(Tom) This week on Arizona Illustrated, learn what it takes to redefine beauty standards and become a top bodybuilder.

(Kandice) The hardest part through all of my preps was you kind of feel cut off from like your social life.

(Tom) Go behind the scenes as we explore an oasis in the middle of Tucson.

(Michelle) How do we get those people who are not gardeners to become passionate about gardens and about nature?

(Tom) Joy is an act of resistance for poet Estella Gonzalez.

(Estella) When do women hustle in peace while gentlemen jive for joy?

(Tom) And go back in time to see a secret cave before it became a tourist attraction.

(Peggy) Now the secret is out.

The existence of the cave has been announced.

The caverns are located in the Wetstone Mountains.

Hello and welcome to Arizona Illustrated and the Tucson Botanical Gardens.

I'm Tom McNamara.

You know over the past decade more and more women are embracing bodybuilding as a lifestyle that extends far beyond competition and aesthetics.

Next we explore the lifelong benefits, the discipline and how these women are redefining standards of beauty through bodybuilding.

♪ ENERGETIC BEATS (Kandice) The first time I'd lift at weights, I felt like it was like electricity zaps, like there's something lighting up, like everything in me.

And it was just something that I absolutely fell in love with.

(Tamara) It's very much a mental thing for people, you know.

It's a church.

It's what keeps them sane.

(Patricia) I felt just on top of the world.

(Kandice) The mindset of doing something every day to help become a better person or to become stronger and a way to honor my body.

(Tamara) The work you put in here is the results you get out.

(Patricia) I truly believe that it will change your life 100%.

[ METAL SLIDING ] (Kandice) I was born with a congenital condition called an arteriovenous malformation, which is essentially like an abnormal connection of the arteries and the veins.

And mine happened to be in my brain.

As I grew, it grew with me, and I had a brain aneurysm.

Getting to recovery and I'd stumble upon strength training and it was just something that helped me.

(Tamara) I grew up in a bodybuilding family.

My dad was a bodybuilder back in the Venice Beach days.

So I grew up thinking this was what you did.

I've been lifting for about 22 years now.

And some of that was just training.

I've been powerlifting about seven years now, competitively.

That's 300.

(Patricia) I went to the Olympia, which is the largest bodybuilding show in the world.

And I saw the competitors competing and I just fell in love with their physiques.

So I came home right away and I started to compete.

I was drinking a lot at the time.

Strength training, weight lifting, it saved my life.

When you're in competition prep, you cannot drink, you can't cheat, you can't travel.

So there was a lot of restrictions and I needed to be set in the right direction.

(Kandice) The two competitions that I've been in, they were through the NPC, which is the National Physique Committee.

They were easily some of the hardest things that I've ever been through.

It'll really test somebody's strength and what they're made of, their resilience.

(Tamara) You work so hard in the gym, I was like, I want to do more, I want to pose.

I've worked on biceps, I want to show them.

So I went into physique and learned all the poses.

And I just got hooked on that.

So I did that for several years, and NPC.

My partner, he said, "hey, let's do powerlifting.

It's different.

You know, you're short.

You're muscular.

It's a good sport for you, let's try it."

And I've been very successful with powerlifting.

And I'm rank number one in the world of all time in my division.

And so right now, that's what I'm doing.

I'm training for the next Powerlifting Nationals coming up in October.

(Patricia) I went to Pittsburgh, the Masters National.

And I placed fifth on the national level.

So that's really hard to do because you're competing against the best in the whole country, actually, the whole world.

So there's only five trophies.

And I've got fifth.

And there was probably about 20 in my class.

My workouts were every day, probably like five hours a day.

So it was workouts plus double cardio.

When you get to that level and you're just committed, the discipline has to be there.

(Tamara) Powerlifting training is different than bodybuilding training.

♪ ENERGETIC MUSIC You're always gonna wanna do strength lifts.

Those would be your deadlift, your squat, your bench press.

So I'm always making sure I'm hitting that, I'm going heavy.

And women need to go heavy.

You need to really push the limits on that to build muscle.

