Layers of Wilderness

March 12, 2013 by 6 Comments
Southwest Layers

Canyon Layers © 2013 Bo Mackison

Listen to your life.
See it for the fathomless mystery that it is . . .
Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart
Of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments
and life itself is grace.
                                          ~ Frederich Buechner

Traveling.

Silence is so loud, all of my senses on alert. Bees buzzing in pockets of blooming brittlebush, yellow blossoms swollen with pollen laden landing strips. They buzz my head when I lean in for a closer look.

I take in the spectacle. Cactus with upturned octopus arms stretching towards the sky, mighty saguaro of cartoon fame. Rocks bleeding rusty reds and oranges. I greet these ancients on their sacred ground. I, the newcomer, stare and gawk and take snapshots to send home.

Town is twenty-five miles north – four concrete block houses, an RV park dwarfed by rows of fifty year old palm trees, Shady Palms it’s called. Two gas stations. A faded sign at Edith’s Rock Shop advertises cheap crystals and polished gems.

There’s a diner, Grandma’s Cafe. A border patrol truck, white with the familiar green stripe, is angle parked at the entrance. I eat what the locals eat – bean burritos for breakfast, hot tortillas just flipped on the griddle, strong coffee.

Formica tables and folding chairs fill the room. And a maple dining set, table with two leaves, eight matching chairs, a bouquet of plastic roses centered on a doily. It’s the only available table, yet no one sits there.

The newspaper is a six page shopper with a few local items – a music benefit for a kid with leukemia, a Saturday night BBQ at the church in Ajo, ads for health care and Mexican insurance.

Coke and bottled water pack the refrigerated case, two bucks a bottle if you want something cold to drink. This is the desert.

The cook is Marjie, she’s the waitress, cashier, the owner, too. The regulars ask about her newest grand-baby, Jesus, her fifth, the first boy. “Born at midnight” she says, “Five pounds, six ounces. Already he’s a screamer. Aye yi yi.”

She half-smiles when I offer my congratulation, then balances a tray of dirty dishes half on her hip, hums with the radio static as she disappears into the kitchen.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She explores the whole and the fragments, the extra-ordinary and the ordinary.

 

 

 

 

 

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Choosing a Path

March 8, 2013 by 10 Comments
Ajo Mountain Trail

Ajo Mountain Trail ©2013 Bo Mackison

“One’s options in this world are as vast as the horizon, which is technically a circle and thus infinitely broad.
Yet we must choose each step we take with utmost caution,
for the footprints we leave behind are as important as the path we will follow.
They’re part of the same journey — our story.” ~ Lori R Lopez

Sherpa and I hiked several of the trails in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. When we trekked up the Bull Pasture Trail, we encountered lots of switchbacks, lots of rocky trail. Occasionally we walked along a packed dirt path, but more often we were picking our way through rocky rubble. Every foot placement was a decision.

I noticed that Sherpa and I chose very different paths. He would choose to veer to the side and balance on wobbly stones. I would choose to climb up larger, more solid rocks, balancing with my hiking stick and my hands when necessary. He sidestepped down the side of an arroyo, slip sliding as he descended. I did my sidesteps in smaller increments, testing the stability of the rocks so I had a firm footing. We each choose different paths, but we chose our individual paths with intention.

So different — hiking on a rocky trail versus strolling on a smooth sidewalk. For the majority of us, a sidewalk poses little problem. We barely notice where we place our feet. We walk, usually heading to a destination, and often pay little attention to our surroundings. Walking on a rocky path requires concentration and deliberation, the path is seldom designed for speed, and often rewards us with magnificent views.

The kinds of paths we choose can apply to living a full life, also. We can choose to walk the easier path, walk it in such a way as to never call attention to ourselves. Follow the same path as everyone else. Or we can maneuver over a rockier trail, choosing our own way. We can walk with intention. We can be observant. We can take in the view.

I can’t do all of my walking climbing a mountain path, but I don’t want to do all of my walking on a sidewalk either.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She continues to make discoveries when she connects with the natural world.

