2011/2013
New Mexico’s Bosque del Apache (Spanish for Woods of the Apache) is located 90 miles south of Albuquerque, along the Rio Grande. In 1939, this tiny high desert wetland National Wildlife Refuge was created to protect the endangered Sandhill Cranes heading down the continent ahead of winter in November, as well as on their return North in February and March for breeding season.
Bosque de Apache has been expanded considerably over the last 80 years, and now serves as a migratory layover for hundreds of thousands of snow geese, 10,000-15,000 Sand Hill Cranes, plus a wide assortment of other migratory fowl.
Each November Bosque del Apache celebrates the ‘Return of the the Sandhills.’
2013
Returning to New Mexico and the splendid variation of topography along its eastern edge, offering spectacular views of its high desert scenery.
North of Santa Fe, 70 miles along the east side of the Rio Grande, lies the western base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. With a year-round population of nearly 6,000, Taos’ population expands considerably during the winter, as the excellent skiing in Taos is often compared to Jackson Hole.
Taos sits on the eastern edge of the Taos plateau at an elevation of 7,000′, while the mountains further west above Taos soar to 11,000–12,000′.
2017
The biggest draw in Southern Croatia is the extraordinary walled city of Dubrovnik, with a remarkable history stretching back well over 1,000 years. Walls up to 80′ high, complete with fortresses and towers, with an ancient footpath along the 2 mile-long wall encircling the stone-built, red-roofed city, offer incredible views of the clearest blue-green waters of the Adriatic. The streets are paved with time-polished pale marble.
The town’s harmony owes much to the 17th century rebuilding program following the Great Earthquake in 1667.
2017
The Adriatic Sea, roughly 100 miles wide, begins at the Mediterranean Sea and runs northwest about 800 miles to where Italy, Slovenia and Croatia come together at its northern terminus, while The Adriatic Sea separates Italy from the eastern Balkan Peninsula for its entire length.
Along the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea, the eastern Balkan Peninsula (North-to-South), includes Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece. Beginning at Croatia’s north end, the Dalmatian Coast extends south-southeast.
The Dalmation Coast’s high limestone elevations offer wonderful views of its own coast line, its many just off-shore islands, tropical Mediterranean weather and sea, as well as occasional glimpses of Italy’s distant coast.
2018
As the temperature drops above 8,000′ elevation in early autumn, the aspen’s leaves commence turning — initially from green to bright yellow, through various hues of gold and lastly to surprising shades of orange — while the tall, slender and graceful trunks subtly shift from white to taupe.
Just north of Santa Fe, along the western edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain Range among Santa Fe Mountain’s extensive aspen stands, most of the groves begin their turn dramatically at the same time. Others change at a different pace, depending on their particular exposure to sun and wind.
These out-of-sync aspen turns are invariably more muted, with the leaves’ change often blending closely with their trunks — creating quiet, blended tapestries that are contrasted against nearby evergreens.
Overlaying these quiet forest tapestries with minimal camera strokes enables me to achieve the antidote to my lifetime preoccupation to control time. It’s no accident that my landscapes convey the serenity I have always sought in my own life…
2013
From about 10,000 feet elevation on Santa Fe Mountain — Santa Fe’s ski mountain — where the ski lifts rise to 13,200′ – views toward the South and Southwest offer classic New Mexico mountainous landscape under New Mexico’s equally spectacular, colorful skies.
I moved from the eastern shore of Maryland 15 years ago to place myself at the eastern edge of the amazing landscape throughout America’s west – as have so many artists of all kinds who have moved here over the last 100 years.
Never have I tired of the amazing visual access to nature’s unending western beauty.
I captured this group of pictures one evening while showing the view to out-of-town friends. I spent about an hour capturing some 20 images, from which these five best reflect my 40 year+ compulsion to overlay my images with some sense of the ever-fleeting passage of time.
2012
Fifty miles north of Albuquerque, just north of the junction of U.S. #550 & NM #4, begins the Southern end of the Jemez Mountain Range, which roughly parallels the North-South Sangre de Cristo Mountains 20 miles further east.
Between these mountain ranges lies the Río Grande Rift, into which all surrounding runoff flows, creating the Rio Grande River that originates in the San Juan Mountains in southern Colorado and flows all the way south across the Mexican border.
The small town of San Ysidro is situated at the southern end of the Jemez Mountains, where the Jemez river flows south from the Valles Caldera, joining the Río Grande about half-way to Albuquerque.
San Ysidro is the intersection of four significant geologic features: the Colorado Plateau to the west, the 75 million-year-old Sierra Nacimiento uplift to the north, the Río Grande rift to the east, and the northeast-trending Sierra Jemez lineament, characterized by its young volcanism cutting across all three geologic provinces. The 15 million-year-old Jemez volcanic field is visible to the northeast; the 2 to 3 million-year-old Cabezon Peak is located just to the west. 3.3 million-year-old Mt. Taylor can be seen on the skyline to the west. The surrounding hills are covered with sedimentary red to green siltstones and mudstones, similar to the Painted Desert’s petrified forest Chinle group, deposited on the floodplain of a large west-to-northwest river system some 210 million years ago.
