Ponderings from 2014

 Another old blog from 2014 with the issues I was wrestling then. I know today is the anniversary of 9/11. I know what's gone on with Afghanistan up until now; but seriously, I need to think elsewhere and away from the outside world. What I was thinking about almost 7 years ago (it was published near Christmas) seems a lot on my mind today. Time doesn't really move on -- or does it.

ponderings

On a personal level, when I am assessing the year past and looking ahead to 2015, my mind is on marketing because, strangely enough at this point in our lives, Ranch Boss and I are involved in marketing on several levels. Short of major advertising campaigns or big box stores, how do people find the products they need for their lives? The following are four of the ways, which after many years of having no such concerns, we now find ourselves involved in the economics and emotions of marketing.

The first one qualifies as the most-have-to-find buyers-- selling our grass fed beef and lamb. If we were willing to take our animals to an auction yard, where they might end up in a feed lot *shuddering*, this would mostly only involve + or - $$$ differences-- i.e. is the market up or down? 

Literally with raising cattle and sheep, you don't set a price when you take a animal to an auction. You can find it sells at less than it cost you to produce it-- not even considering the labor involved. To me selling through an auction is a total last resort because of what can happen to the animal's life next. We do have to sell or our grass would all become mud; but it's how we sell that matters.

So without the auction, how does an independent grower of beef and lamb get information to the ones looking for grass-fed meat (which is healthier for the consumer but somewhat different in flavor and texture than meat that is fatter, as it is finished on  corn or grain). For a buyer to find such products takes work. Currently we find buyers with Craig's List and our previous customers. Getting the right number of animals sold frankly is often dicey.

Next up would be the rental of our Tucson house. How do you get information about a vacation rental to the kind of people you want using your fully furnished home? Our house sets on natural desert and is more homey and arty than sophisticated. 

VRBO has been our solution. We thought of it because it's how we have found our own home rentals for vacations. I had liked dealing directly with the owner and now as landlord, I like dealing directly with those who want a few weeks in the desert. Vacation Rental By Owner makes all that possible and has worked well for both us and our renters-- once we learned the right way to phrase that blurb-- and that is critical to get a renter who won't be expecting something fancy. The last thing you want as a renter is a dissatisfied customer. 

The next area of our own marketing involves Ranch Boss's expertise as a technology expert. As an independent consultant, he markets his expertise to help start-up companies figure out what they need to overcome certain production problems. He is then also involved with how they get their product seen since it's not like start-ups have a big advertising budget. Word of mouth is a big part of how they market. 

Networking has gotten him most of his jobs since he retired in 2002-- except he didn't retire from working and has had pretty much all the hours he's wanted since he began consulting. 

We are also both involved in marketing my books... Marketing books-- argh! I began to ePublish December of 2010. In the intervening years, I've continued to write new books, improve my craft, BUT have never gotten good at promoting my books or even understanding where to put my effort. I can be promoting one book, getting it zero sales, while several others, where I had done nothing, are selling. I have no idea how readers find them as that's not easy information to access for an indie-- short of paying probably more money a month than I'd be making. One possibility is setting up an email list regarding new arrivals. I haven't gone there yet.

Here's a recent example of a marketing mystery. We put on sale A Montana Christmas at 99¢ for the eBook, ending January 1st. It seemed a good idea-- after all, it's the Christmas season. I put out the word on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon forum, and the blog. It got zero interest (while some of my other books had sales). So what went wrong?

The story is a novella but a lengthy one at 27,000+ words. It followed characters and situations from an earlier book, From Here to There, which had sold pretty well in its time. 

Possible problems-- A Montana Christmas might not be a typical Christmas story since it is about the lead up to Christmas, covers Winter Solstice, and ends Christmas Eve. It's about an estranged family coming together for the holiday and explores how this season can be a time of healing-- or maybe make relationships worse. Early mistakes can't always be fixed... or can they? 

It's not a religious look at Christmas since the characters are mostly those who don't pay a lot of attention to religion. The biggest celebration in the novella is Winter Solstice-- so its nature theme does tend to carry through. That could be a turnoff to someone who wants a religious look at Christmas. 

