After an unusually beautiful May, June settled into Phoenix like a tidal wave of flaming hydrogen. You can almost smell the heat in the air- you inhale deeply, and the inside of your nose stings and burns. When you step outside of the shadows, into the direct 110 degree sunlight, there's the feeling all over your body of your skin tightening up as the pores open and the sweat rushes to block the openings. The dry, overwhelming heat almost feels like a cleansing fire, burning away everything and filling the world with brilliant white light. This powerful direct light also makes buildings look great- brilliantly defined surfaces textures and colors, the phenomenally crisp shadows. It's almost like a studio lamp on a sculpture.
I'm going to miss this brand of light and heat. I do enjoy the summertime here. There's no one outside on the streets, its the perfect season to sit in a shady porch with the misters, and let the afternoon while away while you enjoy a pitcher of Arizona Peach beer, or a local Hefewiesen with a slice of lemon. The blistering silences and dust make the world feel thin and unreal, like there are things in Phoenix that only awaken and stir when its too hot for people to be outside.
There's something that strikes me architecturally about the desert too. In nature, form is a slave of function, but it seems most striking and apparent in the desert, where plants and animals have surprising forms and adaptations to survive. And its elegant. There's so little resources, and the conditions are so extreme, everything is taken to its most simplistic level of survival. Regular trees lose too much moisture through their big leaves, so we have trees that have very coarse bark to shade the skin, and billions of tiny tiny leaves, or trees that have no leaves, but only green skins to capture the sunlight.
Showing posts with label Arizona. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arizona. Show all posts
Jun 8, 2010
May 7, 2010
The Sky People
Several years ago, mom took us all white water rafting for mother's day. We stayed the night exploring Globe and Miami to the east of Phoenix, and it was a lot of fun. It set a standard of a more "adventuresome" mother's day. I thought it would be fun to take mom to see Arcosanti, since Saori and I both thought it was a really pretty, interesting place. If you spend the night as a tourist, there's two options- a series of minimalist but comfortable rooms at the base of the mesa, or the sky suite, which is the sweetest suite in the arcology. I booked it a week in advance for a Thursday night. $100, but you get two bedrooms and a kitchen and a phenomenal 270 view of the surrounding high desert. Arcosanti feels like you're at an artist colony on mars. It's a bit communal, a bit removed from civilization, definately a do-it-yourself kind of settlement. In short, not exactly the BestWestern. But the people who enjoy chain motels are probably not the Arcosanti type anyway. (not to deter potential visitors- there's plenty of hot water in the showers, you can drink the water, the towels and washcloths are laid out for guests on the beds, and the people there are all very laid back and accommodating).
Mom and Tay met us at my apartment and we drove up to Chino Bandito for lunch. After stuffing ourselves, we picked up some more road snacks and beer and drove out. Arcosanti is about an hour and a half from the center of Phoenix, not too far beyond that point where you pass the last saguaro on the long hill up to the plateau, and all of a sudden you emerge into desert grasslands. We took the Cordes Junction exit and followed a dirt track to the complex. While mom and Tay checked out the bronze bells for sale, we checked in and got directions to the special parking for the Sky Suite. To get to it, you leave the nice visitor parking and drive around to the construction entrance, where you find your way to the marked spot right outside the main vault.
We dropped our stuff off at the suite and wandered around, hiking over to the camp, and generally trying to figure out which roofs and spaces were open to the public. This is tricky as Arcosanti is very open and the definition between common space and private space is nearly defined by convention alone. With all the various terraces, accessible roofs, gardens, and seating everywhere, mom kept remarking that she kept seeing great places to enjoy a glass of wine, so we wandered back to the room to open a bottle.
We sat outside on the roof terrace outside the sky suite and enjoyed our wine, until we moved up on top of a higher roof where I unfortunately broke a wineglass. This rooftop was only accessible by running up a concave slope like a half-pipe, and when I arrested my motion by grabbing the lip at the top where everyone was seated, including my empty wine glass, my eyeglasses flew out of my pocket and hit the glass, breaking it.
