Bisbee, Arizona, sits on top a hill in colorful pieces like a kid’s jigsaw puzzle. It was once the biggest city between the Mississippi and the Pacific, but it shrunk and it is still shrinking even as you read this.

Bisbee is arty and has a love-and-peace 1960s vibe, but don’t you believe that one minute! Bisbee is full of ghosts and the paranormal investigators and ghostbusters who track them! Scared yet?

Bisbee has always been and still is about copper. Today the Big Lavender Pit Mine uses bulldozers and technology ….

But back in the day, the miners rode little railroads into the cruel darkness of the underground caves blasted open by the Phelps Dodge Corporation, and back in the day Bisbee was full of violent men who’d shoot each other and hang each other over women and cards or because they were too drunk to know better.

Today people come to Bisbee from all over the world with their ghostbusting thermometers and proton packs, and some even take a ghost tour while riding in a hearse. They’re looking for spectres and ghosts of cheating card sharks, murdering cowboys, zombie miners, and dangerous women you don’t want to know. Scared yet?

The Oliver House alone was the scene of 26 murders.

It’s so creepy that its neighbors may have put up gargoyles as a feng shui measure to keep those ghosts in their usual home. Scared yet?

City Park at Brewery Gulch looks peaceful enough, but it’s a place where you can get extreme readings of paranormal activity. It used to be a cemetery, and the legend is that all the bodies and caskets floated down this innocent-looking hill during a flood. Scared yet?

A miner’s ghost turns on the jukebox at St. Elmo’s Bar, another ghost climbs into bed with guests at the Bisbee Inn, a prostitute-ghost roams the streets of Bisbee looking for the cowboy who killed her accidentally while cleaning his gun, and a Madam refuses to move out of Opera Drive Brothel. The Lady in White shows up at the top of the staircases,

and once she scared three boys so badly that they ran away — accidentally saving their lives as the ground behind them collapsed in a sudden torrential rain. Scared yet?

Even the Bisbee prom has a zombie theme.

Bisbee locals even put up scarey posters. How scarey is this one down here?

Every night teams of ghostbusters go around looking for spooks and spectres and the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man! Aha! We have a reading here by the Copper Queen Hotel that shows a non-repeating phantasm or a class-5 free roaming vapor, circa 1912 .. Scared yet?

Lions and Tigers and Bears and things that go va voom in the night. Scared yet?

Yes! Oorah!

We’ve made it to dawn — Bisbee’s not a bit scarey in the morning.

Good job, you Ghostbuster of Bisbee, you. Oorah!

Lately I have discovered John Denver.

Okay, I’m tardy to that party — but whatever, I’m here.

Why do I like  John Denver? Let me count the ways.

John Denver could get high looking at sunshine. Sunshine on his shoulder makes him happy, sunshine on the water makes him high.

If John Denver lived here in Arizona, where the sun shines 360 days a year — just think!  John Denver would have been happy all the time just because of all that sunshine.

I like John Denver because he could write exquisitely romantic songs. You fill up my senses like a night in the forest. Let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms.  Okay, he and his wife got a divorce, but what a love he must have felt to inspire that poetry!

Let me be the end of your rainbow, Let me be the stars up above,  Let me be the one you dream of …  let me be the one that you love.

John Denver like so many of us who live out West came from somewhere else. He was born Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. and grew up all over the country as an Army brat. But when he came West , he found out that…

He was born in the summer of his 27th year, Comin’ home to a place he’d never been before …

He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again ..You might say he found a key for every door …

So many new Westerners  have had that experience. One day you look out at that gigantic sky and endless landscape, and you know you are home.

Although John Denver is often accused of being a cornball, the truth is John Denver had a dark side. He sang about flying away … just leaving the planet forever.

All of the days have gone soft and cloudy, all of the dreams have gone dry, all of the nights have gone sad and shady, she’s getting ready to fly .. Fly away …

John Denver sang about wanting to fly away, and he sang about feeling alone in the universe and being lost in its screams.

