Views from Mt. Lemmon

In the photo above, you can see the moon. Also, you can see the city of Tucson in the valley below.

My cousin David was happy to comply with my only request: that we go shooting in the desert. Shooting with our cameras, of course. Because he is SO talented and accomplished with photography, and I am not, I am shy about his equipment and his skill compared to mine, but I decided to just let go of that and enjoy the opportunity. He loves the desert wildlife and had so many ideas about what he could show me. He wanted to drive up Mount Lemmon first.

We drove up Mt. Lemmon Highway and parked. When we arrived, we were the only vehicle to pull over. By the time we left, there were a dozen. In the photo below, you can see some tiny people walking on the rocks, sort of near the center of the photo (one is wearing yellow). That is where we took most of the shots you see here. We struck out across the rocks almost as far as we could go. That provides an outstanding view of the valley on three sides of the promontory.

The first birds of the day that visited us were groups of Mexican Jays. Mexican Jays live in family groups of up to 25 individuals. They are mostly found in Mexico, but do have territory that ranges along the shared state border of Arizona and New Mexico, and they can cross the country border into Texas as well. These look a lot like the Scrub Jay that I am used to seeing in the mountains of the PNW, and the two species’ terrain does overlap.

We walked all around the rocks, finding new and wonderful views.

Hoodoos are tall, skinny rocks that were shaped by erosion. The name refers to the religious practices of enslaved Black people in the southern United States, which is presumed to be a form of the word voodoo. White people had a fear of the religion, which combined the peoples’ former African religions with Abrahamic religions, and so they associated the “strange” rock formations with those “strange” (in their eyes) practices.

Once we were done clambering all over the rocks at Windy Point Vista, we hopped into the car and went a little higher up, to Hoodoo Vista. We got out and started climbing around again. David prefers staying away from people and off the main trails.

I read that early Native American beliefs interpreted these formations as frozen historical figures, and told stories about them and how they came to be turned to stone. This is not surprising at all, since all the mountains where I live were formerly believed to be characters from human history. Recently, I wrote about this kind of legend when Pedro and I went to Walla Walla.

I asked my Cousin, “Does the cave go anywhere?”

“Nope,” he answered. “But it’s big enough for you to get inside and I can take a photo of you.”

Bird Count: This was only our first stop, and there would be more, but so far I had only captured one bird. So far on day four in Arizona, my total was up to 6 birds.