In addition to the red and green stone from the petrified forest, San Ysidro has numerous interesting anticlines and synclines — reflecting the movement of earth structures formed by geological folding.
2018
The Zuni Mountain Range — approximately 60 miles long by 40 miles wide — is situated in western New Mexico just south of I-40 between Gallup and Grants, about 85 miles west of ABQ, within the Cibola National Forest. The highest point in the Zuni Mountains is 9,256′ Mount Sedgewick, with elevations within the range going down to 6,400′.
The Zuni Mountains are surrounded by the Zuni Indian Reservation, the Ramah Navajo Indian Reservation, and El Morro National Monument to the southwest, El Malpais National Monument to the southwest
The Zuni Mountains are part of the ancestral Rocky Mountains from the Pennsylvania epoch, sit on the Continental Divide, and form the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau.
2011
Within the Sangre de Christo mountain range, 25 miles north of Santa Fe, are situated the Truchas Peaks (Spanish for “trout”). This range of four summits include the 13,102′ South Truchas Peak – the second highest peak in New Mexico – and the 13,024′ North Truchas Peak.
The birth of the Sangre de Cristos Mountains — the southernmost subrange of the Rockies — occurred 80 million years ago as the Farrallon Plate slid under the North American Plate at such a shallow angle that it formed a wider belt of north-south mountains, resulting in a broader region of lower mountains farther inland.
During the succeeding 60 million years, erosion stripped away the high rocks to reveal the ancestral rocks beneath that have since been eroded by water and glaciers, sculpting the mountains into more dramatic peaks and valleys.
Shooting east during late afternoon light, while simultaneously stroking my camera south, enabled me to intensify the texture of these north-south trending subranges of the Truchas Peaks
The fourth and final set of Truchas Peaks images, each resulting once again from single exposure camera pans, as I blend the varying textures with the constantly changing light.
2011
These six images complete my attempt to visually convey the 200 million year passage of time when Ghost Ranch’s oldest exposed rock became part of a collection of varicolored siltstone, mudstone and sandstone deposited by rivers.
2016
West of San Miguel de Allende, the Laja River rises in the Sierra Madre at about 6,000′ elevation, arches east and then south through the central plateau, past San Miguel de Allende, where it flows into the Lerma River.
Looking east 15 miles to San Miguel across Presa Allende Lake — created by the Ignacio Allende Dam to control Laja River flooding — offers a wonderful sense of Mexico’s central plateau high desert landscape.
2016
Fifteen miles west of San Miguel de Allende, situated on a small mesa surrounded by canyons, the Canada de La Virgen Pyramid was occupied between 500 and 1000 a.d. by the Otomi people, one of the many indigenous ethnic groups of the Middle American Indian population that inhabited the central plateau region of central Mexico.
The House of the Thirteen Heavens — which served as a horizon clock, an observatory, and a burial ground for the elite — was in perfect alignment with the sun, the moon, and all but one of the planets in our solar system at sunset during the Otomi New Year’s Eve, March 4, 2011, while the missing planet, Saturn, was situated precisely 180 degrees from the setting sun, just at the visual beginning of the ritual causeway to the site.
The interplay of the pyramid’s various-sized wall stones reflects the meticulous layout and care of the construction of this pyramid complex begun more than 1,000 years ago.
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2014
From northern NM high country to South Carolina tidal lowlands amounts to an 8,000’ transformation in elevation.
Water, water and more water, as the tidewater fishing fleet courses amongst the lowlands, always followed by wonderful skimming pelicans…
2015
Back home from China in Santa Fe; several weeks later I drove east across the high plains of Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle before heading south to Ft. Worth to see friends. En route, I stopped to have a look at Palo Duro Canyon, situated just south of Amarillo, that claims to be the second largest canyon in the U.S. Typical spring weather — wind and furious thunderstorms across Texas’ high plains — did not disappoint.
Early Spanish Explorers discovered the area and named the canyon “Palo Duro,” Spanish for “hardwood” due to the abundant mesquite and juniper trees. Palo Duro Canyon’s elevation at its rim is 3,500 feet; it is 120 miles long, 20 miles wide, and 800 feet deep, compared to the Grand Canyon — the largest in the U.S. — which is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide, and 6,000 ft deep.
Palo Duro Canyon State Park comprises 30,000 acres at the north end of the canyon. Water erosion from the Red River deepens the canyon as it moves sediment downstream, while wind and water erosion gradually widen the canyon.
Humans have resided in the canyon for approximately 12,000 years. Nomadic tribes hunted mammoth, giant bison, and other large game. Later, Apache Indians lived in the canyon, but were soon replaced by Comanche and Kiowa tribes, who resided in the area until 1874 when Colonel Ranald Mackenzie was sent into the area to transport them to a newly appointed reservation in Oklahoma.
