Mike in the Wild

I awoke to the sound of breaking glass coming from outside my bedroom window.   Even though it was 12:30 AM, I grabbed a flashlight and headed outside in the direction of the noise, towards my neighbors' house.  I knew they were out of town, and I would have wanted them to similarly keep an eye on my place while I traveled.  When I reached the end of my driveway, I could see a pair of bright eyes across the street reflecting the beam of my flashlight.  On a slope below where my neighbors kept their trash bins, a bear was staring directly at me.  And then it turned, climbed up the slope, and sauntered away down the street.   Just a few weeks later, I would have an entirely different bear story that occurred very much closer -  not a hundred feet away but a mere six feet from my front door.  My summer had begun several weeks earlier with lots of bear sightings in my Prescott neighborhood.  There were stories of a big one that kept get...

Bugs are something to reliably count on seeing every summer evening in Prescott, at least for now.  Luckily they're usually not the annoying ones: houseflies besetting your face, mosquitoes biting your ankles.  Instead more colorful, less hyperactive nocturnal insects creep out of the shadows.   When the porch lights switch on after twilight, it only takes an hour or so before moths appear on the scene.  These lepidopterans share a large family with skippers and butterflies, varieties that I mostly see during the daylight hours.  The nocturnal moths are just as attracted to my home's lights during colder temperatures in the fall and spring.  While many are colorful, it's their wide variation in size that's most notable, ranging from a tiny couple millimeters to almost the width of a hand when the polyphemus moth pays an infrequent visit. If monsoon rains have drenched the landscape, June bugs - despite the name, it's usually July when they start sh...

It's that time of year, when the night time temperatures in the highlands of central Arizona reach freezing.  The green leaves of many trees are changing color and, interestingly, some of the needles on ponderosa pines are turning brown and dropping in their semiannual routine.  Enjoy these several pictures of a quiet morning walk along Willow Creek between Camp Emmanuel Pines and Trail 332, a final homage to many of my 2017 visits to the Prescott area. A neighbor's aspen or birch tree in its autumn glory. Willow Creek as it cuts through a ridge near Camp Emmanuel Pines. View along Willow Creek with dry-needled ponderosa pines. Colors along Willow Creek. A deer paying close attention to me along Willow Creek. Deer with autumn color and light along Willow Creek. Deer with autumn color along Willow Creek.  Adieu Prescott.  The mild desert temperatures are calling.

America has its famous mile-high city, Denver.  But Arizona has one too - Prescott.  With 30,000 people, Prescott may be more of a town than a city, but it's still got the cooler temperatures of a high altitude community.   And like Denver, it sits on the edge of a mountain range.  While not as massive or extensive as the Rockies, the local Bradshaws are high enough to store some winter snow and to  generate springs to feed Granite Creek.  Historically a perennially running waterway, the creek has long supported a lush riparian environment along its banks.  But with the coming of the miners in the mid-19th century, most of the adjacent trees were cut for fuel, its slopes overgrazed by cattle, its banks dug up for sand and gravel, and the resulting low, open space used as a dumping ground. Late last century, the local community and state recognized the value of a healthy watershed for clean drinking water, recreation and conservation.   So 126 ac...