In this post we start the day of my posting “Family Trek“, July 19, 2008, when, well before the sun rose at 6:23 am Mountain Daylight Time (the Navajo Reservation observes daylight savings, the rest of Arizona does not), Pam and I were at the Spider Rock Overlook.
Most visitors to the canyon make use of a system of roads and parking lots next to strategic views. There is the White House Overlook we visited our first day, July 18, to hike from the trailhead into the canyon. There are also, on the south side of the canyon:
Tsegi Overlook, taken from a Navajo word that translates directly to “between the rocks” and usually refers to a deep canyon with steep cliffs.
Junction Overlook above the point where Canyon Del Muerto (see my posting “Sun and Shade, Canyon Del Muerto”, and Canyon De Chelly intersect. There is an Anasazi ruin in the south-facing cliff across the canyon.
Sliding House Overlook, another Anasazi run across the canyon.
Face Rock Overlook, to view the eponymous formation.
Spider Rock Overlook, the most stunning rock formation.
Click any photograph for my Online gallery.
Looking east from the Spider Rock overlook, Canyon De Chelly.
While getting ready I scoped out the location for interesting visual tropes. Utah Junipers are exceptionally hardy shrubs, stressed individual plants grow into compelling forms shaped by hardship. As the sun rose, this specimen emerged from the gloom and caught the first sun rays.
Click any photograph for my Online gallery.
A distressed Utah Juniper on the edge of Canyon De Chelly overlooking Needle Rock a few moments after sunrise.
The grandchildren and I hiked the 0.6 mile trail through old growth forest to visit a bog. In the 1830’s there was a village named Chicago along Gracie Road, which gives it the name we have today. The Chicago Bog is home to many carnivorous plants, including sundew, the pitcher plant, and more. The deepest depth of the bog is about 7.2 ft. The bog is along the Phillips Memorial Trail, which can be found on Gracie Road. Lime Hollow Nature Center, Cortland, New York.
Listen to the Wood Thrush and other bird song in this short video.
A dragonfly landed on the log, in the above images, lying at my feet. This male Chalk-fronted Corporal (Ladona julia) is a skimmer dragonfly found in the northern United States and southern Canada.
Chalk-fronted corporal dragonfly
Juveniles of both sexes are light reddish brown, with white shoulder stripes and a black stripe down the middle of the abdomen. As they mature, males develop a white pruinescence on the top of the thorax and at the base of the abdomen, while the rest of the abdomen turns black. Females become almost uniformly dark brown, with a dusting of gray pruinescence near the base of the abdomen; a few develop the same color pattern as the males.
Chalk-fronted corporals often perch horizontally on the ground or on floating objects in the water as you can see it doing here. They are gregarious for dragonflies and are commonly seen perching in groups. They readily approach humans to feed on the mosquitoes and biting flies that humans attract.
We noticed a large patch of buttercups growing in a sunny patch along the trail. Petals of these buttercups are highly lustrous owing to a special coloration mechanism: the petal’s upper surface is very smooth causing a mirror-like reflection. The flash aids in attracting pollinating insects and temperature regulation of the flower’s reproductive organs.
Mesquite is the Sonoran Desert smell carried by distant rain, omnipresent and humble, a survivor with tap root extending 190 feet down to draw on the water table.
Prosopis is the scientific name for about 40 species of leguminous trees. Present in North America since the Pliocene era, mesquite wood has been dated to 1300 BC.
I found this flowering mesquite bush in Finger Rock Canyon of the Catalina Mountains outside Tucson, Arizona.
They are thought to have evolved with megafauna in the New World. The loss of North American megafauna at the end of the Pleistocene era gave way to one theory of how the Prosopis spp. were able to survive.
One theory is that the loss of the megafauna allowed Prosopis spp. to use their fruit pods to attract other organisms to spread their seeds; then, with the introduction of livestock, they were able to spread into grasslands.
The plentiful legumes that develop from these flowers are edible when cooked. The shape and color of the seeds can be understood from this empty seed pod that happens to lie near a tarantula burrow.
An excerpt from an interview by Diane Frances Wills of our father Thomas Francis Wills for a seventh-grade assignment about 1971. I did some editing to correct the date based on historical records and my father’s military records (Michael Stephen Wills).