To add to this, it also is not a romance although it carries on the couple from the earlier book. I consider it a slice of life story. Because I like this imaginary ranch and these people, summer 2014, I carried the family story further with a short story (found at the end of the novella) and plan in 2015 to bring forth another full length novel set on this ranch but with a new romance-- two actually, with two different age groups. 

I've considered that perhaps the title and cover are the problem-- no pzazz. Saving Christmas maybe? lol Or making it part of a series-- damaged families... hmmmm doubt that'd do much to draw in readers either. 

One thing I might advise to anyone who is thinking of writing-- if you want to write what everybody else does, that's craft and can be learned. If you want to write your own story, then you can get it published but be prepared-- you may not be able to get it purchased. It is at that point that you have to find, what I work to find, peace with that fact and enjoyment in the creative process, creating a book that turned out just as you wished, and release what you cannot control-- everybody else's reaction to it. 

There is a big plus to writing fiction; it takes you away from your own disappointments, the world outside, pretty much anything that is outside your created world and its characters. For a little while, you live in a world where you have more control.

As for marketing, it just has to remain a mystery-- whether it's beef, our rental, Ranch Boss's consulting, or my books, the right people have to be reached. That's the sweet spot that isn't always possible to find.

On the other hand, I am an old woman as is my husband an old man. It's kind of good to still be challenged-- don't you think!

Georgia O'Keeffe and New Mexico

 From 2009

In trying to think when I first became so enamored of Georgia O'Keeffe, it seems forever but couldn't be. It wasn't just her art although that would be enough. It wasn't just her life. Although that would also be enough. More than likely her greatest appeal to me was because of New Mexico and her love of the land there. It wasn't even just New Mexico but more that it was a wild land that spoke to her spirit. She felt the land like I feel the land. Whatever the whole set of reasons, I have read and seen about anything on her that comes along. It was 1998 when I had the opportunity to visit Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu-- areas that provided her a home and gave her inspiration for her paintings. New Mexico is a powerful place with its light, history, and then that wonderful, interesting land which has drawn artists and writers from around the world. It was easy to understand why she had found her artistic soul there. Irony was that her heart's home was with a man in New York who would never come west. Thousands of miles would often separate them but both were part of her inner being. It was a conflict. Was it also fate? Who knows. Unfortunately I was unable to tour her home due to shortness of time and not knowing enough ahead of time the limitations on the tours. We had other places to go (Chaco Canyon which is also the best). I will go back someday and see inside the home-- I hope. I have seen so many photos of it, the little things she treasured, the simplicity of how she lived that I seem to already know it. Why she is coming up right now is very apropos as I go through photos and remember my trip to a land I love. Then last week-end, I watched on Lifetime the film, Georgia O'Keeffe, a biopic starring Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons. I really liked it even though no two hour movie can do justice to the complexity of the woman-- let alone all of those in her circle. The film was mostly about her relationship with the photographer and gallery owner, Alfred Stieglitz, and his impact on her painting. Even that, it couldn't fully deal with in the limitations of two hours. It needs a miniseries. I don't suppose enough Americans would be interested in her story for that to happen. If she had been an English painter, it would have already happened. What fascinated me about the film wasn't just her relationship to her art or even to him but the bohemian quality of the way so many of them lived. Definitely not satisfying to the right wing of today-- well not totally rewarding to themselves either as everything has a price and there is no such thing as true freedom in love or relationships. Stiegtlitz saw early that her life was her art. She was her painting. When he photographed her nude and then showed the artistic photos at his gallery, it made her a sensation and began the mythology that added to her value as an artist-- as he knew it would. This might sound crazy but when we buy paintings, it's the subject but also the energy. Her energy was that of a passionate woman. Her love for him was part of that but it went beyond it to her essence. Land and man helped form her into the woman she became. The Whitney in New York City is opening a showing of her paintings, which I was fortunate enough to have seen at the O'Keeffe museum in Santa Fe. This article shows some of the paintings and the love letters she wrote to Stieglitz.