In 1876, Charles Goodnight entered the canyon and opened the JA Ranch, which at its peak, supported more than 100,000 head of cattle.
2014
Abiquiu Lake is a reservoir located in Rio Arriba County 60 miles north of Santa Fe.
The Rio Chama was damned in 1963 to create the 5,200 acre Abiquiu Lake, which is more than 12 miles long at an elevation of 6,100 feet.
From the bluffs along the southern side of the lake, the views north of the red cliffs that frame Ghost Ranch are just beautiful. Behind (south of) the lake is the very distinctive 9,862′ mountain, Cerro Pedernal.
2014
As snow continually falls, but rarely melts in Antarctica, the weight of its ice sheets constantly increases, while the weight of the air bubbles in the ice are squeezed out and the ice crystals enlarge, making the ice appear blue. Along the coasts, the glaciers/ice shelves slowly crack off, calving as icebergs; due to their displacement, about 90% of all icebergs are actually below the ocean’s surface.
Small amounts of new ice appear to be white because they contain plenty of air bubbles, while small quantities of water appear to be colorless. But as ice continues to form, the pressure of the added weight squeezes out the air bubbles, increasing the ice’s density. And just as large quantities of water appear to be blue, since they absorb other colors more efficiently than blue, a large piece of compressed ice – a glacier – can also appear blue.
Until recently the Antarctic Ice Sheet had been considered to be fairly stable in how it retreated. A recent study by Peter Clark, a climate scientist at Oregon State University, concludes however, that “New evidence shows that the ice sheet is much more dynamic and episodic, and contributes to rapid sea-level rise.” Published in the journal Nature, his study includes measurements at Antarctica’s largest glaciers – Thwaites and Pine Island – proving that during a warming trend which occurred 14,600 years ago – these ice sheets launched enough icebergs into the ocean that the sea level rose 6.5 feet in just 100 years. This evidence of dramatic melting in Antarctica’s past supports predictions for its future: that so many of Antarctica’s melting glaciers are now on the brink of a similar massive retreat.
Icebergs are fascinating, as they can be as big as mountains, or islands, or as small as very small chunks of ice, of any shape, and having any texture; and they can range from very blue to quite white, depending on the sunlight or lack of it; and the nearly 90% that is underwater can either be somewhat visible, or not visible at all.
So often in nature, when concentrating on one scene or object – such as a mountain, or a cloud, or an iceberg, it is fascinating how often one can see in one’s own mind – recognizable shapes – pareidolias – if you will: Dancing, Passing by, Two Critters, Penguin in Repose…
2014
A year and a half ago, I spent two weeks along Antarctica’s northwest coast.
Flying to Buenos Aires and further south to Ushuaia, the ‘southernmost city in the world’ (Latitude 55 degrees S) which sits on the north bank of the Beagle Channel, the interior passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Named for Darwin’s ship that sailed this passage in 1831, the Beagle Channel separates Argentina’s very southern tip, the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, from Chile’s islands to the south.
Upon exiting the eastern end of Beagle Channel beyond Picton Island, Chile — a passage can then be set to cross the famed and feared 500 mile wide Drake Passage that separates South America from the ‘ice continent’.
Along the north side of Beagle Channel are lovely snow-covered mountains descending down to the water’s edge. Although this passage provides an inland route across Cape Horn, it is too narrow for sizeable ships to navigate its notoriously harsh and unpredictable weather.
2013
As the last light falls on the bosque’s marsh grasses, the range of red-browns gradually fades against the Chupadera Mountains, leaving hardly any visible contrast with the tens of thousands of snow geese and sandhills that have now settled in, quieting with only occasional chatter.
Nearby grasses bordering a canal contrast ever more softly against the flowing water in the marshes. And then it becomes so quiet, no one would believe that only a few hundred yards away a vast carpet of migratory fowl await daybreak’s signal to once again awake, rise and fly out to the fields to feed.
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2013
Tens of thousands of snow geese and as many as 15,000 sandhill cranes begin arriving mid-November to rest and refuel from their long southern migration flights. Most will stay until the end of January, spending each night safe from predators in 2-to-3 feet of marsh water. At dawn, the snow geese begin stirring; soon their honking and flapping of wings raises to such a din, flock after flock lift off, ‛flying out’ to the surrounding fields to feed. As the sun sets, they return to the wetlands for the night.
This time of year thousands of people are drawn to Bosque Apache to witness this twice daily incredible ‛sight, sound, and motion’ show, which is further enhanced by the low-angled winter sun as the birds circle against the 7,000′ Chupadera Mountains.
2013
Twelve years ago I moved from Maryland’s very flat, eastern shore to Santa Fe to live amongst beautiful mountains bathed by incredible high desert light. Yet I still can’t quite believe the anomaly that is the 4,500′ Bosque del Apache wetlands preserve.
The wetlands’ color and texture magically blend against the Chupadera mountains’ 7,000′ east face during the sun’s morning ascent.
