Blue Pottery on Ocotillo

Blue Pots on Ocotillo

Blue Pottery on Ocotillo © 2012 Bo Mackison

I lose my center. I feel depressed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over any encounter, and to extract its juices, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.    ~ May Sarton

I had copied this quote in my journal, and until I got to the ending and noted May Sarton’s attribution, I thought I had written those words. Maybe I wouldn’t have written such perfectly paced phrasing, but the sentiment was right on.

Am I trying to keep all the little pots filled? Am I being careful to not be harmed by the thorns on the ocotillo branches as I draw nearer? I do think things over, slowly, simmer them for awhile. Sometimes I repeat the same experiences in order to capture the essence.

May Sarton and me, hmmm?

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She is exploring the Sonoran desert and  examining the smallest of encounters.

Early Morning Coffee in the Desert

Early Morning Coffee in the Desert

Early Morning Coffee in the Desert © 2012 Bo Mackison

Coffee is real good when you drink it it gives you time to think. It’s a lot more than just a drink; it’s something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup. ~ Gertrude Stein

A pitcher of water, a container of ground coffee, a backpacker’s stove with a little fuel canister and a French press coffee cup. That’s a lot of equipment but I find it all to be incredibly important. With the above contraptions and about five minutes of my time, a simply perfect cup of coffee can be had.

I think it a necessary morning ritual after one sleeps in a car wrapped in a sleeping bag with only nose and mouth exposed to air (while ignoring any claustrophobic tendencies.) One should be able to take that first hike at dawn with a full cup of hot coffee for companionship!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She is exploring the Sonoran desert and making desert coffee.

Desert Twilight

Sonoran Desert Twilight

Sonoran Desert Twilight

Seeing form with the whole body and mind.
Hearing sound with the whole body and mind.
One understands it intimately.
~ Eihen Dogen

When I am in the desert, I have two responsibilities — to listen, to see.

I watch as nature busies herself doing the quiet things not easily seen, sometimes only sensed. A lizard scooting from under a cooling rock. Cactus wrens darting from their nest holes in the saguaros to the top of the cactus, on alert, the look-out. Then swooping about, catching an insect or two, and a return to the nest inside the huge saguaro.

A pack of coyotes sing. A second pack joins, in harmony. Silence. Then the who-ooo of an owl. I hear it, I never see a twitch of movement.

I am content, also, to hear the sound of silence. Silence has a sound. I feel surrounded by the desert, as if she has a hold on me. The desert wakens all my senses — sacred senses.

Now is the time to remember that all you do is sacred. ~ Hafiz

I stayed in the desert overnight. There was no roughing it for me. My days of primitive camping ended decades ago. This time I had my car, a sleeping bag rated warm enough to keep me comfortable in the desert night. (The low reached 38˚F — not too cold.)  I had a backpacker stove and a French press coffee cup. I had coffee and soup in a box for dinner and granola and fruit for breakfast and lots of bottled water. I had a lantern. I had the necessities. I also had my iPad, a last minute addition to my camp gear. I was set. Luxury camping.

When I woke up at 4 AM and couldn’t fall back to sleep, I sat in the car and read The Turquoise Ledge by Leslie Marmon Silko on my iPad. Now that is really desert camping in luxury. I didn’t wait the first touch of daylight to make my coffee. The sun rises late in the desert — I don’t know why — and I got cold. I finally maneuvered in the dark and heated water and made my first cup of coffee by the yellowish-orange hazy lights of Tucson reflecting off the clouds.

By the time it was light enough to follow a trail and not walk into the desert plants, I was dressed in layers and had my hiking stick and coffee cup in hand. I followed a trail along an arroyo and was quite pleased to be out in the desert, alone, at dawn — until a pack of coyotes ran across the trail twenty feet from where I stood.

Once I got my heart out of my throat and back into my chest where it belonged, I turned around and hiked back to camp. All those sacred senses were on alert.

But it was a great explore.

My first overnight camping trip in the desert.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She is exploring the Sonoran desert.

Ocotillo Sunset

Ocotillo Sunset

Ocotillo Sunset © 2012 Bo Mackison

“Something has happened
To my understanding of existence
That now makes my heart always full of wonder…”

~ Hafiz, The Gift

I have desert dreams. They are not as tidy as I would like, but perhaps they are tidier than one would imagine. My desert is a tidy place with a tidy habit. No dense, tangled tropical paradise. In the desert there is room to move. Space for movement. But even more important to me, there is space to see.

Vision is not blocked by billboard or building. When I look, I can see afar. It is not unusual to look across the desert and see a mountain thirty or forty miles away. There is space to form thoughts, to search for answers. My desert dream affords me a polite habitat, nothing to tangle my feet and make me fall, no hidden roots to trip me, no overgrowth to hide my path.

There is room for all to grow, for me to grow.

In my dreaming desert, I do not cut myself on the spines of the cacti, the thorns on the shrubs and trees. I do not step upon desert earth that has rotted from beneath the surface, that gives way with the weight of my step, and sucks my leg into a gaping hole in the desert floor. The desert in my dreams has been sanitized for my night time journeys.

Awake, the desert is wild and streaming a series of ever more deeply saturated color. There is the silhouette of the ocotillo and its thorns, long and sharp. I watch the sun disappear, it drops below the horizon, and the layers of red, orange, purple linger until night’s arrival blackens the sky.

The sun sets. I breathe in tempo with the still warm desert. I inhale, the desert earth inhales. I exhale, the desert earth exhales. Heat stored in the desert’s earth meets the night’s cooling air, and the desert pulsates with energy.

Desert rhythms. I stand and watch, supporting myself with my walking stick while gripping tightly to my world.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She is in the Sonoran desert.

From My Desert Journal

Sonoran Desert

Sonoran Desert © 2012 Bo Mackison

West, beyond the terraced land of copper mines the earth coughs up mesquite and creosote,
layered gravels holding tight the bushes’ roots, thorn scrub this land is called,
or desert scrub, a swaying land, dizzying,
blinding to my eyes unaccustomed to the torrential whites
of desert light, swaying, undulating, until the scrub becomes desert, the cacti appear.

Look and see the mountains rising from sea-level-deserts to miles-high-tundra, scan the landscape, the topography,
fifty miles in the distance there are observatories on Kitt Peak.
I see white domes.

Pale earth, palest of terra cotta, red ocher,
burnt sienna, burnt umber – a Renaissance painter’s palette,
the minerals – Sonoran desert colors.

Sky paint? The sky’s sapphire blue,
not mineral but precious gem, deepest hue of blue,
no smudges on the blue bowl. Pure blue, it carries my eye into infinity.

Distant Mountain

Distant Mountain © 2012 Bo Mackison

Distant mountains watch from their blue-grayed peaks,
peaks moored by centuries-old anchors, desert sands,
lands rolling ridge over ridge, cracked by water-carved-arroyos.
There is beauty in such surroundings.

Mountains interrupt the repetitions of waves,
a woven landscape of constancy,
the earth remains the same until close inspection uncovers an unsuspected diversity.
My mouth drops open, my eyes widen, my senses awaken.

Rough edges burnished with desert varnish,
polished in black patina, countless layers of microscopic colonies,
millenial crusts cover mountain faces.

Ever present guardians play their roles, here
in the desert – silent cacti, arid plants,
grasses growing amidst the sounds – calls, yips, whistles,
whispers, and yearnings carried upon the winds.

Standing in my circle of silence, the desert quiets.
I hear nothing, feel nothing except the sun and my own breathing.
I breathe — slow inhales, slow exhales — I breathe for the desert earth.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is exploring the Sonoran Desert.