A perfection of form and function

Cactus exhibit perfection in both form and function. It is hard to imagine anything you could design that is adapted so perfectly to its environment than a cactus and at the same time has such a perfection of form and beauty. Frank Lloyd Wright implemented a movement called Organic Architecture. This is defined as a philosophy of architecture which promotes harmony between human habitation and the natural world through design approaches so sympathetic and well integrated with its site that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated composition. See Wikipedia:Organic Architecture. If you apply this definition to this prickly pear cactus, you can see why I think they are perfect examples.

How doth the busy little bee...

Prickly Pear fruit starts with prickly pear flowers and those flowers are pollinated by honey bees. Here is a shot of some really unusual flowers; two colors on one plant. Both these flowers are growing on the same pad. The desert is always full of surprises.

Prickly Pear Fruit

We are rapidly coming up on the time when Prickly Pear fruit will be ripe and ready for picking. Labor Day is our traditional time to go out into the desert with buckets and pick the fruit. We then cook it down in a steam juicer to extract all the juice and use that to make syrup and jelly. I must say that the jelly is delicious and the most beautiful color.

Love

I found this iconic statue in downtown Scottsdale, Arizona standing on a raised cement platform in the middle of a Bermuda grass lawn. No shade. No lovely flower border. It gave me pause to think about what our society considers to be love.

A Tangle of Wire

Millions of miles of barbed wire fence exist throughout the United States. Eventually, without maintenance the fence lines fall and the wire becomes a trap for unwary hikers and even for animals. I see a relationship here between the fence lines and our lives. Unless we maintain safe boundaries in our lives, keeping us from those things that will harm us, the very barriers that we create can become a snare for us and those around us. We cannot let our fences fall and we cannot lose our standards.

Fading into the Past

The destructive power of a forest fire can be one of the most terrifying of the natural phenomena. But equally as impressive is the ability of the forest to renew itself and regenerate from the ashes. This burnt log is now only a shadow of the destruction that is now but a fading memory. The effects may last for some time yet, but part of nature is quickly hiding the evidence.

Creeping Cactus

We often form stylized images of the world around us and when we find something that does not conform to our internal image, we conveniently forget it exists. If I asked fifty people to draw a cactus, I would likely get a huge majority of saguaros. It is very unlikely anyone would draw this cactus. Why is that the case? Even those people who have never seen a cactus in their life have formed a concept of cactus that is equal to saguaro and nothing else. I think this is sad.

Seeing Double

I couldn't resist these twin cactus flowers. Who would suspect that such a small cactus could have such large and beautiful blooms? Many things in life are a surprise and we often misjudge by appearances only. Cactus only bloom once or twice a year, so seeing the blooms is always a treat and a double treat to get a photo.

Iris forever

For many years I grew flowers and among my favorites were iris. I still think they are one of the most beautiful of all the flowers and I never tire of their colors and the variety of their forms. Of all the things I would like to have done in my life, I would most of liked to have had the opportunity to be a gardener, full-time and I don't even mind pulling weeds.

The Great Salt Lake

The vast inland sea of the Great Salt Lake creates its own atmosphere and weather. Since many of its attractions are very local, the vast sweep of its vistas are often ignored by visitors. There is a surprising amount of wildlife for such a desolate looking place. Even the highly saline water teems with life. This is one of those photos that must be enlarged by clicking on the photo to see the detail.

Extreme Dieting

If the super thin model is the example of our society's highest physical aspiration, then here is the epitome. No bones about it, this is one of the thinnest models you will ever find. Looking through the subject however, you can see that there is little substance to this model. It might be a good idea to round out this post with another observation, life is tough and then you die.

The Sands of Time

Sand can be a solid, a liquid or even, when wind blown, like a gas. This sand is fairly unique in that it is not made up of quartz grains or other hard rocks, but are shells of concentric layers of calcium carbonate that has precipitated around a nucleus or central core. They are found in many locations around the world, but generally on the beaches of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. From the wind and the waves, there are many unusual formations.

Regeneration

The news is full of stories about huge wildfires across the Western United States. The stories highlight the terrible destruction of these events and the economic impact. After the fires are over, the news media moves on to other "newsworthy" events and the scene of the fire is forgotten. Here is a recent picture of the part of the burn area of the great Arizona Wallow Fire of 2011. Here I see what happens behind the scenes of death and destruction; the quiet regeneration of the forest.

A Cool Dip on a Hot Day

This herd of cows must have been reading my mind! It was a hot muggy day in the Mid-west and I was wishing I could take a dip in my swimming pool but I was a long way from home. I must say, however, that I was not at all tempted to join them in their dip.

Drought

Driving across the United States through Nebraska, Iowa and Illinois, you get a graphic understanding of the term "drought." News accounts do not covey the full impact of the scale of the drought on corn farmers. These photos show a sample of thousands of similar corn fields across the U.S. If the reporters really wanted to know what was going on, they should get in their cars and drive a few thousand miles and this is what they would see. 