It’s a sweet, sweet dream … Sometimes I’m almost there  …. Sometimes I fly like an eagle  …And sometimes I’m deep in despair.

John Denver died alone in a small airplane. He was up in the sky, flying like an eagle …

when his plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Monterey, 150 feet north of shore, south of Lovers’ Point. I like to think he found his dream there. I like to think that the sweet sweet dream was finally his.

If there’s an answer, it’s just that it’s just that way ……….  

John Denver

(1943 to 1997)

This weekend near Tucson — it’s the Battle of Picacho Peak!

To those of us who live in Tucson, Picacho Peak is the only interesting point between Tucson and Phoenix during a long, boring car ride. It’s a big anvil-shaped mountain with an RV park and a Dairy Queen, and it’s pretty steep. When we want to impress people from out-of-town, we say, “Oh yeah, climbed it once.”

But on March 10, Picacho Peak is where they fought the Gettysburg of the West. Hundreds of Civil War re-enacters in Yankee and rebel uniforms aimed their long rifles and shot off their rolling cannons in great booms that shook the desert floor and created gigantic smoke rings in the turquoise desert sky.

When Lincoln said, “Now are met on a great battle-field of that war,” I bet he didn’t picture us 150 years later sitting on the side of Picacho Peak.

About 200 Civil War re-enacters come to Picacho Peak every year in March to pose the battles of Valverde, Glorietta Pass and Picacho Pass. Some people play a certain character — such as a doctor or bugle boy or captain — through the entire re-enactment. If their character gets killed, they have to play dead. Even the kids dress up!

Apparently, there are three kinds of Civil War Re-enactors. You can be an “Authentic,” which means everything you wear is 100% correct to the 1860′s times. You can be a “Standard,” which means you sometimes cheat a little by drinking a coke or using a cell phone, or you can be a “FARBY”, which stands for “Far Be It From Me to Criticize.” It sounds a little nerdy, but the truth is these people look as if they are having an absolute blast, even if their pup tents are very primitive.

Their cannons are truly awesome!

READY!

AIM!

FIRE!

(NOW COVER YOUR EARS!)

In the middle of the Battle of Glorietta, the two sides suddenly stop the fight. One side holds up a white glove, and they meet in the middle. They decide to stop the battle and allow themselves time to tend to their wounded in dead. Why couldn’t they just stop the entire war altogether?

Abraham Lincoln would have liked the re-enacters.

Lincoln would have liked us to remember any way we could ….

He would have liked us to remember any way we could that 620,000 soldiers died in the Civil War, some of them just baby bugle boys … Lincoln would have liked us to remember any way we could, so we do not to repeat the terrible mistakes of his generation. We promise, Father Abraham … even in this cactus-land …

We promise to remember always.

I love graffiti

When it’s tangled like spaghetti

When it’s art and a crime

Both at the same time

Look at me! See what I say! Look at me! I won’t go away!

You don’t have to like me

But you have to look at me

I am graffiti

I am graffiti

When I first moved out West, it was so hot and dry that I thought they needed a few good shade trees. You know, “the under the spreading chestnut tree where the Village Smithy stands-kind-of tree,” and  the “I think that I shall never see a poem as-lovely-as-a-tree” kind of tree.

Instead they had saguaros, which did not even look like trees to me. They certainly don’t do much in the shade department.

After a while, I began to respect them, even though I didn’t like them. You have to respect them because they are so heavy they can crush a car, and because they live in the hot desert without water. You have to respect saguaros because it takes so long to get one. They start out as babies as big as your thumb, and it takes about 100 years to get one arm, and more to get a bunch of arms.

Some people think they look like candlestick holders.

They have dorky flowers that turn into little fruits. The natives know how to make food out of that.

They are home to birds and all kinds of bugs and little wildlife things.

People here decorate them at Christmas,

And use their bones for fencing.

After a while, saguaros looked tall and stately to me. Dignified. Vertical.  And even noble.

Saguaros can look human, especially if you’ve been cowboying alone in the desert too long.

Hello, friendly Cactus Person.

