In the spring of the year the Sonoran Desert goes from light green to yellow.
Everywhere you look you see yellow.
Spring picks up her color crayons and throws them all away except for one, and then she colors it all yellow.
Palo verde trees hang heavy with yellow, yellow falls all over their feet, yellow creates a carpet beneath them, as if it had snowed yellow snow. The yellow of palo verde trees against the bright blue Arizona sky is electric … so electric that you feel as if yellow fire alarms are going off in your head.
In the spring of year in the Sonoran Desert if you walk in the mountains, if you walk in the gray and black shadow mountains, suddenly you’ll see fields of wildflowers, and pop! They are all yellow.
All day long everywhere you look, yellow … the yellow sun lights up yellow wildflowers and gentle yellow wax flowers on the saguaros smiling and welcoming golden bees …
No one can explain yellow to someone who cannot see it. The dictionary says yellow is the color of ripe lemons, but what does that mean? Is the color of your ripe lemons the same color as mine? Just thinking about yellow, that is.
Mark Rothko, the American artist, made gigantic paintings of yellow. Once he painted a huge picture of a yellow square on top of an orange square… so everyone could see the difference between the color yellow and the color orange. Rothko’s idea is simple but yet it is profound in its own way.
In the Sonoran Desert the sky paints its own Rothko painting … the sky makes its own comparison of orange and red and yellow…
Then when it’s night a yellow moon comes out behind yellow clouds ..
Coldplay knew these things when they sang … “Look at the stars… Look how they shine for you and everything you do ..Yeah, they are all yellow .. they are all yellow…”
He looked like a skinny German shepherd dog with a big bushy tail.
He had noble confidence about him.
The animals you meet most often in the desert, like rabbits, pocket mice and ground squirrels, get a scared look on their face whenever they see a human. They run away or else they freeze like statues and hide in plain sight. They understand the importance of not being seen.
But not my coyote. This coyote had confidence and nobility. He looked at me without fear, and I thought he was beautiful.
In Native American legends, Coyote is a trickster or the Wise One. He’s usually a mischievous prankster who doesn’t pay any attention to any rules. He’s smart, crafty, selfish and conceited. In the one and only Anglo legend about coyotes, he’s “Wile E. Coyote.”
I never believed how really smart these animals are until I watched one cross Oracle Road. This is a big, six-lane highway with a 50 mph speed limit and a meridian. The crafty fellow took his time, looked both ways, and crossed with his head up in the air, as dignified as a Londoner on a Sunday morning.
Like so many desert creatures, coyote sleep in the day and come alive at night. They have this magnificent howl –it’s loud and extreme and pierces through the darkness like a terrible scream. And yes, it’s true. Sometimes they do look up and howl at the moon.
People used to think coyote eat only meat, but now we know that they eat anything they find: seeds, human trash, saguaro fruit, roadkill, and even roadrunners. Their only real enemies are mountain lions, wolves, and us. Maybe because they’re so smart and eat everything, coyote are not on the endangered species list. They are classified “least concern” which means they”re multiplying and thriving. They’re moving into big cities like Chicago and New York, and I think they’ll do just fine there.
If you see a coyote, I hope you take this advice from Chief Dan George, Tsleil-Waututh and make his acquaintance.
One thing to remember is to talk to the animals.
If you do, they will talk back to you.
If you don’t talk to the animals, they won’t talk back to you, then you won’t understand, and when you don’t understand you will fear, and when you fear you will destroy the animals, and if you destroy the animals, you will destroy yourself.
– Chief Dan George, Tsleil-Waututh (1899-1981)
If you want to watch a coyote howl and hear his nighttime sound, try this little video by KB Bear:
I’d let people in there, but only those who love sunflowers. They’d definitely have to be sunflower people.
We’d love to draw their big happy faces pointed to the sun — big happy faces of ridiculous sunflowers on their gigantic stalks with their humongous roly-poly heads, awkward like people from some other planet, toddling and teetering like babies with heads too big for their bodies —
— but sunflower people like us understand them.
We’d watch our field of sunflowers, we’d watch the way the wind bends them down and the way they move in unison sometimes but sometimes not. The way their bright yellow is perfect against a turquoise sky!
The way they appear to be smiling just at you!
Hello Sunflower! Taller than me!
We won’t think about water or soil or seeds or any such thing. We would just have sunflowers.
