Southeast Arizona Butterfly Photo-Artistry by kenne
Blossoms and Butterflies
In Sabino Canyon with a group of kids
someone spotted a butterfly flying by
suddenly landing on a nearby wildflower
attracting our attention as a progression
of butterflies began to fill space around us —
smiles and pleasure with the moment.
— kenne
A High Desert (4,800′) Yucca In Bloom — Image by kenne
— kenne
Arizona Wine Country — Computer Art by kenne
— kenne
“The Outpost” (Doubtful Canyon Cattle Ranch) — Image by kenne
Various Outposts
You traded places
with the mystery — fire-torn, insulated leaves,
the steady eyes of the huckleberry — (Haven’t you
been sad most of your life? Come on,
all those outposts in the middle . . . they say the end
of growth is that you’ll suffer “purely” . . .)
One night, remember? No envy or hope.
What you sought
was here, what was done
could not be undone by you: there was the owl,
the night’s vice president,
the tangled sheets of moon —
— Brenda Hillman
Don’t Fence Me In — Image by kenne
the West
invented itself,
then
reinvented itself —
first by cowboys,
then
by landowners,
which changed its
tone and image,
so much so
now only the
makings of myths,
not history.
— kenne
Computer Painting by kenne
You ask me what’s a coyote fence? A crooked line of cedar poles
Surrounding our adobe, our refuge from the road
Some nights we can see light of fires as Indians dance
And the eyes of God shine through the coyote fence.
— from “The Light Beyond the Coyote Fence” by Tom Russell
Cochise Stronghold In The Dragoon Mountains — Panorama by kenne
This rugged natural fortress was, for some 15 years, the home and base of operations for the famed Chiricahua Apache Chief, Cochise. Cochise and about 1,000 of his followers, of whom some 250 were warriors, located here.
Born in present-day Arizona, Cochise led the Chiricahua band of the Apache tribe during a period of violent social upheaval. In 1850, the United States took control over the territory that today comprises Arizona and New Mexico. Not hostile to the whites at first, he kept peace with the Anglo-Americans until 1861, when he became their implacable foe because of the blunder of a young U.S. Army officer, Lt. George Bascom. In that year, Cochise and several of his relatives had gone to an encampment of soldiers in order to deny the accusation that they had abducted a child from a ranch. The boy was later proved to have been kidnapped by another band of Apaches.
During the parley, Cochise and his followers were ordered held as hostages by Bascom, but Cochise managed to escape almost immediately by cutting a hole in a tent. Bascom later ordered the other Apache hostages hanged, and the embittered Cochise joined forces with Mangas Coloradas, his father-in-law, in a guerrilla struggle against the American army and settlers. The capture and murder of Mangas Coloradas in 1863 left Cochise as the Apache war chief. The U.S. Army captured him in 1871 and prepared to transfer the Chiricahua to a reservation hundreds of miles away, but he escaped again and renewed the resistance campaign. The following year after negotiating a new treaty with the help of Thomas Jeffords, the band was allowed to stay in their homeland.
— Source: Coronado National Forest