Dinner was a buffet in the bottom level of sunny tower perched on the mesa edge, and afterwards, we watched the sunset from the roof of the massive vaults. Later, we sat inside on the giant wooden window ledge in the sitting room of the Sky Suite, playing cards. Much later, we sat watching the incredible array of stars visible from the clear desert. Even at this distance, Phoenix lit the southern horizon like a distant yellow dawn.
Mom and Tay met us at my apartment and we drove up to Chino Bandito for lunch. After stuffing ourselves, we picked up some more road snacks and beer and drove out. Arcosanti is about an hour and a half from the center of Phoenix, not too far beyond that point where you pass the last saguaro on the long hill up to the plateau, and all of a sudden you emerge into desert grasslands. We took the Cordes Junction exit and followed a dirt track to the complex. While mom and Tay checked out the bronze bells for sale, we checked in and got directions to the special parking for the Sky Suite. To get to it, you leave the nice visitor parking and drive around to the construction entrance, where you find your way to the marked spot right outside the main vault.
We dropped our stuff off at the suite and wandered around, hiking over to the camp, and generally trying to figure out which roofs and spaces were open to the public. This is tricky as Arcosanti is very open and the definition between common space and private space is nearly defined by convention alone. With all the various terraces, accessible roofs, gardens, and seating everywhere, mom kept remarking that she kept seeing great places to enjoy a glass of wine, so we wandered back to the room to open a bottle.
We sat outside on the roof terrace outside the sky suite and enjoyed our wine, until we moved up on top of a higher roof where I unfortunately broke a wineglass. This rooftop was only accessible by running up a concave slope like a half-pipe, and when I arrested my motion by grabbing the lip at the top where everyone was seated, including my empty wine glass, my eyeglasses flew out of my pocket and hit the glass, breaking it.
Dinner was a buffet in the bottom level of sunny tower perched on the mesa edge, and afterwards, we watched the sunset from the roof of the massive vaults. Later, we sat inside on the giant wooden window ledge in the sitting room of the Sky Suite, playing cards. Much later, we sat watching the incredible array of stars visible from the clear desert. Even at this distance, Phoenix lit the southern horizon like a distant yellow dawn.
Mar 21, 2010
Boyce Thompson Arboretum
Located outside of Superior, AZ. Got stuck for 40 minutes in RenFest traffic going out, AND coming back. The Arboretum was pretty amazing though. Large, and spread out with canyons, ponds, and streams.
 |
| Superior Arboreum |
Apr 22, 2008
White water and red legs
We got up at 7 and hit the dusty trail out of Globe. We drove north on a long and winding road up onto a plateau and down into the river valley. The river was less than 40 miles outside of Globe, but it still took us about an hour to get there. I thought that my Prius would have been the most impractical car there, but there were also two corvettes also parked at the end of the dirt road. The staff sorted us out, and outfitted us with splash jackets, a helmet, a life vest, and a paddle.
The staff were the same kind of people as ski instructors, real laid-back, outdoorsy people, typically younger, with really leathery skin, some dreadlocks, a scruffy beard, and really faded clothes. They do the jobs they do because its a lifestyle they love. The people that run the tour actually camp a little downstream, and live there for three months at a time, only going to town one day a week if that. The day is filled with rafting and guiding tourists, and they probably have great parties at night with all the other companies guides also camped out there on the riverbank. Probably not much of a future, but its really living for the day. The woman who guided our raft actually migrates between a few states to guide on different rivers, and occationally works on the rivers in south America.
Anyway, they put the four of us in one raft along with a cooler filled with lunch and a collapsable backboard, since we were going to float through a really remote wilderness area inaccessable to almost anything else, and they also threw in a satphone for extra safety.
We had a twenty minute introduction to rafting safety which mostly consisted of what to do when you or someone else falls overboard, and then we took our positions on the boat. I was excited and a bit nervous with the first rapid, but we blasted through it and it was really fun, a bit like a rollercoaster except you're actually there in the wild. We rafted through a few class three rapids, a lot of class two rapids, but mostly class one rapids, which is technically the same as a kiddie pool. We took a bathroom break at the guide's camp, and then rafted downstream until we stopped for lunch at a series of rock ledges, almost exactly at the point where the saguaro cacti begin appearing again.
