Cottonwood Spring is a 5 minute drive from the ranger station, and a fun nook to walk along. The trail itself was quiet, but the palms were not. They were dense and shaggy, hunched like sentinels in dusty regal robes.

The spring still feeds the land like it always has, attracting wildlife in search of respite. The rocks here are pale and sun-split, with the silence having a gravity to it. It’s the kind of spot that doesn’t need an audience.

The palms look almost unkempt, chaotic, but they’re exactly where they should be: rooted, fed, and flourishing. Maybe it’s not about tidying things up all the time. Maybe growth is meant to be rough-edged, with clear artifacts of change.

Interstate 10 is the southern-most transcontinental highway, and connects a 150 mile route from Phoenix Arizona to Joshua Tree National Park California. It passes through Kofa Wildlife Refuge and Palen/McCoy Wilderness until reaching the eastern entrance.

I stepped out of the car to stretch and explore for a bit, learning about differences between the Colorado and Mojave Desert. Both ecosystem types exist here:

The Colorado is a low desert, hotter and dryer than the nearby Mojave. Colorado Desert vegetation is more diverse than the Mojave's, but large cacti typical of the Sonoran Desert are noticeably missing.

Creosote bush and bursage dominate the desert flats; mesquite, palo verde, smoke tree, desert willow, and ironwood occupy broad sandy washes; ocotillo, brittlebush, and various cacti secure the rocky slopes

After driving a few more miles on Cottonwood Spring Rd, it intersects with Pinto Basin Rd and the Cottonwood Visitor Center Ranger Station. It’s a good place to get bearings, pick up a map, and plan your route. Take precautions to have a satellite phone, or satellite capabilities enabled on your cellphone, as reception is non-existent until you exit the park.

The air was hot and fire alerts were high. Seems like a great day to walk in the brush…

Parallel to the Grand Canal and northwest of Tempe is S'edav Va'aki Museum, where visitors can see a platform mound, a ballcourt, and centuries-old irrigation canals that are ancestral to the Salt River and Gila River O'Odham people.

The earliest homes in the area, called pithouses, date to AD 950. Their wood framework was covered with adobe mud. The Hohokam arranged these one-room homes around shared courtyards.

The exterior of the dwelling is designed to insulate, while the interior supports and provides surfaces to organize items of use and necessity. The frame is made from mesquite or cottonwood trees. Branches or saguaro ribs are lashed to the supports.

The dense woodwork is functional and aesthetically memorable in pattern and texture.

Gliding through Sunset Terrace leads to the tranquil serenity of the Garden Room; a space wrapped in warm wood and soft textiles, inviting quiet reflection. The variation of natural textures shaped into geometry is on full display.

Adjacent to the Garden Room is the Dining Cove, once a breakfast room for the Wrights, and a private dining room for the family. Eventually it evolved into a sitting room. The 8 panel screen on the wall is from the 19th century: “Hundred Flower Offerings for Longevity”. All the faces of the characters are sculpted in detailed porcelain.

Here at the Tower Pool, we get a closer encounter with Wright’s approach to organic architecture. Stone, brick, concrete, and wood are all exposed and celebrated in their raw form as desert masonry. The large stones of quartzite used for the walls were found on-site. The masons built the walls section by section with concrete, gravel, and rock-poured forms.

At this point you are fully immersed and accepting of this way of being in the desert.

In the foothills of Scottsdale Arizona, Taliesin West stands as a testament to Frank Lloyd Wright's vision of organic architecture. The drive in through a single lane road brings you into a new state of mind before reaching the front entrance.

Etched next to a petroglyph-covered rock is an excerpt from the Walt Whitman poem “And Thou America”:

“Thou, too, surroundest all,
Embracing, carrying, welcoming all, thou too
By pathways broad and new approach the Ideal.

The measured faiths of other lands,
The grandeurs of the past, are not for thee,
But grandeurs of thine own,
Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all,
All in all to all.

Give me, O God, to sing that thought,
Give me, give him or her I love this Quenchless faith in thee.
Whatever else withheld withhold not from us
Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space.”

Established in 1937, this National Historic Landmark served as Wright's winter residence and laboratory, embodying a harmonious blend of innovative design and natural materials. Constructed using "desert masonry"—a combination of local stone and sand—the structure seamlessly integrates with its surroundings, reflecting the rugged beauty of the Sonoran Desert.

The journey begins at the drafting studio, where wide glass windows frame the desert beyond, blurring the boundary between structure and nature.

The blueprint is 1 of the 36 in the 1953 presentation set produced for Harry Guggenheim, museum founder Solomon R. Guggenheim’s nephew and longtime Guggenheim Foundation president. The drawing illustrates the relationship between the two ramps in plan: overlapping circles. This intersection of pure forms was archetypal of Wright’s design process.

Outside, an edge parameter walkway leads to triangular pools mirroring the sky and the mountains in the distance, their still surfaces punctuated by the occasional ripple of desert wind.

