In the Desert – Visiting Saguaro National Park

Sonoran Desert IV

In the Desert © 2011 Bo Mackison

The trip to Saguaro National Park has been one of the highlights of my stay in Arizona. I hiked in the Tuscon Mountain Unit on the west side of Tucson, the smaller of the two units that comprise the park. Rincon Mountain Unit is just east of Tucson. The two units are actually separated by the city of Tucson and together they protect more than 90,000 acres of the Sonoran Desert and thousands of saguaros.

Purples, Yellows, Greens in the Desert

Symphony of Desert Color © 2011 Bo Mackison

I love the Sonoran desert region. I love the desert surrounded by mountains. On some winter days, you can stand on the fringe of the desert, look into the mountains, and see the peaks covered with snow.

When I hiked in Saguaro NP, I stopped for a while along the trail. There was no other person in sight, just me and the cacti, the jackrabbits, and a pack of four or five coyotes that sprinted across an arroyo a hundred feet away. I stood there, the sun warming me when it appeared, but there was a fairly heavy cloud cover and the desert light seemed to flicker off and on.

Saguaro National Park

Saguaro © 2011 Bo Mackison

I put my camera in my backpack, and just stood there in silence, listening, watching. I became intensely aware of this “place”. The desert is very grounding for me. I felt very solid and strong, standing in its midst, surrounded by this expanse of land.

The desert is by no means a desolate area. My photographs are a testimony to the wealth and diversity of the many growing plants, the contours of the land, the occasional bird or animal flushed from its daytime resting place. I stood near several saguaros, all at least twice as tall as me, all like poles. They had not yet sprouted any arms.

Suddenly I peered at my feet. I thought for a moment I had sunk into the earth, I felt that connected with this desert.

But no, I was standing just as you would expect. I shook off the feeling, and laughed a bit at my sudden fancy. But I do, feel a strong connection with this land, with this whole region. I don’t know exactly what that is all about, but I’m going to keep exploring and I’ll pay close attention to what happens.

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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.”  And she is discovering more than she had anticipated.

On the Journey

Tumacacori - In Balance

Tumacacori – In Balance © 2011 Bo Mackison

I am rather fascinated by the granary and the clay pottery. So many opportunities for composition studies. Maybe too many, hmm? Even though I have moved on, and I am visiting new places, I will share these photos of pots in this post, and then I will share photos of the cemetery at Tumacacori National Historic Park tomorrow.

Tumacacori - Two Plus Three

Tumacacori – Two Plus Three © 2011 Bo Mackison

I was asked, after I wrote about sitting in the garden at Tumacacori, what I heard and felt as I rested in that sacred space.

I let my thoughts flow freely as I sat there, as I took in this ancient place, still filled with the “ancient.” And as my thoughts came, I thought about freedom. It was as if this place was filled with an energy that was all about seeking freedom.

Tumacacori - Three Pots

Tumacacori – Three Pots

I sat mostly in silence, and listened–to the birds singing, the wind rustling the dried grasses, the footsteps retreating from me, and I wrote only a few words in my journal. As the thoughts came, I wrote, no censoring, no editing.

Give us our freedom.
Give us our freedom,
but we were never freed.

Now you say, “Let me be free.”
And your request has been answered.

Do not look back at the past; live in this moment.

Take this gift, give thanks, move on.

As I spend my time exploring southern Arizona on my own, I have been thinking a great deal about freedom, but also about connectedness, about creating, about making meaning.

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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 of Arizona landmarks, both historical and natural, and blogging about photography, art fairs, and learning to live on her own. It is an experience well worth the effort.


Reflections from Tumacacori

Four Pots

Four Pots @ 2011 Bo Mackison

Another set of photographs from Tumacacori National Historical Park. These are taken in a side building near the mission church building. This was one of the more important buildings in the complex–it was the granary. The granary held all the surplus food grown during the growing season. It was an impressive place to the native peoples who seldom had huge stockpiles of food stored and ready to eat during the leaner months of the year.

In the Sun

In the Sun © 2011 Bo Mackison

I was at Tumacacori twice this week. One day it was bright and sunny, and even February’s morning sun in the desert provided intense sunlight. The second day it was mostly cloudy, with patches of blue sky peeking through stormy gray clouds. It is often easier to photograph buildings in cloudy weather to avoid the deep shadows and washed out colors, so I returned thinking I would retake some of the photographs of the church building. However I quite like the sun’s highlights and the shadows on this clay pot. I took many photographs studying the interplay of light and shadow.

Granary at Tumacacori

Granary at Tumacacori @ 2011 Bo Mackison

This is another photograph of the granary. The stairway, at one time, led to the second story of the granary, but only the first floor remains. Efforts by the Park Service to maintain these ruins are ever ongoing. The adobe must be continually cared for or it would eventually be damaged by moisture during the times of the monsoons.

