Photographs
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Cottonwoods and mesquite trees in the Rio Grande Bosque blaze with color every October and into
November, changing from green to gold to golden
brown as chlorophyll drains from their leaves with
dropping temperatures. It's a fleeting window of
brilliant color before leaves turn to dull brown and
fall to the ground. It's exhilarating to witness the
Bosque change from half green and half gold to
gold to golden brown over the course of a couple
weeks, a change that passes too quickly for me.
Beautiful sunsets don't always come in brilliant and
showy red and orange colors. This photograph taken
just after sunset evokes a serene and peaceful
feeling for me with some orange on the horizon and
dark blue-gray clouds and wispy white cirrus clouds
in the center, bracketed by darkening blue sky above
and the shadowed foothills below. It's a photo I just
want to keep looking at, so I put it on my computer
as my desktop background.
Late December cottonwood forest north of Alameda
Road in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque. In the last
stage of autumn color cottonwood leaves turn brown
and when backlit in light from a lowering sun they
take on a golden brown color that shows up nicely
against a deep blue sky. The tree trunk on the left
blocked the sun to let the color of the trees and sky
come through.
An arch in Canyonlands National Park's Needles
District called Druid Arch. I'm not aware of any source that tells the origin of the name, but I'm guessing that it reminded someone vaguely of Stonehenge, with the top looking like it's sitting
on three pillars, even if they look like they're three
sheets to the wind. To reach it, hike to the end of
Elephant Canyon and then up a short, steep climb
out of the canyon to the bench above, where you
get this view.
This looks like a creek but it's actually a section of the
drainage ditch along the levee on the east side of the
Rio Grande north of Alameda Road, in Los Ranchos de
Albuquerque on a winter afternoon. It looks like there
may be a submerged tree limb underwater that is
catching debris that floats down from the right. I like the
brilliant blue sky and other colors reflected in the water
and the graceful curve of the jam of debris.
Photograph of a small ruin in Kane Gulch, a tributary
of Grand Gulch in the Grand Gulch Primitive Area of
southeast Utah. I like the sweeping curve of the ledge
leading out to it. It could be just a granary, but there's
a remnant of a wall in front of it, and my guess is it
could have been a defensive structure for a family or
a very small band. Its position along a narrowing ledge
that ran out shortly behind the ruin would have made it
very easy to defend from behind the wall, which was probably higher and came out farther. Any attackers
would have been extremely vulnerable with no cover.