And I liked the way they looked in different kinds of skies, (even the skies I make up).

After a while, that could mean only one thing.

The desert had become home.

What if I stood at the same spot and watched the sun set? What would that be like?

I would go in the same way that Manet went to the same spot every day

to paint the same haystack in different lights. What would I found out?

Especially since I live in Arizona, where the sunsets are so beautiful.

I would found out that while most sunsets are everyday ordinaire, like vin ordinaire,

they can be, more than anything, light shows.

Sunsets are also events in that the sun moves from the top of the sky to the edge of the horizon and then it disappears.

When it happens, the energy of the earth changes. The energy loses its everyday quality and becomes restless.

Everything becomes restless, even people. Animals need to hole up for the night.

Flowers shut down, and birds pepper the sky right before sunset.

We humans do the equivalent with our “rush hour,” the nervous scramble to get home before dark.

Though most sunsets are ordinary, a few clouds can turn them into spectacles.

Add thunderheads for real drama.

Some sunsets have crazy combinations of colors that no human artist would use –wild fusions of orange, pink, chartreuse and turquoise.

Big, dramatic, bright colors lighting up the world one last time before night.

They are like the big colors of autumn back East that light up the world

one last time before the black night of winter.

Brother Sun says, “Look at me! Here – something’s happening here!”

He does not go gentle into the dark desert night — in fact, sometimes

he sets the mountains on fire.

It keeps getting more and more beautiful. Just when you think you cannot

take in such beauty, it grows even more beautiful.

You are thankful for your eyes, that you can see this beauty. Surely a thing of beauty lasts forever!

But it fades to black …

Every time.

Good night, Arizona, until tomorrow at 5:30 near Oracle and Hardy Roads.

by Jane St. Clair

One of the best things about living out West is that you can still see animals in the wild. This is no small thing. Seeing these magnificent creatures who share our planet and watching them in their stealth animal maneuvers and pure instinctual energy– this reminds us that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophies.

I often see coyote -these skinny dog-like creatures with their bushy fox tails – and I admire them. They are so clever. They are so much freer and smarter than our pampered pooches who get picked up by their “mommies” from day care. No coyote would ever be caught in a grooming salon! Or living in some lady’s purse!- not our clever friend, not this dignified hombre – he who knows how to look not just both ways but all ways all the time. I have seen them watching and waiting and then working their way across Oracle Road, all six lanes of it with its whizzing 50 mph speed limit, and then I’ve watched them walk in a dignified way back into their desert.

No problem, man.

I have seen black bear at night. They lumber almost clumsily, and then suddenly they stand upright on those two big feet — and they are gigantic! I have seen them open trash bins and help themselves with their huge paws, paws perhaps three times the size of my hands. They could smash my skull with those paws so deadly equipped with hard claws – claws as fierce as knight’s medieval gauntlets — but yet, I still love them! Perhaps it is their simple black form that brings up some ancient memory in me – I think they must belong to the stars –to Ursa Major in the sky — to something big and timeless and eternal.

The other night I drove up to my house and stood in front of a big mama bobcat, her tits hanging like the dogs of Rome, and yet she was beautiful! She was sleek and dappled with patches of brown and gray and she moved like grace itself. We checked each other out, but she with her glowing golden eyes saw no threat in me, and as she crept away on silent soft cat feet, I felt her contempt of my civilized mode of transportation. She was one acquainted with the night and unafraid, so what’s with you, sister? You’re bigger.

Because of all these animals, I was moved today when I learned about the St. Croix cougar, or as we’d say out west, the Santa Crux Big Cat. This lion made his way from the Dakotas to Connecticut – an incredible 1500-mile  journey! Even jaded state officials called it “amazing news!” — that this cougar was on the Wilbur Cross Parkway on June 11.  The science-types, who tracked his DNA traces from the Black Hills to Minnesota (Dec. 11, 2009 sighting) to Wisconsin (May 20, 2010) to Connecticut, said this cat defied everything they knew.

I think I have fallen for him.