We would never put them in a vase because they are too big and besides they belong in a sunflower field after all. They are too big and electric with light and sun to go into a vase. Can you really think that you could vase-up magic? Van Gogh knew better, which is why he got crazy-high drawing a simple vase full of simple sunflowers. He knew the power of sunflowers, yes indeed he did.
If you walk through a field of sunflowers, you can get drunk and slant without drinking anything at all!
The sight of them –with their wild colors and crazy shape and the way they sway and dance in the sun– makes you, as Emily Dickinson wrote, “reel through an endless summer day.” And you just reel away — tipsy slant! High on nature– you taste her liquor never brewed, you debauchee of sunflowers, you!
For more of Jane’s writing about Emily Dickinson, go here.
I think I can. I think I can. Keep going. Be positive. Practice “The Secret” and all your dreams will come true.
Americans have been into positive thinking since our country began. We believe if you always keep going, you’ll always succeed.
This is just the thinking that got Daniel Barringer in trouble, and trouble on a colossal scale.
Born in 1860, Barringer was a whiz kid from a prominent family. He graduated from Princeton when he was only nineteen years old, and then earned degrees in law and geology. He went out West when he was in his early thirties, and invested in get-rich-quick schemes. Barringer got rich quick, making a fortune in gold and silver mining.
He was traveling in Arizona along what was then a broken-down road about 35 miles from Flagstaff. The landscape is very plain and vast, broken up only by Humphreys Peak miles and miles in the distance.
Our hero had heard about a huge crater formed by an ancient volcano. This great big bowl that pocks its lonely desolate landscape is stunning when you first see it. It’s in pristine condition as craters go, and gigantic, measuring a mile wide and 600 feet deep. You can fit 20 football fields and their stadiums in it.
For Daniel Barringer, it was love at first sight.
Barringer believed that it was the result of a gigantic meteor crashing to earth, not a volcano. His plan was to find the remains of the “dead meteor” that was buried there, and then make a billion dollars mining its minerals. Literally one billion dollars.
Barringer began digging holes in the crater in 1906. You can still see his mining equipment at the bottom of the meteor crater. He kept digging and digging, but the most he found were just big chunks of silvery rock.
He literally put his entire fortune into that hole –$600,000 or the equivalent of $7 million today. Nothing, not even the pleas of his wife and family who got sick of living in the middle of nowhere, could stop him. What must it be like to dig holes for 23 years in what you think is an impact crater, and what everyone else thinks is the remains of a volcano?
In the early 1920s, Barringer recalculated his mathematic formulas, and concluded that the meteor must have landed sideways at a 45 degree angle. He kept digging into the side of the meteor crater, still without any pay-off.
On October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed and wiped out what little remained of Barringer’s money. A month later Barringer died of a heart attack, believing he was a failure.
Yet our story is not over yet. By the 1960s, astronomers were taking another look at the meteor crater and Barringer’s theory. The modern theory is that he was right all along – the crater was the result of a gigantic meteor about 160 feet across, traveling about 26,000 miles an hour, and crashing into the desert floor.
So it’s true, kids! This Thing Came From Outer Space!
What Barringer got wrong was that the meteor was traveling so fast and was so big that most of it blew apart and vaporized before it landed, which is why he only could find only fragments of it.
Barringer’s descendants still own and operate the meteor crater, now designated a National Natural Landmark. A popular tourist spot, it’s also where all American astronauts, including the ones who went to the moon, go for training.
The meteor crater still has the “Wow” factor –the feeling you get whenever you look at the stars, whenever you think of going boldly where no one has gone before, and whenever you believe in something no matter what anyone else believes.
Maybe that’s Barringer’s true legacy.
To plan your visit to Arizona’s meteor crater, visit their website here.
The first time I read Gerald Manley Hopkins’ poem, “Pied Beauty,” I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Dappled things?
Was he really thanking God for the speckles on trout? After all, that’s what “stipple on trout” means.
Trout are pretty cool looking, but really?
The next thing you know Hopkins is thanking God for the stripes on cows. Stripes on cows are also cool, but yet …
The more I thought about Hopkins’ words and kept looking around me, I finally understood what he meant by Pied Beauty. Gerald Manley Hopkins meant that speckled or dappled things as well as striped or brinded things are all around you, and they are beautiful in their own way.
Beautiful striped skies, for example.