I'm making sure I'm getting my proteins, my carbs, so I'm strong, my muscles are full.

You get to the point, you can smell food and you wake up, you smell bread, you know, you dream about what you're gonna be eating.

Usually that's the first thing you ask, where are you going after the competition?

It's either usually an IHOP, pizza, or burgers and fries.

The hardest part through all of my preps was, you kind of feel cut off from like your social life.

You're not going out to eat or going out to drink with all your friends.

If you're taking it seriously, there's very little time for like a big social life.

And I think that that was something that impacted me.

(Patricia) Say I went to like a party, like a birthday party, so I'd have to take my meals with me, warm it up, and people thought I was crazy.

I have a Hispanic family.

Eating is a big part of gathering.

They would get upset with me because I wasn't eating with them.

(Kandice) A lot of the reasons that women are getting into bodybuilding is because it's been debunked that women get bulky, and I think that many women are just seeing how we feel it.

It's something empowering.

Being a woman, strength training, like you do face a lot of criticism because everybody wants to say something like, "Either you're too skinny or your shoulders are too big or your legs are going to get too big."

(Patricia) Back in Arnold's day, it was mostly for men.

And it just wasn't feminine to body build or to be in the weight room with men.

If I had a bicep, you know, that just wasn't feminine.

And I would get harassed.

(Tamara) And you just get used to it.

You have to have thick skin in the sport.

And usually what I find the people who are going to critique it, who are doing it, if you look at their profiles or the people that are sitting there with their Cheetos and their beer and have never been in a gym in their life, "oh, it's because of drugs" or "oh, it's because of this" or "you want to be a man."

No, I want to achieve something.

I want to prove to myself I can do something.

I do it for me.

I don't do it for you.

I can put on a cocktail dress like anybody else.

And I want people coming up saying, "gee, how do I have arms like that?"

(Kandice) If I'm training a guy client and I'm like, "Oh, here, do this weight."

And he's like, "Oh my God."

I'm like, "Oh, I thought that was lightweight."

(Tamara) Lift.

Everybody.

I don't care what age.

Come in at 70 years old and start lifting.

It will, you know, it will make your life longer and more functional.

You'll be able to get off the couch when you get older.

The person who said, "Well, I'm 50 years old now.

I can't lift."

Absolutely can.

(Kandice) It's very intimidating at first, but then it just becomes very empowering, like knowing that you're doing something for yourself every day, and nobody can take it away from you.

[ METAL CLANGING ] We're joining you today from a true oasis in the heart of the city, the Tucson Botanical Gardens.

You know, it's more than a peaceful retreat.

This is where art and nature and culture all come together.

Born of Bernice Porter's vision, you can wander and learn and be inspired just as these gardens celebrate their 50th anniversary.

♪ SOFT PIANO (Adam) This is one of the few places in town with this much shade, this verdant canopy.

The easiest way to describe my job is I'm in charge of the plants and keeping them happy and healthy.

One of the things that sets us apart from a lot of our sister gardens is that we are an organic based botanical garden.

So we do not use any petrochemicals.

We do our best to not use pesticides.

We try to keep as much of a balanced ecosystem as we can.

(Michelle) The mission of the gardens is to connect people with plants and nature through art, science, history, and culture.

I started at the gardens back in 2002, when the gardens only had about 700 members and a staff of about 15.

Today we're at about 6,200 households.

In fact, I remember back in the old days, their horticultural budget was about $700 a year.

We're happy to celebrate this year, our 50th anniversary.

What we're celebrating is the day that the city of Tucson turned over the deed of the property to the organization, the Tucson Botanical Gardens.

But the story of the founding of the Garden started many years before that with Harrison Yocum who started the club, the Tucson Botanical Garden Club, and then the Porter family whose property we're sitting on.

In 1939, Bernice and Rutger Porter built this little house on this property.

Mr.

Porter was one of Tucson's first nursery owners.

And so many of the trees that you see in Tucson were planted by Rutger Porter.

Bernice was a naturalist.

She studied biology.

So it was a marriage kind of made in heaven.

♪ AIRY AMBIENCE Mr.

