Monthly Archives: July 2020

Cienega Creek

2020-04-14

We are on our way back from a retreat in Cascabel:

We have some time on our hands and I figure that it’s a good time to cruise the old Marsh Station Road. Once again, I’ll look for one of the coolest wash canyons that I have ever seen, a secret treasure that I lost the map for, maybe 40 years ago.

After passing through a barbed wire fence and walking across a desert field of private land, there were a string of mesquite trees. After they matured, digging their roots deep for water, the wash became deeply eroded. The roots of mesquite gather bark when exposed. The result is a corridor of an upside down forest of root. It is dark and mysterious, other worldly.

I remember that it was across a field near where the historic railway bridge crosses the creek. We would park next to the old bridge at one point, but memory and change in terrain have made the place disappear.

I pull into what is now a parking lot for entry to La Ciénega Creek Preserve. I eat a sandwich and relax and stretch from my drive. I stand working on memories, wondering where I have misplaced the hidden gorge.

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Happy Five Year Birthday!

Yup, it’s been five years since that first post of The Free Range Naturist. When I started this, I figured that I would have about one hundred stories, old and new. I thought that maybe I’d give it a day a week for two years. I have been surprised!

Along with evolution in my writing and our photography, DF and I have been to so many new and different places freely naked. It is now something to look back on, seeing a piece of life well spent and well documented. We have had fun and life continues!

We’re still planning more fun; the bucket list never dries up. We have had so much going on this year that I have had trouble keeping up with the publishing of it all. I have already secured a weekly post to cover well into next year, but much of it is rough drafts, piles of pictures, and very little of it refined and marked “READY. “

This month, I was supposed to get caught up and ahead of the game during a retreat in the alpine region in the White Mountains, Arizona. It ended up that a huge piece of my time was spent in the wilderness with what I’m pretty sure was me alone, bundled in bed with Covid 19. I’ll be more sure of that diagnosis later.

Plans just sometimes fall away to surprises. I might add that the illness in an isolated wilderness, didn’t allow me to go to town to press the “PUBLISH” button on someone’s WIFI for a couple of weeks in a row. That’s what happened to the two stories that I had ready, but better late than never.

So, I’ve started several articles and we have been around many wonders of Arizona worth a yarn. We hope to spot a few more adventures before years end, too. We’re in the process of retiring, I’ve got a big project renovating a new house, building a sweat for the Tucson community and moving into a purging of possessions mode, all with this continued Covid 19 world disruption (understatement). Somewhere down the line, there will be more time and mobility and maybe an epic adventure. Life surprises.

Thank-you for tuning in, “liking” and all of your comments.  An acknowledgement that this has touched someone, a pat on the back, the new “followers” and it all keeps me going. Posting, photography, experiments in writing and media, all make each trip report that much more fun for us.

Five years and going strong! Tell your friends.

Jbee and DF

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Weaver Canyon

2020-04-05

We haven’t explored the area down the road that goes to the sleepy little border town of Sasabe. We are driving out to Three points, Arizona to head south on it, State Road 286. We don’t know what we will find, but then we like that.

I have done some preliminary scouting on the internet. I have some vague directions and have looked through some maps and satellite images.

It is wide open spaces before us and very little human population. We know that there is a border patrol checkpoint and so we are keeping coverings near. We see a typical desert sight in the foreground , scrubby tortured mesquite with a sparse carpet of low plant life and grasses. The background is a view up at the telescopes of Kitt Peak and the natural landmark, the sacred mountain of Baboquivari.  We hope to find our way up to the later.

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Among the Gold Miners

2019-08-25

We’re up here in Northern Arizona around Prescott. We had been given directions to a piece of creek that is likely to have water. The proximity seems familiar. We have a back-up plan, if the situation warrants a change.

The story begins, with:

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