Cottonwood Shade in Pima Canyon

The cottonwood’s deep roots draw water from a mountain stream.

Looking back down Pima Canyon on a spring morning plenty of green under the unrelenting sun.

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A large Fremont’s Cottonwood Offers shade and protection along the Pima Canyon Trail.

In the shade, a grapevine, offers a vain promise of grapes.

The cottonwood’s deep roots draw water from a mountain stream.

Native Americans in the Western United States and Mexico used parts of Frémont’s cottonwood variously for a medicine, in basket weaving, for tool making, and for musical instruments. The inner bark of Frémont’s cottonwood contains vitamin C and was chewed as an antiscorbutic – treatment for vitamin C deficiency. The bark and leaves could be used to make poultices to reduce inflammation or to treat wounds.

The Pima people of southern Arizona and northern Mexico lived along Sonoran Desert watercourses and used twigs from the tree in the fine and intricate baskets they wove. The Cahuilla people of southern California used the tree’s wood for tool making, the Pueblo peoples for drums, and the Lower Colorado River Quechan people in ritual cremations. The Hopi of Northeastern Arizona carve the root of the cottonwood to create kachina dolls.

Reference: Wikipedia “Fremont’s Cottonwood.”

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills

Nature Abstracts from Reavis Falls

Basalt and Water

A Series of Nature Abstracts, macros of Reavis Falls

These are six shots of Reavis Falls from my solo expedition to this location in the remote eastern Superstition Wilderness of Arizona.

All are macro shots of the falls taken with a Canon 100mm f/2.8L lens.

“Reavis Falls Abstract V”

I took these while perched on a pile of talus beneath the falls.

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Reavis Falls Abstract XIV

Reavis Falls are 114 feet high in a canyon hidden in the folds of mountain ridges in the remote eastern Superstition Wilderness of Arizona.

Reavis Falls Abstract VI

Reavis Creek falls from a sheer basalt cliff, remnants of a volcanic eruption, cool a million years ago, a little colder today by this running water.

Reavis Falls Abstract VIII

Reavis Falls Abstract XI

Reavis Falls Abstract XV

Click Me to visit my previous post, “Canyoneering to Reavis Falls” for more of this story.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Canyoneering to Reavis Falls

No signposts in the wilderness

Reaching Reavis Falls, once you find the canyon mouth, is three-fourths of a mile of boulder hopping and bushwacking over and around landslides, deep pools and fallen trees.  Odds are you will be the only person in the canyon for weeks, if not months.  Expect to be surprised. In this chapter you will (finally) visit the falls themselves.

A Camp in the Canyon

Click me for the chapter about the environment around the mouth of Reavis Canyon below the falls.

The Last Mile

Here is an overview of the last third mile of Reavis Canyon.  You can see the wall of the falls nestled in the folds of ridges towards the top, just off center.

On the lower right is a large landslide and, below there, it is complete chaos.

The vegetation grows shoulder to shoulder with interleaved branches.  You will not get through there.  The solution is to find a way around, usually over and around house-sized boulders.

The image was captured from Google Earth


After almost two hours of picking my way, there was a flicker of light.  The fall waters were sparkling in the sunlight high above the cottonwood trees, in full Mach bloom, and the still leafless Arizona Sycamores.

This was my view of Reavis Falls from the canyon on a March day before the Arizona Sycamores have leaved. The falls are the tiny patch of white to the left of midline where the earth meets the sky. Jumbles of infallen boulders and thick growth of sycamores, oaks and fully leaved cottonwoods cloak the falls.

Another 30 minutes of canyoneering brought me to the foot of the falls.

At the Foot of Reavis Falls

Looking up at Reavis Falls from a 20 foot tall mound of talus.

These are boulders  washed down at flood time.

The rock wall is thick with microorganisms, fungi and mosses.

After clambering around the talus pile I found this angle….

