Mountain lion silhouette on Catalina ridge
— — the cat the ridge holds until dusk.
Not only on a wall.
“A long-bodied silhouette on the spine of a Santa Catalina ridge at the edge of evening. Mountain lions move through this range on the same paths they have used for a long time, mostly unseen. The Catalinas rise sharply from the Sonoran Desert north of Tucson, climbing from saguaro country at the base to ponderosa pine at the summit. The cat is rarely seen but it is steadily there.
Mountain lion silhouette on Catalina ridge, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Santa Catalina Mountains rise on the northern edge of Tucson, in the Coronado National Forest, with Mount Lemmon reaching 9,159 feet. The range climbs through five life zones in roughly twenty miles by road, from Sonoran Desert at the base to mixed conifer at the summit. Mountain lions (Puma concolor) inhabit the range alongside black bears, bighorn sheep, and Coues white-tailed deer. The Catalina Highway, completed in 1950, climbs to the village of Summerhaven and is the only paved road to the upper elevations. Mount Lemmon SkyCenter operates a public-program observatory near the summit.
Mountain lions are the most widely distributed large cat in the Americas, and the Catalinas are part of a corridor that runs from northern Mexico through the Sky Island ranges. A single adult holds a range of 50 to 150 square miles. Sightings by hikers are rare; biologists track the cats through remote cameras and collar studies run by Arizona Game and Fish. The range is also home to the long-running Mount Lemmon ground-squirrel population and ringtail cats, both nearly invisible until last light.
Ridge silhouettes hold the eye longest in the half-hour before sunset, when the western light cuts the saguaro and rock into clean black against the red of the sky. From the Tucson basin the Catalinas read pink at sunset, the rock catching the warm light directly. The Catalina foothills sit around 2,500 feet; the high country at Mount Lemmon at 9,159 feet. The first cool blue after the sun is gone is the time a moving body on a ridge is most visible against the colour behind it.