[Georgia O'Keeffe's Love Letters]

For anyone interested in art or love, the link is well worth taking the time to read with some of her paintings for those who are not familiar with her art. I have read she didn't think she was good with words. Lordy, wonder what she'd have been like if she had thought she was...

From New York, II 13 July 1929 "I know that many things that seem very precious – very holy – are gone for me – but I feel too – that way down beyond that – where you can not touch it – where no one can touch it – there is a bond – that is my feeling for you – it is deeper than anything you can do to me – that is why I know I will be with you to the end – whether you wish it or not – whether I choose it or not – whether I am close to you or not … "You have always told me that the work came first – that has often been very difficult for the woman in me"

Their relationship had its ups and downs, two imperfect people coming together as it always is, both of them fascinating, complex, strong, conflicted, extremely creative artists. They were soul mates in the truest sense of that word. Being soul mates doesn't always make for easy relationships. These photos were all taken on the 1998 trip to New Mexico. We came in September and saw most of it between torrential rainstorms. The photos don't do justice to the lighting on that trip.

a book and thoughts from November 2010

 Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I Sit Listening to the Wind

In my bookcase for some years, I have no idea how many, has been a thin little book called 'I Sit Listening to the Wind' about Woman's Encounter Within Herself by Judith Duerk. Sometimes I am drawn to buy such books and then they seem to sit for a long time until I see them, open them, and find they are just what I need right then and might not have been so meaningful to me another time.

The book is poetic, a sharing of women's thoughts and aimed mostly at women although the ideas could apply to men as well. It is about our human need to find balance between our masculine and feminine sides which according to Jungian thinking, we all have.

The chapters are quite short and aimed at reading one and then thinking about how it applies. It would be a wonderful book to do in a circle of women which is perhaps how it is intended. It would also be a good book for a woman to think about as her daughter was coming into maturity or her niece or a girl to whom she was close. It is really about being there on an intimate level for each other.

It is mostly aimed at old women with the emphasis that as we come to old age which can be a time for balancing our male and female energy, it is a time where we can open ourselves to the things a busy life before never permitted.

Now when I start throwing around terms like animus and anima, or yin and yang, assume I am no Jungian nor am I an expert in Chinese philosophy. I internalize what they mean more than finding myself able to accurately describe them to someone else. We all have both female and masculine characteristics. The female has the internal animus. The male the internal anima. That isn't always expressed but Jungian teaching would say it should be if we want to live most fully.

What this book is about is how in our culture the animus is rewarded in male or female, and it is what is needed to get through school, to attain and succeed at jobs. It is the focused energy of the yang, hard, analytical, tough, the ambitious side of humans. While the anima is the soft part, the dark, the yielding, the intuitive, the yin.

So (this is for the women here) we are born into the world as females, and we must learn to operate in a masculine realm. We toughen. We become more analytical. We compete. We may work too hard at developing our animus because we must. If we didn't find success ourselves, we might drive our daughters to find it and try to grow their masculine side instead of their feminine.

Then we come to old age and things have changed but have we?

When we are old, we do not have to do what we once did; but for some women, there is still this need to compete, to succeed, to justify, which drowns out the softer, intuitive, female side which has been buried for so long that it must be resurrected if we want to life fully for who we can be now. Some block it all out by being a perpetual Peter Pan, not admitting where they are but using the animus to direct their goals possibly haphazardly while there is no time for the intuitive anima. Busy busy busy and at what? That's the question of the book as well as how might our lives have been different if we had internalized all this years before?

It might seem this is all about women but the same would be true for men who now are freer, in old age, to release their softer sides, less compelled to be competitive-- or will they ever let that go in a culture that places the emphasis on the animus and the yang.

We can change it by opening ourselves up to the fullness of who we are. Or we can stay caught in the trappings of what we have been told we need to be.