Filed Under: Art of Healing, Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument

March 6, 2013 by 8 Comments
Organ Pipe Cactus

Organ Pipe Cactus ©2013 Bo Mackison

“We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” ~ Henry David Thoreau from Walden

We traveled west. Warnings of high winds — 40 to 50 mph — and dust storms, downed electrical lines and zero visibility were more than enough reasons for us to curtail our planned expedition to California’s Joshua Tree National Park, and stop only three hours west of the Tucson area.

I’ve been to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument several times over the last few years, but Sherpa had never visited this park, so it seemed like a wise alternative. Sunny, a bit of a cooling breeze and temperatures in the mid 70s to mid 80s, fit the description of a suitable camping destination.

I am the tent camper; Sherpa is the reluctant camper in any type of camping set-up. He considers a tent a fine place to store the camping equipment while he checks out the nearest motel. But he was a super trooper these past few days, and we spent an uneventful two nights protected by a tent while we slept.

(Sherpa has every right to have hesitations about tent camping — he has camped through torrential downpours, collapsed tents, wildly spirited neighbors with loud music, ambitious families with terrified toddlers, and even a near miss by a tornado.)

Organ Pipe’s campground played the perfect host. We had a tent site at the edge of the Sonoran Desert and set up so we could watch the sun rise over the saguaros and organ pipe cacti. The stars filled the sky and we had a clear view since the moon delayed its rising until way after midnight. A cloudless, moonless night of star watching in a dark desert wilderness surely is a life changing experience. We spread a sleeping bag on the picnic table and couldn’t stop staring. There were so many stars, and such a wide swath of the Milky Way, we swore we could hardly find a black bit in the sky. The sky is ALL stars!

We hiked during the day – including one 3 mile hike that I misread as “easy and meandering.” Sherpa read the same sign which correctly described the hike as strenuous and difficult, but he didn’t say a word when I suggested we hike to Bull Pasture. Well — it was one of the more magnificent trails I’ve hikes since we tackled several out-of-the-way hikes in the Great Smoky Mountains when we were in our twenties.

Suffice to say that I was gratified to see that my new self-care program of healthy eating and exercise paid off.

As for the Organ Pipe Cactus, what a spectacular plant! I promise many more photos from our travels, including entire mountain sides of Organ Pipes mixed with Saguaros.

Tomorrow!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Nothing makes her happier than trips to explore the many protected wildernesses across America – the National Parks and Monuments.

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Organ Pipe Cactus

March 1, 2012 by 5 Comments
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
Organ Pipe Cactus © 2012 Bo Mackison

Transparent and intangible as sunlight, yet always and everywhere present, [the desert] lures a man on and on, from the red-walled canyons to the smoke-blue ranges beyond, in a futile but fascinating quest for the great, unimaginable treasure which the desert seems to promise. Once caught by this golden lure you become a prospector for life. ~ Edward Abbey

The organ pipe cactus shares this mountainside with saguaros, mesquite, and blooming brittlebush. The organ pipe has many arms which appear to come from a low-to-the-ground center and resembles a pipe organ, its namesake. Some of the largest specimens grow to twenty-five feet, but most of the cacti I saw at Organ Pipe National Monument were in the twelve to eighteen feet range.

Organ Pipe Cactus and Desert Marigold

Organ Pipe Cactus © 2012 Bo Mackison

Although the lucky organ pipes that make it through their first years become giants in the Sonoran Desert, they are a bit on the slow side when they are getting started. In the wild, an organ pipe is only four inches high when it celebrates its eighth birthday. A three foot tall cactus will be about twenty years old, and it will finally reach an adult height of twenty feet when it is forty five or fifty years old.

Organ Pipe Cactus grow in Sonora, Mexico and a few are seen in the Tucson area, but the majority of Organ Pipe Cacti that grow in the United States are in or very near the monument. These cacti are afforded little protection in Mexico, so it is vital that we remain committed to maintaining this region for the protection of this unique cactus.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Love the organ pipe cactus and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. What an amazing place!

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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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