Unprotected

     While walking in the pinyon-juniper woodland desert northeast of Walnut Canyon, I came upon this somewhat grisly scene. 

     I imagine that the tire might have held water and that this unlucky bovine was able to enjoy it for a short time before his untimely death at whatever hands. The carcass was completely empty, yet the stench of death lingered. Fortunately I was able to stand upwind to photograph the scene.

     Over the past year I've come to enjoy this strip of land, despite its having been ravaged by cattle and unethical wood cutters. It's obvious from aerial imagery, the difference between this exhausted land and the protected area within monument boundaries. 

     The lack of vegetation provides vista views and open off-trail hiking, but the large scale sacrifice of things like oxygen, food, and habitat is hard to reconcile with bare juniper stumps, spent bullet shells, clay pigeons, and beer bottles. Still, the flora and fauna there are worth a reverent look, even if it does mean staring into the eyes of human ignorance and irresponsibility for a while.

Summer Moths

     This week's Summer Solstice brought the excitement of moths. Yes, moths. On a short walk Wednesday morning I came across the largest moth I've ever seen. The wingspan was pushing 4 inches.

antheraea oculea - Oculea Silkmoth

     It was very exciting to see something so beautiful taking rest at my eye level in a short Ponderosa Pine. I felt like I was seeing something I shouldn't, a creature of the night caught sleeping in the open.

     After that experience I wanted to set up a sheet and light in the evening to try to attract more moths for close inspection and photographs. Last night the kids and I set up our potential viewing area. We snapped a few very mediocre shots of some moths that would have come just as readily to our porch light.

     Dejected and scheming to procure a more powerful light and a whiter sheet I settled in for the evening. A few minutes later my wife heard a rattling sound outside our bedroom window. I was, of course, dispatched to handle the disturbance. Amidst the toys, bikes, and art supplies on the porch was a struggling moth of decent size. I coaxed it gently from against the house and held it loosely in my hand as it fluttered wildly. My oldest daughter retrieved my camera and I took a few shots while holding the now calm moth as it stood content on my thumb. 

smerinthus cerisyi - One-eyed Sphinx

 

      After we had a long look I released our fat little friend into the air with a push. I felt a tug at my skin upon release. Fearing the worst, a leg segment left behind in a knuckle's crease perhaps, I examined my hand under the porch light. There I found three neatly laid eggs. Looking further I found two more on another finger.

     I was amazed and humbled to have been entrusted with these tiny pale green jewels containing future moth lives. I gently removed the eggs and deposited them neatly on the nearby vegetation in hopes that their mother's trust had not been misplaced.

Place

Tropical Kingbird - Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico

      In examining my relationship to place I realized that I largely experience place through birds. Regardless of where I go I look to birds for clues about where I am, and look at where I am for clues to which birds I might see there. As soon as there's a window to look out of, a place to walk or sit, I look for birds. My first time visiting my sister in Indiana a couple of years ago I saw my first Yellow-shafted Flicker, a woodpecker, along a freeway on-ramp on the way to her house from the airport.

     My love of birds goes back as far as I can remember. When I was maybe four years old I would stay with my grandmother at my great-grandfather's cottage on the beach in Rhode Island. My grandmother would save table scraps for the seagulls. I remember picking favorite individual gulls, especially the young brown gulls who hadn't yet molted into stunning white and grey, and asking my grandmother to be sure they were fed too.

Ring Billed Gull - Island Park, Portsmouth, Rhode Island

      Even after we moved to Phoenix when I was eight years old I watched the birds in our front yard and remember seasonal newcomers like meadowlarks and starlings as they moved through in migration. 

Meadowlark - Elgin, Arizona

     I'll never forget one especially close encounter with a burrowing owl when I was about 18 years old. I had ridden my bicycle down West Bell Road and noticed an overgrown open desert field clearly undeveloped. I laid down my bike and started walking down an arroyo; on the opposite bank I noticed a pair of eyes watching from behind a neat mound of gravel and dirt. As I stood up straight to peer in, the eyes lowered, and as I crouched they raised to track me. I could feel a relationship develop in that moment as we expressed our mutual curiosity of one another.

Burrowing Owl - Tucson, Arizona

       Much later, at thirty years old, my wife and children and I moved to Tucson. It wasn't long before I made friends with a couple of folks, Homer and Jen, who were really connected with the local ecology in a way I hadn't experienced before. One of the ways they expressed this connection was through bird watching. Our first outing was to the local cemetery where Vermillion Flycatchers and Say's Phoebes inspired me to pursue bird watching more avidly.

Greater Peewee - Carr Canyon, Huachuca Mountains, Arizona

       One trip after another I experienced new habitat and enjoyed looks at birds I had never seen before. The same could be said for my own backyard where Harris and Coopers Hawks were regular visitors looking for dove and quail to eat, and Cactus Wrens abounded scavenging on our patio for food scraps abandoned by our children. 

Cactus Wren - Tucson, Arizona

      This relationship to birds developed very naturally as did the friendships that came with it. The watching of birds was never about tallying as many species as possible or checking off a list of species for a certain area, it was about really knowing birds in their chosen habitats and engaging deeply socially with the people I had as company in those places. We never called birds in with recordings or waited in massive crowds of birders for a glimpse of a rarity to an area, we just took the birds as they came, or didn't, and when they didn't come we took the time to enjoy the landscape and its other inhabitants. 

