Mike in the Wild

I've been a fan of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum since I first moved to Arizona way back in 1988.  The destination is still a lot of things: a zoo, a botanical garden, an art gallery, and a nature preserve, conveniently collected in a breathtaking corner of Tucson parkland.  In these multiple ways, the park teaches the visitor about the natural history of the Sonoran Desert.   The ecosystem spans much of the southern half of the Grand Canyon State, a big part of Mexico's state of Sonora, southeastern California, and most of Baja California.  In fact the desert even surrounds most of the Sea of Cortez. On a recent visit, several first-time encounters reminded me how every visit to the ASDM - as the museum is known - expands my knowledge of the region in surprising ways.  I hadn't been through the entrance gate for thirty seconds when I stumbled upon an iguana near the footpath.  At first I thought the lizard was a chuckwalla, a common reptile in the ...

When I moved to Arizona from Philadelphia, I was immediately struck by the sharp contrast in climate and landscape between the two locales.  I quickly became a fan of Tucson's Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a showcase for the flora, fauna and geology of my new home.  Almost 30 years later, I'm still a regular visitor and still learning about the unique environment of the Sonoran Desert. One interesting and possibly misleading detail about the ASDM - as many shorten the name - is that it's called a museum.   Most of us think of that word in the context of static displays of art, artifacts and taxidermied animals.  However it's success relies on the visitor's interaction with mostly living outdoor subjects as it merges the features of zoos, botanical gardens, natural history museums and art galleries.   Not only is it a one-of-a kind experience, it's also situated in a beautifully mountainous and verdant area of Tucson, in the heart of the saguaro-filled desert i...