Thomas enlisted for
the navy one day after his 24th birthday, September 25, 1939 and
served 6 years and a few weeks until October 7, 1945 having experienced the
Battle of the Atlantic (American Defense Medal) and liberation of the Philippines
(WWII Victory Medal, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic Pacific Theater, Philippine
Liberation Ribbon). Here is his
description of an incident from that time:
Thomas Francis Wills, Ocean View Beach, Virginia, 1940
1 Year, 6 months after my enlistment in New York City, March 1941, on the USS Upshur two days out of Boston on its run to Reykjavik, Iceland delivering mail and supplies to the marines stationed to prevent the Germans from establishing a base. Steaming north we got word there was a gale blowing in our path. We all became apprehensive. I asked Bill Rogers, the radioman, about the approaching storm. “Say, Bill, I see by the weather report we’re heading info some rough weather. How long do you think it will last?”
“Yeah, according to the latest weather report it is a regular Northeaster and we can expect a couple days of rough winds and high waves, also very cold weather. We’ll have to secure everything topside so it won’t blow or be washed overboard. We can also expect very little in the way of normal meals except for maybe coffee and sandwiches.” On such a small ship the cooks can’t prepare meals in such weather.
USS Upshur, 1940, the ten-man crew, including Thomas Wills, is on the bow
As we approached the storm zone the sea got rough and the wind started blowing. Soon we were well into a horrible storm. The sky got dark and gloomy, full of dark bold clouds. The ocean rough, choppy and black. The rain started coming down sharp and harsh, cold and icy. The rain cut through your body like piercing arrows, it chilled your bones.
Sometimes I thought the ship was going to sink, the waves and the wind were so strong. The bow would go bluntly into the water. The ship listed sideways, seeming to almost rolling over. The waves carried our ship up, then go out from underneath sending us crashing down. This happened over and over, endlessly.
I was on duty in the radio shack and had to walk the whole length of the ship from my sleeping quarters. Many times, I almost went overboard, the wind was so strong. I could lay on my stomach but it did not help because I could still slide through the railings. I would freeze to death in five minutes in that water. I hope I never had to go through that again, seems like yesterday. All we had to wear was a sailor suit, not too warm. I’d just get all soaked.
My shipmates and I, a five-foot eight-inch boy of 25 with dark brown hair, had to be calm and keep doing our normal scheduled duties, because we learned you can’t get panicky or else you will put your whole ship out of order.
The storm went on until the end of night. I thought the storm would never end. It felt as if it lasted a week. At that time no other ships sailed with us, so there was no possibility of help. Nobody fell over the side or was drowned.
After that, a German U-Boat launched a torpedo at us and missed. We searched, tried to sink them without success.
Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
On my fourth morning, after I awoke to am immense silence, my first photography subject was the lone dry juniper you see below.
Then the dawn lit up the far mountains. You can view a larger image these mountains at dawn in my previous blog, “Superstition Wilderness Dawn.”
A Lone Dry Juniper
This is a photograph of that juniper tree, dryer than most, being dead. I take it to be a One-seed Juniper from the thick growth of branches and the strong rounded aspect of the crown. I captured this photograph from a tripod mount using a Kodak DCS slr/c with a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lens.
Looking into Reavis Creek Canyon from Lime Mountain
I used the tripod to bracket this shot on the left and right for the following panorama.
The Reavis Creek Canyon from Lime Mountain while still in shadow, morning
The Spirit of Elisha Reavis
From this vantage you can see my route into Reavis Creek Canyon and Reavis Falls taken on the first afternoon of the expedition. That first morning I loaded up 65 pounds of food, supplies and photography equipment and headed out from the Reavis Trailhead on the Reavis Ranch Trail. This was one of the trailed used by Elisha Reavis to ride a favorite burro and a string of 8 to 15 burros loaded with vegetables he sold to various communities throughout central Arizona. See my blogs “A Ride to Reavis Ranch” and “Apple Orchard in the Wilderness“for views of the paradise (as of the early 21st century) where Elisha Reavis, lived and prospered in the latter part of the 19th century where he lived his 70’s.
This his mountain valley, using a perennial creek, Reavis cultivated and irrigated about fifteen acres of land by himself with chickens, turkeys, hogs, burros, two horses and several dogs. The horses, teamed together, pulled a shear plow, disc and leveler. On April 9, 1896 Reavis was preparing of another trip to Mesa, to buy seed potatoes, and was found by a friend a month later on what is now the Reavis Ranch trail, to the south and west of his valley, near what is now called Grave Canyon were friends buried him.
