It’s easy to picture how Tumacacori once was so many years ago – serene, tranquil, beautiful — the active center of a small community in this isolated desert. And it is still beautiful in its own way.

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I could picture the Wells Fargo wagon a’coming down the street, and all of Mayer’s townspeople gathering at the Big Bug station – wondering if they got salmon from Seattle, a box of sugar maple or a cross-cut saw—the way we wonder what’s in the Amazon box on the porch. I could also picture the ladies of Mayer in their long dresses and corsets, living in the dust and heat of the Wild West.

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Since the desert is mostly dusty browns and a zillion shades of pastel greens, this means when the Palo Verde trees bloom, they are the whole show. The contrast of bright yellow flowers against the bright blue sky can be too much for human eyes to take in. No wonder Van Gogh went nuts.

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Desert Spaces by Jane St. Clair John Masefield wrote, “I must go down to the seas again to the lonely seas and the sky,” but you could say that about longing to go down to the desert again, to the lonely desert and sky. Something in me longs for desert spaces. I understand that you […]

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About 300 Hohokam probably lived in walled villages on this 15-acre spot called Romero Ruins. They were farmers who knew how to irrigate the desert. They had two large ball courts, and probably played tournaments against nearby villages. Since they made seashell jewelry, archaeologists think they went to the Gulf of California to trade.

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A forest meadow on Mount Lemmon is surrounded by quaking Aspens, these white-barked trees that keep waving their yellow hands back and forth. So many leaves quake at once that it feels as if you’re sitting in quaking yellow polka dots.

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Personally I love rabbits. I’m always happy to come upon one, even though when a rabbit sees me, he’ll usually freeze and hide in plain sight like a two-year-old child. I love their bright black eyes and their round dewdrop bodies, punctuated by those unlikely Popsicle ears and big Clarabelle feet.

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April picks up her color crayons and throws all of them away except for one, and then she colors it all yellow. Palo verde trees hang heavy with yellow, yellow falls all over their feet, yellow creates a carpet beneath them, as if it had snowed yellow snow.

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This beautiful mountain has a great serenity, grace and peace about it, as if it were a natural cathedral. The Tohono O’odham nation, upon whose land Kitt Peak sits, recognize it as the holy place that it is –for it is where their elder brother deity resides. Their creator deity lives on nearby Baboquivari Peak, the center of their cosmology

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I watch his beautiful glowing eyes and his muscular tawny body, and something about the Tucson jaguar is bright and burning. The Aztecs, who had elite Jaguar Knights, believed something similar about the jaguar too. They believed the jaguar gave fire to humankind.

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