Far from the Maddening Crowd

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Arizona, Arizona Photos, desert, Wild Flowers, Wild Flowers of Southwest USA

 

These are not great photos because they were taken directly into the sun but I have tried to capture the crowds that came to look at wildflowers at Lost Dutchman State Park Arizona. I estimated there were about 250 flower lovers.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever expect to see such crowds coming to look at wildflowers.

The people were of all ages. Old Codgers like me to young bright and eager kids. It was spectacular. Wonders never cease.

 

 

If you click on the photo and make it bigger I think you will see what the park is usually like. Finally I was far from the Maddening crowd after I lost them. I took a wrong turn.   How can you lose 250 people?

 

Flower Children going wild at Picacho Peak

2023 Grand Finale Tour

 

 

 

This was another strange day during a super bloom. I went to Picacho Peak State Park by myself since Christiane was not feeling well. As soon as I drove into the park I realized there would be trouble. Once again there was a lineup of cars.

 

This time, as the above sign indicated, it was really slow. I considered driving home until I noticed progress in the line was excruciatingly slow but had no stopped completely. Flower children are determined folks.

I loved a licence plate on a car next to me. The owner was happy to have me photograph it. She said it was a favorite saying of her mother.

The flowers were definitely worth the wait. Word of a super bloom was spreading, but I was told every year at this time this park was filled with lovers of wild flowers.

The wind was not my friend and made wildflower photography very challenging. There was a family with 2 lovely young girls being photographed among the flowers. I think they were meant to be graduation photographs.

“Super bloom” is the term given to an above-average number of blooms of desert wildflowers blooming at the same time. It is a rare occurrence that should be appreciated when it happens.

I read an article about the flower boom at Picacho Peak State Park and the man who was interviewed said it “my Superbowl.”  That’s the way I felt about it too.

Picacho Peak

Picacho Peak

Hawk’s nest in a Saguaro

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Arizona, Arizona Photos, desert

 

There was nest of a hawk or eagle in the crotch of this Saguaro butwas empty.  It might be that no bird was occupying it, but also it could be that the crowds were spooking the birds and not able to nest.  I hate to think that eggs in the nest were not being attended to because of the crowds.

This is another shot of the saguaro with an empty nest. Somebody ought to have warned the birds that this would be a super bloom year and hence they would be plagued by flower children.

 

 

Is Flower watching more Popular than Golf?

2023 Grand Finale Tour

 

 

I went to Lost Dutchman State Park today for a wildflower walk with the Park Ranger and I couldn’t believe my eyes! Normally, at such events, which I frequently attend there are about 10 to 12 people at the most, that attend. This year at one such event, when I drove into the park there was a lineup-from the Interpretive Center and Ranger Station all the way to the highway. It must have been about ½ mile long. It was impossible.

Owl Clover

 

I wondered why there were so many people. First, I was told, it was the start of Spring Break so lots of young people were out and about. That has happened before and there were never such long line-ups. It must be something else. And there was something else.  It was a super bloom. People came from far and wide to see wildflowers.

Can you believe that there were more people coming to watch flowers than golf?  I estimated there were about 250 people signed up for this walk and talk. I was stunned. I’m sure no T-box had half as many people. The poor Park interpreter, a fine young lady, had to stand on top of a picnic table and shout to the crowd to be heard. It was crazy. Are wildflowers guys like me taking over the world? It sure looked that way to me.

She did the best she could. She was an enthusiastic flower girl and gave us some interesting information about wildflowers. The line was so long no one could hear what was being said at the front except those right beside her so he always stopped to let us hear what she was saying. At least she did it to the best of her ability.

Because the line was so long about half-way through the walk I got separated from the group There was a place where many people were going up the trail to the mountain and others turned left. I did not realize it until it was too late, but I followed the wrong group. After that I was on my own.

 

A Flower Child arrives in Heaven

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Arizona Photos, Natural History, photography, Wild Flowers, Wild Flowers of Southwest USA

 

 

 

When I was a young lad going to University, it was the time of hippies and flower children. I always considered myself as on the fringes of this group. The term we liked to refer to ourselves was “freaks.”  But I always liked the expression “flower children.”  It called to mind these crazy kids at the Kent State  University Vietnam War Protest, and other places, who stood in front of the national guard members that were pointing their rifles at them and they smiled at the guards and placed flowers in the barrels of the gun.  How crazy is that?   Much to my surprise I actually became a flower child of sorts many years later when as an adult of sorts I became interested in wildflowers. I remember my mother was amazed. How could this happen?  Well, my answer to her was, “How could it not happen?” What is there not to like about wildflowers?

It was a very windy day, so I gave up on trying to freeze images of flowering blowing in the breeze.

