Sky Island Alliance

"To my mind these live oak-dotted hills fat with side oats grama, these pine-clad mesas spangled with flowers, these lazy trout streams burbling along under great sycamores and cottonwoods, come near to being the cream of creation." Aldo Leopold (1937)


"This landscape that so enthralled Leopold was where the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Madre kiss, where the plants and animals of the Neotropics mingle with those of the Nearctic, where jaguar and grizzly hunted the same ridges, where elk and javelina browsed and rooted cheek to jowl, where northern goshawks took thick-billed parrots on the wing. Arizona, New Mexico, Chihuahua, and Sonora are landscapes of wonder, beauty, and wildness--and of mind-boggling biological diversity. Aldo Leopold saw this landscape as a single ecological region, as do we today. Sky Island Alliance (SIA) hopes to protect it and restore it to ecological health."
[paraphrased, Wild Earth Journal, 2000: The Wildlands Project.]

Sky Island Photos


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Earth Verse

Wide enough to keep you looking
Open enough to keep you moving
Dry enough to keep you honest
Prickly enough to make you tough
Green enough to go on living
Old enough to give you dreams
Gary Snyder

Tea-Time on the Mountain-Top

You are CORDIALLY INVITED to a TEA PARTY on the SUMMIT of Mt. Wrightson, (Santa Rita Mountains, Sky Islands) this SATURDAY and SUNDAY from noon till 4 in OBSERVANCE of the planet MERCURY's greatest visibility on the 29th. Refreshments will be served. Dress will be smart-casual and please be on time. An after-party camp will observe Mercury's peregrinations.
Cheers,
CONOR

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Postscript:
The glare up here is Tremendous, serving tea and talking about imaginary things. I can see smoky haze rolling off the open pit mines. Mines and telescopes, the only things visible of the earth from up here by moonlight. The crickets lie still on the asphalt as autumn starts. I am fatterning up for the Winter;mosquitoes cannot bite me and river rocks are Shiatsu on my back. I'm spending the weekends tracking Jaguars (either melanous or spotted) in the Borderlands. This is where Coronado sought the seven cities of gold. There is only one place in the world with more mammal diversity: the Costa Rican rainforest.