Porter had passed away and Mrs.

Porter had always dreamed of the garden being a botanical garden for the public.

Half of this garden is really historical and we keep it that way.

But there's also a beautiful herb garden.

Of course, we have our Cox Butterfly and Orchid Pavilion; the cactus and succulent garden; the most beloved garden is our barrio garden.

It's a typical Mexican backyard garden.

We also have a zen garden.

In May of 2024, the gardens open the Great Garden Express Railroad.

And then we have a little sensory ramadas that really give you little pockets.

It just gives you a real sense of immersion into that space.

We also house four galleries with rotating exhibits.

We have a cafe on site.

(Adam) This is our new Frida's garden.

At the time she was creating her famous garden in Casa Azul, formal plantings were usually plants from Europe and not from Mexico particularly, or even the Americas, in general.

So, she collected some plants from South America and Mexico for her space, and so that's what we've— that's what we've done in that space as well.

The first traveling exhibit called "Nature Connects," it was a Lego exhibit.

That was totally transformed— the gardens with a thousand new members, bringing in people who had typically never thought about entering a botanical garden.

And I've always said that that's a bit of our job, you know, It's very easy to attract naturalists and gardeners to a garden.

But how do we get those people that are not naturalists and are not horticulturalists or are not gardeners to become passionate about gardens and about nature, specifically?

(Michael) We're in the Butterfly Magic exhibit.

This is the only and first tropical butterfly exhibit in Southern Arizona.

We've been here since 2004, so this is our 21st year.

We house over our season about 300 to 400 butterflies at any given time; they're all from the tropics, So Costa Rica, Malaysia, different parts of Southern Africa.

The other thing that we do is try and educate people about conservation and get people interested in essentially how these species should be protected in their native habitats.

The people that we purchase from are essentially putting that money back into communities and also into conservation efforts.

♪ UPLIFTING GUITAR (John) Well, we're in an old janitor's closet that's been converted to our train repair room.

The weather here has been very harsh on our trains.

We've burned out a number of engines over the summer.

I was always good with my hands, so I was a trauma surgeon, very unrelated.

(Katie) If you're here exploring the Botanical Gardens, and you see a butterfly or a bird, or a lizard, that fascinates you, and you want to learn more, we will likely have the programming that can help you discover more about anything that your eyes can see here at the gardens.

♪ MELLOW PIANO (Laura) One of the programs that we do here is Garden Story Time.

It's geared for preschool kids, but all ages are welcome.

We have a volunteer who is a professional puppeteer.

So we have puppets to help us tell the stories.

(Phillipa) I work with a range of different populations.

The one common theme amongst those populations is that they have some type of therapeutic need, whether that is recovering from an illness, or coping with a new life circumstance, or dealing with a lifelong disability.

I work with those populations to accomplish goals that improve their quality of life and overall level of independence in a garden setting.

So, we're planting; we're harvesting; we're cooking the food.

They're growing plants from seed all the way to maturity.

And in the process of doing all those activities, they're working on enhancing their fine and gross motor skills, boosting their ability to communicate, increasing their self-confidence.

This has been going on since the 80s, and it's been passed along to various horticultural therapists over the years.

And so, I, luckily, got this position.

(Adam) We're five and a half acres, but we feel so much bigger than that because you come into 20 plus different spaces while you're in this garden.

(Michelle) You can always tell the story of plants in a broader, deeper sense by connecting it to other things in the world.

[birds chirping] Well, joining us now is the president and CEO of Botanical Gardens, Michelle Conklin.

Good to see you again.

It's good to see you, Tom.

Thanks for having us back on a special occasion with a lot of cool things going on.

First off, what does 50 feel like, 50th anniversary of this great place?

It's pretty amazing.

I mean, I think about a lot of times the family who started this garden and that small group of members who probably never would have imagined it could cultivate into something as large as this.

(Tom) The Porters, whose land this was not so many years ago.

Now, a lot of what you're doing to mark the 50th anniversary is a nod to Frida Kahlo, who was beloved in Tucson.

Tell us about that.

Oh, well, it's really wonderful.

You must remember back in 2016, we hosted the first Frida Kahlo exhibit from the New York Botanic Garden.

And then life has a funny way of coming back around to you.

And we received a call from the Naples Botanical Garden to acquire the exhibit that was first originated in San Antonio.

And we, of course, said yes.

And we thought, what a wonderful way to celebrate 50 years by opening a brand-new garden and have it be in Tucson permanently.

(Tom) There are a lot of special elements that go into this garden, plants, walls, fixtures and all.

Tell us about the process of putting it all together.

Right, we did not want to recreate Casa Azul in Mexico City.

We want to create the spirit.

So you'll see plants that are all native to Arizona.

The walls, the pyramid, the iconic Frida in Diego lived here.

Well, all of those elements are very, do give it a bit of authenticity.

The Kahlo exhibit is new, so you haven't had a lot of reaction yet, but just to the 50th and the vibe in here now after all these years.

Everyone, you can really feel the appreciation for what a public garden can bring to a city and a community.

So we're feeling that and people are excited about Frida Kahlo.

Someday there's gonna be a 100th anniversary of Tucson Botanical Gardens.

And we'd like to come back in 50 years.

Yeah, I'd love to be there, right?

And celebrate with you.

What do you think it's going to look like?

Well, I do see the future for the garden as many of our members and board members do.

I see it doubling in size on property.

I see a children and family garden that's two, at least two acres.

I see a dedicated youth education facility just for children because children will learn to protect the things that they love.

Well, we hope everyone in town gets down here and out of town gets down here for the 50th this year.

A lot of great things planned.

I'll see you again February 21st.

It's a Saturday.

You're bringing back all the former directors of Tucson Botanical Gardens for a very special event and we're all looking forward to it.

So thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Next, in our ongoing collaboration with the Poetry Center, Estella Gonzalez reads "Everybody Dance," which reimagines disco as more than music, but as joy, healing and resistance.

She calls out patriarchy and predators and spins a world where girls dance freely, families heal and culture shines.

Disco's back.

Never sucked.

Unlike patriarchy and pedos, both far too deep into ripped slits of plastic covered hells.

♪ UPBEAT MUSIC Now, when summer comes, night breezes ride on funky grooves and baselines into bedrooms.

Windows open.

Doors unlocked.

Quinceañeras and Sweet Sixteens are the stuff of cautionary tales.

always set far, far away on Epsteinlandia, mythical island of predators.

Instead, family healing sessions, curanderizmos, are the order of the day, followed by pachangas with two turntables and a mic.

On weeknights, first-gen daughters strut to college libraries, funk blasting through headphones.

A cucuy between buildings, a flasher among library stacks, vanish.

Date rapes, slut-shaming, burn baby burn.

No more unwanted close encounters.

No need for keys thrust between fingers like Wolverine.

Tonight, Wonder Women hustle in peace, while gentlemen jive for joy.

Saturday night fevers mean mamas and tias wish daughters and nieces Feliz dancing.

Leisure-suited devils languish in dreary infernos, while parents dream deep.

Their children in satin jumpsuits skate to Donna Summer.

Polyurethane wheels leveling life under a mirrored ball.

Sparkling strength, paradise gained, misogyny gone in this boogie wonderland.

Back in 1974, a pair of hikers went looking for a cave in the Wetstone Mountains and found it, but they kept it a secret until the 80s.

That place has now become one of the most popular tourist attractions in Southern Arizona.

Here's the story of the secret cave from our recently digitized archives.

(Peggy) It's an underground wonderland, a fantasy world of brilliant color and startling formations.

Truly pictures speak louder than words.

It is estimated that the cave is two to three million years old.

The man who discovered the cavern, Randy Tufts, says it is pristine, like the surface of the moon.

98% of it has never been touched by man, and the plan is for it to stay that way.

Caverns are protected from the elements when rain and temperature changes.

They are fragile ecosystems which change gradually over thousands of years.

Tufts says the first footprints in the cave, made by him 14 years ago, are still there.

Since 1974, the cave has been one of the best-kept secrets around.

