and part of the Coronado National Forest, located about 20 miles south of Tucson.

I hiked a trail that was at an elevation of 5ooo feet, in an area called Middle Madera Canyon. A creek runs along the trail, but there was only a bit of water trickling through the creek bed. Mostly there were dried leaves and rocks in the creek, and a few pools of water, inches deep. It’s been an exceptionally dry winter and spring. I’d be curious to know what this creek looks like during a typical spring.

This is a riparian area. It has deciduous trees–mostly the Arizona sycamore and cottonwoods. There are fir trees at this elevation, mostly alligator junipers, and several varieties of oaks. The river runs quite strong most years to support the number of large trees near its banks.

Green Lichen

Green Lichen © 2011 Bo Mackison

Another entry from my thirty minutes of “quiet time” and journaling exercise:

Many rocks, some covered with a light green lichen. There are several large pieces of dark gray slate. Dotted pink/gray granite. Another rock is pink/burnt orange and it has a sand-papery texture.

Sitting along side the creek. Moving water wriggles through the rocks, disappearing under last year’s dried leaves and fallen tree limbs. Moving water shimmers and shakes as it reflects sunlight, light rays bounce from mossy rock to mossy rock.

Still water is a mirror, showing the pool’s depth; it reflects my hand when I reach over the pool.

Two weathered limbs from the sycamore tree, each at least five feet long, are crossed to form a wishbone. Can I make a wish on a tree limb?  I wish . . .  to come back to Arizona next winter.

The sycamore tree’s bark looks like peeling paint flaking off an unpainted Wisconsin barn. Or does the barn look like bark from a mature sycamore tree? Arizona sycamores are different from the sycamores that grew in my neighbors’ yard in western Illinois. This sycamore is much smaller which makes sense as it grows with less moisture. The Arizona tree has smaller pieces of bark–looks like alligator hide.

The bark I remember from my childhood sloughed off the hundred foot tall tree in large pieces, rough and sand-papery, cream with silver gray blotches. As a child I wrote little stories for my grandpa on pieces of bark. My children did the same when they were young, writing “I love you” messages on the bark and offering them to me–gifts from the heart.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is living in Tucson for two months, exhibiting her photography in art shows, taking photographs, and blogging about photography, art fairs, and living life “solo.” She loves the sky islands and plans to visit several more before she returns to the Midwest.