Description

Arizona Firecrackers
Penstemon and Hairstreak Butterfly
Bill Williams Mountain, Arizona at 9259 ft.
Bloomed 7-20-24
30×20 Oil on Canvas

There’s something about a mountain; I have looked up to them all my life (pun intended). I have walked around them, skied down them, scrambled up their faces. I have been breathless from lack of oxygen, while gaining perspective that is only possible when standing at a peak. Mountains are landmarks, a way to find your way.
For Martha Summerhayes, Bill Williams Mountain outside of Flagstaff was a companion during her hard journey through Arizona.
“For some days, Bill Williams was the predominating feature of the landscape; turn whichever way we might, still this purple mountain was before us. It seemed to pervade the entire country, and took on such wonderful pink colors at sunset. Bill Williams held me in thrall, until the hills and the valleys in the vicinity of Fort Whipple shut him out from my sight. But he seemed to have come into my life somehow, and in spite of his name, I loved him for the companionship he had given me during those long, hot, weary and interminable days.” *

She did not have the luxury of traveling to the top to see the view. There were not resources for such frivolity back then. But if she had, she might have noticed the abundance of firecracker penstemon bursting in bright red around every corner. In July they are in full bloom, attracting bees and butterflies. At the top, you can sit at the base of the fire tower and watch the monsoon clouds build in the distance.

There is a reason why we say “mountaintop experience.” It is a special feeling. Just ask the butterflies on old Bill Willians.

*Martha Summerhayes, “Vanished Arizona”, written about her journey through Arizona as an army wife from 1874 to 1878.