A cactus garden and colorful ceremic pots near a Southwest style fence and gate adorn the grounds of Desert Meadow Park. By Norma Jean Gargasz
Desert Meadows Park
“For most people, Desert Meadows Park is an organic discovery,” says Chuck Parsons, president of the Green Valley Gardeners club. And that’s an appropriate way to stumble upon this 4.2-acre garden —…
One indigenous woman sits on a crate, fixing another indigenous woman's hair.
Storyteller: The Photography of Jerry Jacka
In 2024, the Heard Museum received a landmark gift of the Jerry Jacka archive, which makes us stewards of one of the largest and most consequential collections of documentary photography of Native…
Battleship in the Grand Canyon
Climbing Aboard the Battleship
Perhaps I should’ve charted safer courses years ago. But here I am, closer to my 70s than my 50s, still chasing improbable dreams. This time, with one particularly stubborn idea: to climb The…
Smoke from the Dragon Bravo Fire creates sunbeams in the Grand Canyon just before sunset. By Matt Soeffner
Stories from the North Rim
In the wake of the devastating Dragon Bravo Fire, which destroyed the historic Grand Canyon Lodge, many of the surrounding cabins and thousands of acres of old-growth forest on the North Rim of the…
A jaguarundi perches on a tree trunk. Despite their name, jaguarundis are in the same genus as mountain lions, not jaguars. | iStock
A Little Cat Goes A Long Way
There are all sorts of cats in Arizona — from coddled condo kitties and feral Tucson toms to bobcats and cougars, the big cats of the Santa Catalina Mountains. The ringtail, sometimes called a ring-…
Sedona’s iconic Cathedral Rock formed the backdrop for a set used in Copper Canyon, a 1950 film that starred Ray Milland and Hedy Lamarr. By Bob Bradshaw
Quiet on the Set
Nineteen seventy-three. That was the unofficial end of the movie business in Sedona. There were a few other flicks in subsequent years — The Quick and the Dead, National Lampoon’s Vacation — but by…
Daniel Bulletts, a member of the Kaibab-Paiute Tribe, serves as its Cultural Resource Director. | John Burcham
As Different as Night and Day
When members of the Kaibab-Paiute Tribe look up at the night sky above their homeland in one of the darkest places in the Lower 48, a bighorn sheep named Naag often comes to mind. According to a…
The colorful, textured “brain rock” of White Pocket, in the Vermilion Cliffs, is one of many geological wonders on the Colorado Plateau. By Claire Curran
Our Land of Colorful Rocks
THIS IS A LOVE STORY OF SORTS. Not a love story among people — although readers of this magazine will be familiar with most of the subjects involved, and perhaps even in “love” with a few of them. No…