Past the Dry Juniper and Down
102 years later, I headed up the Reavis Ranch Trail, over the ridge of Lime Mountain and past this dry juniper in the same spirit as Elisha Reavis if for a different purpose.
Two Bar Mountain is only part of this view taken the evening of Day Three, my solo expedition to Reavis Falls in the Superstition Wilderness of Arizona.
The view encompasses most of the four day expedition, being the climb into the lower Reavis Creek Canyon from which I camped. I spent one entire day walking up the valley to the falls.
The patches of yellow on the far slopes to the left and into Reavis Valley are Mexican Poppy (Eschscholtzia californica) blooms.
To find lower Reavis Creek Canyon, look for the prominent cliff formation in the very center of the image. Follow the end of the cliff down to a dark shadow. The western canyon wall creates the heavy shadow. As you move to the right, in the image, the shadow becomes wider because the canyon wall becomes higher.
The view also encompasses a 2005 solo expedition over Two Bar Mountain using the Tule and Two Bar Ridge trails into the Superstition Wilderness around Pine Creek. See my blog “Racing the Sun” for an image Two Bar Mountain with the path of (most of) two days of that expedition.
An interesting feature of the full size image (lost in the small-scale reproduction of this blog) is the host of enormous saguaro cactuses marching up the sides of the canyon to the left, thinning out and ending on the western walls of the canyon (the slope directly beneath my viewpoint). Our course, each cactus is perfectly still, casting a huge shadow, and seems very tiny. The nearest is a mile away. We are seeing in this thinning host the lower Sonoran in transition to the upper Sonoran life zone.
All of this in one view from Lime Mountain. Here is another, taken just as the sun set.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
A series of group and individual portraits from the 2013 Dragon Day Parade on the Cornell University Campus. I am happy to report this tradition resumed 2022 after a 2-year pandemic enforced hiatus. This tradition was and is celebrated for over 100 years.
Cake design and production by Grandma for Rory’s Third 3 Birthday. On the lead up to the special day, Grandmother phones Rory to interview him for his birthday cake wishes. Rice Krispy treats drizzled with melted colored chocolate to resemble a coral reef. Chocolate cupcakes with homemade buttercream icing.
This was three years ago at the start of Covid-19 pandemic. We drove up his long, snowy drive way……
Rory, Mom and brother Sam welcomed us.
Pam had Swedish fish and other fixings for Rory to put on the finishing touches.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Last Friday the grandsons and I had an outing to the hills above Moravia in Cayuga County, there we visited the birthplace of Millard Fillmore. The site is a rather steep, rocky hillside near where the future President was born in a log cabin. He was not the last future President thus born, James Garfield in 1831 was born fatherless in Ohio in a log cabin. The future 20th President and the last to be so born. Nine years after Millard Fillmore, Abraham Lincoln was born, February 12, 1809 in the same residential circumstance and was the first future President born west of the Appalachian Mountains at Sinking Springs Farm, Kentucky. At least seven (7) future USA Presidents were born in log cabins, the others are: Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur.
There is quite a bit to do at this open air museum: educational signs, split rail fencing from that time, a pavilion build from concrete, steel I-beams and a metal roof with picnic tables where we played games.
On the way to Fillmore Glen New York State Park to visit an actual log cabin from that time, we stopped at the Lickville Cemetery on Lick Street. Opened a few years after Fillmore’s birth, 1807, 180 headstones are still standing. We practiced sounding out words from the large carved letters on the stones.
After visiting the log cabin our day was interrupted by symptoms of a stomach flu that has been terrorizing all our families. Fortunately, I escaped. Our plan is to continue to explore Fillmore Glen at a later time.
More about Millard Fillmore from Wikipedia
Millard Fillmore was born on January 7, 1800, in a log cabin, on a farm in what is now Moravia, Cayuga County, in the Finger Lakes region of New York. His parents were Phoebe Millard and Nathaniel Fillmore, and he was the second of eight children and the oldest son.
Nathaniel Fillmore was the son of Nathaniel Fillmore Sr. (1739–1814), a native of Franklin, Connecticut, who became one of the earliest settlers of Bennington, Vermont, when it was founded in the territory that was then called the New Hampshire Grants.
