Photograph by Sean Parker
Please Don't Make Light of This
Stars were so dense, there was hardly space for sky.  I was late coming up the Bright Angel Trail. It wasn’t on purpose until I realized that by not rushing, I’d walk the last part of the trail in…
Illustration by Davide Bonazzi
The Cabeza de Baca Paper Trail
Don Luis María Cabeza de Baca would never know what he started. Married three times, the wealthy New Mexico sheepherder fathered as many as 22 children. But Cabeza de Baca’s 19th century land grant…
Photograph by John Burcham
Coming to an End
Twice, it looked as if the route would not go, but a careful scramble to the edge always revealed a stairway through, perfect little steps hidden amid spires of limestone. Soon, we found ourselves in…
Photograph by Bill Hatcher
Back to the Beginning
By the time I met Bob Stevens in December along a very muddy road on White Mountain Apache Tribe land, I’d been trying to get to the headwaters of the Salt River for six months. And if I were to…
Photograph by Jonathan Buford
That’s Pretty Wild
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jonathan Buford grew up in Ohio, but after he moved to Arizona in the early 2000s, he fell in love with the concept of wilderness — and with landscape photography. Those two passions…
Photograph by Michael Jennings
Born Survivor
TRANSCENDENCE, SOLACE, serenity, inner peace ... your first encounter with a saguaro forest, a fantasy landscape that seems as improbable as a lake on the moon, fills you with none of these…
Photograph by Dawn Kish
So Far. So Good.
I’VE LOST ROB KRAR. Well, kind of. It’s midafternoon on a Thursday, and we’re running a segment of the Arizona Trail near the San Francisco Peaks. Krar detours into the woods. So, I am — if only…
Photograph by Steven Meckler
This Is Harder Than It Looks
What enigmatic inspiration or demon magic is it that lives in this tree — this arboreal delinquent, bristling with 2-inch thorns, that refuses to yield lumber that isn’t laced with crinkly crevices…