Photographs
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After 31 years hiking the trails of the Sandia Mountains and Manzano Mountains I can still come across plants
and flowers I haven't seen before. I photographed this
plant identified on [email protected] as myrtle spurge along a trail above Pine Flats in the Manzanita Mountains
southeast of Albuquerque. I like its sculptured shape
and the contrasting blue-green leaves with the yellow-
green new leaves
Setting sun looking through a solitary juniper in a meadow
in the Sandia foothills in September, 2025. The foothills
alternate between grassy meadows and juniper forest with
the occasional pinyon tree until you get to the base of the
mountains where pinyons predominate. Pinyon trees are
small pines that have tasty and nutritious nuts harvested
every year by local people, for themselves and often sold
in grocery stores. To the right of the picture in the distance
you can get a sense of how dense the juniper forest can be
in certain areas in the foothills. I love hiking in the juniper
forest where it goes in and out of arroyos with occasional
meadows, with a lot of interesting rocks -- granite, quartz,
sandstone, and chert of varied colors.
A view of Sandia Peak and Trail 365 north of the Cottonwood Springs
trailhead in the Elena Gallegos Open Space Area. Trail 365 runs all the
way from I-40 to the Sandia Tramway, a distance of what must be about
20 miles. This 2.5-mile section runs through a dense juniper forest until it
gets beyond Domingo Baca Canyon, where it goes to the tram through
what can only be described as a cholla forest. It's a rocky stretch with lots
of small granite, quartz, and chert boulders. I had no idea there were so
many different colors of granite until I hiked here. Domingo Baca Canyon is a fairly deep canyon with nice scenic viewpoints at the top on both sides.
Remember days like this? This is a photograph from several miles
up La Luz Trail in deep snow taken in 2005. It seems like scenes
like this will be a thing of the past, given the recent long stretch of
high temps in the mid- 50s and mid-60s lasting into the third week
of December. It's been a long time since we've had anything like
this on the west side of the Sandias, or anything more than 2 or 3
inches in the foothills. But I remember this day hiking through
about 12 inches on La Luz. It was quite exciting.
I don't have much of the child's excitement at Christmas
left at my age, but I still enjoy seeing what people do with
Christmas lights every year. I marvel at the work, as well
as the artistry, that some people put into it. I noticed some
particularly striking lights some ways off the road to the
foothills where I hike as I retuned from a hike I finished
just after sundown, so I went back up after dark. I drove
back in the neighborhood, and this was the best I found.
It was delightful, and imaginative and creative enough to
be worthy of being called art. It reminds me a little of
what landscape artist Christo did, on a much smaller scale.