"I feel as if I am becoming who I was meant to be. After all the years of outer-directed energy, I am coming home to the Feminine... coming home to myself. I am allowing myself to become a mature woman in the truest and deepest sense."

quote from 'I Sit Listening To The Wind'

The book ends with this thought--


Photo is mine. Words are from 'I Sit Listening to the Wind' by Judith Duerk

Eastern Oregon 2009

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Walking Through Time

100,000,000 years ago Oregon was-- under the Pacific Ocean. A visitor from another planet, as there were no humans yet, would have seen ocean waves lapping the shore near McCall, Idaho. Things happened-- as they tend to do where it comes to the earth. Volcanic eruptions, uplifts, weather and eventually Oregon rose to take its place as the left wing capitol of the country-- well not really.

Places like John Day Fossil Beds National Monument's three units (Sheep Rock, Painted Hills, and Clarno) give us a sense of timelessness and time. It cannot help but make anybody think that climate change is both inevitable and something we better plan for-- over say a few million years, give or take a few.

Where I walked through beautiful stone canyons, once there were lush forests with 100" of rain a year, where predators and prey lived together. Some of the species living then didn't evolve into anything else. They disappeared. Others can be recognized (with DNA) still today. None of them had any idea that things might change because their concerns were strictly about from where their next meal might come.

The earth did change though due to more volcanic action, more earthquakes and uplifts and a steady change of the climate that left behind a fossil record from what they call The Age of the Mammals that is fascinating and really does stir the soul. My guess is most who visit this Monument, not that well publicized nor known, have already felt stirred by the history of earth.

To help a person equilibrate themselves to the vast sense of time and change, the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center is a great spot to start. There you find fossil exhibits, a working laboratory where you can spy on the work through a glass window, paintings and exhibits to help you see what animals would have been out there say 20 million years ago. It also directs you to the various units.

This is a glimpse into that time after the extinction of the dinosaurs until the Ice Age. Some of the fossils of animals I saw as familiar but others were new to me. What made some survive and others disappear? Fascinating story with no definitive answer-- yet anyway.

Here we get a view of earth's physical reality where sometimes we have had absolutely nothing to do with what happens-- like the recent string of earthquakes in Indonesia and Samoa. Not to say we cannot sometimes have an impact with our human finger in every pie attitude.

Spending some time in the center is helpful, but the real experience is walking the many hiking trails to look at the layers of rock and earth. It's beautiful but more than that, it feels spiritual and to a pagan like me-- sacred. Earth is more awe inspiring than the most beautiful temple ever made by man and some of these formations seem very much like cathedrals.

When we reached the end of one trail (signs clearly mark where visitors can go) we heard a tapping farther up the canyon. A gentle, steady tapping. Back at the center we asked to be sure but were relatively positive that it was a crew from there. The careful work goes on in the laboratory as the matrix is further removed from the fossils.

There were others visiting the monument but not many. It was easy to find quiet places to just sit and think, to let it all soak in.

Mankind has only been here a few million years and in his present form only about 90,000 years. Some of the animals that once walked the ground where I walked, they don't exist today. Someday if mankind is foolish or maybe even if not, our species may not.

To better understand this land and the influences that made it what it is, at the museum, we asked what they recommended. We bought the book In Search of Ancient Oregon by Eileen Morris Bishop. It has many photographs and well-written texts to help put the story of Oregon's beginning, the stages through which it went, that got us from 100 million years ago (when dinosaurs roamed Montana) through the processes that bring us to today-- which is clearly not the end of Oregon's story even if we humans might like to think so.

Going somewhere like John Day Fossil Beds puts our own time on earth into perspective. I don't know what its energy is, but it's strong. Is it those animals wanting their stories to be told? They didn't die leaving no sign behind. Their stories are being told. It's a blessing that others saw these places and worked to preserve them for future generations to have the chance to walk back through time.

 

Education

 

From 1972 at Montezuma's Castle, Arizona. What do you know about it?

Because I dream a lot, I try to remember them for possible interest later. Sometimes that works and often it doesn’t. Either way, I enjoy dreaming vivid stories and images.

Last week, I dreamed my husband and I were at a convention of some sort. It was held in an interesting area, but I was staying with the trailer and the cats (typical of my life).

