Inside a Saguaro

Inside a Saguaro cactus

It has been 10 weeks since the last time I went to the hiking trails at Sweetwater Preserve on Tortolita Road. This park is my all-time favorite place to walk, but life happens and you deal with it. It was so great to be able to walk there today.

One of the nicest things about these trails is the ability to walk up to a 120 year old Saguaro or to turn a corner in a trail to discover a forest of Saguaros covering the hill in front of you.

This particular Saguaro is at the junction of Wildflower and Roller Coaster trails. It is awesome to see inside the cactus and learn how it grows. This scar looks like the kind the Saguaro gets when one of its arms breaks off. It does not look like the kind of hole that a Gila woodpecker makes when building a “boot” nest.

You can see how much rain we have been getting by the how far apart the pleats are. When the Saguaro sucks up rain, the pleats expand. When there is a dry season, they shrink as the Saguaro pulls water from its stores.

In the evening at sunset, it really does look like spirit people in exalted prayer or children playing in the shade of a tree.

On these trails the Saguaros make enough shade in the summer, that you can stand in it and cool off.

They are amazing.