Thurber’s Wild Cotton Blossoms (Sabino Canyon Recreation Area) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
— James Thurber
Author Archive
Thurber’s Wild Cotton Blossoms Art Leave a comment
Catclaw Acacia Bean Pod “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas!” Leave a comment
Nature Has Its Own Signs For The Season. (First Posted November 9, 2011.) — kenne
Catclaw Acacia Bean Pod “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas!” — Image by kenne
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Morning Shadows Leave a comment
Morning Shadows In The Sonoran Desert — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Yes, the sun has risen again.
I can see the windows change and hear a dog barking.
The wind buckles the slender top of the alder,
the conversation of night birds hushes,
and I can hear my heart regular and strong.
I will live to see the day end as I lived to see
the earth turn molten and white, then to metal,
then to whatever shape we stamped into it
as we laughed the long night hours away
or sang how the eagle flies on Friday.
When Friday came, the early hours perfect
and cold, we cursed our only lives
and passed the bottle back and forth.
— from One Day by Philip Levine
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Looking Back To Spring of 2011 Leave a comment
Originally posted April 2011 on Becoming is Superior to Being. — kenne
“The only thing we can perceive are our perceptions. In other words, consciousness is the matrix upon which
the cosmos is apprehended. Color, sound, temperature, and the like exist only as perceptions in our head,
not as absolute essences. In the broadest sense, we cannot be sure of an outside universe at all.” — George Berkeley
Artist Along Sabino Creek In Sabino Canyon, April, 2011 — Image by kenne
Water
Pressure of sun on the rockslide
Whirled me in dizzy hop-and-step descent,
Pool of pebbles buzzed in a Juniper shadow,
Tiny tongue of a this-year rattlesnake flicked,
I leaped, laughing for little boulder-color coil–
Pounded by heat raced down the slabs to the creek
Deep tumbling under arching walls and stuck
Whole head and shoulders in the water:
Stretched full on cobble–ears roaring
Eyes open aching from the cold and faced a trout.
— Gary Snyder in Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems
The poem originally appeared Riprap, which was Snyder’s first book of poetry. For Snyder, nature as divine, which goes hand-in-hand with the biocentric nature of his Buddhist beliefs.
— kenne
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Pandemic Kids In The Canyon 4 comments
Pandemic Kids (1st Graders) In Sabino Canyon Recreation Area — Image by kenne
In the last week of October, Sabino Canyon Volunteer Naturalists (SCVN) began offering nature classes to elementary school children
four days a week, the first time since March 2020. The number of children per day is a maximum of 30 students that are
divided into six groups. Masks are required except where social distancing is possible. The children have been perfect about
wearing masks, even though it may not be a school requirement. Some field trips have been canceled due to COVID outbreaks at the schools.
All the SCVN members have been vaccinated. Still, some naturalists have tested positive and have been self-quarantining.
— kenne
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Turkey Vulture On This Turkey Day, 2021 2 comments
Turkey Vulture — Image by kenne
Happy Thanksgiving!
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Fear Not O Muse! On This Thanksgiving Day Leave a comment
HDR Image by kenne
Fear not O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you,
I candidly confess a queer, queer race, of novel fashion,
And yet the same old human race, the same within, without,
Faces and hearts the same, feelings the same, yearning the same,
The same old love, beauty, and use the same.
— Walt Whitman
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Coyote Buttes In Vermilion Cliffs National Monument Leave a comment
Old Juniper Tree In Coyote Buttes, Vermillion Cliffs National Monument — Image by kenne
Old juniper tree
Face of the desert’s harshness
Life twisted and bent.
— kenne
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Thurber’s Cotton Leave a comment
Thurber’s Cotton with Bee (Sabino Canyon) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
The cup-shaped flowers are 1 1/2 inches (3.8 cm) wide and have 5 broad, white petals that fade to pink as they age.
The petals are either solid white or streaked with pink at the base. The flowers are followed by round, green seed capsules that dry
to a brown color and split open to reveal the seeds and only a few, sparse cotton fibers. This plant is related to cultivated cotton,
but its cotton is too paltry for commercial use. The leaves are green and palmately lobed with 3 or 5 point-tipped lobes.
The leaves turn a bright red color in the fall (around late October). Source: fireflyforest.com
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Last Thoughts on Robert Bly Leave a comment
On this day before Thanksgiving, I share Frank Hudson’s “Last Thoughts on Robert Bly. — kenne
The poet and writer Robert Bly was unavoidable here in Minnesota, and to some degree that may be true elsewhere. Today would be the day this week I would have to record something new, but I’m going to write this instead on the week of his death.
I moved to Minnesota from New York in the mid-1970s, and Robert Bly was unavoidable even then, at least within poetry circles. Minnesota is used to single degrees, and it soon became clear to me that one didn’t need to reach a balmy high of 6 degrees of separation to connect a lot of the poets here to Bly.
Now as a younger man I was a big again’er, and so I was often moved to do by what I was in opposition to. Bly was this too, and he retained this spirit well into his middle age. I recall the first time…
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A Fall Hike Leave a comment
A Fall Hike In the Sonoran Desert — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Fields of gold
more beautiful
than any mineral
Strike it rich
it’s out there
to be found
There’s more
I know, just
keep on hiking
Over the hills
through meadows
of golden magic
— kenne
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The Wave in Coyote Buttes 1 comment
The Wave in Coyote Buttes (Vermilion National Monument) — Image by kenne
Walking on the wave
An adventure to behold
Decades of waving.
— kenne
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Sycamore Canyon Panorama Leave a comment
The Arizona Trail Runs Through Sycamore Canyon in the Santa Catalina Mountains — Panorama by kenne
“She was actually learning to love Arizona.
The beauty and color and solitude,
the vastness of it had called to something deep in her.
First, she had complained of the dust, the wind, the emptiness,
the absence of people. But she had forgotten these.”
— Zane Grey
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Red-Tailed Hawk 2 comments
Red-tailed Hawk in Sabino Canyon — Image by kenne
Hawks gotta fly high
Staking out a hunting spot
Cross the desert plain
— kenne
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Fallen Leaves On The Sky Islands Leave a comment
Fallen Leves in the Sky Islands — Image by kenne
Sky Islands are isolated mountain ranges in southeastern Arizona and northern Mexico,
connecting two very different mountainous regions.
Sky Islands are places where you can see incredible plant diversity in only a few miles.
Becoming is Superior to Being 