Or the way that tree shadows form long wavy stripes on sand …
Or even everyday striped things like an everyday striped cat …
Or the wondrous beauty of vast striped things like the Grand Canyon ..
.
Then I began to see dappled things … the dappled things all around us … like pebbles in speckled patterns …
And how wildflowers can be dappled too …
The ability to see dappled and brinded things is a beautiful revelation.. because as Simon and Garfunkel wrote, once you’re dappled, you love life. ..
“…I’m dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep. Let the morning time drop all its petals on me. Life, I love you, All is groovy …”
Thank you, Brother Gerald, for opening us up to dappled things.
Pied Beauty by Gerald Manley Hopkins
GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
G.M. Hopkins poet and monk
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
When you come to Arizona (and I hope you do) you’ll want to stop at Walnut Canyon National Monument on your way to the Grand Canyon.
Hundreds of years ago, the Sinaqua people lived on the ledges and caves of Walnut Canyon.
If you look closely, you can see one of their houses.
Look closer.
Their homes had doors leading to rooms.
It must have been hard to watch little ones on these ledges!
Don’t look down!
Archaeologists do not know why the Sinaqua lived on the ledges of the canyon.
I like to think they loved the spirits of mountains and skies.
And that they wanted to live in that sacred space between sky and earth where you can see the faces of the sun gods.
Where you can reach out and touch a bird
Where every creature has wings
And where the sky and the canyon remember each spirit who lived here
They remember forever and ever.
Rabbits are easy to overlook. After all, you see these little brown creatures every day. Rabbits are the wildflowers of the animal kingdom. We take them for granted, but we’d miss them if they weren’t around.
Personally I love rabbits. I’m always happy to come upon one, even though whenever a rabbit sees me, he’ll usually freeze and hide in plain sight like a two-year-old child.
I love their bright black eyes and their round dewdrop bodies, with unlikely Popsicle ears at one end, and big Clarabelle clown feet at the other. I love how still they can be when they sit and eat or when they just sit and stare, and then how quickly they can move when they want to.
And those amazing back legs are always ready for take-off! Wham! Bang! They sure can take off! Rabbits are fast –but then, they are I-run-away animals. I-run-away animals have to flee from the I-will-chase-you-and-eat-you kind.
We’ve been talking about everyday rabbits but now let’s hear it for famous rabbits.
I love Bugs Bunny with his Brooklyn street-wise accent and the way he turns a carrot into a cigar. I love all the rabbits in Watership Down, but especially Fiver-the-Fearful, who has this untreated anxiety disorder that makes him psychic and able to predict disaster, so his favorite phrase is the sky is falling, the sky is falling.
Fiver’s literary opposite is Peter Rabbit, an adventurer with the courage of a lion and the heart of a Robin Hood. Peter thinks every good thing on the planet belongs to us all. I love how Peter hops into Mr. MacGregor’s Garden, ignoring the family tragedy that his father had an “accident” in that very garden and landed up in a pie.
And who doesn’t love Thumper, the bunny who is Bambi’s friend, if only for his prefect rabbit name. Thumper has the voice of a baby and the wonder of a child.
The White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland is an anomaly as rabbits go, because I certainly don’t think of rabbits as uptight and worried about clocks and being on time. But then I never believed Br’r Rabbit actually liked sticker bushes until I moved out West, where you see rabbits in cactus patches all the time.
While I’d be very happy to encounter Thumper or Peter Rabbit, I hope I never see Harvey, the six-foot hallucination in the Jimmy Stewart movie. He may be a friendly rabbit but you never know what comes next once you start seeing six-foot tall rabbits.
So, enough for famous rabbits. Let’s return to ordinary ones. If you’re ever lucky enough to find a baby bunny, one small enough to fit in your hand, you’re in for cute overload. I once found one, and dutifully phoned the Sonora Desert Museum for help.
“If his eyes are open and he has his fur,” the expert said, “then he is able to take care of himself. Just let him loose.”
This seemed incredible and wonderful to me. It reminded me that small miracles are all around us, even in things like every day rabbits. Graham Greene said, “Mortality and death set in when you lose your curiosity and the wonder of every day.”
That’s right. It’s also right that I set him free.
I miss black and white photography but it’s been gone since the 1940s. I don’t care about being old-fashioned. I want it back.