Before we reached that point, we passed a small trickle of water coming off of a huge salt deposit which forms a small grotto. The guides informed us that this spot was where the Apache believe life began. Actually, the natives believe this river is sacred, and carefully control which parts of it can rafted in thier lands. This idea of the sacred river stuck with me and hit more strongly when we landed 26 miles downstream. The drive back was along a rough dirt track, which crossed streams, ran along ridges, and up and down hills, two hours of very rough driving across an extremely harsh landscape. I reflected on how the water effortly glided us through the barren, arid land, the sheer quantity of water in the river, the source of life in the desert, and I began to understand perhaps, why it was seen as sacred. The river was sacred to the guides as well, in a way, they respected it, and feared it, taking many safety precautions and not only for the sake of the paying passengers.
I thought about the river much farther downstream, this sacred thing, and it really seemed debased by the mass of floating partygoers going tubing, beer, piss, vomit, marshmallows, empty cans, all join the racous group and flow along that same river that Apaches revere and has taken many lives farther upstream.
We floated through some really spectacular wilderness, some of the hills we passed had the densest saguaro cacti growing I've ever seen. We floated through granite canyons, eroded into wild fluid shapes by the river. Overall, I enjoyed it as much for the landscape as for the rapids.
We hit less than ten really cool rapids, the ones that left you drenched and scrambling, most of the time, we were paddling. We had a really nasty headwind which would stop our raft dead in the water while the river flowed beneath us. In order to advance, we pretty much paddled 14 miles. The last stretch was the worst, with tons of wide open water and vast pools to cross. We were all exhausted from the paddling, and the guide actually hopped in the front seat to boost paddle us along. I steered the raft.
After we landed, they had cold Tecate for us, and some snacks. We all changed clothes and loaded up into the open truck, with the two rafts stacked above us. Due to the headwind, we were about an hour late, and the camp actually sent out a second truck to rescue us since there was no other way to communicate out there. The ride back was beautiful with the sun setting against the wilderness, and our truck charging over the peaks and valleys filled with trees and cacti. We were bounced all over the place in the back, with a fleece blanket pulled over the legs of us four in a row.
We got back to camp late and mom got us a photo that one of the staff took. I drove us back to Globe and we stopped for dinner at Dairy Queen. I was really badly sunburned on my legs and even on the backs of my hands. I was nauseus and shaking, and then I drove back to Phoenix. Almost. We were stuck for about 30 minutes in stopped traffic waiting for an accident to clear on the 60. I dropped taylor back off at his dorm, mom at her house, and we finally got back home around midnight. I layered on aloe gel all over my knees and calves and slept fitfully on my back.
Monday was hell.
The staff were the same kind of people as ski instructors, real laid-back, outdoorsy people, typically younger, with really leathery skin, some dreadlocks, a scruffy beard, and really faded clothes. They do the jobs they do because its a lifestyle they love. The people that run the tour actually camp a little downstream, and live there for three months at a time, only going to town one day a week if that. The day is filled with rafting and guiding tourists, and they probably have great parties at night with all the other companies guides also camped out there on the riverbank. Probably not much of a future, but its really living for the day. The woman who guided our raft actually migrates between a few states to guide on different rivers, and occationally works on the rivers in south America.
Anyway, they put the four of us in one raft along with a cooler filled with lunch and a collapsable backboard, since we were going to float through a really remote wilderness area inaccessable to almost anything else, and they also threw in a satphone for extra safety.
We had a twenty minute introduction to rafting safety which mostly consisted of what to do when you or someone else falls overboard, and then we took our positions on the boat. I was excited and a bit nervous with the first rapid, but we blasted through it and it was really fun, a bit like a rollercoaster except you're actually there in the wild. We rafted through a few class three rapids, a lot of class two rapids, but mostly class one rapids, which is technically the same as a kiddie pool. We took a bathroom break at the guide's camp, and then rafted downstream until we stopped for lunch at a series of rock ledges, almost exactly at the point where the saguaro cacti begin appearing again.
