I love the way butterflies slit themselves up into little black lines and then flash! –Open up those beautiful wide wings! One poet compared their wings to parasols opening,

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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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Soon it was warm and dry again so that the sound of rushing water in our desert wash became a memory, and so that all that’s left for the javelina and quail and other desert animals to do is to wait for the next rain.

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Within a month, the team in Biosphere 2 was losing weight and feeling deprived of oxygen. They ate their three-month emergency food supply, and even birdseed and hummingbird nectar. As one member put it, “We were suffocating, starving and almost going mad.”

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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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Mexican Dance! Danza Mexicana ! by Jane St. Clair The elder prays for all the people who are crossing the desert today, that they might not die from the heat and their thirst. No more deaths on the desert, the elder prays. Then the drums begin and the dancers march into the room, single file. […]

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While I always liked the kiddie party trick-or-treat spirit of Halloween, the grotesque images of the Day of the Dead used to creep me out. I mean, skeletons! Then a friend originally from Mexico took the time to explain Dia de Muertos to me.

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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. Desert rain comes inbetween great lengths of sun; waiting for rain is like […]

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To resuscitate your friend-lizard, you may need to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Yes, you will do this — this is a fellow creature who needs you. Albert Schweitzer practiced reverence for life for all creatures, and now is the time for you to practice it too.

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John Dillinger was Public Enemy No. 1 when he was captured by police in Tucson, Arizona. He thought the small Old West town would make an easy place to hide — he never believed the police would get him there

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