After I spent an hour with my camera, and a second hour taking a tour of the site with a Park Ranger, I spent another hour sitting in the shade, absorbing the mystical sensation of being surrounded by ancient memories held in these ancient walls. I thought about the idea of the granary, comparing it to my Southwestern “explore”, thinking that it is important to me to capture this time in my history, to keep hold of this time, make meaning from these solitary days, these days so different from what I normally experience.

I’ve been documenting my stay in the Southwest in several ways–through journaling, drawing maps, sketching and, of course with my photography. I am particularly drawn to the study of light and shadow in this sunny climate, to the natural areas–mountains surrounded by desert–so unlike the rolling farmland and lake country that I usually call home, and to the stories of the ancient people.

My words, drawings, photographs, and memories–all of these I am storing in my “experience” granary.

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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 of Arizona landmarks, both historical and natural, and blogging about photography, art fairs, and learning to live on her own. Her mantra is “Bo goes solo!”

Bird Cage, Ocotillo, and Freedom

Study in Brown

Freedom © 2011 Bo Mackison

A visit to Tubac Presidio Historical Park in Tubac, Arizona, gave me an opportunity to photograph some amazing objects from an early historical period in Arizona–from the middle of the 18th Century through the early years of the 20th Century. The above photo shows a part of the historical museum’s veranda. The wooden bird cage is hung from a ceiling made of ocotillo, a thin, wood-like desert plant.

The park protects the ruins of the oldest Spanish presidio in Arizona, founded in 1752. It is the site of the first European settlement in  Arizona.

Tubac is one of only three presidio sites to survive into modern times. The second (if you can consider this surviving) is buried under downtown Tucson, the third in is Cochise County. The Tubac Presidio Historical Park was Arizona’s first state park, dedicated in 1958.

In early 2010, the state of Arizona decided to close the park due to severe budget cuts to the Arizona park system. Santa Cruz County administrators and the Tubac Historical Society stepped up to thwart the crisis.  The county assumed the role of governmental agent for the park and the Historical Society took on the administration and maintenance of the site — a bold move to protect a historical gem in the town whose motto is “where history and art meet”.

All of the people who take care of the Presidio are volunteers–a difficult, though rewarding job–and they deserve big thanks. Without their many hours of time and effort, the park would be boarded up and fall into a state of disrepair. So kudos to the Tubac Historical Society docents.

The park preserves three historical buildings which are on the National Register of Historic Places:

Old Tubac Schoolhouse

Old Tubac Schoolhouse © 2011 Bo Mackison

  • Arizona’s second oldest Territorial school building, the Old Tubac Schoolhouse, built in 1885.
Otero Hall, Tubac Presidio Historical Park

Otero Hall © 2011 Bo Mackison

  • Otero Hall, an adobe building built as a community center and later used as a schoolhouse, built in 1914.
1930s Kitchen

1930s Kitchen © 2011 Bo Mackison

  • And the Rojas House, a typical adobe row house that has the original furnishings of Luisa Rojas, a life-long resident of Tubac, built in 1890, and restored to the period of the 1930s.

On a personal note, I love the photograph of the empty bird cage. It is very symbolic to me–I feel like I am tasting a type of freedom and independence I haven’t experienced since my college days.

I’m learning that independence gives not only freedom, but also demands responsibility. I woke up this morning with such amazing feelings, almost too hard to describe–feelings of wonder and accomplishment and the knowledge that whatever needed to be done today, well, I’m the one that had to do it. But the responsibility feels good; it makes me feel competent, effective, satisfied.

And so I love the photo of the empty bird cage–the bird has flown to freedom.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She is living in Tucson for the next eight seven weeks, exhibiting her photography in art fairs, taking photographs of Arizona landmarks, both historical and natural, and blogging about photography, art fairs, and learning to live on her own. Her mantra is “Bo goes solo!”

Cold Front Sunset – Arizona Silhouette

Cold Front Sunset

Cold Front Sunset © 2011 Bo Mackison

In the nine days since I’ve been in Arizona, the skies have seldom had any clouds. So when I saw clouds forming as a cold front approached, I headed for the nearest mountains. I’d spent the day south of Tucson exploring the Old Tubac Presidio and Tumacacori National Historic Park, and so I stopped at Madera Canyon in the Santa Rita Mountains.

I had a long wait. The sun was quite high in the sky when I pulled into the parking area for the trailhead to Elephant Head. But it was time well spent. The sky took on more and more color as I watched, and then the clouds turned a brilliant orange as they caught the sun’s reflection. Elephant Head is the highest peak towards the center of the photograph, and the Santa Cruz Valley is beyond the mountains.

Arizona sunsets. Wow!