Santa Cruz Cat was a teenager, probably one in search of a mate, and like so many teenagers, he died on the highway. His tragic death was suitable for a young, romantic Romeo of the road and only adds to his mystique.

Like the animals I have seen out West, he is adventurous, he roams without maps, he presses forward no matter how uncharted the territory. He follows his intuition, he trusts the stars, he knows how to live unafraid. He teaches that it is not how or when you die that matters, but how you live that is important. Santa Crux, you were all those things, and I thank you for that. Good night, sweet prince.

Tucson, Arizona is in monsoon season … which means the desert puts on a show!

by Jane St. Clair

..

The other day it rained in the Sonoran desert. It took perhaps a month to build up to it; the desert is not a place for rain.

The sun shines 360 days a year, it hardly ever rains. Rain comes inbetween great lengths of sun; waiting for rain is like walking on pebbles that are too far apart.

Without rain, the plants in the desert grow brown. They lose their tops first — their tops shrivel up and fall off and then the whole plant goes into shock and struggles to survive. The big saguaro cactus turn into drying watermelons; the paws of the prickly pear go from thick and chubby and childlike, to old and dry and thin.

Meanwhile, the sun keeps shining in its fake-friendly way, forcing the animals into panic mode. They drink every bit of standing water left; when that disappears, they suck water from cactus; when that dries away, they must go without water. Snakes, lizards, turtles – they are the most fortunate because they can go without drinking for the longest time. The liquids in their bodies become so concentrated as to be poison. The mammals –bobcat, pack rat and coyote — are less fortunate. A local puma, so desperate for water, comes to a children’s park to drink from the swimming pool.

A terrible tension builds up in the desert as the plants struggle against wilting, drying and premature death, and the animals slow themselves down to survive. There is no water, no water anywhere. Arizona has great beds of dry sand where rivers can run, and long stretches of dry creeks that run from the mountaintops to the valleys, but they run dry between rains.

Then one day, the storm begins to spin itself! Big dramatic white clouds take days and days to form in the clear turquoise sky like the overture of a grand symphony.The Navajo call the spirit of rain Yei. On his body are bars of rain, on his wings hang bags of water, his legs are dark clouds, his hands and feet are lightning. At first Yei brings his gifts slowly, gently.

Then the whiteness turns strange unearthly colors: –grey, black, blue, pink, orange– like a horrible gigantic bruising wound in the heavens.

Thunder roars – something has to let loose and something must crash and shake down from the sky! there’s too much tension! So it rains, how it rains, rain like you’ve never seen before!

The people of the Tohono T’oham Nation, the Native American people here, say the desert smells like rain. Now as the rain comes down in great solid sheets of water, it does. The desert has the musty odor of wet creosote, and it smells like rain.

Then two great arcs of color form over the Catalinas: a double rainbow: red, yellow, blue, violet. Bright light of color, lighting the soft pastels of the desert into the colors of jewels: emerald, citrine, ruby, sapphire.

The riverbeds fill up and develop currents that drown automobiles and people. The little dry creeks run again.

It’s dark and very cold for us outside, but we run out barefoot anyway to see the rain. Everyone is out for the party – bobcat, snake, lizard, coyote, puma – everyone’s out for a drink – just because it rained.

People ask us here in Tucson,


“How do you stand the 110 degree summer heat? “

We desert rats think to ourselves –”What wimps for asking!” –
yet our polite answer is, “We go up to the High Country!”

The High Country is only a few hours out of town. One nice place in the High
Country is Ramsey Canyon, world-known for gorgeous hummingbirds

And dorky looking frogs.

The Ramsey Canyon trail is steep and uphill, but worth it for the view. The
country is a mix of desert and mountain pine, because it is where the
Sonoran desert meets the Rockie Mountains.

About half-way up I see a mama turkey with six babies. I did not know
that turkey babies like to climb up mama turkey’s back for rides.