Before we reached that point, we passed a small trickle of water coming off of a huge salt deposit which forms a small grotto. The guides informed us that this spot was where the Apache believe life began. Actually, the natives believe this river is sacred, and carefully control which parts of it can rafted in thier lands. This idea of the sacred river stuck with me and hit more strongly when we landed 26 miles downstream. The drive back was along a rough dirt track, which crossed streams, ran along ridges, and up and down hills, two hours of very rough driving across an extremely harsh landscape. I reflected on how the water effortly glided us through the barren, arid land, the sheer quantity of water in the river, the source of life in the desert, and I began to understand perhaps, why it was seen as sacred. The river was sacred to the guides as well, in a way, they respected it, and feared it, taking many safety precautions and not only for the sake of the paying passengers.
I thought about the river much farther downstream, this sacred thing, and it really seemed debased by the mass of floating partygoers going tubing, beer, piss, vomit, marshmallows, empty cans, all join the racous group and flow along that same river that Apaches revere and has taken many lives farther upstream.
We floated through some really spectacular wilderness, some of the hills we passed had the densest saguaro cacti growing I've ever seen. We floated through granite canyons, eroded into wild fluid shapes by the river. Overall, I enjoyed it as much for the landscape as for the rapids.
We hit less than ten really cool rapids, the ones that left you drenched and scrambling, most of the time, we were paddling. We had a really nasty headwind which would stop our raft dead in the water while the river flowed beneath us. In order to advance, we pretty much paddled 14 miles. The last stretch was the worst, with tons of wide open water and vast pools to cross. We were all exhausted from the paddling, and the guide actually hopped in the front seat to boost paddle us along. I steered the raft.
After we landed, they had cold Tecate for us, and some snacks. We all changed clothes and loaded up into the open truck, with the two rafts stacked above us. Due to the headwind, we were about an hour late, and the camp actually sent out a second truck to rescue us since there was no other way to communicate out there. The ride back was beautiful with the sun setting against the wilderness, and our truck charging over the peaks and valleys filled with trees and cacti. We were bounced all over the place in the back, with a fleece blanket pulled over the legs of us four in a row.
We got back to camp late and mom got us a photo that one of the staff took. I drove us back to Globe and we stopped for dinner at Dairy Queen. I was really badly sunburned on my legs and even on the backs of my hands. I was nauseus and shaking, and then I drove back to Phoenix. Almost. We were stuck for about 30 minutes in stopped traffic waiting for an accident to clear on the 60. I dropped taylor back off at his dorm, mom at her house, and we finally got back home around midnight. I layered on aloe gel all over my knees and calves and slept fitfully on my back.
Monday was hell.
Mar 14, 2008
Cul-de-sac Cowboys in Pumkinville
Saori was telling me about a sickness in Japan that strikes the workforce at a certain time of the year, where hundreds of people fail to turn up for work. By pure coincidence, those days are the most beautiful, with clear warm skies. These days have returned to Phoenix.
Thursday I met Tay and mom for lunch and decided it was so beautiful out that I could not afford to miss it, so I spent the afternoon hanging out with them. I took them on a driving tour of downtown Phoenix, and we took a very entertaining tour of the Arizona capitol, probably the cheapest state capitol in the United States. They founding members of our state were so cheap they made legislators bring their own chairs to work, and housed them in a building smaller than most of the governer's houses. The docent who led the free tour expressed sadness in the fact that the state tie is not a bowtie, and is spearheading a grassroots movement to change the name of Phoenix back to "Pumkinville."
I just did a search for "Pumpkinville" to see if our friend had set up a grassroots website, but instead I got website about the dark side of Arizona history. Very funny and acerbic. I love the term "cul-de-sac cowboys" and if you live here, you know exactly what I mean. Check it out.
The most surprising thing on the tour was actually the silver service used on the USS Arizona. In typical stingy state fashion, Arizona wanted the cheapest silver possible, so they cut a deal with some silversmiths who were willing to cut fees in exchange for artistic control. The result is reportedly the most beautiful silver service in the navy. There is an inherent conflict between the navy themes and the portrayal of the desert, but it is beautifully and elegently resolved, and I almost feel strange calling it a conflict at all. The stylized dolphins next to the shields surrounded by prickly pear work. The prize of the collection was a punch service, with a copper tureen accented all over with silver saguaro cacti.
