Patterns of Nature

A PORTFOLIO BY DAVID MUENCH

Nature speaks to us in a variety of ways: wind, clouds, storms, flowers, the greening that follows the winter monsoons, or the drought that arrives when the rains fail to come. And more precisely in the patterns she weaves with trees and grasses, ferns and cacti. But too often we do not have the eyes to see or the ears to hear. It is then we must lean upon the writers, the artists, and the photographers to show us the way. In the photographs on these pages, David Muench does just that, capturing for us an intimate aspect of Nature's voice in the natural patterns of aspens and pines dusted with snow, left, a barrel cactus wearing a crown of ruby flowers, above, saguaros, stalks of wild grasses, bracken ferns. Listen and see.

A PORTFOLIO BY DAVID MUENCH

(PRECEDING PANEL, PAGES 22 AND 23) A snowfall in the Coconino National Forest enhances the ethereal beauty of aspens shorn of their fluttery summer finery. (RIGHT) In Tucson Mountain Park, a forest of saguaros clings to a rocky hillside.

A PORTFOLIO BY

(LEFT) Grasses and wildflowers carpet a meadow in the Blue Range Primitive Area, along the Arizona-New Mexico border.

(FOLLOWING PANEL, PAGES 28 AND 29) Aspens tower above billows of bracken fern near the Grand Canyon.