Photographs
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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 small meadow a few feet away from Trail #365 north of Elena
Gallegos Open Space Area in the foothills with Sandia Peak and
the crest of the Sandia Mountains in the background. I stopped
here to sit on a rock and absorb everything around me for 15 or
20 minutes. It was just a very peaceful and pleasant place to sit for a while. I started hearing the cheep-cheep of a bird a little behind
me and to my right and turned to watch it moving along branches
of a mountain mahogany, seeming to pick things off the branches.
With blue on its crown and a white or light gray breast and darker
gray wings, I looked it up in a book later to learn it was a white-
breasted nuthatch, which hunts insects on tree branches.
My spirit always soars when spring arrives in full force and flowering trees bloom while everything else turns green after a long winter of
bare trees, brown grass and cold. This is a photograph of a Bosque
trail north of Rio Bravo in Albuquerque's South Valley. It's the nicest
section of the Bosque with the densest forest and the tallest trees. It
looks so lush in spring and summer, and it's gorgeous in the fall when
the cottonwoods and mesquite turn gold, so even though it's a long
drive from where I live I get down there pretty often. Whoever had the
idea to preserve the Bosque as undeveloped land along the 25-mile
length of Albuquerque did the city a great service.
Zion National Park in southwestern Utah is one of the most visited
national parks in the country, along with Grand Canyon NP and Yosemite NP. When I went there in September, 2014 the area near
the entrance and visitor center was so jampacked with cars and
people that I decided to leave and go around to the east entrance
of the park to see what that offered. So I missed the canyon with
its monumental 2000-2600 foot walls, but was treated to a very
different experience on the eastern plateau above the canyon. The plateau was full of monumental stone formations on a smaller but
still very impressive scale, with great scenery of its own. One of
the more intriguing views was not of monumental stone slabs but
this view of a slickrock expanse with ponderosas growing out of
the rock, leading toward some cliffs in the distance. Slickrock,
which is not slick, is like the interstate of the wilderness. I love to
hike on it. It would have been nice to explore this scene, but I
didn't know if going offtrail was prohibited in Zion and I was eager
to get through the half-mile tunnel and down the interminable switchbacks to see if there was camping at the east entrance
to Zion Canyon. The canyon leading down to it was awesome in
itself, but I didn't see a campground. It was definitely worth the
drive though. It's a majestic place from the east side as well.
