(no subject)
Thanksgiving trip to Tucson. A chance for a family visit in a sunny location vs our gloomy rainy homestead.
We chose to travel out of Phoenix - more direct flights versus none with Tucson. Thanksgiving dinner at a swanky place in Tempe called Top of the Rock and we stayed at its beautiful motel. A nice base for Phoenix south, recommended if you are not on a budget but want to ignore Scottsdale.
Black Friday commute to Tucson. These are “cities of the plain.” The drive is unremarkable through expanses of wash and jumping cholla and prickly pear and mesquite, and you look hard to detect any oasis. The old adage about the west - whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.
Cloudless skies and remarkable clarity of air. Vastness and sublime emptiness encroached by settlements and the lifeline of the freeway.
What brings you to Tucson? Nice weather this time of year. And cactuses. A major omission in my opinion to overlook the Saguaro National Park just outside of town.
The National Park is pristine desert jungle and you see it is lush with plant life when you grasp the intellectual facts of biodiversity and fitness to the environment.
Sunset in the Sonoran Desert -- golden hour is pure magic. Glowing saguaro and enormous vistas and expanse of desert punctuated by rocky outcrops and distant ranges.
Much poetic ink has been spilled on the topic of desert landscape and desert sunsets. I wont attempt it further besides the paragraph above. Maybe a quote or three later.
But forgive an abstract observation. Strongly subjective encounters with nature can become “moments of time.” Wordsworth wrote this, about different landscapes. Safe havens of specific brief memory of natural beauty - for Wordsworth anyway - can last a lifetime. The moments can be a resource of calm and perspective that counter our mental tendencies to meanness and anxiety and envy. And Wordsworth included human relationships in these moments - when we share experience of sublime nature at specific time and place.
“Important to read poetry then get out there: solo but better with friends and the whole fam” -- Dave of the Lake District.
We had serendipity too. Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum was outstanding. We passed it up - and the crowds -- in the afternoon and went back early next morning. It is a rich place. More lively than “museum” might suggest. Depicts the plants and animals of diverse local habitats (desert is very plural). Animals are more active in the cooler AM. There are “free flights” where birds zoom in over your head - ravens, big horn owl, ferruginous hawk, red tail hawk. Good café on sight. Mineral exhibits and interpretations of geological and cultural history. Kid friendly indoors events with desert animals up close - skunk, porcupine, tortoise, ring-tail cat. Art. Beautiful desert gardens integrated into acres of natural desert.
Kitt Peak was a perfect daytrip up the mountain and back. A scientific complex of telescopes at 6700 feet. Desert panoramas 80 miles or more. We were lucky to get a tour of the solar telescope. It may be unique in the world. A 100 foot tall mirror tower tracks the sun and sends light at the 37.5 degree azimuth into the mountain to the collecting mirror 300 feet away and 140 feet into the rock. We met an old scientist - probably famous in his astronomer world, who knows? - who let our tour group into the big instrumentation lab underground where the images are studied. That day Sunday they were doing spectroscopic studies of the stratosphere especially looking at freon and UV holes.
Those are the trip hilights. Much fun and overeating. Sublime desert that transcends poetic genius. Or put another way: desert creates sublimity poetry tries to describe it.
Took the kids’ very dubious advice about a sure-fire shortcut through the desert. You know, these things always end badly in books, but it worked great! Got back to PHX early -- just to wait for our delayed flight. It never fails. But in the small world of the PHX terminal Whitney met two close college friends in transit to Denver and we had beer and tacos. Serendipity is the best.
We chose to travel out of Phoenix - more direct flights versus none with Tucson. Thanksgiving dinner at a swanky place in Tempe called Top of the Rock and we stayed at its beautiful motel. A nice base for Phoenix south, recommended if you are not on a budget but want to ignore Scottsdale.
Black Friday commute to Tucson. These are “cities of the plain.” The drive is unremarkable through expanses of wash and jumping cholla and prickly pear and mesquite, and you look hard to detect any oasis. The old adage about the west - whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over.
Cloudless skies and remarkable clarity of air. Vastness and sublime emptiness encroached by settlements and the lifeline of the freeway.
What brings you to Tucson? Nice weather this time of year. And cactuses. A major omission in my opinion to overlook the Saguaro National Park just outside of town.
The National Park is pristine desert jungle and you see it is lush with plant life when you grasp the intellectual facts of biodiversity and fitness to the environment.
Sunset in the Sonoran Desert -- golden hour is pure magic. Glowing saguaro and enormous vistas and expanse of desert punctuated by rocky outcrops and distant ranges.
Much poetic ink has been spilled on the topic of desert landscape and desert sunsets. I wont attempt it further besides the paragraph above. Maybe a quote or three later.
But forgive an abstract observation. Strongly subjective encounters with nature can become “moments of time.” Wordsworth wrote this, about different landscapes. Safe havens of specific brief memory of natural beauty - for Wordsworth anyway - can last a lifetime. The moments can be a resource of calm and perspective that counter our mental tendencies to meanness and anxiety and envy. And Wordsworth included human relationships in these moments - when we share experience of sublime nature at specific time and place.
“Important to read poetry then get out there: solo but better with friends and the whole fam” -- Dave of the Lake District.
We had serendipity too. Arizona Sonoran Desert Museum was outstanding. We passed it up - and the crowds -- in the afternoon and went back early next morning. It is a rich place. More lively than “museum” might suggest. Depicts the plants and animals of diverse local habitats (desert is very plural). Animals are more active in the cooler AM. There are “free flights” where birds zoom in over your head - ravens, big horn owl, ferruginous hawk, red tail hawk. Good café on sight. Mineral exhibits and interpretations of geological and cultural history. Kid friendly indoors events with desert animals up close - skunk, porcupine, tortoise, ring-tail cat. Art. Beautiful desert gardens integrated into acres of natural desert.
Kitt Peak was a perfect daytrip up the mountain and back. A scientific complex of telescopes at 6700 feet. Desert panoramas 80 miles or more. We were lucky to get a tour of the solar telescope. It may be unique in the world. A 100 foot tall mirror tower tracks the sun and sends light at the 37.5 degree azimuth into the mountain to the collecting mirror 300 feet away and 140 feet into the rock. We met an old scientist - probably famous in his astronomer world, who knows? - who let our tour group into the big instrumentation lab underground where the images are studied. That day Sunday they were doing spectroscopic studies of the stratosphere especially looking at freon and UV holes.
Those are the trip hilights. Much fun and overeating. Sublime desert that transcends poetic genius. Or put another way: desert creates sublimity poetry tries to describe it.
Took the kids’ very dubious advice about a sure-fire shortcut through the desert. You know, these things always end badly in books, but it worked great! Got back to PHX early -- just to wait for our delayed flight. It never fails. But in the small world of the PHX terminal Whitney met two close college friends in transit to Denver and we had beer and tacos. Serendipity is the best.