“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on – have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear – what remains? Nature remains.”
For most of us, There is only the unattended Moment, The moment in and out of time, The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight, The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts.
— from Four Quartets, “The Dry Salvages” by T. S. Eliot
Rancho Fundoshi Above Bear Canyon Creek — Images by kenne
“Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.”
— Georgia O’Keeffe
In Sabino Canyon Recreation Area, if you hike to Seven Falls, you walk the Bear Canyon road to Bear Canyon trail, which crosses the Bear Canyon creek seven times. South of the trailhead sets a house on a cliff above the creek outside the Sabino Canyon Recreation Area. Since 2010, I have hiked to Seven Falls several times and may have noticed the house but was more focused on the hike.
Yesterday, a group of us older, now slow hikers hiked the newly paved Bear Canyon road to the Bear Canyon trailhead, taking a trail south to get a better view of the house on the cliff, where I took a few images of the house. After discussing the possible owners, I decided to do a Google search once I got home. I first did a drag & drop in Google Images with no match. So, started a Google search using a few descriptors. I learned that about 65 years ago, Jack Segurson, a local high school wrestling, and swimming coach and teacher from the 1950s into the late 1980s, bought the 151-acre property that he lived on, cherished, and mold into a naturalist’s paradise — it became become his legacy.
Segurson died at age 90 in 2011, and soon afterward, an appraiser valued his land at $3.9 million. He left the property to The Nature Conservancy with restrictions that it never be sold or developed. The Nature Conservancy donated the property, which Segurson named “Rancho Fundoshi,” a fundoshi is a Sumo wrestler’s loincloth to Pima County. The Pima County Regional Flood Control District manages the property as open space and owns and manages other lands along Bear Canyon and Sabino Canyon as part of its riparian habitat and upper watershed preservation program.
“As the poets and painters of centuries have tried to tell us, art is not about the expression of talent or the making of pretty things. It is about the preservation and containment of soul. It is about arresting life and making it available for contemplation. Art captures the eternal in the everyday, and it is the eternal that feeds soul—the whole world in a grain of sand. Leonardo”
David Hidalgo, Los Lobos Guitarist — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Cortez the Killer
He came dancing across the water With his galleons and guns Looking for a new world A palace in the sun On the shore lay Montezuma With his cocoa leaves and pearls In his halls he often wondered The secrets of the worlds Oh, and his subjects gathered round him Like leaves around a tree In their clothes of many colors For the angry gods to see And the women all were beautiful And the men stood straight and strong They offered life in sacrifice So that others could go on
Hate was just a legend And war was never known The people worked together And they lifted many stones They carried them to the flat-lands And they died along the way They built up with their bare hands What we still can’t build today And I know she’s living there And she loves me to this day I can still remember when Or how I lost my way
Cortez, Cortez He came dancing across the water Cortez, Cortez
Came dancing across the water
Came dancing across the water Cortez, Cortez Dancing across the water Dancing across the water Dancing across the water Came dancing across the water Cortez, Cortez Dancing across the water Dancing across the water Dancing across the water
● relax ● don’t compete ● always respect nature ● be patient and you will get there ● be conscious, rocks can harm you and others ● go new ways, boost your creativity ● let go when its time to ● push your limits ● never give up ● enjoy the art
Jack “Old Jules” Purcell — Photo-Artistry by kenne
In June of 2006 Old Jules wrote on his blog So Far From Heaven “The More It Stays The Same.”
I hadn’t watched Easy Rider (Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, circa 1968) in three decades.
When I saw it again this past weekend I appreciated it again for the first time:
Nicholson: You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it.
Hopper: Huh. Man, everybody got chicken, that’s what happened, man. Hey, we can’t even get into like, uh, second-rate hotel, I mean, a second-rate motel. You dig? They think we’re gonna cut their throat or something, man. They’re scared, man.
Nicholson: Oh, they’re not scared of you. They’re scared of what you represent to ’em.
Hopper: Hey man. All we represent to them, man, is somebody needs a haircut.
Nicholson: Oh no. What you represent to them is freedom.
Hopper: What the hell’s wrong with freedom, man? That’s what it’s all about.
Nicholson: Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s what it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it – that’s two different things.
I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace.
‘Course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are.
Oh yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ’em.
Hopper: Mmmm, well, that don’t make ’em runnin’ scared.
Nicholson: No, it makes ’em dangerous.
Three young men searching for America who found it wasn’t what they bargained for.
“Thank Heaven For Little Girls” (Hoping they grow up with an appreciation and respect for nature.)
— Image by Their Classroom Teacher
“Thank heaven for little girls
Thank heaven for them all
No matter where,
No matter who
Without them
What would little boys do
Thank heaven
Thank heaven
Thank heaven for little girls.”
— from Thank Heaven For Little Girls by Alan Jay Lerner / Frederick Loewe
Balanced Stones — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Jack “Old Jules” Purcell — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Sabino Canyon Viewed from Blackett’s Ridge — Panorama by kenne
“Thank Heaven For Little Girls” (Hoping they grow up with an appreciation and respect for nature.)
Becoming is Superior to Being 