The West is the Best

Palo verde tree, near Black Canyon, AZ

I took this photograph several years ago, on a return trip to Phoenix from New Mexico. If memory serves me correctly, this is a palo verde tree, which usually has green bark spanning the length of its trunk, especially when it is young, although sometimes the green diminishes as the tree ages and grows. In the spring, it bears a multitude of yellow blooms. This photograph was taken just outside of Black Canyon, where the saguaro's habitat begins. So, with this photograph we are at the doorstep of my part of Arizona.

The stillness of the desert is stunning. There is a sense of languishing in the desert, for those too used to the frenetic pace of urban life and the verdant scenery of the East, and a sense of calm and peace, for those of us ready to apprehend its austere beauty. And there is distance, great expanses of parched red earth beneath a vast arid sea of blue sky. This is where journeys proceed, and this is where mine will begin again.

I love my hometown of Chicago, but returning to it never felt right. It was my past: been there, done that. So much of it involved my retracing old steps. It is truly a great city, but it was also the wrong choice for me, an uncreative choice because I was returning to what I already knew. And while I also know Phoenix now, there is just so much out West that I have yet to see, too much beauty that remains for me to enjoy for the first time. Adventure begins when you cross the boundary from what you know into the unknown. So now I am about to take that first step, beginning the process of crossing over...

Photographs will be taken of my journey back out West and posted once I get settled. This blog will continue. Something needs to document the beauty I continue to encounter. I look forward to beginning, and documenting, my journey, and I hope you will enjoy bearing witness to it. "You come too."