Category: Uncategorized

Garden Canyon pictographs at Fort Huachuca in Cochise County, Arizona. These raptor images were made by Apache people sometime around 1700. The pictograph panel is on the underside of a soot-blackened rock shelf and comprises about 40 figures, of which soaring birds are the most recognizable feature. 

Wrought iron thumb-latch door handle, at Mission San Xavier del Bac, on the Tohono O’odham Nation San Xavier Indian Reservation near Tucson, Arizona. 

The

rattlesnake motif handle was crafted by Raúl Vásquez around 1955. It is fitted on what are thought to be the original mesquite portal doors.

The portal leads to the sotocoro, the space under the church’s choir loft. Because of the desert climate there is no vestibule screen or narthex at San Xavier. The

sotocoro

opens directly into the nave, and the doors are typically propped open. Hundreds of visitors pass by each day without noticing this unique decorative embellishment. 

This is for @charlesreeza, whose wonderful photos of antique door handles and hardware and architectural details helped me see the doors at San Xavier.  

Yarrow’s spiny lizard (Sceloporus jarrovii) at Miller Peak Wilderness, Coronado National Forest, Cochise County, Arizona.

This is a sky island species, distributed in isolated, high altitude pockets in the Madrean mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona and northern Sonora. Its scales make me think of chain mail made of copper.