Looking for a fault

This is a fault in the Wasatch Mountains of Utah. You can clearly see the bent and broken rocks where the fault runs through the mountains. If this fault were to slip any further, there would be an earthquake. There are not too many places where the fault line is so obvious.

Triops

Triops, or tadpole shrimp, live in desert potholes of the Southwest. The are prehistoric crustaceans and have remained unchanged for millions of years. They predate the dinosaurs. Their eggs can lie dormant for 25 years, waiting out a dry-spell.

Barbed Wire

There are few things more ubiquitous in Arizona than barbed wire. It has even become a valuable collectors item, mounted on a board in a frame with various varieties. The idea for barbed wire dates back into the early 1800s. Sometimes it is referred to as "bobbed" wire. When I was young, we called it "bob wire." One of the rites of passage as children was to learn to walk through a barbed wire fence without getting a scratch and without tearing your clothes. This photo shows a stretching segment, the crossed wire in the middle is tightened by twisting the sticks in the wire.

This is not fake -- Indian Paintbrush

This is not a fake, this plant really does have incredible color. I am always on the lookout for flowers and it is always nice to find one, have my camera and have time to take the picture. All of these factors combined to produce this fantastic photo. The Arizona high country is full of surprises, some of them on the very local level.

White Thistles

I don't believe I had ever seen a white thistle flower before. Usually and very commonly, they are purple. The appear to be rare, especially in Arizona. It just goes to show that you may see something unusual if you know where to look and what you are looking at.

Mushrooms

I have always been fascinated by mushrooms. I can remember seeing them as a child and thinking there was something magical about the way they just appear out of the ground without any other visible plant structure. I always think that I could have been happy, just wandering the forests and deserts of the world discovering new kinds of mushrooms. But I guess I have to be content at just looking at them, when I find them.

Mountain Daisies

Sometimes when walking around in the desert forests of Arizona, you get a glimpse of beauty through small flowers poking up through the pine needles under the trees. In the overall view of the vast mountains and hills, these tiny flowers are an almost infinitely small dot of color, but up close, they are truly marvelous. I have learned to keep my eyes open for the small as well as the large vistas in life.

Aftermath -- The Wallow Fire 2012

Last year, the Wallow Fire became the largest in Arizona recorded history. The aftermath of the fire is visible throughout the White Mountains and highly visible from some of the mountain communities. You will need to click on this photo to see the detail, but this is shows some of the most northern reaches of the fire and the land below where the fire stopped. Look closely at the mountainside to see the fire's destruction.

Rag Rug

Some of my earliest memories are associated with rag rugs. In the 1800s and early 1900s (and before that of course) rag rugs were common as a floor covering. They are made on a two or four harness loom warped with strong cord. The weft is made from strips of cloth cut from old or discarded clothes or bedding. None of the cloth was wasted. The cloth was either cut into squares for quilts or woven into rag rugs. Some of these are so durable that they are still in use in modern homes today. Rag rugs are a visible symbol of a society that had as a motto, "Waste not, want not." This would be a good thing to remember today.

A View of the Temple

I find this picture symbolic of our mortal lives. We live here in the present, with dark shadows and a confusion of contrasting images. There above, on the hill, is the Temple, lifting above the tangled world below and giving us a clear message of light and knowledge. Even though we live in the tangled world below, we have the promise that comes through, like this Temple on the hill, that will guide us out of the dark shadows and into the light.

Windows to the Past

As I walk through life, I spend a lot of time thinking both about the past and the future. The past is behind us and we cannot see it clearly. We can only see the dim reflections of our memories colored by our emotions. The future is also dark, we can make out general outlines, but the details are all missing. All we can really see is the intricate pattern of the present, sweeping past us like this lace curtain.

Ruins

All that is left of the ancient Indian dwellings is usually a ridge of stone outlining the rooms of buildings. This ruin is called the Puerco Pueblo and it is generally thought that these people were the ancestors of the modern Indians living in the Pueblo communities across northern Arizona and New Mexico. It seems incredible that these people could survive and even thrive in such a hostile environment. But we see a land that is much drier and was heavily over-grazed in the 1800 and most of the 1900s. I often wonder what their lives were really like back then.

See Forever

Go outside or look out a window. How far can you see? This is a scene that is very common from my early childhood and throughout my life. Why would you trade this for what you can see right now out your own window? Maybe you wouldn't. But I would. But reality does step in and move you to the city and out of the Plateau. You do have to work and very few people have jobs that give them the opportunity to see forever.

The Ancient Art of Petroglyphs

There is no particular rhyme or reason to the location of petroglyphs, they mostly take advantage of the type of rock surface. In the desert, some rocks very slowly become coated with manganese oxide, the black coating you can see on the rocks. Small traces of manganese are dissolved in rain water. By chipping away the black coating, the lighter color of the original rock shows through an makes a semi-permanent surface for drawing pictures. You could walk right by these petroglyphs and unless you were attuned to the desert, you would never see them. Petroglyphs give you a direct connection with the ancients who carved them into the rocks. I doubt my writing will last as long.