Hepatic Tanager and Black-headed Grosbeak sharing a bathing spot - Carr Canyon, Huachuca Mountains, Arizona

Three Barn Owls - Willcox, Arizona

House Finch with young on nest in cholla cactus - Empire Gulch, Arizona

Gila Monster - Catalina State Park, Arizona

Kissing Bug on a Cottonwood leaf - Empire Gulch, Arizona

Horned Lizard - Greaterville Road, Arizona

Western Diamondback Rattlesnake - Sweetwater Water Treatment Facility, Tucson, Arizona

Found fallen bird's nest at sunrise - Rucker Canyon, Chriacahua Mountains, Arizona

Zone-tailed Hawk kill, likely by Great Horned Owl - Empire Gulch, Arizona

Devil's Claw and water tank - Sonoita, Arizona

       One year on the Friday after Thanksgiving we took a long route through multiple transitional habitats in Southeastern Arizona visiting grasslands, riparian corridors, and sky islands; as we made our way over Canelo pass we stopped in our tracks to watch as over 20 Merriam's Turkeys strode casually across the road not far ahead of us. We followed at a distance and watched silently as they leapt into the low branches of the surrounding trees to roost for the afternoon while others gently foraged below.

Merriam's Turkey - Madera Canyon, Santa Rita Mountains, Arizona

      Looking back, I realize that engaging place isn't just about me and my private experience but it's equally about who I engage with. I am tied to birds and the people with whom I experience those birds and the habitat we share, whether occasionally or daily, past, or present.

Here are some related posts:
Shrike Tuck
Tecolote

Function Follows Form (cont'd)

Here is the finished version of the form featured in an earlier post regarding sculptural utility.

This piece is the result of a 69 hour firing of the small anagama kiln built by Brian Harper at NAU in Flagstaff, AZ. The sharply delineated sides of this bottle form create distinct canvases for the kiln to paint with ash glaze. No slips or glazes were applied.

58 Cedar Ave

 

Old things

early

forgotten

the backyard

befriending the tree

and fence corner

the garbage man

and the beach

shells

stones

hermit crabs

minnows trapped in a coffee can

the water

giving and taking away

the sun

a moment

resting on the horizon

falling

sinking

beneath the water

without me

despite me

leaving me

alone

Green?

     In an effort to simplify form and focus on preserving the sharpness of my marks in clay I began making vase forms. I recently glazed and fired a few of my less successful forms in the soda kiln. They were deemed less successful because they flare out at the bottom and I'm currently interested in more obviously rectilinear forms. The large vase pictured here was glazed with what comes out of the wood kiln as a white crawling, peeling shino, however, it morphed into a deep green, almost oribe glaze in the soda. I generally dislike shiny pots but the unexpected results are intriguing.

More Mushrooms!

     Impatience and opportunity got the best of me yesterday and I weathered the lightning and rain to ascend the San Francisco Peaks in search of mushrooms. I was elated when I found more than eight different species in less than 100 yards of hiking. The rain had subsided but the dripping from the tree canopy was too plentiful for me to take out my camera, so I collected one of each species found and brought them home for study. In one spot I found three species withing two square feet. Here are a few photos of the specimens featuring a beautiful bowl by Candice Methe, decorated with Burrowing Owls (my favorite).

The Mushrooms Are In

     This morning I walked around my little corner of Coconino National Forest and was very pleased to find a pair of mushrooms growing in the footprint of a fallen ponderosa pine. I won't guess at the type of mushroom or whether it's edible but it was exciting to see just the same. There's something magical about the way mushrooms push their way out of the soil, seemingly overnight, and their variety is almost without bounds. I plan to spend considerable time photographing and learning to identify our local fungi this autumn in hopes of one day harvesting the little gems for consumption.

Harvest

     On the way back from Phoenix this past weekend I enjoyed a shin-scraping romp through the blackberry bushes along Oak Creek. The grocery bag I carried became wet with berry juice as the weight of the harvest began popping the berries at the bottom of the bag. I also sped along the path under the apple trees to pick a bag of small ripe apples. As I write the smell of cinnamon, apples, and blackberries is wafting from the oven as I am now baking an apple-blackberry crisp. A fitting reward for a few deep scratches and a sweaty brow. The apples are pictured here in a bowl by Kazu Oba and the berries on a plate by Takashi Nakazato.

Red Consolation

     This morning I set out to find and photograph mushrooms. The monsoon rains and cooler temperatures bring a good variety of fungi to the ponderosa forest. I think, however, that I am a bit early this year and will have to try again in a week or so. As a consolation I was rewarded with the discovery of a small patch of delicately beautiful Western Red Columbine.

Camping Out

     Yesterday a few of the older kids and I drove out to the forest near our home for a little over-night-er. We set up camp beside a broad meadow and enjoyed clear skies and gentle breezes. As evening approached we hiked around the area. Some of us discovered the beauty of the moon through binoculars for the first time.

 
     As the sun set behind the towering Ponderosa Pines, the yellow primrose opened their broad petals to their faithful night-time pollinators. Almost on cue, what looked like a Sphinx Moth put on a lively demonstration for us. As we headed back to camp for the night the twilight glow illuminated this blossom from behind giving stark contrast to the surrounding shadowy ground.

     This morning, after a hike to a nearby cattle tank for looks at Turkey Vultures, Common Ravens, Violet-green Swallows, and one unfortunate drowned sheep (hence the vultures), we settled near a beautiful cluster of cactus discovered the night before, and waited for the perfect light to hit its blooms.

     Thirty minutes later we were on the road home with hungry bellies and minds full of memories.