Most of the country is experiencing a snowy winter, but it is hard to imagine that cold here in the Sonoran desert. Our latitude and placement relative to the Pacific Ocean give us the climate of a typical midlatitude desert. Life thrives in the winter, especially in the canyons where the winter precipitation concentrates as…

The Superstition Wilderness is rumored to hold the Lost Dutchman’s gold mine. But other treasures can be more readily found here… The landscape is a harsh volcanic one, dominated primarily by lava flows and ash deposition. The rocks are mostly basalts, tuffs, and rhyolites. Narrow canyons are incised into these planes. The canyons are where…

In red rock country, the bottom of a canyon can be a difficult place for a plant to live. Why? Here you can see the depths of Boynton Canyon, where ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and blue spruce (Picea pungens) must grow tall and straight to survive. Growing deep in a canyon restricts the hours of…

My trip to México took me to the small town of Zapotitlán Salinas. The town and nearby hills were once home to Popoloca people, and served as an important trading center. Then the main resource was salt, but today the town exists primarily for the onyx and marble mining industries. It is also surrounded now…