Rivers in the desert

There are rivers in the desert, although some are dry most of the year. Early pioneers to Arizona used the desert waterways with their semi-dependable source of water as highways into the interior of the territory. Almost all of the early settlements were established along the more permanent river systems. Here in this photo, is typical Colorado Plateau River without the deep canyons usually associated with the Plateau. This view is similar to what the pioneers saw when the first stepped foot in Arizona Territory in the 1800s. There are a few exceptions, for example, tamarisk and tumbleweeds are foreign imports and would not have been seen by the pioneers. This happens to be the Rio Puerco, a tributary of the Little Colorado River.

Too thick to drink, to thin to plow

This is the description of the rivers in Northern Arizona, "Too thick to drink, too thin to plow." This shot of the Rio Puerco in the Petrified Forest National Park is a good example. When the pioneers, such as my Great-grandparents" arrived in this area, they had to drink the water from the rivers. They would pour the water into barrels and let it settle for a day and then skim off the top water to avoid having so much mud and silt in their drinking water. The women complained that all of the clothes washed in the river water turned mud red. It was a hard life. When I was young, we got all of our water from the Little Colorado River of which the Rio Puerco is a tributary. When we would freeze ice cubes, they would come out striped, clear on top, red on the bottom.

An Ancient Motif -- The Sunface

The sun symbol is an ancient motif that appears in petroglyphs throughout the Southwest. The example on the top is painting on a wall at the Painted Desert Inn and as a contrast, you can see the same design in this outbuilding constructed on the Petrified Forest National Park. For years, we used this design on our business cards and letterhead as a logo in a simplified form. This particular variation is commonly associated with Hopi traditional designs and appears in jewelry and other places.

San Felipe de Neri, Old Town Albuquerque

San Felipe de Neri built in 1793 is the oldest church in Old Town Albuquerque, New Mexico and also the oldest in New Mexico. Many Americans forget that the whole Southwestern United States was once owned by Mexico. Most of the territory was obtained through the Mexican War of 1846 to 1848. One of the ironies of the War was that some of the generals and other officers fighting for the U.S. would soon be fighting against the United States in the Civil War. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo specified the major consequence of the war: the forced Mexican Cession of the territories of Alta California and New Mexico to the U.S. in exchange for $18 million. Arizona later obtained additional parts of Mexico through the Gadsen Purchase.

The Jasper Forest

This is my kind of country. Some of my earliest memories are of exploring the clay hills of the Colorado Plateau. I feel more at home in these hills than any other place on the planet. In this panorama, you will have to click on the photo to see the petrified wood. This is the so-called Jasper Forest of the Petrified Forest National Park in north central Arizona. The Park is only 45 minutes or so by automobile from where I spent all of my early summers. I wonder what kind of person I would have been had I grown up with green grass and trees?

A Fallen Giant

Giant Sequoia trees finally succumb to age or storms and fall to the floor of the forest. Because the wood is so rot resistant, the fallen trees can lie mostly intact for centuries. Meanwhile, the trunks provide a whole environment for other plants and animals to thrive. You may wish to click on this image to see the detail.

Mountain Lion

This was a difficult shot. The petroglyph was backlit in the Painted Desert Inn at the Petrified Forest National Park. The rock had been "collected" back in 1934 on Blue Mesa, in the early days of the Park before removing such artifacts became a Federal Crime. The image is very faint and standing in front of the rock, I could not see the image very well at all. With a little photo enhancement, you can see one of the most interesting rock pictures (petroglyphs) in Northern Arizona, even if it is in captivity rather than in the wild. This is one of the most famous images of the Southwest.

Spinning Wheel

I have always been fascinated with hand crafted items and spinning is one of those crafts that is most intriguing. The fiber, for example wool, must be sheared from the sheep, skirted, washed, picked, carded, and roved before it is even ready to spin. I never could get the hang of spinning and so bought all of my yarn already spun. It is one of those things on my list that I wish I had done in my life.

Water Lilies on the Mississippi River

These are not your common garden-type water lilies. You can get an idea of the size from the center photo. They grow in huge rafts on the Mississippi River but stay a respectable distance from the shore. Each of the pads are about 14 to 18 inches across and the flowers are about 10 to 12 inches. In the bottom picture, if you look closely you will see what the seed pod ultimately looks like. In the top picture, you can just see the pod forming in the center of the flower. The final pod is a common part of dried flower arrangements and I never realized where they came from. Now I know and so do you.

Mayan Embroidery

The so-called Mayan Indians live primarily in Southern Mexico and Guatemala and other nations of Central America. The term "Maya" is a collective term that refers to a diverse group of people who are related linguistically and culturally but each have their own language and culture. There is no real way to distinguish whether or not a person is "Mayan" and any attribution to Mayan culture is tentative at best. Used in this context, it means that these extraordinary embroideries were made by indigenous residents somewhere in Central America. Imagine spending the time to do something like this in our own culture here in the U.S.