I love tarantulas. You have to respect a spider that can stay alive for twenty five years. The large furry spiders wander across the desert during the summer monsoons. Normally, tarantulas stay close to their holes, traveling only as far as they need to hunt crickets and the other creatures…

Walking through the neighborhood late one night, while walking past a house decorated with several buddha statues. My nostrils picked up a strong and feral scent. I heard rustling and snorting sounds. Suddenly one of the buddhas burst across the yard. Several other buddhas followed. I realized the yard full…

Who would have thought that Safford, Arizona was currently glyptodont headquarters for the world. Some of you may be wondering exactly where is Safford, Arizona? But I bet many more of you are wondering what a glyptodont is? A glyptodont is a prehistoric relative of the armadillo who roamed North…

More and more, as I write about wildlife and wilderness, I find myself writing about species expanding into new habitats. I live in Sedona, Arizona, in the southwestern United States, and in recent decades the region has seen two very different species of large avian move into the area. Black…

It is a rare snowy evening in the Arizona desert. The clouds are laying low, thick and heavy with the promise of the upcoming storm. In a region which goes several years in a row between snowfalls such a rare meteorological event feels magical. …

Horseback riding at Dead Horse State Park in Cottonwood, Arizona was more exciting than the name sounds. For one thing, we were saddled atop healthy living horses. They tend to move faster than the dead ones. The state park has an unusual name. In the late 1940s, the Ireys family…

The North American pronghorn was mistakenly named an antelope by Merriweather Lewis during the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1803. Lewis mistakenly assumed the swift creatures were related to the antelopes who roamed the grasslands of Africa. They are not. …

In 2014 the WNBA All Star game was held in Phoenix on July 19th. An overtime thriller, this classic matchup of East vs. West became an unexpected celebration of Native American style basketball, commonly known as Rez Ball. This was because of Shoni Schimmel who grew up on the Confederated…

I was driving through the Garland Prairie in northern Arizona trying to escape the summer heat. The Garland Prairie is located in the high country, rolling prairie grasslands interspersed with small clumps of pine forest. I was driving through one of the clumps of forest, enjoying the summer shade when…