The part that seemed important was he and I were driving around and I began to think I needed to share with him some ideas I had about education. Although I was an education major in college, I didn’t complete my degree (one term shy). I had though gotten all the major courses-- missing only student teaching for one quarter (babies and life got in the way—my choice).

So, in the dream, I found a piece of paper to write what I thought was important in education.What is its greatest purpose?

First to give students the tools to continue educating themselves when they leave traditional school. Back then, among other things, that meant learning to use libraries, card catalogs, how to write a thesis and stick to the subject. Today, it might mean the internet. It’s about knowing how to learn after the school is behind us.

Second is to provide inspiration for why do you want to learn more. And not just about things that you can use to make money. For things that fascinate and intrigue you. When schools inspire, education does not end with graduation.

Third was to provide a reason to learn more. That means for jobs, careers, hobbies, relationships, really all the things that we use to improve our life situation.

 ~~~~~~~~

I was left with more thinking about a school system and what it teaches. Of course, there are facts, dates, events, rules, etc.; but in the end, do they matter after graduation? They matter if they can be used in some way and then inspire the student to keep learning. It might seem when we memorized (something I did with cards back in grade school) that 8 x 8 = 64 that it doesn’t matter; but it’s brain development and someday we might need it. Even if it’s to fall asleep at night.

 I am concerned, as an old lady, how the schools have come at odds with the parents over schools wanting to teach attitudes, reconfigure society and rewrite what had been taught in the past with things like CRT, 1619 Project, intersectionality, woke, and on it goes, where many of us elders don't even know what the words mean (even after looking them up). What actually is being taught???

You know, when I was in school (eons ago), I didn't have any idea what political party my teachers belonged to or if they did nor what religion. If a school wants to teach attitudes that suit the teacher, and a student graduates, maybe with no basic skills, as apparently Oregon now wants to decree, where do they go next especially if they never got a love of learning. Learning is not a means to an end but rather a beginning… or so said my dream.

What do you think the purpose of education is?

 

Thinking too much from 2009

 Saturday, November 28, 2009

Complexities of Modern Life

Modern culture offers some complexities that weren't faced in the past. These questions of right and wrong aren't always answered by religion-- even if we follow a religion. They can form ethical conundrums if we stop to puzzle through them. Following are some examples of what I am thinking about.

Today we have people with enough money to travel wherever they wish, finding fascinating places to view, and then leaving supposedly without a trace of themselves left behind-- except some money. We also have people who live in those places, often very primitively. Those people are often part of the appeal for what today is referred to as adventure travelers.

So instead of taking a place over and changing it, the goal is keeping it as it was to make it interesting to see even if some live in poverty or worse to offer those views.

This is one such example: [Elephants or villagers]. To have something adventuring tourists will pay to see, the elephant population is allowed to grow and sometimes rampage. Although the country receives financial benefits from the tourists, the villagers receive only death and destruction. Complexities of modern life.


We do still have the problem of the old-fashioned taking over of a country and what does the rest of the world do about it? Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion is about Tibet with China doing the old-fashioned occupying and conquering after Mao became the ruler of China. They justified their actions as liberating the Tibetan people who had asked for no such liberation and often had to be killed to be forced to accept it along with accepting the occupying army and Chinese settlers.

I knew the story but always thought Tibet still existed even though the world had been ignoring what happened there. Then we got our newest National Geographic map where there is no Tibet. There is instead China and the Tibetan Plateau-- in short a recognition that Tibet has been officially swallowed.

Who would fight to protect the Tibetans? Certainly not the United States who is in debt up to its neck and above. Although the Dalai Lama said he understood and thinks Obama has other ways to move forward on things, our president didn't meet with the exiled leader of the Tibetan people when he came to Washington D.C recently which was a first. That happened likely because Obama planned a trip to China to whom we owe so much money that we cannot afford to offend their leadership. Taiwan, watch out!

