White Heat by Jane St Clair I don’t think there is a place as quiet as the Sonoran desert in summer noon. The temperature is an impossible 119 degree inferno in the shade but then, there is hardly any shade. I call it “white heat.” It is the white quiet heat that rises and radiates […]

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Tarantula spiders are scientifically known as big hairy spiders. In James Bond movies, the bad guy will put a tarantula in James Bond’s bed, and it’ll crawl slowly up his arm before 007 reaches for his gun and blows it away. In real life, tarantulas are timid and shy. They run away from you like scared little mice.

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Some say Kokopelli is an insect with dragonfly antennae. Some say he is priest of rain, a trickster, a fertility god. One story is that the first Kokopelli was actually a traveling salesman whose humpback was really a sack of wonderful goods, and that it was Kokopelli who came from Mexico and brought the Anasazi people the first seeds of corn

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Like all Americans, we in Arizona light up Christmas trees. Okay, we light up cactus. We have to make do with the whole snowman thing. Jingle bells. Jingle bells.

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If I could offer you just one word to describe the way desert spring comes to the Sonora, the word would be “soft.” Spring walks into the desert on soft feet so quietly that you cannot hear her footsteps approaching. Sometimes she touches you as a soft warmth that brushes against your face like the memory of a lover’s caress. Desert spring enters soft here the Sonora, as soft as clouds scudding by in a nonthreatening sky.

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Yaqui Deer Dancer is so very beautiful with flowers on his antlers. On his legs he wears cocoons that were once home to beautiful butterflies who are still with him in spirit. Deer Dancer has a rattle and a belt with deer hooves and he makes beautiful sounds as he dances. The Yaqui drummer imitates the heartbeat of Saila Maaso and the sticks imitate his breathing. This ceremony like everything about the Yaqui beliefs is beautiful

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Trees are just there. Trees are just happy all day long – not wanting or striving or doing, just being, and constantly changing, alive and wonderful.The poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “Let be be the finale of seem.” He might have been writing about ice cream, but he might as well have been writing about trees.

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Arizona desert snow is rare . I have forgotten the sound of snow because even rain is rare in the desert. I have forgotten how snow can transform the Arizona mountains into some icy moonscape that belongs in a galaxy far, far away, and I have forgotten how snow settles into spaces I ordinarily overlook,

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The other day I found out that Europeans are crazy about tumbleweeds from Arizona. They’ll pay $25 for a small one and $50 for a big one — as long as they are genuine Arizona tumbleweeds. So –today at the Tucson Mall I saw a great big humongous tumbleweed nestled next to a potted plant in front of Sears and about to roll into the parking lot, it was just like finding $50 cash! I couldn’t let it go tumbling to waste! I am also selling jeans worn in Arizona and totillas made for cowboys to eat in Arizona.