Great Horned Owlets

Great Horned Owls

go here Great Horned Owls © 2013 Bo Mackison

https://www.brigantesenglishwalks.com/q04l69yjs It’s note-worthy when golfers stop their game long enough to stare into the high boughs of a nearby cottonwood. Not that they watched for long, but I watched foursome after foursome check out the tree top as they queued for their tee-time. (I had been given a hint as to the owls’ whereabouts by a dear neighbor who knows my penchant for photography.) Lucky for me, I knew where to look!

https://paradiseperformingartscenter.com/a25wwpjftgw What a thrill! Two Great Horned Owlets, not quite ready to fledge their nest. They kept their backs towards me and their feathers over their heads as I aimed my long lens towards their nest, but when Sherpa made a sort of screeching sound, they popped up and kept a steady eye on that screeching human on the ground. Plenty of time for me to take a few baby portraits.

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go to link Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She explores Arizona with her camera, aided by neighbors’ helpful hints and Sherpa’s noise-making abilities.

Prickly Pear in Bloom

Prickly Pear in Bloom

go to link Prickly Pear in Bloom © 2013 Bo Mackison

follow url “If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment.”
~ Georgia O’Keeffe

https://purestpotential.com/sncki6c2 Not that I would want to take a flower from a cactus in my hand, but I understand Georgia O’Keeffe’s remark about having the world for a moment. When I stop on a desert path or in a desert garden, I feel as if the world opens before me and I see the beauty, the complexity, the order of the Universe.

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Best Tramadol Online Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio. She is beginning a time of transition, and collecting the beauty of the desert – in her memory and in photographs.

All Manner of Stripes

Stripes on Benches

https://lpgventures.com/f3m21ih Stripes on Benches ©2013 Bo Mackison

https://penielenv.com/k5zrq53a5i “In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated. ” ~ August Sander

Tramadol Visa While visiting Casa Grande National Monument, I found plenty of opportunity to play with surfaces striped with light and shadow. And so that is what I did. I played!

Stripes in Corners

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Ordering Tramadol From Canada Photography means ‘light writing’.~ L. Ron Hubbard 

go I took these photos at the visitor center and the outside ramada where Park Rangers give talks about the ancient ruins of a Hohokam-era farming village and a four-story Great House.

Stripes on Roofs

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https://alldayelectrician.com/j1yzca4i891 The camera captures light, our minds capture images. ~ Anonymous

Blue skies, an Arizona hallmark, show through the slatted ramada.

Stripes - Casa Grande National Monument's Visitor Center

Stripes – Casa Grande National Monument ©2013 Bo Mackison

Photos have no narrative content. They only describe light on surface. ~ Garry Winogrand

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She explores the desert with her camera, and is mesmerized by the stripes of light and shadow.

Rootedness – A Desert Wisdom Card

Rooted - Desert Wisdom Card

Rooted © 2013 Bo Mackison

Through our willingness to be the one we are, we become one with everything.
~ Gunilla Norris

Plants that live in the desert have evolved to thrive in a land of little water.

Some plants develop deep, thick roots that reach many feet into the desert soil. They use water sources that are far below the earth’s surface.

A deep root system provides other benefits as well. With strong roots, plants stay grounded and maintain a firm footing on the earth, even when buffeted by harsh desert winds and monsoonal storms. And the plants do not require rainfall to survive, they have adapted to withstand drought using adaptive, internal structures.

We are also beings on this earth. We are connected to the earth.

We require roots to stay grounded, to keep a firm footing, to survive and thrive. To take optimal care of the self, it is essential that we tend our roots — deep roots of connection that are life-sustaining.

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.
~ Simone Weil

ROOTEDNESS offers questions/reflections for journal writing, art prompts, and calls to action:

  • Perform a grounding ritual. Find a convenient space outside where you can actually make physical contact with the earth. Not a piece of pavement, but the earth – grassy yard, meadow, sandy beach, desert soil. Stand quietly, feel the solid earth beneath your feet. Bare feet produce great results, but wear foot covering appropriate for your environment and comfort level.
  • Just as a desert plant has a core root for sustainability, we have core values that keep us firmly established, that define who we are and sustain us. Reflect on several of your values that are the essential you. How are they life-sustaining? How do these values show up in the routines of your daily life?
  • My grandmother’s parents immigrated from Germany, and German was her first language. Decades later, my grandmother spoke only English, but she remembered the songs and ditties from her youth. When her children and grandchildren were young, she soothed them lullabies and children’s songs in German. I remember the feelings these melodies in an unfamiliar language evoked. They communicated a message of love and belonging. What childhood songs, rhymes, or games do you remember that rekindle a deep feeling of belonging, of rootedness?
  • Connect to your inner core by doing activities you enjoyed in your youth. Did you jump rope, hula hoop or play hopscotch? Try one of these activities. Muse, draw, or write about your experience. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to add some activities from your youth to your exercise routine.
  • While chalkboard chalk is becoming a thing of the past, sidewalk chalk is an easy-to-find art supply. What might you do with a box of colored chalk? The obvious — drawing pictures on sidewalks — is great fun, and since expectations are minimal, you can easily lose yourself in this expressive process. Add an uplifting message. Write a famous quote or a few lines from a favorite poem. Add an observation. The options are endless.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Bo is creating a deck of Desert Wisdom Cards for exploration and discovery, using photography, with a Sonoran Desert theme – its myths and stories, cultures and heritage, and the desert’s remarkable natural beauty and resources.

The Essence of Desert

Yucca in Bloom

Yucca in Bloom ©2013 Bo Mackison

“I seek out places where it can happen more readily, such as deserts or mountains or solitary areas, or by myself with a seashell, and while I’m there get into states of mind where I’m more open than usual. I’m waiting, I’m listening. I go to those places and get myself ready through meditation. Through being quiet and willing to wait, I can begin to see the inner man and the essence of the subject in front of me… Watching the way the current moves a blade of grass – sometimes I’ve seen that happen and it has just turned me inside out.”
~ Minor White

There is a transformation that takes place when I sit in a place of solitude and wait.

In the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps did construction projects in the Sonoran Desert. They built several picnic areas in the Tucson Mountains, tables of concrete and stone, each in a private space, each table protected from the heat of mid-day sun by an overhead ramada. One of these picnic sites, tucked far from the road, has become my perfect office space. I gather the requisites necessary for spending a day writing and taking photographs in the desert – camera, a few reference books, my old notebooks, but also water, protein snacks, a wide-brimmed hat, sunscreen, my hiking stick.

I bring my writing office to the desert. I choose not to bring my computer or other devices that might tempt me with an immediate, continuous connection to the rest of the world. I choose  solitude instead. I write by hand, pen to paper, scribbling, crossing out, adding words, sensing the connection between brain and hand. I compile notes from a dozen notebooks, unravel bits of my life from words written during the past decade. I pull inspiration from these worn pages and curate them into the skeletal beginnings of my Desert Wisdom Cards.

I take frequent breaks to hike – a favorite trail begins fifty paces from my table and winds through saguaro-studded desert, in and out of several washes, then half-way up the side of Brown Mountain. There I stop and memorize the desert scene, burn its landscape into my mind – again. In a few weeks I will be in a far away state, and my heart will linger here in this lush desert stretching beyond the beyond.

Minor White’s quote struck a deep chord in me. I do connect with the world beyond my sight, I feel the essence of place seep into my cells. Sometimes I feel as if this sacred desert space turns me inside out, and exposes my innermost being to the desert in exchange for bits of desert wisdom.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She is beginning a time of transition, and finding strength and inspiration in the desert. Her office, at least for a few more weeks, is in the Sonoran Desert.