An Arizona Sycamore, before the spring leafing, at the Foot of Reavis Falls

Talus at the Foot of Reavis Falls

The Reavis Falls talus is large boulders carried down Reavis Creek and washed over the falls at flood time as well as blocks fractured from the cliff face.  You can see the base of the Sycamore from the previous photograph.

The falls are formed where Reavis Creek flows over a solid mass of rock.  The talus is composed mostly of this red rock.  From the edge of this cliff to the base, where the falls hit the canyon floor, is all of 140 feet.  This is a far as you can proceed into the canyon without some serious climbing skills.

It is possible to climb around the canyon by climbing up the ridge from which I captured the Cedar Basin Hoodoos.  See my posts below for this location (you need to work it our for yourself).

This is NOT the last post of the series.  From here I will focus on the beauty of Reavis Falls and the canyon that holds them.

It was a four-day expedition so there are a few chapters covering the approach to the Falls:

Lime Mountain Morning

Two Bar Mountain View

Evening on Two Bar Mountain

Among the desert wildflowers

Superstition Wilderness Dawn

Dry Juniper Descent

Hoodoos on the Descent to Reavis Falls

Cedar Basin Hoodoos

Reavis Canyon Camp

Reavis Canyon Rivulets and Rocks

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Reavis Canyon Rivulets and Rocks

Canyon of Wonder and Beauty

Born from Eruption and Flood

The Superstition Wilderness was born from volcanic eruption and in some places (Peters Mesa) the earth still rumbles.

Here in Reavis Canyon it is the huge spring runoff that builds the environment, grinding and scouring the canyon. In my chapter The Mouth of Reavis Canyon is the story of this aspect of the canyon.

The history of this spot is written on these volcanic and igneous rocks and boulders, the uprooted tree roots and fresh water.

The tire must have washed down from Reavis Ranch.

A Canyon of Wonder and Beauty

In this chapter I present, in the header, the lovely dawn sky of that day, and a tiny corner of a rock jumble in Reavis Creek.   There is a large format version of the sky in my previous post, “The Mouth of Reavis Canyon.”

Rivulets and Rocks

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

The Mouth of Reavis Canyon

Canyon Hazards and Beauty

In this chapter we enter the Mouth of Reavis Canyon below Reavis Falls and examine the beauty and danger of this remote canyon.

See Reavis Canyon Camp for more of my expedition to Reavis Falls.

Dawn on the day I entered Reavis Canyon

Dawn light above the outline of the prominent cliff above Reavis Canyon and Falls the morning of my last day in the canyon.

You might recognize the outline of this cliff from the chapter  Two Bar Mountain View or Evening on Two Bar Mountain.

Here is the same view, in daylight. As I hiked toward the canyon mouth below Reavis Falls, looking up I saw this prominant cliff against the sky.

Here is the path I took toward the falls.  The campsite is to the lower right, the falls are toward the center and left.  My approach to the camp is on the right, moving toward the top.  For another view of this location see Reavis Canyon Camp.

The mouth of Reavis Canyon below the falls is choked with vegetation and infallen rocks and boulders.  The far slopes are thick with the poles of young saguaros. There are hoodoos, as well.  In the photograph, below, one hoodoo is catching morning light.  See the chapters Hoodoos on the Descent to Reavis Falls and Cedar Basin Hoodoos for more views of the hoodoos around Reavis Falls.

Hoodoos visible from the mouth of Reavis Canyon below the falls. Look toward the far slope.

Flood damage in Reavis Canyon below the falls. Note the scouring at the base of these trees and the broken limbs. This is NOT a place to be in spring thaw.

Massive spring flooding scours the canyon floor.

Flood damage in Reavis Canyon below the falls.

There is beauty to be found, as well. Freshly fallen rough rocks contrast with water smoothed boulders and the water surface.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Two Bar Mountain Views

Superstition Wilderness

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

On Torr Road

Facing Views and History

A grand view presents itself throughout the roll down Torcorr into Coolranny townland. Loughan is a shallow bay along the North Channel of the Irish Sea, a rocky sand beach is accessible via a slope shallower than the cliffs on either side. This access is a reason for the tiny rural community on the slope above, now a site of ruined cottages, abandoned during the emigration from Ireland, a flight continuing into the Twentieth Century.

