When It Was Film, Part V -- Elements 2

A Return to an Artistic Expression in the Aravaipa Canyon
Date Unknown, 1999

Rock and water in the Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness, Arizona, USA

The Aravaipa Canyon Wilderness is an ecologically unique and sensitive gem in southern Arizona.  To see the Aravaipa Canyon is to experience a collision of ecological boundaries, lush and vibrant life within a harsh and unforgiving desert canyon.  It is a spectacular and confusing sort of place.  The canyon's rock walls ascend more than a thousand feet, straight up. On one side of the canyon, the walls are immense, creating shadow, micro-climate, and a world with no escape.  The river, clean and ankle-deep, rushes hard against the sheer walls in some places and ripples delicately through cobbled riffles in others.  Along the softer edges, places without vertical cliffs, the banks grow in lush willow, with green leaves swaying in the wind.  Strangely, just beyond the willows, a Sonoran desert ecosystem thrives with barrel cacti, saguaro cacti, and spiny ocotillo.  With permit in hand, we set out to backpack and explore this wilderness in late March of 1999.

I remember the advice we were given before we headed into the wilderness.  "Look down at your feet from time to time.  The water should be clear.  If you see silt running around your feet, find a place to climb out of the canyon. Silt is the forecast of a flash flood." 

I remember the novelty of walking within what seemed to be a southeastern Minnesota trout stream but seeing, just beyond the delicate veil of willow, the red rock and crumbled canyon geology adorned in cacti.  Black Phoebe, Audubon's Yellow-rumped Warbler, Black Hawk, Canyon Wren, and Vermillion Flycatcher reminded me to glance skyward toward the canyon rim.  The sudden and unexpected scurrying of collared peccary, the wild javelina, through the river riffles assured me that we were in a wilderness ruled by mountain lions. 

In the Aravaipa, the trail is the river itself.  Every step is made in the channel of the creek.  The oasis of water and life streaks through the most rugged and unforgiving terrain.  In a new way, it is a reminder that water is life.

This image was inspired by my 1996 "Elements" made on Gordon Lake in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.  When I saw this cliff in the Aravaipa Canyon, I knew I had a matched set. I made the photograph with a Canon EOS Elan and 100 to 300mm kit lens.  It was made on a Bogen tripod, and, if memory serves me well, I put the image on Fujichrome 100 film.