Articles by Bo Mackison

Murals on Historic Route 66

Bus to Tucumcari - Historic Route 66 Art

Buy Xanax Online Overnight Bus to Tucumcari © 2012 Bo Mackison

https://www.jacobysaustin.com/events/ On our travels from Arizona to Wisconsin, we took a few long detours away from the Interstate system. There are only so many hours of a driving day that I want filled with semi trucks passing me going upwards of 85 mph. At least when we take the more rural routes, we are usually pleased to find decent two lane roads, little traffic, and a few surprises along the way.

Purchase Tramadol Without Prescription One such surprise — actually one long string of surprises — was the strip of Historic Route 66 running through the northern part of Tucumcari, New Mexico. These few blocks of Route 66 are filled with a wonderland of murals depicting the Mother Road in a different era.

You're Here - Historic Route 66 Motel and Murals

follow You're Here © 2012 Bo Mackison

https://thelonelycreative.com/videos/ Many of the murals feature the slogans “Tucumcari Tonite” and “You’re Here” reminiscent of the times when these signs dotted the highway for hundreds of miles, beckoning the Route 66 travelers to stop at one of the dozens of motels that lined the main street in Tucumcari. Now, Interstate 40 runs along the southern edge of the town and there are hotels and restaurants providing for most travelers who are in search of the speediest  way.

https://anthonynewmancamps.com/sports-camps/ But there also is a lot of renovation going on along Route 66, and quite a few appealing vintage motels are open for business, providing all the comforts of home. And a great view of a lot of really fun art.

Tucumcari Tonite - Historic Route 66

click Historic Route 66 Motel © 2012 Bo Mackison

Buy Valium Online Without Prescription If you are inclined to see a thousand or so vintage murals, there is even a resource from the Mural Museum, conveniently titled 1,000 Murals – From Pontiac Illinois to Tucumcari New Mexico. It provides information on finding those many elusive art forms on the back roads of middle America.

Tucumcari Tonight - Historic Route 66 Motel

enter site Tucumcari Tonight © 2012 Bo Mackison

go to site Perhaps I will stop and see a few more of these amazing murals on my return trip to Arizona. Wouldn’t it be an adventure to follow parts of Route 66 and document the murals in photographs? I only had a (very) short time to snap these few photos as Sherpa and I took a short break from driving.

Hydrocodone Purchase Online But it would be even more fun to stop awhile in some of these towns, say hello to the local citizens, and see more than the back ends of speeding trucks making time on the Interstate.

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https://www.thephysicaltherapyadvisor.com/home/ Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Sometimes she needs to rush along and traveling on the Interstates make sense, but she much prefers to take her time and see the country she is traveling through.

Palo Verde Yellow – In Rocks

Palo Verde Yellow with Rocks

enter site Palo Verde Yellow with Rocks © 2012 Bo Mackison

https://www.jacobysaustin.com/general-info/ “To hear never-heard sounds,
To see never-seen colors and shapes,
To try to understand the imperceptible
Power pervading the world;
To fly and find pure ethereal substances
That are not of matter
But of that invisible soul pervading reality.
To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul;
To be a lantern in the darkness
Or an umbrella in a stormy day;
To feel much more than know.
To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain;
To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon;
To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves;
To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets
Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching.
To be a smile on the face of a woman
And shine in her memory
As a moment saved without planning.”

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Traveling East, A Spring Greening

http://www.ztpackaging.com/art_requirements/ The greening of the trees in spring rain,
see-through trees like a lacy negligee, the nesting bird
watches from the half-leafed trees.

https://geneticsandfertility.com/services/ Calves balancing on gentle hills rub their noses in the wet grasses.
One stands wobbly, leans against its mother.
Others watch their mothers watching them, nibble a bit, suckle,
wander about the remains of last fall’s tattered harvest.

https://www.52editions.com/personal/ Darkest brown, Iowa’s earth, earth that dips
and dances. We’ve driven past the Kansas grasslands,
and not yet reached the prairie flat of Illinois.

https://drbatayneh.com/post-operation/ See the family plot tucked tightly between
the edge of the woods and the tilled field;
Splintered posts and strands of wire mark its boundary.
Roughly hewed stones, two rows of three, the mossy inscriptions illegible.
Though one, a mother’s marker, is split in half – part upright,
part broken off and tipped into the rain-soaked grass.
The roughened quarry block, now a rest stop for crows,
splats of white the only sign of life.

