Gila Cave Dwellings

We took a detour to the north on our trip between Arizona and New Mexico off Highway 10. We had heard about this small National Forest Area and decided to check it out. We were not disappointed by the five hour detour that took us through Silver City, New Mexico (cool town!) and beyond.

People lived in these caves in 1300 AD. A stream flows through the valley below,  they grew their corn in the mesa across from the caves. It is a wonderful, remote, quiet area. We were ready to move in! It made me wonder what other small parks exist like this one.  There were also hiking trails through out the area, so we had a great time in the Gila ("Hee-la) Wilderness. This was the FIRST National Forest Area in the United States.

Aldo Leopold, an early ecologist, wildlife manager, outdoorsman and philosopher was a pioneer in wilderness preservation. We are grateful to him and so many others for doing the work to preserve land and historical sites in the west.

February Light.

Update from Colorado

Mt Ouray saddle; tiny Eliza on the far right

When people ask me exactly what I do for work, it's hard to know where to begin. I started as Residential Life Faculty and Wilderness Instructor at the High Mountain Institute in Leadville, Colorado in July 2012, though I'd spent a semester here as a teaching apprentice in 2010. As a member of the faculty, I implement HMI's mission and core values with students on a day-to-day basis, which means different things every day – I might be teaching students how to slackline, facilitating a conversation on the use of language in a small community, working with a group of students to cook dinner for 50 people, meeting with the 7-person apprentice group about how to foster a safe environment for students in cabins, empowering elected student reps to plan a coffeehouse, and – of course – leading a group of students through the canyons in Utah or the Colorado Rockies and teaching English on the side of a mountain. 

Teaching a leadership class in Grand Gulch; see ancient ruins in background

I love the variety of tasks this job throws at me, the culture of feedback and insistence on promoting personal growth amongst faculty and students alike, the dynamic and dedicated team of teachers and administrators, the smart and excited students from all over the country, and the epic mountain backdrop. I also love my cute campus apartment with the 30-second commute.

For those who would prefer a visual, HMI has a great promotional video that wraps it all up pretty well.
Here it is.

Open invite to "stop by" Leadville (though it's really not on the way to anything :-) ) for a visit!

Architects in Arizona

"Oh, we have to build here, this is pure abstraction wherever you look."

— Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright began building this desert masterpiece in 1937 as his personal winter home, studio, and architectural campus. Taliesen West is located on the beautiful Sonoran desert in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains. He lived out his life here, working and teaching for twenty more years. He died in 1959 at the age of 92.

Scottsdale, Arizona

Saguaro Cactus

snow in arizona

As is the way with blog posts, the first shall be last, as one post gets piled on top of the previous one.

So the beginning of this series is three posts down from here. But if you don't mind reading a book back to front, this will be fine.

On the last day of our time in Arizona, as if in some kind of sympathy with the east coast weather, it snowed. We went from shirt sleeves to parkas overnight.  It was beautiful and I felt we had seen the desert in many moods and shifting light.

Words I learned/ things I saw:

Jumping cholla, So Tall, Agave, Saguaro Cactus, Prickly Pear, Barrel Cactus, Ocotillo, Palo Verde, Mesquite, Roadrunner, Peregrin Falcon, Harris Hawk, cardinal, coyote, javarina, and many many kinds and colors of grasses. 

Altar Valley

There's something about the light.  Do you see how vivid the colors are?  The grasses glimmer.

The Sonoran Desert

It never ceases to amaze me how stark the desert landscape appears at first

but how full of life it really is

when you take the time to examine the environment and 

study it in more detail.

-MF Cardamone

from an exhibit of her work at The Tucson Art Museum

Sorry for the long silence on this blog. David and I have been in southern Arizona, close to the Mexican border exploring the landscape on horseback and on foot.  Internet was available in a chilly room far from our cabin and I couldn't bear to sit inside with all this going on outside!

I came to appreciate the desert on this trip and my love of riding was rekindled. Many of you know I was an avid rider in my early teens, summer and winter! I rode for five summers at a camp on Lake Champlain near Burlington, Vermont, competing in horse shows in Montpelier and Essex Junction.  In the winter months  my mother drove me once a week to Dana Hall School, a half hour away for lessons and jumping and trail rides. Heaven. I've pretty much given it up. I mean where am I going to find a really good horse to ride around here?

So it was surprisingly familiar to hop on my horse and ride the trails of Elkhorn Ranch in Arizona last week. The wranglers even let us LOPE, Easterners call this cantering (which is unheard of on many ranches due to liability) across grassy meadows and along dried up stream beds. We climbed mountains and looked off to open land as far as the eye could see at what was once an inland sea. My sure footed horse handled steep climbs and steep returns and avoided spiny cactus. Luckily rattlesnakes are still asleep this time of year.

So here are some photos of the west- a little bit of warmth for those of us in chilly New England.  We avoided the snow storm (NEMO) but had to shovel two feet of snow to get  to the front door in the dark on returning home, so don't worry, we suffered a little!