Vintage Golden Poppy

February 26, 2012 by 5 Comments
Vintage Poppy

Vintage Poppy © 2012 Bo Mackison

There are times in our lives when too many voices seem to be pulling us this way and that. We can seek silence and order within. Then we will hear the truth.   ~ Osho

I’ve been in a wild and whirling space the past few days. So much to do, not enough time. Too many shoulds listed on my to do list, and I am ignoring them. The script rushing through my mind sounds like it was written by a convention of gremlins, intent on keeping me on the practical path. Except I am not one who appreciates the practical as much as I appreciate the spur of the moment, the adventure, the explore, but on my terms. I love the adventure but I like to have my feet firmly on the ground, adventuring in safety perhaps. Are those two incongruous? Adventure and safety?

I don’t think so. I like to have a little planning in my explores. Maybe I head west not knowing exactly where it is I am going, but I have a list of three or four places that are possible destinations. I am not one to travel the open road without some idea of where I am. But I also like to leave my schedule open enough to accommodate the serendipitous meeting, the landscape I just have to get to know more intimately, a town that demands more than a cursory visit.

I have been having many conversations with myself. These talks invariably consist of what should I be doing. Now? A month from now? A year? What plans do I have for exhibiting my photography? Where am I going with my art? What path should I follow? As a wise person once told me, “You can’t just sit in an arroyo and watch the poppies bloom.”

Currently I have two of my photographs in an art exhibit at University Hospitals in Madison, Wisconsin. I have another photograph accepted for an  exhibit in March and April, an exhibit called Beyond the Lens at the Tubac Center for the Arts in Tubac, Arizona. I do freelance photography, shooting interiors and exteriors of living spaces. My art fair and festival schedule is slowly taking shape. I’ll be at Tucson’s Fourth Avenue Street Fair in March and I have Midwest art festivals on my calendar from May through September, and adding more each week as the notifications come in. And I photograph and work on my photographs – editing, post-processing, printing, matting, framing – 50+ hours a week.

The conference of my gremlins settled on a conclusion – they want me to expand my photographic repertoire. Actually, in plain-speak, my gremlins want me to become financially solvent. And then save for retirement. Save for a rainy day. Save for their retirement. All excellent suggestions.

And here I am, feeling quite the contrarian, wanting to return to the lovely arroyo to see the poppies again. Maybe I can go sit there and re-think my business plan WHILE watching the poppies grow.

A compromise?

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. If you need to find Bo today, she’s sitting on a rock in an arroyo in the Tucson Mountains, and talking to the poppies about life goals.

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Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in Bloom

February 22, 2012 by 5 Comments
Where are the Bloomin' Cacti?

Where are the Bloomin' Cacti? © 2012 Bo Mackison

It’s not often that one can’t see the many cacti in the Sonoran Desert because of blossoming flowers and shrubs.. But this spring one can truly say “Can’t see the cacti for the flowers.”

Park Rangers say that a rainy November and December, followed by a warmer than average January set up the National Monument for a potentially good Spring for desert blossoms. Then two days of soaking rain, each delivering 3/10ths of an inch of moisture, made the flowers pop!

The Palo Verde trees were turning yellow with flowers. The mesquite and brittlebush shrubs looked less like shrubs and more like yellow balls of blossoms. And the flowering plants — desert senna, desert marigolds, Mexican golden poppies, lupine, orange mallow, chuparosa, desert chicory — added shades of yellow, orange, purple and white to complete the transformation of the desert from cacti to layers of floral colors and greenery.

Sonoran Desert Dressed in Yellow

Desert, Dressed in Yellow © 2012 Bo Mackison

What a difference from the desert I fell for in 2011. Not knowing any better, I loved the Sonoran Desert a year ago, even though the desert had first experienced a plant-threatening frost in early February, then a prolonged drought throughout the spring and summer.

Last year, when I visited Organ Pipe for the first time, I asked the Park Rangers if there were any flowers in bloom. They looked at me as if I had just stepped off the bus from the far North. Well, they were close in their assessment. I had just driven to Arizona from the snow-bound Midwest, and I was enthralled with the desert blue skies and warm temperatures.

But no, they explained in particularly patient voices, there were no flowers in the desert right then. The desert was wearing mostly brown and drab green last year. The cacti maintained their greenish colors, but last year the desert scape was quite desolate. . . and brown. Except, I didn’t know just how desolate it was until I saw the Sonoran Desert a few days ago. I could barely contain my excitement with the lush growth, the bright colors, the layers upon layers of textures and life.

Well, truthfully, I didn’t contain my enthusiasm. Not one tiny bit. I was like a kid in a candy shop, going from bush to flower to tree with increasing joy. Everywhere I looked — flowers, flowers, and more flowers! It was almost beyond my understanding. I fell even more in love with this lush, vibrant  desert.

Wow!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She just returned from a visit to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and has more than 700 photos to sort through and process. Bo will be sharing photos of this gloriously blooming desert for quite a few blog posts..

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Blue Pottery on Ocotillo

February 1, 2012 by 12 Comments
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.

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Early Morning Coffee in the Desert

January 31, 2012 by 12 Comments
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.

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Desert Twilight

January 30, 2012 by 19 Comments
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.

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