A contemplative pause at the triangular pool and 45 degree turn into shaded walkways marks the locale’s halfway point, resuming in next week’s writing. A peacefully stepped oasis, it is.

Civic Space Park glows through canopy as evening engulfs skyscrapers and cranes. Centrally suspended like a jellyfish bloom is the billowing form by artist Janet Echelman.

The structure, supported by steel and stretching high above surrounding trees, transforms with the elements and responds to the wind and ambient light. Inspired by Arizona’s monsoon clouds, it’s a piece that doesn’t impose itself on the landscape but instead moves with it.

Watching it slowly undulate, I thought about patience and the way things edify over time.

The sculpture doesn’t fight gravity, rather finds natural shape in the tension between forces. Sometimes, remarkable things emerge when we allow space to breathe with time.

Straddling the Arizona Canal at the base of the Phoenix Mountains is the Phoenix Bat Cave. Parking is sparse and along side streets in the nearby residential area.

I showed up around 8pm as the sun started its dip below the horizon line and the crescent moon had taken its place. Walking parallel to the aqueduct for about 50 yards convenes with a nocturnal group of onlookers.

The place is a hidden gem, with the only signs related to the migratory and social patterns of Arizona bats on the overpass fence. The Mexican Free-Tailed Bat is most common, with 10,000 to 20,000 flocking to the area from May to October en route to Central America.

After waiting about 10 minutes, they started emerging as clusters, building to a steady stream of quiet exodus.

It’s important that places like these are built and preserved, as bats are critical to the balance of the ecosystem with their diet of insects, as well as pollination of cacti and agave.

Between the cities of Phoenix and Scottsdale sits Papago Park. Within the patch of waterways and walkways on the eastern corner is a locally-recommended vista on the Hole in the Rock Trail. I waited until evening to go, as temperatures were over 100 Fahrenheit during the afternoon.

It’s a jaunt up rows of cobbled steps to the opening on the other side.

I conversed with folks on the path for several minutes to ripen the timing. The payoff of gazing through the portal as the sun swelled a rich orange over skyscrapers and palm trees sprouting from the dusty horizon was worth it.

Walking down the frontside is more steep, and a faster way to the beginning of the trail head. A small crowd was mingling by the time I made it to the bottom of the hill.

The way everyone was grouped on the rock face staring at the sun spoke an interesting echo to how we socialized outside of caves and monoliths before screens and cities. Places like these curate healthy and spontaneous connection.

Route 89A west through Cottonwood takes you back into the desert into a unique mining town perched on the top of Cleopatra Hill. Jerome was born a copper mining camp, growing from a settlement of tents into a roaring community.

After its founding in 1876, Jerome was at one time the fourth largest city in Arizona with the population peaking at around 15,000 in the 1920’s. The Great Depression slowed the mining operation and the claim eventually went to Phelps Dodge, who still holds the claim to this day.

Today the mines may be silent, but Jerome has found new life as the largest ghost town in America. The steep drive up the narrow road passes by quirky shops, landmarks, and restaurants, concluding at Jerome Grand Hotel.

Walking over to the narrow parking lot over the cliff, you can peer down Cleopatra Hill to the town entrance road.

Descending down the hill from the hotel gives you the option of taking an alternative route back, which passes by more historical building and shops to the long abandoned Sliding Jail.

The concrete cell block was once part of a wood and tin building, but pulled away from the rest of the structure after some underground blasting in 1938 shifted the ground beneath a substantial portion of the town

Continuing the rest of the way down the hill, one last landmark along the perimeter is the Audrey Headframe Park.

Since he had obtained an option on the company in 1912, James S. “Rawhide” Douglas had dug in vain, counter to the advice of his own geological experts and others who claimed that the mine would never be profitable. Against all odds, Douglas persisted, and finally in December of 1914, with his corporate resources almost exhausted and much to the dismay of the mining world, his crews ran into the incredible deposit.

Before heading to the Gold King Mining Town nearby, a look across the valley to Jerome is a reminder of people’s ingenuity to build better into the present, even if it started rough around the edges.

Route 260 North takes you from Camp Verde towards Verde Village and Cottonwood. North of both towns the Verde River carves a valley along roadways until giving way to a Pueblo on a hill, in contrast to the cliffside dwellings nearby.

Construction started around the year 1000, expanding into 4 different sections and eras of building over the next 400 years.

During the excavation of Tuzigoot pueblo, trade items and materials from hundreds of miles away were found. Distinctive regional pottery from many different communities across the southwest was found here, as were seashells, exotic minerals and paints, obsidian from distant volcanoes, and feathers from macaws, which are found from southern Mexico into the Amazon basin of South America.

Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints….

Heading into the topmost chamber of the settlement, which is rebuilt with walls and a ceiling, is a reprieve from the hot sun of mid-day. Standing on the roof is a pleasant view of the valley and nearby Cottonwood in the distance.