Sonoran Desert, Saguaro National Park © 2013 Bo Mackison
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air. ~ Paul Hoffman
Blooming Desert
March 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Play – A Desert Wisdom Card
March 17, 2013 by 8 Comments
Jackrabbit Wisdom – Play © 2013 Bo Mackison
If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I fill myself so well, to the point of bursting. I wake up early and hear my morning voices leaping around like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.
~ Ray Bradbury
I love the set of music-making, playful pottery jackrabbits.
I imagine them jumping around, creating joyful notes, all improvisation, unpredictable and original. I even hear a stream of hoppy, happy notes.
I also love the idea of Ray Bradbury joyfully filling himself with words and music, comedy and rhythm, until he is bursting. He is so full that he wakes early each morning, ready to capture the leaping thoughts and joyful words. What an image — the power of play, so inspiring that it fills the creative well.
This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. ~ Alan Wilson Watts
I love this set of music-making jackrabbits, pottery critters that I found at a folk art market in Southern Arizona. These funny little critters make me laugh. I imagine them jumping around, creating joyful notes, all improvisation, unpredictable and original. I imagine a stream of hoppy, happy notes filling the air.
I also love the idea of Ray Bradbury joyfully filling himself with words and music, comedy and rhythm, until he is ready to burst. He is so full that he wakes early each morning, ready to capture his leaping thoughts and joyful words. What an image — the power of play, so inspiring that it fills the creative well.
This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. ~ Alan Wilson Watts
PLAY offers questions/reflections for journal writing, art, and a call for action:
- Consider these journal prompts: What wisdom do the jackrabbits offer? When is my work play? When is my play work?
- How can I incorporate play in my life as a daily practice? Jot down a few ideas of play that requires no set-up, no special equipment, only a few minutes of time in between other activities.
- While chalkboard chalk is becoming a thing of the past, sidewalk chalk is easy to find. 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. She plays while she creates her series of Desert Wisdom Cards and then she plays with the cards.
Towards Nonexistence
March 13, 2013 by 10 Comments
A Tumble of Cactus © 2013 Bo Mackison
”Like homeopathic medicine, the essence of wabi-sabi is apportioned in small doses. As the dose decreases, the effect becomes more potent, more profound. The closer things get to nonexistence, the more exquisite and evocative they become. Consequently to experience wabi-sabi means you have to slow way down, be patient, and look very closely.”
~ Leonard Koren in Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers
I took dozens of photographs of organ pipe cacti last week. It was a major preoccupation while I was camping at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. I found a few specimens that were perfect to the discerning eye – not an easy feat when a cactus typically stands 8 to 10 feet high, the older ones reach heights twice that size. Each has eight to fifteen stems, though some of the ancient giants have twenty or more.
It was not the symmetrically formed, unscathed cacti that captured most of my attention. I loved the cacti that had character, the ones marked with scars and age . . . and great beauty. Desiccated arms tangled with vibrant greens and golden greens. New buds of growth twisted around aged skeletons.
Two Stems ©2013 Bo Mackison
I loved the cactus that carried marks of its challenges with below freezing temperatures or prolonged cold spells. Indentations on the stems are the result of the freezing and death of vulnerable tissue on the stem ends.
When new growth appears, the plant is marked by circular strictures on the pipes. These cactus have gone through hardships, and survived, marked by the challenges of life in a harsh environment. The bumpier an organ pipe cactus, the more battles it has met with climate at the northern reaches of its habitat.
Stages of Life © 2013 Bo Mackison
This photograph is a Southwest version of photo I took in Wisconsin exploring the same concept – the presence of both life and death in a plant.
A walk through this small part of the Sonoran Desert – mostly in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and its adjacent areas in south-central Arizona – offers the only opportunity to see these unique cactus giants in the United States. This small micro-habitat offers the only chance for survival of these warmth-loving plants. Many more grow in the warmer climes of Sonora Mexico.
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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. I continue my exploration of whole and fragments, of extra-ordinary and ordinary.
Layers of Wilderness
March 12, 2013 by 6 Comments
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.
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument
March 6, 2013 by 8 Comments
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.