Clouds hang gray, so low I yearn to stand
and push them high into the skies, high enough to punch an opening into the dim blueness
that is Midwestern sky, give sunlight to the earth.
Yet fog lingers, sky primed in deep grays.

We pass a highway sign, What Cheer, population 142. Twenty miles south.
I wish to see a town worthy of this name, but we’re on the fourth morning of steady travel.
There is no will to detour.
Tonight we sleep in the familiar ridges and valleys of our familiar bed.

First I will say hello to the house I left a hundred days ago,
walk through the rooms I know by memory, peer out the back window at the apple tree.
I’m told no blossoms remain.

Oklahoma, Gray Skies, and a White Truck

White Truck © 2012 Bo Mackison

I bought a primitive statue of a woman last summer from a stone sculptor the next booth over.
She toppled in a winter storm. My husband mentions this
as he pulls into the Save-n-Go in Dubuque for gas and coffee.

Tomorrow morning I’ll push her upright so we can watch the garden together.
We will meet, eye to eye, and reflect on the greenness of Midwest spring.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. After four days of cross-country travel, Bo is back home in the Midwest.

Torch Cacti in Bloom at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum

Many Red Torches

Many Red Torches © 2012 Bo Mackison

What a marvelous send-off I had this past week!

I have visited the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum just west of Tucson two or three times a week since mid-January. Each time I visit, I manage to find new wonders. Sometimes I sit on a bench and simply absorb the desert surroundings. Sometimes I visit with the docents who amaze me with the depths of their knowledge on almost any desert topic. Last week I stopped at the Prairie dog exhibit to watch the new babies pop out of their burrows —  only the second day they were out and about exploring the world of the sun.

And on my last visit to the Desert Museum I was treated to an explosion of color as the Torch Cactus Garden had just erupted in a display of red, pink, yellow, orange and white. No wonder the sign in this garden bed proclaims these flowers a “Fireworks of Color!

 

Yellow Torch

Yellow Torch © 2012 Bo Mackison

Each bloom only lasts one day and they bloomed early this year.  I photographed these flowers over a period of several hours on April 25, a month earlier than is typical. (Last year’s peak bloom was around May 24-25.)

Magenta Torch Flowers

Magenta Torch Flowers © 2012 Bo Mackison

The Torch Cactus (Trichocereus) is not native to Arizona but adapts well to this climate and to landscaped gardens when planted in a filtered sun setting. I imagine these plants would be welcome in any desert garden – what gorgeous, showy flowers they are!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC, living and photographing in southern Arizona from January through April. She returns for the July monsoons.

In the Abstract

Abstract Torch Flower

In the Abstract © 2012 Bo Mackison

One looks, looks long, and the world comes in. ~ Joseph Campbell

The sharp edges of the desert are softening. The sunrise I watched every morning is hidden behind the gray clouds of a Midwestern spring rain and I hold the sunrise in my memory. The cactus flowers that I spoke to every day, gently touched and examined as if I were examining the delicacy and newness and the miracle of my first born child, those flowers are by now wilting and other buds are opening.

I miss my daily exercise on the desert paths, I miss watching the prickly pear cactus in the back arroyo and guessing which buds would next open. I miss the bright sunshine, the heat of the light on my back and arms. I miss the ritual of preparation I had grown to enjoy, the ritual of applying the sun screen and hat and coverings, of gathering enough water and the right maps and my hiking stick and pack.

I miss the constant chatter and song of the many birds, the questioning of the owls, the late night and early morning cries of the coyote. I miss the road runners strutting past my glass doors, the quails playing hide and seek under the cactus, and especially the bobcat that would stop at the stoop of my porch, stare through my door, and then casually move on into the arroyo.

But none of this is gone. I close my eyes, and I remember. I shake awake my senses, recall the scent of the desert after a brief rainfall, the whirr of the hummingbirds as they sip nectar from the feeder, and the bzzz of the carpenter bee’s dip and dance, the almost constant questioning and answering of the pair of doves.

I can look into the bright colors of this photograph, the abstract lines and shapes, and it is almost as if I am looking into a crystal ball as I recall the past few months of desert days and nights.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is on the road today, on her way back to her other home.