Is the taking over of another country okay when it's one big enough doing it? The argument goes that it's okay because China originally had Tibet as part of its domain. Really? What else did China have besides that? We have seen the same argument with North and South Korea as well as Vietnam. The countries were once one-- pretty much everything was; so now it's okay to conquer it? Complexities of modern life.


On a smaller scale, we were recently at Finley Wildlife Refuge. It is a wonderful place set aside for birds and wildlife. It is a mostly safe place for them to live and breed... But all around it are grass seed fields where the geese love to graze. These are fields planted for families to make a living but so many geese can decimate the grasses. As a compromise there is hunting allowed sometimes to reduce the numbers of certain of the geese and ducks.

So it's beautiful to watch these swans, to listen to their calls to each other which were so melodic as to be almost like songs, and a very contradictory emotion to once in awhile hear the boom of nearby shotguns.

We had the experience recently at the farm when we walked up our road, saw a lot of geese in our pasture, grazing alongside the cattle; then watched them fly off thinking how beautiful-- only to within moments hear the boom of shotguns in the next valley about the time the birds would have flown over.

Farm Boss reassured me that it was skeet shooting. Maybe or maybe some of those beautiful birds were shot right after leaving the safety of our pasture. And how long and how many of them could we provide refuge in our pasture. The cattle and sheep also depend on that grass. Provide refuge. Don't provide refuge? Complexities of modern life.


Finally (well not really but one more of these examples of complexity) we watched on HBO the recent remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still starring Keanu Reeves as part of an alien population who have decided humans are so abusing earth that they must be eliminated if the planet it to survive with habitability.

There wasn't a lot of story, but lots of special effects and one dominant question: Are humans worthy of having such a wonderful planet upon which to live? We say we own it but then argue over what that means, abuse it and each other, and can't agree on what quality of living means for ourselves or the earth. It was easy to make the alien's case for eliminating us as a species.

Of course, the thing is there are those among us who are worthy (most of us would start by naming our families, friends, and selves). In the film that was the case the humans made. We can change. We can do what is right. Give us another chance. But it was only at a point of disaster that humans were willing to do that. Would it change anything even if that happened?


How do we resolve these questions that it seems money decides everything. Want to visit a people at the price of elephants rampaging over them? No problem if you can afford it. With the complex lives some humans have, the appeal of viewing the simple life is very appealing-- so long as it's just as a voyeur.

Is there another way to figure out what is right to do? How about starting with the recognition that being able to afford something does not make it the right choice. Another good one is just because someone else says it's okay does not mean it is.

Photos from Finley Wildlife Refuge other than one from our pasture.

And don't bother telling me I think too much. I already know it.

Starting over or not...

Something came up recently about reincarnation. I've used it as a theme in several books as an explanation for how we are drawn to certain people. I've read a LOT about it, done regressions to see if I could find past lives of my own, but in the end, I am down to mystery as to what happens after we or our animals die.

I thought of something else though, in one of those nighttime between sleep times. First where it comes to beloved animals-- if they come back, do they get good lives or are they among the unfortunate who find themselves at the mercy of the cruel? Is it really better to come back if there is no control over how or where-- and that's up for debate according to my research. Some do believe there are those who track it all, make sure it's fair. I've used that in some of my fantasy/paranormal books, and it's come to me in dreams. Is it so?

 

For myself, would I want to come back? Currently, not so much if I had the choice. I was very fortunate with this lifetime. I've had plenty of angst and tears; but overall, it's been a blessed life without riches but good relationships and experiences that make me grateful for when I was born and what family and friends came into that life. The idea though of starting over has no appeal for me. I am tired and not sure that the future of this world will be one I'd like to begin again in. I imagine starting again as a baby, and think good grief, would I want do all of that again??? Do I have a choice when on the other side? Is my gratitude for what I've experienced this time a plus or minus?

When you read how some have been so abused and it's the fault of those who did have a good life, even if it was hand me-down clothes and little money, was this life unfair to someone else, who I don't even know?

 

