Desert Interlude – A Winter Experience in Introspection

February 16, 2014 by 4 Comments
Tree Silhouettes

Trees in Blizzard © 2014 Bo Mackison

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” ~ C.G. Jung

There are lessons to be learned in the depths of white winter, when vision is blinded and the fierce winds chill even the deepest, innermost recesses. When even heart and soul shiver, and seek warmth by looking inside.

There is a certain strength that is uncovered when all aspects of the future are clouded, dressed in a white blizzard of nothingness, when only the shrouded present exists, tense with uncertainly and questions.

There is peace to be sought, a search undertaken within. In quiet. In reflection. In a surround of self acceptance and love.

Filed Under: Photography, Writing Practices Tagged With: , , ,

Winter Speaks – A Slow Day, Take it Easy Day

December 22, 2013 by 2 Comments
Oak Leaves and Snow

Oak Leaves and Snow © 2013 Bo Mackison

The first full day of winter. It’s a winter speak day. Snow falls, softens the landscape, all mounds and drifting sculptures. Skeletal trunks poke from the showy hillocks. A few trees, the oaks, sport crinkly brown leaves, the accent color in all the white. Pastel blue skies peek from cloud cover. Even the streets and sidewalks have a glaze of glitter.

Winter speaks in hushed tones today, the snow muffles the sounds of bustling human activity. A slow down, take it easy day.

Filed Under: Nature Explorations, Photography Tagged With: , , , , ,

Wintry Day on a Sky Island

January 30, 2013 by 7 Comments
Winter on a Sky Island

Winter on a Sky Island © 2013 Bo Mackison

In every walk in nature, one receives far more than he seeks. ~ John Muir

Snow in Arizona?

Sure. Arizona has its share of mountain ranges. The state, when viewed from far above, might resemble a piece of brown corrugated cardboard. Mountain ranges alternate with valleys, and those mountains peaks, many which near 10,000 feet in elevation, get plenty of snow.

A couple of days ago the snow moved even further down the mountains, and I headed for the nearest mountain range, the Santa Ritas, and drove towards Madera Canyon. Before I reached the road climbing upwards through the canyon, I saw clumps of wet snow hanging on ironwood trees, acacias, palo verdes. A few cholla had a snowy mitten on every arm. The prickly pear and yucca wore coats of white.

What a sight! it was the first time I’ve seen measurable snow in the foothills, mostly a thornscrub habitat.

Sycamore Snow Fall

Sycamore Snow Fall © 2013 Bo Mackison

In all things of Nature, there is something of the marvelous. ~ Aristotle

As we drove to the higher elevation, several inches of heavy snow covered everything. The wind was breezy and it seemed wherever I walked, the sycamore trees were throwing the snow off their leaves and branches and aiming for me.

Sycamore Leaf Creek?

Trail of Sycamore Leaves in Madera Creek © 2013 Bo Mackison

The sound of water says what I think. ~ Chuang Tze (c. 360 BC)

When we reached an access area for Madera Creek, I hiked along the creek. Water was flowing amidst a bed of red sycamore leaves. Surrounded by the whitest of snow, the creek seemed more sycamore leaf than tumbling water.

I enjoyed my brief foray into the wintry weather, especially while standing in the rays of the warming sunshine.

————–

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Yesterday she traveled to a wintry sky island in southern Arizona to play in the snow. Nature is truly a wonder!

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Boarded Window – Barrier Series # 2

January 14, 2013 by 8 Comments

This post is the second in my photo/story series on my journey of healing and recovery. See the introduction and complete series at My Healing Journey.

Warehouse in Winter

Boarded Window © 2011 Bo Mackison

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” ~ Viktor E Frankl,in Man’s Search for Himself

Cold.

Winter.

This barrier, a solid barrier.
No light, no sunshine, no blue skies,
nothing natural except the brittle vines.

Impenetrable barrier.
The frozen exterior the world perceives.
The bushes are skeletal in their winter bareness.

Dead vines cling to the bricks,
hang from the window’s edge,
collect in piles on the ledge.

The decorative bricks offer some respite,
though the window is covered with boards.

But wait, it’s been patched neatly, with blue painted boards.
Boarded closed, but with care,
Is there something inside worth protecting?

And the vines?
Dead for now, but the hidden roots,
alive, are protected under snowy depths,
warm enough in the warm earth.
These roots will send forth newly alive green shoots in the spring.

This phase, the deep winter of my spirit-break –
a period of dormancy.

A winter phase waiting for the thaw and spring’s return.

                 — based on journal entries, 1990

——–

The second barrier correlates to the time when I became unable to function, to keep up with life’s day-to-day expectations and demands. It was as if I constructed a barrier much like this one deep in my  interior, providing myself with space and time, waiting for the passage of winter and spring’s thaw.

It was a time of silent waiting.

Next: No Escape

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

Return to the Southwest

January 11, 2013 by 6 Comments
Sycamore II

Sycamore II © 2012 Bo Mackison

Forest and field, sun and wind and sky, earth and water, all speak the same silent language, reminding the monk that he is here to develop like the things that grow all around him. ~ Thomas Merton

I have returned. Returned to Pima County, a 9,000 square mile partition of the Sonoran Desert that spans two-thirds of the southern part of Arizona.

When I am in Wisconsin, and awaiting the day I return to the Southwest, I always say I miss the desert, that I am ready to return to the desert. But upon deeper reflection, it is not only the desert I miss. I miss the huge diversity that this small part of the country has to offer. The diversity of the southern Arizona habitats.

If I begin in the far western part of Pima County, perhaps I am visiting Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and Organ Pipe National Monument, and I then travel east to Tucson and ascend Mount Lemmon, I have traveled an equivalent distance of more than 2,200 miles in habitat. It is comparable to me traveling from northern Mexico to  southern Canada. And I can travel that in less than a half day’s time.

The part of the Southwest I call my home is part of the Sonoran Desert. Yes. But it is more than sand and cactus and rattlesnakes. It is an example of one of the most diverse ecological spaces on our planet. Not only does the area have over forty sky islands – tall mountain-islands surrounded by desert – but it is borders two diverse communities — the Rocky Mountain community to the north and the Sierra Madres to the south. Diversity abounds.

I can travel a few hours and explore six different communities — desert-scrubland (what most people call the ‘desert’), desert grasslands, oak woodlands, pine-oak woodlands, and coniferous zones, plus the riparian woodlands (seen in the picture above).

What an amazing place to explore with a camera in hand!

————

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She had landed back in the Southwest and is adapting to the transition between a Midwest winter and a Southwest winter.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »