White Mountains in autumn
— — the aspens the wind sets ringing.
Not only on a wall.
“A range of volcanic highlands in eastern Arizona, capped by Mount Baldy at 11,420 feet. The aspen groves around Greer, Big Lake, and Sunrise Park turn gold in late September into early October, two or three weeks before the canyons farther south. Meadow and conifer interlock the way a hand fits a glove, and the air at nine thousand feet keeps the colour bright. Cooler than most travellers expect from Arizona — nights drop into the thirties when the gold is at its peak. from the studio
White Mountains in autumn, 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 White Mountains of eastern Arizona are a range of late-Tertiary volcanic highlands straddling Apache and Navajo Counties. Mount Baldy, the high point at 11,420 feet, sits on the Fort Apache Reservation and is sacred to the White Mountain Apache; the summit itself is closed to non-tribal visitors. The range is largely covered by the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests, with the small towns of Greer, Pinetop-Lakeside, and Springerville serving as gateways. The Little Colorado, Black, and White Rivers all rise here.
Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) is the colour-bearer here, turning bright gold against the dark of Engelmann spruce and Douglas-fir. Peak colour in the high meadows around Greer and the West Baldy Trail typically lands the last week of September into the first week of October, with the lower elevations around Big Lake and Sunrise running a week later. The trees clone underground, so an entire hillside often turns within a day or two of itself. First frost commonly arrives mid-September at nine thousand feet.
Elevation defines the visit. Trailheads sit between 8,500 and 9,500 feet, and the West Baldy Trail climbs to about 11,200 feet before the boundary closure. Visitors coming from Phoenix's 1,100-foot baseline often feel the altitude on the first afternoon — slower pace, more water, less ambition for the first day. Summer afternoons bring monsoon thunderstorms that build off the rim by two o'clock, so morning hikes are the rule. By October the storms have moved off and the sky stays clear into the cold.