After the Capitol, we drove up to the Biltmore where Tay and I helped mom buy the wrong iTrip that wouldn't work in her car. Then we went back and got her the right one. Afterwards, we met Saori for some really good Vietnamese food.
There's this place called Pho Bang up on camelback and 17th ave that is great. Its a little place, with a TV always on, and usually turned to a vietnamese or dubbed chinese movie, and the entire family works there, or hangs out there. Go in the evenings and they are always at one of the tables in the back. Food is great. Get the summer rolls ($3) with shrimp and one of the beef soup bowls with more cow parts than I can name ($4). Delicious. They serve it with fresh basil, cilantro, lime, and the whole thing is really refreshing and good. Also soda lemonade. Good stuff, unbelievably cheap prices. Apparently won the best Vietnamese restaurant in Phoenix for a long time. Not sure who is the current contender.
Suki is good, almost done with her medicine. After 20 days of being orally injected with bad tasting medicine 4 times a day, she has finally learned to avoid the kitchen and the sound of me shaking the bottle up. Not the speediest cheetah.
Thursday I met Tay and mom for lunch and decided it was so beautiful out that I could not afford to miss it, so I spent the afternoon hanging out with them. I took them on a driving tour of downtown Phoenix, and we took a very entertaining tour of the Arizona capitol, probably the cheapest state capitol in the United States. They founding members of our state were so cheap they made legislators bring their own chairs to work, and housed them in a building smaller than most of the governer's houses. The docent who led the free tour expressed sadness in the fact that the state tie is not a bowtie, and is spearheading a grassroots movement to change the name of Phoenix back to "Pumkinville."
I just did a search for "Pumpkinville" to see if our friend had set up a grassroots website, but instead I got website about the dark side of Arizona history. Very funny and acerbic. I love the term "cul-de-sac cowboys" and if you live here, you know exactly what I mean. Check it out.
The most surprising thing on the tour was actually the silver service used on the USS Arizona. In typical stingy state fashion, Arizona wanted the cheapest silver possible, so they cut a deal with some silversmiths who were willing to cut fees in exchange for artistic control. The result is reportedly the most beautiful silver service in the navy. There is an inherent conflict between the navy themes and the portrayal of the desert, but it is beautifully and elegently resolved, and I almost feel strange calling it a conflict at all. The stylized dolphins next to the shields surrounded by prickly pear work. The prize of the collection was a punch service, with a copper tureen accented all over with silver saguaro cacti.
After the Capitol, we drove up to the Biltmore where Tay and I helped mom buy the wrong iTrip that wouldn't work in her car. Then we went back and got her the right one. Afterwards, we met Saori for some really good Vietnamese food.
There's this place called Pho Bang up on camelback and 17th ave that is great. Its a little place, with a TV always on, and usually turned to a vietnamese or dubbed chinese movie, and the entire family works there, or hangs out there. Go in the evenings and they are always at one of the tables in the back. Food is great. Get the summer rolls ($3) with shrimp and one of the beef soup bowls with more cow parts than I can name ($4). Delicious. They serve it with fresh basil, cilantro, lime, and the whole thing is really refreshing and good. Also soda lemonade. Good stuff, unbelievably cheap prices. Apparently won the best Vietnamese restaurant in Phoenix for a long time. Not sure who is the current contender.
Suki is good, almost done with her medicine. After 20 days of being orally injected with bad tasting medicine 4 times a day, she has finally learned to avoid the kitchen and the sound of me shaking the bottle up. Not the speediest cheetah.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
I’ve been seriously hungover before, so I was very happy to roll out of bed (still early) with little worse than grogginess, a slight heada...
-
I really enjoyed watching Dune, and it's such a cheesy movie, it made me wonder why I enjoyed it so much. I think what set it apart for ...
-
Saori and I started looking at wedding rings in Stuttgart and didn't get too far. For one, we could see the dollar signs accumulating in...
