SUMMER

Summer

Condolences to those who must endure heat waves and triple-digit temperatures, but it's worth it for the crown jewels of saguaros. The cactus heads turn snow white with rings of June flowers. They are night pollinators, magnets for bats and moths. Low-desert summers are more about nighttime, anyway. It cools by 10, maybe 15 degrees, and you feel your breath coming back, the sky relieved to have stars instead of a great and beaming sun.

The Arizona Office of Tourism recently launched a media campaign called “Sunshine to Share” to help attract winter visitors. In the summer, you couldn't give our sunshine away. It brings a kind of heat that makes you brave. You can feel your heart beating in your ears. Jackrabbits handle the problem by having blood vessels and capillaries in their big ears to dissipate body heat. Humans do it with air conditioners like stepping into a meat locker. The more proper way to cool oneself is with water. Swimming pools are nothing compared to inner tubes on the murky lower Verde and often-clear Salt. Swimsuits and flip-flops are mainstays. A light sarong dipped in water does wonders.

Shade matters. Naps are needed. Put on the list: broad-brimmed hat, wet bandanna, plenty of drinking water. Step up a few thousand feet in elevation from the low desert, and you'll still be thankful for that hat, bandanna and water, now in warm woodlands of juniper trees. Half the state is above 4,000 feet in elevation, and it keeps cooling as you go up. Another thousand feet and piñon pines come in, then ponderosas that shush each other whenever the wind blows. Fishing creeks are pleasant to step into. Lie down in them and be baptized.

The music of summer is the electrified drone of cicadas. The other music is thunder. You might wish over and over — or pray, if that's your way — for cumulus clouds to come. They rise like gods, hot air from the ground reaching the cool, moist upper atmosphere. A bruised purple shade falls over you. On a blazing day, the smack of cold rain falling from 50,000 feet is unparalleled, and the smell of it along with the rumble of thunder is narcotic.

These monsoon storms are when the buried Sonoran Desert toads come out. They can wait in their burrows up to 10 years, and when it happens, they are leaping all over each other. Damp desert nights come to life with their rasps of mating calls.

It is rare, but some places have fireflies, and these summer storms bring them out. They are known from the lower desert around Tumacácori National Historical Park, near Tubac, up to the cool, heavy pines of Hannagan Meadow, 170 miles to the northeast. These are miracles to witness. They may be common in other parts of the country, but here they are gems, adding a sense of mystery to nights with their glow-in-the-dark trails.

Patience for a season is a few months, and summer overstays its welcome boldly. While other parts of the country are celebrating the arrival of autumn with reports of early frosts and changing leaves, temperatures here can still be triple digits. You can ask nicely, but summer won't leave until it's ready. By then, all you can imagine is coolness.

PRECEDING PANEL:

The colors of sunset loom over an aspen-lined meadow in the Kachina Peaks Wilderness, part of the San Francisco Peaks. The Peaks, the remains of an ancient stratovolcano, are sacred to several of Arizona's Indigenous peoples.

The water of Wet Beaver Creek, near Sedona, flows over red rocks and through a small dam likely built by human visitors. The creek supports a unique plant and wildlife habitat that is protected by the Wet Beaver Wilderness, established in 1984.

Morning sun illuminates the monsoon-fed greenery of the Santa Rita Mountains' rolling foothills. As one of several "sky island" ranges in Southern Arizona, the Santa Ritas feature topography, temperatures, and plant and animal life wildly different from the desert that surrounds them.

CANON EOS 6D, 1/8 SEC, F/14, ISO 100, 176 MM LENS

EIRINI PAJAK CLAIRE CURRAN

A copse of wildflowers overlooks the flowing water of the Black River, a key waterway in Eastern Arizona's White Mountains, in morning light. This view is of the river's East Fork, much of which parallels Forest Road 276.

As it flows through the rugged geology of the Hellsgate Wilderness, Tonto Creek reflects a high canyon wall illuminated by evening light. More than 70 miles long, Tonto Creek begins below the Mogollon Rim and ends at Theodore Roosevelt Lake on the Salt River.

GURINDER SINGH TOM BEAN

Tall aspens thrive on the edge of Lockett Meadow, in the San Francisco Peaks. Typically, aspens are among the first plant species to return to an area after naturally occurring wildfires, which happen often in Arizona's forests.

Beneath stormy skies, Arizona poppies (Kallstroemia grandiflora) fill a field near Willcox in Southeastern Arizona. This wildflower species typically blooms in summer, and it's found in deserts throughout the American Southwest.

OLYMPUS OM-D E-M1 MARK II, 1/640 SEC, F/16, ISO 400, 12 MM LENS

CLAIRE CURRAN

DEREK VON BRIESEN CANON EOS-1DS MARK III, 1/160 SEC, F/11, ISO 400, 560 MM LENS

LAURA

ZIRINO Fleabanes (genus Erigeron) grow in abundance near the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. Also visible in this photo are aspens with curved trunks, likely the result of heavy snowfall when the trees were younger.

CANON EOS R5, 0.4 SEC, F/16, ISO 100, 35 MM LENS

BYRON NESLEN

The setting sun shines through ponderosa pine boughs in the Kaibab National Forest. Along with ponderosas, the Kaibab is home to tree species that include Douglas-firs, Engelmann spruce, aspens and oaks.

CANON EOS 5D MARK III, 1/40 SEC, F/8. ISO 100, 26 MM LENS