The first month of the monsoon has not been good for Tanuri Ridge. It seems as if it has been raining only somewhere else. For the month of July, we have received only about an inch.
“Alone in the silence, I understand for a moment the dread which many feel in the presence of primeval desert, the unconscious fear which compels them to tame, alter or destroy what they cannot understand, to reduce the wild and prehuman to human dimensions. Anything rather than confront directly the anti-human, that other world which frightens not through danger or hostility but in something far worse – its implacable indifference.”
Near The Wave Entrance in the Coyote Buttes Wilderness Area in Vermillion Cliffs National Monument in Northern Arizona — Image by kenne
Known for its colorful swirls of slickrock, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument is a sherbet-colored dream world filled with fantastical rock formations like The Wave, White Pockets, and Buckskin Gulch.
Ocotillos produce clusters of bright red flowers at their stem tips, which explain the plant’s name. Ocotillo means “little torch” in Spanish — Images by kenne
Waiting It Out
Desert display as Saguaro’s spiny arms raise to the darkening blue sky. Days of heat waves chase Ocotillo flower buds drooping slowly in the mauve air very still … and then, with the distant rumble of thunder and a flash of lightening, comes a first drop. Coming fast, the rain begins a flood within the gulch and there, from nowhere, from the nothing dust, from the ether reconstituted as out of a mirage appears by the side of the road … a toad.
I don’t know, why I don’t Put it out baby We kiss and the flames Just get higher But yeah I know When I hold onto you baby I’m all tangled up in barbed wire I get burned, I don’t learn I’ll be back, give it time Yeah, I know it sounds crazy But guess I like playing with fire