Click photograph for a larger view. To do this from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.

See this post for a description of wildflowers flowering here in the month of June.

This photograph from the bottom of the Torr Road hill takes in Coolranny Townland. a slice of land running from the ridge to Loughan Bay. We see a number of hawthorne trees in flower, yellow flowering Whin Bush, houses and the Roman Catholic church Saint Mary’s Star of the Sea.

Tor in Irish is a steep rocky height. Likewise, Corr means odd, uneven, rounder, convex, curved, peaked, projecting, smooth. Combined Torcorr is the townland where we stopped on the Torr Road, halted by our wonder at this sight. In the distance, Torr Head projects into North Channel, the closest land to Scotland. Following the coast, the cliffs in front of Torr Head is home to numerous sea birds. The curved bay is named Loughan, the rocky sand beach are ruins of cottages emptied by Irish emigration. The white building is Saint Mary’s Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church. County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

The photograph of the header, taken by Pam, is from either Coolranny or Loughan Townland, looking across a sheep pasture, the North Channel of the Irish Sea toward the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland just twelve miles distant.

Here is a slideshow of this post’s images. To visit from WordPress Reader, you need to first click the title of this post to open a new page.
Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills

Thunderhead Sunset 3

the rest of the story

Here are the rest of the images captured in that August 2014 sunset.

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Thunderhead Sunset 2

a highly idealized fantasy world

The combination of water vapor in all its forms and the sun dipping below the horizon combined to form these magical images.

Maxfield Parrish refined his art to duplicate these effects in oil.

Parrish’s art is characterized by vibrant colors; the color Parrish blue was named after him. He achieved such luminous color through glazing. This process involves applying layers of translucent paint and oil medium (glazes) over a base rendering. Parrish usually used a blue and white monochromatic underpainting.

His paintings/illustrations were unique in that they depicted a highly idealized fantasy world that was accessible to the public. Although you will rarely see a glimpse of that color in reality, he was and still is linked with a particularly bright shade of blue that coated the skies of his landscapes. And it was not an easy task for him to complete. He invented a time-consuming process that involved a cobalt blue base and white undercoating, which he then coated with a series of thin alternating coatings of oil and varnish. When exposed to ultraviolet light, the resins he employed, known as Damar, fluoresce a shade of yellow-green, giving the painted sky its distinctive turquoise tint.

Reference: “Maxfield Parrish” from Wikipedia

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved

Thunderhead Sunset 1

Just the Facts

Cumulonimbus (from Latin cumulus ‘heaped’, and nimbus ‘rainstorm’) is a dense, towering vertical cloud, typically forming from water vapor condensing in the lower troposphere that builds upward carried by powerful buoyant air currents.

Above the lower portions of the cumulonimbus the water vapor becomes ice crystals, such as snow and graupel, the interaction of which can lead to hail and to lightning formation, respectively. When occurring as a thunderstorm these clouds may be referred to as thunderheads. Cumulonimbus can form alone, in clusters, or along squall lines.

Graupel also called soft hail, hominy snow, or snow pellets, is precipitation that forms when supercooled water droplets in air are collected and freeze on falling snowflakes, forming 2–5 mm (0.08–0.20 in) balls of crisp, opaque rime.

Graupel is distinct from hail and ice pellets in both formation and appearance. However, both hail and graupel are common in thunderstorms with cumulonimbus clouds, though graupel also falls in winter storms, and at higher elevations as well.

These clouds can produce lightning and other dangerous severe weather, such as tornadoes, hazardous winds, and large hailstones. Cumulonimbus progresses from overdeveloped cumulus congestus clouds and may further develop as part of a supercell. Cumulonimbus is abbreviated Cb.

Reference: “Cumulonumbus Cloud” and “Graupel” from Wikipedia

Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved