Outdoors

I’m in Tucson. And you know what the thing about Tucson is? It really must have been beautiful, before they turned it into a giant parking lot and all the rivers dried up.

Case in point: The Rillito River. Once it flowed it flowed year-round, now it’s mostly just a bone-dry trench filled with garbage, unless there’s really heavy rains, in which case all the garbage gets washed into inconvenient places.

I decided to take a walk alongside the Rillito “River”. It bummed me out. It’s weird squaring with all the destruction and mayhem my species causes.

There was a river here for thousands of years and it only took us about 100 to use it all up.

Yeah, so, all my pictures suck, because I was sad… and also I was testing out the camera on my new cellphone and I didn’t realize it was shooting in 16:9 mode, because the UI was covering part of the view up.

That’s my story and I’m sticking it.

Really, this is a river.

DON’T VANDALIZE HANDICAPPED PEOPLE! IT’S NOT NICE!

This sign was next to some scary-looking bathrooms that had their sinks outside.

There a loads of discarded shopping carts all over Tucson. It’s weird how far away some of them end up from any store. Tuscon has the urban sprawl something awful. Definite food desert situations in many areas. I guess some people without cars just opt to take the cart with them, rather than try to carry their groceries for miles.

Here, fishy fishy fishy…

Hhhhmmm… That’s weird. It looks like someone has cobbled together a small structure from various refuse.

Yes, that’s right, the Rillito River has been dry so long, that a hobo has taken up residence right in the middle of it.

I sort of wanted to go down to the shanty and have myself a little look-see, but I couldn’t see if anybody was home and I didn’t want to get hobo-shanked.

I hope whoever lives there doesn’t drown during the next monsoon season.

On the rare occasions when there is water in the river, it can end up way too high and overflow, because the ground is so dry and hard that the water doesn’t seep into it. They built these ugly concrete trenches to mitigate the overflow.

I can never seem to find any nice cacti. They’re always misshapen and weird.

Birds live in those holes. Also, gnomes.

It’s actually a felony to vandalize a saguaro cactus. They take a really long time to grow. It can be a 100 years before they even get their first arm. So they get a mite bit miffed when you mess with one.

The fruit of a barrel cactus are edible. You need tongs and oven mitts to harvest them, though.

This a palo verde tree. The little yellow flowers get collect in little piles on the ground and it is very cute.

This is all blurry because it was very windy. I wonder if my cellphone camera has a burst function?

This one is a little bit hard to see, but what looks like a clump of twigs on this tree is actually desert mistletoe. It wasn’t very Christmasy, though, because there wasn’t any little poisonous berries on it.

This sure is a boring photo.

Ocotillos look like they belong on an alien planet. A lot of people have them it their gardens. I could never do that, because I would inevitably stumbled into it and grievously harm myself on the spinedies.

Cute little orange flowers. Apparently, hummingbirds like them.

Here’s one without flowers, just evil spinedies waiting to murder unsuspecting Laurels.

I like taking photos of flowers. Someone buy me a $4000 macro lense, so I can do it more betterer.

I need to learn how to stop bright yellow from blowing everything out.

We have asters in Ontario, but they tend to bloom in the Fall there, instead of the Spring like here.

This should stop being an agave and start being a tequila.

Ice? Ha! You don’t know from ice, you crazy southerners.

If this bridge wasn’t here, I might have drowned trying to cross the river.

Some of the bridges are decorated with painted tiles.

Are those hands gigantic or is that corn really small?

Someone vandalized the pork.

Intact pork.

If you see a wild pig in Tucson, run. They’re very dangerous… and delicious.

Look it’s the mountains! Clouds look weird when you’re at a high elevation.

Alright, what the Hell is this thing? It looks like a bus stop, but it’s not anywhere near a road. It’s also the only one along the path to my knowledge.

And then there’s this weird cylinder in front of it. The purpose of which was the cause of much perplexitude.

It opens, but why?

Pretty much all the art along the path has been vandalized.

Hey, it’s the Tucson Sun Circle, which is completely useless on an overcast day, as you can plainly see here.

Here are the instructions for the Sun Circle. Apparently, it does something interesting on the Equinox, BUT I COULDN’T SIT AROUND AND WAIT THAT LONG.

I stopped at the Children’s Memorial Park. That wall back there is filled with the names of dead children. There are too many names.

I’m not sure whether those flowers blew there or someone placed them on the girl.

Not sure whether I like the idea of dead children flying around on magic carpets. Ghosts are scary enough without whimsical woven goods.

Why do they bother with trash cans? Everyone just throws their junk onto the riverbed.

I always wanted an ant farm as a kid.

It is a dead dove. It’s a metaphor for my life.

Google Photos created this stupid hipster video of my trip.

If I misidentified anything in these photos, feel free to drop me a line.

And, yes, I realize that it’s still technically a river because there is water flowing underground. (Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was…)