Phoenix: desert, art and Camelback Mountain

The Desert Botanical Garden houses over fifty thousand desert plants from around the world on trails that wind among century-old saguaros, useful also just to understand how much life a desert actually sustains.

The climb up Camelback Mountain, the camel-hump-shaped mountain that dominates the city, takes about two hours round trip along the Echo Canyon Trail, steep but open to anyone with suitable shoes.

The Heard Museum exhibits one of the most important collections of Native American art and culture of the Southwest, including Navajo and Hopi works acquired directly from the artists.

At Papago Park, wind-eroded red rock formations frame the small artificial lake in the area and the nearby city zoo, a contrast between barren rock and irrigated vegetation.

From the summit of Camelback Mountain, the Botanical Desert and red rocks of Papago Park are recognized at a glance as pieces of the same landscape, merely domesticated in different ways.

It's a useful reminder for those arriving thinking of Phoenix only as endless suburbs: the desert here hasn't been erased, merely negotiated.