A young cactus wren perches in the middle of a buckhorn cholla on the Latigo Trail. It was actively exploring its desert home but never strayed too far from the nest in the saguaro where it was born.
Category: Plants
Sap
The Lush Green Desert
As I hiked up the Bell Pass Trail I was rather astonished to find buckhorn cholla growing in a sea of green, not your typical view here in the Sonoran Desert.
One of Three
We see a lot of overlap between the birds of our backyard and the birds of the desert but not with towhees. I’ve seen three species of towhees in Arizona, Abert’s towhees all summer in our yard and just recently a spotted towhee, but the canyon towhee shown here I only see on the trails.
Follow Me Home
After all the changes in our lives this past year I feel a special sympathy for when we adopted terrified little Boo five years ago. He worked so hard to conquer his fears and embrace his new home, you could see the struggle in his face and I suppose for months I wore that expression too. I took this picture of a broken saguaro within a month of arriving in the desert when so little in our lives seemed familiar yet we were excited about our new home. It seems to me a guide, waving with one arm held high to attract the attention of the lost, another arm pointing the way home. Shattered, surviving, standing, strong.
Who Am I?
I am not broccoli.
I am tall, taller than you.
I am rare, doubly so.
I am a double crested saguaro. While most saguaros have tips of the familiar shape, some grow into fan-like shapes know as crests. Crested saguaros are rare, this one has two crests. This is the only one I’ve seen so far, a reader pointed out its location near Granite Mountain where the Coyote Canyon Trail meets the Desperado Trail in McDowell Sonoran Preserve.
Let Me Hold You in My Arms
I love this old saguaro with a seemingly endless number of arms along the Whiskey Bottle Trail in McDowell Sonoran Preserve. I put my backpack beside it for scale (this is my Tom Bihn Guide’s Pack). The pack probably misses the Pacific Northwest where I didn’t sweat all over it but if so it hasn’t said a word and has faithfully carried all my water and other hiking essentials every time I go out.
Soft and Sharp
The sun was up and shining on the tops of the saguaros but when this white-winged dove dropped down to feed on the fruit on a lower arm I was able to photograph it in the soft reflected light. The full sun arrived seconds later. Taken on July 4th while the saguaro were fruiting and the white-wings still flew above the desert.
Heroes
This is what the Lord Almighty said: ‘Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other.’ But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears.
Zechariah 7:9-11
Let us not delight in the suffering of others, nor celebrate lies and cruelty. We know why assault victims don’t come forward, it is because we are monsters. Enough. We need not be. To those who suffer in silence. To those who suffer in public. To Anita Hill. To Christine Blasey Ford. To those who stood tall, to those knocked down, to those who suffered for us, you are heroes, still.
Don’t Drink the Water
As a child when I learned a saguaro stores water in its body I assumed water flowed through pipe-like structures and was stored in reservoirs. But as you can see from this arm that had fallen off, inside the skeleton is a spongy tissue that holds the water. And because of the way the saguaro processes carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, the liquid is acidic and not safe for human consumption.
Boolie 