Nathaniel Fillmore and Phoebe Millard moved from Vermont in 1799 and sought better opportunities than were available on Nathaniel’s stony farm, but the title to their Cayuga County land proved defective, and the Fillmore family moved to nearby Sempronius, where they leased land as tenant farmers, and Nathaniel occasionally taught school. The historian Tyler Anbinder described Fillmore’s childhood as “one of hard work, frequent privation, and virtually no formal schooling.”
Over time Nathaniel became more successful in Sempronius, but during Millard’s formative years, the family endured severe poverty. Nathaniel became sufficiently regarded that he was chosen to serve in local offices, including justice of the peace. Hoping that his oldest son would learn a trade, he convinced Millard, who was 14, not to enlist for the War of 1812 and apprenticed him to clothmaker Benjamin Hungerford in Sparta. Fillmore was relegated to menial labor, and unhappy at not learning any skills, he left Hungerford’s employ.
His father then placed him in the same trade at a mill in New Hope. Seeking to better himself, Millard bought a share in a circulating library and read all the books that he could. In 1819 he took advantage of idle time at the mill to enroll at a new academy in the town, where he met a classmate, Abigail Powers, and fell in love with her.
Later in 1819 Nathaniel moved the family to Montville, a hamlet of Moravia. Appreciating his son’s talents, Nathaniel followed his wife’s advice and persuaded Judge Walter Wood, the Fillmores’ landlord and the wealthiest person in the area, to allow Millard to be his law clerk for a trial period. Wood agreed to employ young Fillmore and to supervise him as he read law. Fillmore earned money teaching school for three months and bought out his mill apprenticeship. He left Wood after eighteen months; the judge had paid him almost nothing, and both quarreled after Fillmore had, unaided, earned a small sum by advising a farmer in a minor lawsuit. Refusing to pledge not to do so again, Fillmore gave up his clerkship. Nathaniel again moved the family, and Millard accompanied it west to East Aurora, in Erie County, near Buffalo, where Nathaniel purchased a farm that became prosperous.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved.
On our way back from “The Train at the End of the World” and sailing the Beagle Channel, these two young people came into view. Sitting at the foot of the a tower welcoming airport arrivals, who must transit this roundabout, is a pair of young people. In my imagination they were brothers waiting for a ride. In the first long wide shot the older is taking their selfie with the Ushuaia.
Here we at at the “center” of this city set spectacularly against the Fuegian Andes, the southern continuation of the Andes mountain range immediately south of the Strait of Magellan. with a West-East orientation. They occupy the mountainous and mountainous portion of the southern archipelago of Tierra del Fuego.
In this second, close photo, he is talking to the ride on his smart phone, after sending the selfie. The roundabout is named “Hipólito Yrigoyen” after an Argentine politician twice elected President.
Here is more information about the man:
Juan Hipólito del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Yrigoyen (Spanish pronunciation: [iˈpolito iɾiˈɣoʝen]; 12 July 1852 – 3 July 1933) was an Argentine politician of the Radical Civic Union and two-time President of Argentina, who served his first term from 1916 to 1922 and his second term from 1928 to 1930. He was the first president elected democratically by means of the secret and mandatory male suffrage established by the Sáenz Peña Law of 1912. His activism was the prime impetus behind the passage of that law in Argentina.
Known as “the father of the poor”, Yrigoyen presided over a rise in the standard of living of Argentina’s working class together with the passage of a number of progressive social reforms, including improvements in factory conditions, regulation of working hours, compulsory pensions, and the introduction of a universally accessible public education system.
Yrigoyen was the first nationalist president, convinced that the country had to manage its own currency and, above all, it should have control of its transportation and its energy and oil exploitation networks.
Between the 1916 general election and the 1930 coup d’etat, political polarization was on the rise. Personalist radicalism was presented as the “authentic expression of the nation and the people” against the “oligarchic and conservative regime”. For the ruling party, the will of the majorities prevailed over the division of powers. The opposition, on the other hand, accused the Executive Branch of being arrogant and demanded greater participation from Congress, especially in matters such as the conflictive federal interventions.
Reference: Wikipedia “Andes fueguinos” and “Hipólito Yrigoyen.”
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 