” A messenger of the truth is often a lonely voice, but it’s echo can change the world”

They call this cacti the Teddy bear cactus. It’s not anything you want to cuddle with though. The jumping cactus digs in deep and is not fun to dance with, best to stay clear of this if you run across them. Bring pliers with you on hikes, just in case you need to pull one out of your leg, even when wearing long denim pants…the needles go right through that. I know this from experience. A long stick can also be used to try and pull it out, but don’t try to pull out with your bare fingers.

The little morning doves all over Arizona have the sweetest songs. Walking through the desert or getting up in the early morning if you listen closely you can hear them cooing. I always loved waking up to that. The ones I have around my garden became tame and fly all around me. Every year I have one really white dove show up, it’s so pretty. That dove is hard to get a photo of though, she or he is very shy.

Besh Ba Gowah archeological site. The ruins of the Salado people who lived in Arizona 800 years ago, around A.D. 1225 and A.D. 1400 are filled with thousands of candles. Every Christmas season volunteers light over 4,000 luminaries by hand that light up the whole area. It is one of the most beautiful sights I have seen. It was a family tradition of ours to visit this event at Christmas.

Sometimes I would take portraits of people in Arizona. One of my favorite portraits was of an Appaloosa pony because I was able to see this pony grow up. I was even there the day this pony was born. I just happened to be up north that weekend at Our Little Red house when I got a call to photograph a newborn colt. It was early in the morning when I grabbed my camera to hang out with the cutest baby colt, I loved his markings too, such a beautiful creature.

An invasive plant in the Arizona desert called Stinknet. When crushed this plant emits a strong unpleasant odor. Arizona wildfires are getting worse due to this invasive weed from South Africa. If you see these in Arizona, pull them up by their roots and throw them away. Make sure to do this before the flowers start to dry, otherwise the seeds will blow everywhere. Wear gloves, these are cute in appearance but mean in nature.

This was our view for years from the porch of Our Little Red House. Our friends who owned this land and barn eventually had to take the old barn down. They used the wood for all kinds of beautiful projects and the rebuilding of the old museum they live in now. They even gifted us with a wooden Christmas tree they made from the wood of this barn. It was a nice surprise that Christmas.

For a home school lesson, we made a little barn with our kids. We collected twigs near the creek, then we made clay animals to put inside the barn. Our neighbor’s old barn was the inspiration for this fun homeschooling lesson. Home school lessons outside in nature was one of our favorite places to learn about things. The perfect place for lessons.

The Phoenix zoo had a new arrival in 2020 when my family and I finally got out to explore more during the biological war of C19. Howard the white Rhino had just arrived at the zoo and was all alone in a small area quarantined from other animals.

I remember walking very close to him and he seemed so sad. He followed me with his eyes, like he was trying to communicate something. I wanted to take him home with me, him and the elephant, to release them off somewhere with huge open spaces and other Rhino friends.

I asked my husband how much do you think it would cost to fly a huge animal to a HUGE sanctuary to roam and be around other animals similar to it. I didn’t want to leave this animals side as it followed me with it’s eyes.

I don’t play the lottery, but sometimes when the amounts would go up into the high millions I always wondered what would people do with all that money. As I stood there looking at Howard I imagined how much would a zoo charge to sell an animal of theirs if someone just happened to have a lot of money to do so with. Does everything really have a price?

I think if I was one of those Lottery winners I would buy Howard and set him free in a Rhino sanctuary, it was a nice little day dream in that moment.

“This Rhino is so very unhappy” I remember telling my husband.

I didn’t really enjoy the zoo after that, not like I used to, not like when I was a little girl, although I had moments back as a child too, when on a school trip I was complaining to the teacher about the zoo’s gorilla not being happy…

” Hazzle is not happy at all” I remember saying as I ran up to my teacher to tell her.

Usually this kind of truth would not work in my favor, especially in any animals favor.

I was too young then to truly understand what was happening. With adult eyes now…Howard’s eyes had opened mine.

After I had moved away from the city, I checked online to see how Howard was doing. Sadly, Howard had passed away in 2024 from what the Phoenix zoo said was a protracted and progressive neurological condition. They had to euthanize Howard when he became unresponsive to their treatment. He lived to be 27 years old.

White Rhinos, like humans, are one of the most social animals out there, and usually live in herds of 12 or more. In the wild they can live up to 43 years, but in captivity they only live at the most to be 30 years.

White rhinos are one the world’s largest animals, and also one of those most endangered. They are the actual Unicorns of the world.

My children have been hiking since they were toddlers. It’s in the hearts and souls of all Arizona natives. Something we all do, we get to the mountains.

I see old photos of my 10 year old daughter on the top of a mountain desert, looking over the city of Phoenix and I’m amazed at how clearer the air was back then. Each year it gets worse.

The photo of my daughter above was taken on a normal pollution day years ago, you are still able to see pretty far. Not anymore sadly, it’s pretty bad, it’s gotten so much worse. What kind of a world are we leaving for the children of the future?

I have so many photos of Arizona desert sunsets. They remind me of watercolors. Like a kaleidoscope of never ending images and colors…pure beauty. God creates the most beautiful things.

I could write a whole post about this photo. It was taken during a time in Arizona history when parks had to close down because of extreme drought conditions. No camping was allowed and there were reports of wild animal attacks from starvation.

People who had houses up north in the high country could visit their homes but only people who owned property up north, otherwise they were not allowed to go into the forest areas.

