Jean Zimmerman

Tag: cactus

  • Take a closer look. 

    What do you see? It’s almost the new year. Time to look within. How will you change? What parts will endure? Is the past alive? Is it dead? Somewhere in between? Is life short? Sometimes seems that way. Is life long? Could be. It’s all relative. We need to name things, somehow. Of course. Sometimes it’s…

  • Plants have names.

    Even those plants most people would walk right by and have no idea what to call them. In the desert, maybe, especially. It helps if you’re lucky enough to be with someone who knows most of the names. Like my brother. He seems to be acquainted with everything we pass this morning on this quiet…

  • Had a little rain last night.

    Really? You don’t say. We’re used to the regular deluge back east, especially lately. But here in the southwest, of course, raindrops are so rare as to be remarkable. There hasn’t been any rain in Phoenix in months. And even when drops do fall, as they did for a bit yesterday, much of it is…

  • It’s nothing. Really.

    Three generations take a hike at Brown’s Ranch, in Scottsdale. Nothing important happens. Nothing worth recording. Except for everything. My mother, my daughter, me. Sixty years separate those two. My daughter is thirty-one. I’m somewhere in the middle. In the middle of age and work, love and life. It’s not a long hike, really a…

  • It is Someone’s birthday today.

    Someone important. A good day for strolling among the cacti. And the art. The community of Carefree is a good place to be carefree on a birthday. The botanical garden is small and sweet. Unusual plantings. The miracle of water in the desert. Back east we have tree protection, and I’ve done a lot of…

  • On the cusp of spring

    the Arizona desert moves itself to sprout. The ocatillo puts forth its first miniature green leaves. Fairy Duster joins the party. Pima Dynamite trails may be full of mountain bikes and power lines, but they go on and on despite humankind’s interference. This preserve was saved from development by a champion named Arthur W. Decabooter.…

  • Does it make you think of your own mortality?

    asked my brother as we scaled Pinnacle Peak in the late afternoon, among throngs of pleasure-hikers and trail-runners who didn’t seem to have a care about possibly spraining their ankles in the grit. He didn’t mean the cactus, which had an interesting appearance. Some of the saguaros appeared charred, girdled, as if they had been…

  • I’m not much for views.

    I’d rather look up to the peaks than down to the valleys. So I’m fortunate that any number of stupendous trails wind around the base of the mountains at Brown’s Ranch in Phoenix. Desert vistas abound at this former cattle ranch, which dates back to 1917. But first you must pay attention. A warning. I…