One afternoon this winter in Arizona Christiane and I went for a jaunt on Red Mountain Road and Saguaro Lake and then headed south to complete a loop to Busch Highway and then Usery Pass Road.  We saw many wildflowers along the way. But we were really shocked at Usery Pass Road  where there was a long line of cars parked beside the road. What was happening we wondered? It was the wildflower children going crazy photographing flowers. My sport has been turned over to the rabble! And there was good reason for that. The flowers were outstanding.

 

There was a traffic jam of sorts in the countryside where we saw these wild flowers. Everyone, it seemed wanted to see these gems. Who can blame them?

 

More than remarkable

2023 Grand Finale Tour

 

At Usery Pass Road, on the north east edge of Mesa Arizona there were carpets of flowers, particularly California Golden Poppy, also called Mexico Poppy.

One person we met today who lives here said it was the most spectacular bloom of flowers he had seen in 40 years!

It was astonishing what can happen to the desert. The Sonoran desert gets more rain than most deserts so it has the greatest diversity of plant life of any of the North American deserts. But this was unusual.

First, the desert was greener than we had ever seen it before. By desert standards it was lush. Ditches even had water close to our rented house, where we rarely saw water. This year was special.

To call this year in the desert “remarkable” as I had been doing was really to use a word that is too mild. It was sensational. It was heaven for a flower child like me.

Super Bloom

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Arizona Photos, desert, Natural History, Wild Flowers, Wild Flowers of Southwest USA

 

 

Everyone in Arizona this year, as in many other places in the southern USA, complained a lot about the bad weather. I admit it—I was one of them.  Everyone complained. Some told me it was the worst winter in 40 years.  It was awful. But it was also great!

 

From the perspective of a wildflower guy—like me—it was fantastic. Conditions were great.  I learned from Ranger B an interpreter at the Maricopa Parks where we often attended his talks, that the ideal conditions for wildflower growth were a wet autumn followed by consistent occasional rain from January to March. This is exactly what happened this past year. He said it happened about once every 11 years. Well it happened this year. Life is good.

 

I had been hoping to experience one of those years ever since I heard about it.  Ranger B says it was fantastic to see. He was right.

 

The result of these ideal conditions is called by local “a Super Bloom.”  And that was what we experienced this year. Now I say it was the best weather ever in Arizona.  Though, I admit, I also complained about it. Some of us are never happy and are never satisfied.

 

 

What are we waiting for?

2023 Grand Finale Tour, Climate change, Decline of the west

 

Spending 3 months (this year nearly 4 months), living in the USA I get a lot of news and commentary from that country while there. Climate change is of course a hot topic (opun intended) there as it is in Canada.

We can avoid catastrophic climate change if we have the will to do it. Yet many people don’t think this affects them. Many people think this is someone else’s problem. Many think the economy is more important. Many of us don’t realize that most of the solutions to this big problem are “already in our hands.”

Added to that, these unfortunate changes are already affecting us in our homes, food, drinking water, in nature, and even in the economy which we think is so important. We are already paying a hefty price because we have delayed action for so long.  In part that is because some corporations have been spending a lot of money to confuse us and persuade us that the problem is not that bad. We have allowed corporations to do that to us.

For decades, scientists like Katherine Hayhoe, one of the leading scientists on Climate change in the US, have been warning us but we have been ignoring their sage advice and instead listening to business leaders who have been exaggerating the cost of change and minimizing the costs of doing nothing.  That advice from our business leaders has come at an enormous cost. And we are paying it already. And we will have to pay even more.

We already have solutions at hand here today as the impacts of climate change have started to affect us.  As Hayhoe, asked, “what are we waiting for?”

 The UN has been warning that we are headed for temperature rises much more than 1.5ºC and to some people that doesn’t sound like it would be so bad.  Hayhoe asks us to think of it like the human body. The temperature of the climate has been as stable as the temperature of the human body throughout the life of civilization. As Hayhoe concluded,

 “If our body is running a fever of one or two degrees Celsius or three or four or five or six degrees Celsius, that is life-threatening. So we have already, thanks to the Paris Agreement, changed — reduced the amount of change that we expect in the policies that have already been adapted by at least a degree. But we still need more, because every bit of warming carries a cost with it.”

 

It used to be that we could not see the changes in front of us so perhaps that is why we did not act. Now we can see the changes. As Hayhoe said,

“Over the last year, at least one in three Americans were personally affected by the way that climate change is making our extreme weather more severe. We might live somewhere where sea level is rising, where hurricanes are getting stronger, where wildfires burn in greater area, where the summers are now dominated by record-breaking heat waves. Climate change is no longer a future issue. It is right here where we live. It is right now. And the time to fix it is also here now.”

Hayhoe always makes it plain, but we just don’t listen. And our failure to listen and act, in my view, is a symptom of decline.  It is hard to deny the decline of the west.