Saguaro Spines © 2011 Bo Mackison

The Tucson area has had very little rain this winter. Add a freezing spell colder than average, and the result is little to nothing blooming in the desert I’ve been hiking. Rather than come home empty-handed with no photographs of flowering cacti, I have been concentrating on patterns and colors in tiny landscapes in the desert. This is a macro-photograph of the spines on a saguaro.

I’ve also been reading A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert by the staff of Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and edited by Steven J. Phillips and Patricia Wentworth Comus (a fascinatingly informative book). So I was beginning to feel like I had been well introduced to the mighty saguaro.

Patience in the Desert © 2011 Bo Mackison

Then I hiked in a desert garden filled with rocks inscribed with quotes about the desert.

And I realized that my gathering of information about the saguaro has been only that — an introduction.

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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.” She spends a little time each day exploring the desert. There is so much to see, so much to learn–about the Sonoran desert, about creating art, and about living a full life.