The men who discovered and first explored it were not only expert spelunkers, they were also secret keepers of the First Order.

(Randy) We didn't believe it.

We didn't believe it at all.

I mean, we'd been hunting for so many years and had never found anything up to that time.

It was something that took a while to sink in.

I'd call it the Oak Creek Canyon of caves.

It's probably about the same size in some respects.

It's a very colorful and a gem.

Unless you're going to implement something like state parks, the way to protect it is through secrecy.

And it was pretty easy to just not talk about it.

But now the secret is out.

The existence of the cave has been announced.

The caverns are located in the Wetstone Mountains, just a few miles outside of the community of Benson.

The exact location has not been disclosed for fear of vandalism, even though there is a guard watching the entrance 24 hours a day.

The caverns are destined to become a major tourist attraction, and there is no question that they will dramatically impact the community of Benson.

The question is how Benson will deal with its economic good fortune while at the same time guarding the integrity of the caves.

It's obviously going to change from one of moderate tourism to one that is focused on tourism.

A lot of excitement, and everybody is just tremendously interested, curious, and fascinated that it's been here for so long and that nobody's known about it.

The concern over vandalism is real.

Evidence of that can be easily found in other caves.

Ken Travis is director of state parks.

People want to take a stalactite home with them?

And they'll crumble after some time because the stalactites and stalagmites are kept the way they are by the moisture.

So if they take them out, eventually they crumble and you've lost them anyway.

Dick Ferdon is assigned to guard the cave.

Just trying to protect it.

It's too valuable resource to have it vandalized.

But being the guard does not necessarily mean a trip inside the cave, not yet anyway.

My turn's coming.

Part of the cave reached members of the state legislature, and the result was the passage of Senate Bill 1188.

The bill creates a land acquisition fund from state park user fees.

The first purchase would be Kartchner Caverns.

The Arizona Nature Conservancy has negotiated an option to buy the property for $1.6 million, then to hold the 550 acres until there is enough money in the acquisition fund for the state to buy it back.

There is of course a lot of work that must be done before the caverns can be accessible to the public.

The current opening into the cave has been enlarged from its original size.

But it is still extremely small, at least to those of us who are not accustomed to what it takes to get into underground caverns.

There's no what we call one-eyed crawls through water passage where you have to tilt your head sideways to be able to breathe.

I mean, there's none of that.

It's a fairly accessible cave.

The next year and a half in particular, we're going to be studying the climate of the cave, the environment of the cave, because we have to preserve that.

That's what indeed keeps the cave living as we know it.

And we have to make sure that we go in surgically, that we don't go in in such a way that we kill the patient as it were.

We need to study it and make sure we do it right.

Aside from the obvious economic opportunity presented by the caverns to the surrounding area, there will also be excellent educational opportunities.

The first to benefit from these will be the schoolchildren in St.

David.

I kept this thing secret for so long.

It's kind of amazing to be in a room with 300 people in it.

I'm talking about it.

It's a real shift for us.

The discoverers met with students at St.

David High School this morning to talk about the cave and answer questions.

There's like bacon stalagmites.

How do those form?

There will be a little crack where water will drip, a little drip of water that's sort of dribbling down the ceiling, deposits a little bit of calcite and it does that for thousands and thousands of years, depositing little bits along the curve of the ceiling and out grows what we call a bacon formation.

It's usually about a quarter of an inch thick.

Through mineralization on the surface you'll get banding colors and then when you backlight it because it's so thin it's translucent and it looks like bacon.

Kartchner Caverns is named for the family on whose land the cave is located.

It is a large family.

Rex Kartchner is just one of a dozen children raised by the late Jake Kartchner.

Rex is now a teacher at the St.

David High School at which his father was a one-time superintendent.

Soon the cave will belong to the state and in a special way to those whose lives will be most impacted by it.

For Arizona Illustrated, I'm Peggy Giddings.

Thank you for joining us for Arizona Illustrated from here at the beautiful Tucson Botanical Gardens and Frida's Garden.

I'm Tom McNamara.

We'll see you again next week.