Driving up north was like another world when all that was happening, no vehicles were on the roads anywhere, for miles and miles. A police officer stopped us before we got to Our Little Red house. He was waiting at the dirt road on the way into town. We told him we had property and told him where, that we were coming in to check on it. He let us go. How strange that was I thought to myself.

The next morning my husband and I went out for a morning walk, it’s when I took the photo above. Our friends and neighbors that morning warned us to watch for wild animals, the animals were starving from the drought. There were reports of attacks on humans because of that. The animals were becoming desperate.

We had protection on us when we went out for a walk around Cherry creek. There was no water anywhere except one tiny little mud hole of dirty water and all around that were so many animal tracks, all kinds. I remember pointing to one set and saying to my husband…

“Mountain lion, and they’re fresh tracks” I looked up and out into the distance where the tracks led, wondering where it was at in that moment.

We walked a little more alert after that. Mountain Lions are beautiful to see in their normal environments, which we have seen before, while driving into town once, almost hit one with our truck. It leaped up off the ground like it had wings then dashed off to be swallowed up by the woods. We no longer could see it after that, hidden so well in those trees. They are such striking animals, but I wouldn’t want to be close to one face to face.

I have a photo in my hundreds of photos and files of that mud hole with all kinds of animal tracks around it, that tells a story too. Poor things were thirsty. We didn’t see any bear tracks though, so that was good, since that’s what was attacking the most, the bears. Those animal print photos are not easy to access at this moment otherwise I would share that photo too. Organizing my photo files is on the back burner of things I need to do.

These drought conditions are more than what “They” say, or want people to believe. The truths like anything else are always hidden in the cracks. Some of those cracks are pretty thin and they too hide things. The bigger a crack forms, the more tiny little cracks it creates. Kind of like when people lie, they have to carry that lie with them the rest of their lives, which creates many more little lies to help support the big lie….and on and on it goes. It all connects…it spreads into many wars.

I took that photo above before the Saudi owned company Fondomonte was stopped from pumping Arizona groundwater in March of 2024, at least this is what we have been told, that they are no longer doing that. The ground water was pumped during a time of extreme drought conditions. They were allowed to use unlimited amounts of Arizona ground water to grow alfalfa feed to ship back to their kingdom for their dairy cows, according to news reports.

In 2025 a water bottling company in Arizona that fills and caps bottled water to be sent out all over our country was the target of a theft that totaled $100,000 in stolen water. That is shocking all on it’s own, but what is even more shocking to me is that there is a bottling company that fills and ships water out from Arizona. A desert that is experiencing over a decades long drought. Think about that.

The city of Buckeye Arizona is growing so fast that they are concerned over water supply issues in the future. But not concerned enough it would seem, because they are not giving up on building a city in Buckeye. They are in talks about building a pipeline to bring in water all the way from Mexico. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/19/arizona-mexico-water-pipeline-housing-boom

In Pine/Strawberry Arizona out of 40 ground water wells, only 14 are still functioning, all the rest have dried up. The town’s water supply has seen more than half of it’s wells dry up.

It doesn’t stop there…it goes on and on. Water is the the blue gold, and it’s what I fear will be the biggest war of all time…the water wars. I pray and hope I am wrong but the signs have been there for a long time, even before I was born.

Arizona for some reason seems to be the test market in my opinion. It sure does look that way. It’s a big city and a lot can hide in those cracks in big cities.

One of the reasons we had to sell Our Little Red house up north was because a very large and well known insurance company dropped the whole town up there, they could no longer insure us, told us we were too high risk all of a sudden.

We had been around so many wildfires over the years, driving through some of them when they started, trying to get away from them. Most were started by man…look that one up, a lot of these fires are questionable.

According to news reports, the Phoenix metro area is projected to have a major groundwater shortage in the next century. Sadly, ground water can take thousands of years to replenish. Yet, they keep building and building, and telling people to move to Phoenix, come to Phoenix.

People are being herded to a place that is in extreme danger when it comes to water…just my opinion because people are being mislead to believe everything is okay. I truly believe this will create dangerous living conditions way off in the future. Or at least very uncomfortable conditions, which is already happening now.

It’s becoming more expensive to live in Arizona, more chaotic in certain parts of the city and violence is increasing.

The removing and killing trees over the years, taking away farm lands, building large communities and giant warehouses…all contribute to the heat pocket that Arizona deserts are experiencing right now. But they never talk about that part. They blame the rise of heat on other “Things”.

Now they are bringing Huge Chip factories to Arizona that are being built everywhere in warm desert states, along with AI warehouses. Why do they choose desert areas for these warehouses?

They tell people they are using recycled water.

A beer making facility in Arizona is also using recycled waste water to make their beer, that’s what they say, but they also use water as well.

Has Arizona become a target to strip it’s land of water? It’s like they discovered how huge Arizona is and knew how much ground water Arizona has and they want it all.

Real Water is worth more than actual Gold to the ones who know it’s worth, some people don’t even realize that yet, but the ones who do know that are getting a hold of it’s power as fast as they can to control it before everyone finds out.

Those people are playing a dangerous game with it. The advancements, the excessive building…this will cause that blue gold to just evaporate and disappear.

If you made it this far reading this, as you can tell, I am very concerned about the water situation in Arizona. Please look into ways to conserve and treat water as the gift it is. Learn about low water usage, and conservation, especially in desert and drought areas. Always remember Water is life. It’s one of God’s greatest gifts he has given us, and we need to respect that.

I hope these photos taught you a little bit about the back stories of Arizona. It’s a beautiful state but it can be deadly and I fear it is not going in the right direction because some bad apples are changing what is Arizona.

” Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied.” Benjamin Franklin

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