I like the way black and white photography lends itself to the imagination. It’s all shadows and hollow places, and you have to fill in things like time of day, feelings, and what the picture would look like in color. That means you have to look harder.
Some pictures are black and white naturally. This shot of a monsoon storm was not touched up at all. The rain and mountain shadows made it black and white naturally.
Other pictures start out with only a little bit of color. Most of today’s photographers avoid those subjects. They want that bam bam bam! look that technicolor gives out.
But to me, this sweet-faced ostrich looks just fine the way he is, sans color. I also like my picture of the nun going to prayers at San Xavier just the way she is.
Woody Allen likes black and white photography. This totally works in his movie “Manhattan,” where he got all kinds of images of New York City that look classic and iconic.
When he used Gershwin’s music in the background, he completely captured the spirit of Manhattan.
When you try to do the same thing in Tucson, you run into the problem that you’re lucky to find one black and white building in Tucson.
…because Tucson is all about light and color.
It’s not the same in black and white.
Manhattan Island can be as dark and grainy as Tri-X film.
It rains there.
Here the sun shines 360 days a year and goes out in glorious sunsets.
Our buildings are wild crayon colors.
If we had background music, it wouldn’t be Gershwin-sophisticated.
It’d be something younger, happier and peppier, maybe Mariachi songs combined with Native American flutes. The kind of music you hear when the sky lights up in brilliant colors, and suddenly you’re walking when everything around you is luminated. The music of Tucson. The song of the West.
Someone once said that there are only two Christians: Jesus Christ and his follower St. Francis of Assisi. We love St. Francis because he was radical in his faith, but also because he was a lover … of animals … of the earth … and God.He felt kindred to everything in nature and he spoke about Brother Sun and Sister Moon and Brothers Wind and Air and Sister Water. Here is St. Francis Canticle to the Sun, set in Arizona where Brother Sun shines all the time.
St. Francis Canticle to the Sun
Most high, all powerful, all good Lord! All praise is yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing. To you, alone, Most High, do they belong. No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce your name.
Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun who brings the day; and you give light through him – And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor! Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens you have made them, precious and beautiful.
Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, and clouds and storms,
and all the weather, through which you give your creatures sustenance.
Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water;
she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.
Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom you brighten the night. He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong.
Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us and rules us, and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.
Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of you;
Happy are those who endure in peace, for by you, Most High, they will be crowned. Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks, and serve Him with great humility.
The above is a picture of the earth from outer space. I’m positively sure that he would have liked it.
And a picture for you of beautiful Brother Francis.
Many people do not like organized religion or churches. They say they get more out of being in nature and I can understand that, because I feel close to God on a lonely mountaintop like the one in this picture. But I think even atheists would like San Xavier Mission in Tucson.
The Italian priest who made our mission was an impractical man who wanted to be in China, not Tucson. When he got the notion of building a boat to cross the Sonoran desert, his followers questioned his sanity. Padre Kino somehow organized the local Native Americans to help him build San Xavier mission in 1700. It never really got finished, as you can see from this picture. The top of one tower is missing, but that is part of its magic. The interior of the Mission is over-the-top amazing. It’s slowly being restored, but there is never enough money to finish. It doesn’t really matter: it’s beautiful the way it is.When you go inside San Xavier, you sense that people here really believe in God. They pray very deep prayers, and leave little momentos of their prayers pinned to the Virgin Mary’s dress or to santos. These are called milagros. If you pray about your bum leg, you leave a milagro in the shape of a leg. They also leave candles, pictures of loved ones, and other symbols of their devotion to God and prayer.The services have no show, no sham. Once on Christmas Eve, the old wood pews were filled even though there was no heat in the Mission. An old bitch dog with long tits was walking around, licking people.The priest was wearing a simple brown Franciscan habit with rope and sandals. In the middle of Mass, the theme from “Rocky” came over the intercom, because they cannot afford a decent sound system. Yet it was beautiful, the way Christmas should be.Outside the church, Native Americans sell fry bread and trinkets. You can walk up a little mountain to a tiny shrine that is very inspiring. You look out on a simple cemetery and think of your own mortality.Even if you don’t like churches, I know you will like San Xavier mission. Trust me, it’s a sacred place.
No one can explain yellow to someone who cannot see it. The dictionary says yellow is the color of ripe lemons, but what does that mean? Is the color of your ripe lemons the same color as mine? Just thinking about yellow, that is.
