Early Morning Coffee in the Desert

Early Morning Coffee in the Desert © 2012 Bo Mackison

Coffee is real good when you drink it it gives you time to think. It’s a lot more than just a drink; it’s something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like [...]

Desert Twilight

Sonoran Desert Twilight

Seeing form with the whole body and mind. Hearing sound with the whole body and mind. One understands it intimately. ~ Eihen Dogen

When I am in the desert, I have two responsibilities — to listen, to see.

I watch as nature busies herself doing [...]

Ocotillo Sunset

Ocotillo Sunset © 2012 Bo Mackison

“Something has happened To my understanding of existence That now makes my heart always full of wonder…”

~ Hafiz, The Gift

I have desert dreams. They are not as tidy as I would like, but perhaps they are tidier than one would imagine. [...]

Pottery at Tumacacori

Pottery in Tumacacori Granary © 2012 Bo Mackison

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not, Knows no release from little things: Knows not the livid loneliness of fear, Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings.

Shadows of the Olive Leaf

Shadows of the Olive Leaf © 2012 Bo Mackison

On my first full day back in Arizona, I spent the last hours of sunlight in the historic mission garden at Tumacacori National Historic Site in southern Arizona. It is one of places I visit most often when I am in Arizona – a tiny [...]

Filling Containers in the Desert

Containers © 2012 Bo Mackison

In ancient times wise men and women fled out into the desert to find a place where they could be fully present to their inner struggles at work within them. The desert became a place to enter into the refiner’s fire and be stripped down to one’s [...]