Cooper’s Hawk In Sabino Canyon — Image by kenne
A beautiful bird
And a super partiture
Love dive booming doves
— kenne
Archive for the ‘Sabino Canyon Recreation Area’ Tag
Cooper’s Hawk Leave a comment
Thurber’s Wild Cotton Blossoms Art Leave a comment
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
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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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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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Greater Roadrunner Leave a comment
Greater Roadrunner (Sabino Canyon) — Image by kenne
The desert is human
endeavour’s most fitting graveyard;
the slow bleaching,
the gradual eroding into sand,
the heat stifling sound as it leaps into the air.
IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE. But it always does.
— from Roadrunners by André Naffis-Sahely
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Sacred Datura Flower Leave a comment
Sacred Datura Flower — Image by kenne
Witches and sorcerers cultivated plants with the power to “cast spells” — in our vocabulary, “psychoactive” plants.
Their potion recipes called for such things as datura, opium poppies, belladona, hashish, fly-agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria),
and the skin of toads (which can contain DMT, a powerful hallucinogen). These ingredients would be combined in a hempseed-oil-based
“flying ointment” that the witches would then administer vaginally using a special dildo. This was the “broomstick”
by which these women were said to travel.
— Michael Pollan
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Benedicto 1 comment
Snow On The Peaks Above Sabino Canyon — Image by
We are blessed to live on this beautiful planet.
Yet, most people don’t show any gratitude.
Benedicto
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous,
leading to the most amazing view.
May your rivers flow without end,
meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,
past temples and castles and poets’ towers
into a dark primeval forest
where tigers belch and monkeys howl,
through miasmal and mysterious swamps
and down into a desert of red rock,
and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm
where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,
where deer walk across the white sand beaches,
where storms come and go
as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than
your deepest dreams waits for you–
beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.
– Edward Abbey
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The Greening of Sabino Canyon 2 comments
Esperero Trail in Sabino Canyon — Image by kenne
Near-record monsoon rains have turned Sabino Canyon into a desert oasis.
Sabino Creek Dam — HDR Image by kenne
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Cut Saguaro Ten Years Out 3 comments
I took this image in September 2011 while on my first Sabino Canyon Volunteer Naturalists (SCVN) nature walk.
I was so appalled that someone cut off the top of this young (probably 35-40 years old) saguaro cactus.
Sadly, over the years, I have frequently seen this type of vandalism.
This Image, taken July 27, 2021, illustrates the resiliency of nature. — Image by kenne
Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns,
so that each small piece of her fabric reveals
the organization of the entire tapestry.
— Richard Feynman
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Lacepod Mustard Leave a comment
Lacepod Mustard — Image by kenne
Lacepod Mustard is a common species found throughout Arizona in various habitats below 4,000 feet.
It has a distinctive rounded or oval-shaped fruit with small perforations around its perimeter.
The plant is rather drab-looking and inconspicuous, but the distinctive rounded fruits are most exciting and
appealing. I captured this image along the Esperero Trail in Sabino Canyon, April 2013.
— kenne
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A Pernicious Source . . . Leave a comment
8th Grade Student Deciding Whether To Eat The Berries — Image by kenne
“A pernicious source of bad decisions in our lives…
Knowing just enough about a topic to think you’re right,
Knowing just enough about a topic to think you’re right,
but not enough to know you’re wrong.“
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Lunch On A Limb Leave a comment
“Lunch On A Limb” Cooper’s Hawk Eating a Catch In Sabino Canyon — Image by kenne
A life ended so another can survive.
— kenne
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Pin Cushion Cactus and Funnel-Wed Spider 1 comment
Pin Cushion Cactus (the most common cactus in the Sonoran Desert)
and Funnel-Wed Spider In Sabino Canyon — Image by kenne
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Missing The Kids In The Canyon 1 comment
Elementary School Class In Sabino Canyon (February, 2012) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Since March of 2020 Sabino Canyon Volunteer Naturalists (SCVN) have not bee working with students on field trips
in the Tucson area. We are hoping to start offering nature classes again this fall. Meanwhile, SCVN has developed
a series of videos called The Canyon Classroom covering some of the “Fun Facts” covering the history, geology,
ecology, and wildlife of Sabino Canyon.
(Original image provided by the teacher.)
— kenne
Becoming is Superior to Being 