I have always called the Sonoran desert home.  I was born and raised here like the saguaro cacti that surround me.  I’m not sure if I could live in any other environment at this point in my life.  For a number of years, I flat out refused to take pictures of cacti.  It was almost too easy.  The last couple of years I softened up my stance and embraced taking pictures of them:  in part because they don’t exist outside of where I live.  Then a number of years ago because of the extreme heat, they started falling.

     One of the magic things that happens when you take a photo is it can invoke the past.  As I’ve gotten older, the photos I’ve taken feel like breadcrumbs to a different time.  All of these snapshots start to add up. For example a photo I have of me and a friend hanging out at a coffee shop.  The coffee shop no longer exists and the friend passed away as well.  Now I have this one moment in time that can’t be recreated.  As I see our thorny giants fall, I feel like we are losing something that makes the Phoenix area special.