When I did my regressions, none of those lifetimes were as sanguine as this one has been. I saw tragedies, mistaken goals, and often a shorter than expected lifetime. No queens or wealth as some claim all remember. Mine were ordinary people living ordinary lives and often ruining things by poor values. I still remember the things I saw in those meditations, with a few spilling into this lifetime, but seriously would I like to begin again... Not yet anyway. And I did get a full lifetime, which was not the case for some I have loved, where there might be more desire to get another chance.

 

Reincarnation make for a good plot for a book like Echoes from the Past where the heroine was seeking answers for her dreams. Maybe it explains some of my current life's mistakes . To have had though a good life doesn't mean I'd get the next one the same-- not based on my research and own meditations.

 

My granddaughter talked of some such memories when she was a toddler. After a while, she didn't remember them but have they impacted her life decisions anyway? Mystery to me.

 

The books with strong links to reincarnation begin with Diablo Canyon. I had that one begin from a dream when I asked for a dream that explained reincarnation to me as I'd just lost a beloved cat. The dream didn't exactly explain but it was about reincarnation. 

 

Diablo Canyon.

And then was another book, historical where the idea of a woman trying to understand her dreams led to her exploring the area in which the dreams had come. 

 

Echoes from the Past

 

 

Hiking washes from 2009

 I can't leave out our times in Tucson and the years of hiking washes were most special. The older I get, the less I can do it without just memories-- like these two blogs

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Hiking the washes

Wherever I go, I am always interested in rock art (petroglyphs, pictographs) and usually ask those who might know if they can give directions to such sites. Many in the Tucson area are in washes (normally dry river or creek beds).

The washes serve important ecological benefits to the desert as roads for the wildlife and a carrier of water when the heavy rains come-- and they do come. They are somewhat protected, and it might be why they were so often chosen for the rock art. Although, in Tucson, one of the easiest to reach and well preserved sites, Signal Hill, is on the top of a small hill.

Washes are important as a source of water even in dry seasons as you can often dig down in their sand to find water even if the surface is bone dry. Dry washes go from nothing to brim full sometimes very fast (not a good place to live). Flash floods actually drown quite a few people as the water comes from great distances with little advance warning as the deluge doesn't have to be where you even know it's happening. Here, a lot of roadways don't have culverts and instead dip with signs warning don't enter when water is present. More than a few motorists have ignored that to the damage (at the least) of their vehicles.

This particular wash is out in the Tucson Mountains.

At one time this was a mining area with quite a few small shafts. Today it's about a mile hike to a petroglyph site. Although I had expected just a sandy wash, we were warned by someone coming out of it that our walking sticks would come in handy. There were rock formations that we had to scramble up. Not rock climbing but they did make the stick a handy tool.

These deteriorating petroglyphs were likely left by the Hohokam peoples who lived here and then left abruptly as did the Sinagua and Anasazi more to the north around the same time. The Hohokam left behind not only their rock art but also an extensive system of canals whose forms can still be found. The assumption is a major drought drove most of the peoples from their way of life, a few to remain, but most to seemingly disappear into an unwritten history unless you can translate their drawings into their story.

Hiking up a wash Part II

Can you feel what it is like to hike up a wash, scramble over some rocks and finally come to a place like this one, within about six miles from what is, at least for awhile, your home down here, where the rocks have left behind a story to tell of a people who lived here long ago? They had dreams and goals, walked these same places, sought shelter, food, and sometimes left behind their stories pecked or painted on the rocks. The places always feel sacred to me as they appeal on emotional and physical levels. Sometimes the symbols appear to represent a story of how they saw life, like the spirals which are seen most often in the Hohokam sites.

To stand where I know people did hundreds of years ago and look at their rock art is always a very special experience for me. The Hohokam people occupied central Arizona from around 200 B.C. until about 1450 A.D. when they, like most of the cliff dwellers to the north (Sinagua and Anasazi), left at least their established villages and disappeared into history.


As you start to hike up this particular wash, in the foothills of the Catalinas, there are owls that nest under an overpass. From the drawings, it appears that they have always been here.


Do enlarge the photos, especially the one of me because it was one of those lucky shots. We didn't know when it was taken that the waning moon was also in the shot. You couldn't plan a shot like that if you wanted and yet here it was with three elements come together-- the symbols of a people long ago, a person from today, and the moon representing the cycles of life.