Photograph by Tom Bean
Heading North for the Summer
North Rim ferns thrive amid aspen trunks in an intimate view of the forest floor. The North Rim averages nearly 26 inches of moisture per year, allowing plants such as…
Photograph by John Burcham
The Resurrection of Colorado City
A road sign marks the entrance to Colorado City on State Route 389.Summer on the Arizona Strip means the occasional promise of a dark, vast, gray sea. Monsoon storms…
photographs courtesy of the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History
Worshipping the Ground He Walked On
For the past four years, I’ve been following the footsteps of a ghost around the canyons of Northern Arizona and Southern Utah. Let me explain. In 1919, Charles L. Bernheimer, a cotton-goods…
Photograph by Rich Rudow
Parashant: It’s Easier Said Than Done
I have klatarismenophobia.  I hadn’t heard of it, either. But it turns out there’s a name for the irrational fear of getting a flat tire. For me, the roots aren’t hard to trace: In the summer of…
Photograph by Joel Hazelton
Ancient Runes?
In the high-desert grasslands of South-eastern Arizona, a fertile wine country gives way to a small range of low-coned mountains near the tiny community of Elgin. It is here, in the unpretentious…
Photograph by Jill Richards
Ben's Bells Project
Be kind. The message is simple. And at the Ben’s Bells Project, it’s the driving force behind what the organization does every day.   “I think [it’s important] even more so now, because there is so…
Photograph by Gary Ladd
Troubled Water
You may have questions. Why would we be out on Lake Powell in late winter? Isn’t the lake extraordinarily low? Has anything interesting been revealed by the low water? The answers are interlocking:…
Photograph by Laurence Parent
Long Stories Short
LAURENCE PARENT “My daughter, a friend and I visited this Tonto National Forest ruin in late October, hoping for fall color in the maples. After camping one night and…