I make friends with a squirrel. He jumps around in Shakespearian iambic
pentameter …
Under the Greenwood tree …
who loves to lie with me …
Here shall we see no enemy
but winter and rough weather …
Da Dum da dum da dum da dum…

I forget that the Canyon has bears and puma and I take the colors of
the many greens and the sweet way the trail winds.
I watch a spider happily at work.

I spot a gentle deer in the meadow, and watch him as

he leaps like a springer spaniel to eat some leaves.

I follow him into tall grass,

all the time all spaced out watching him, all rapturous like St John of the Cross
wrote,

I was so caught up and rapt away,
In such oblivion immersed,
That every sense and feeling lay
Of sense and feeling dispossessed;

I do not notice a coiled-up rattler at my feet –
his hissy sound like water rustling –
his hooded mean little eyes –
and his awful open serpentine mouth!
YIKES! Run away!

Suddenly formerly friendly forest is forebodding!

Every tree looks like a monster!

Friend-squirrel stops to eat; he knows my mind is playing forest tricks
on me. He also knows I stepped on the snake first.

Did St John ever get so spaced out that a rattler snapped at him? I think
about that as I wander up to the top of the mountain and watch
civilization below. I take it in, no longer thinking, just feeling the
transcendental experiences St John knew so well:

I entered – where – I did not know,
Yet when I found that I was there,
Though where I was I did not know,
Profound and subtle things I learned;
Nor can I say what I discerned,
For I remained uncomprehending,
All knowledge transcending.

It is time to leave, but in the new stillness of my heart,
I know that I will come back to High Country sometime soon.

To contribute to the Nature Conservatory and Ramsey Canyon, please go Nature Conservatory at www.nature.org/

Tombstone, Arizona, where the cowboys live, sets in the mountains and is known as the Town Too Tough to Die.

It’s down the road from Bisbee, where the hippies live, which is known as the Town Too High To Die.

Tombstone today is part history

and part Halloween party.

It’s famous for the Gunfight at the OK Corral and Boothill Cemetery.

With its many cool grave markers …

And its tombs of the unknown cowboys — Killed by Indians, Found Dead in a Mine Shaft, Killed in a Card Game, and such.

Tombstone was full of cowboys in the 1880s.

Who worked the mine on Toughnut Street

and then drank all night at the 116 saloons in town. Good whiskey and tolerable water!

The very cool citizens of Tombstone brag that other towns have histories but their town has a LEGEND. The guns, violence, and brave dead cowboys inherent in this LEGEND are very so American that it just makes you feel proud.

Everybody in Tombstone takes their LEGEND very very seriously. The actor who plays Doc Holliday quotes Shakespeare and they play opera music during the reenactment. There are actually statues of all eight participants in their exact spots. This is serious stuff.

Doc was actually drunk during the Gunfight, but luckily he had a shotgun and the others had pistols.

The McLaury boys and the Clantons had been feuding with the Marshall Virgil Earp, his brothers Wyatt and Morgan, and Doc Holliday. It started over a hold-up of a Wells Fargo stagecoach, and just kept escalating until the afternoon of October 26, 1881. Snow was falling and the good guys wore black dusters. The bad guys had red sashes round their waists.

Their feud climaxed at the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Legend has it that they fired 30 shots in 30 seconds.

When the first shots fired, Ike Clanton ran tail and pleaded for his life.

Bam bam bam Bam BAM – !!! Within a few seconds, Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton were dead. Doc Holliday got himself a permanent limp from a bullet hole to his knee.

The Earp brothers ended up just fine.

Frank and Tom McLaury and Billy Clanton ended up in Boothill Cemetery

With a great view of the mountains…

That night there was a party in the Bird Cage Saloon, which today is haunted by ghosts of cowboys and saloon women.

If you’re psychic, the images of ghosts will appear in your pictures of the Bird Cage. The ghost of Wyatt Earp’s lady/friend is in the little mirror in this picture.

At night you can still have a great time in the saloons of Tombstone, and you feel all goosebumpy and part of history.

So pardner, it’s true — old cowboys and their legends never die,

They just ride off into the sunset and live in technicolor movies forever and ever.