Desert Menagerie
Butler Wash, Utah
2022
So many different symbols, I can’t begin to even make up a coherent story about them all, or imagine the lives of the people who made them. Well, except for the bullet holes, I can very much imagine stories about the people who made them. I won’t bore you with impolite details; let’s just say they obviously did not live very rich inner lives.
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Marking Time
Bluff, Utah
2022
Sundials make use of the fact that the position of shadows throughout the day are a measure of time. But shadow length tells you something too. This image shows, perhaps, a different kind of five o’clock shadow.
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A Moment in the Sun #2
Bluff, Utah
2022
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Cattail Maze
Bluff, Utah
2022
A jumble of last year’s cattail crop makes, I imagine, a great place for birds (such as the red-winged) blackbird to hide out, not to mention other marsh loving critters.
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A Moment in the Sun
Bluff, Utah
2022
A squirrel, just passing through, gets a solar halo.
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Good Cairn
Butler Wash, Utah
2022
Cairns are built for various reasons and have a long history, especially in places such as Scotland dating back to the megalith days. Large cairns also have a long history of being built on mountain summits. Smaller ones along cross country hiking routes, especially over rocky areas are used for navigation. If you’ve ever followed such a route, you know how important they are to prevent getting lost or at least off track. Unfortunately, a recent craze in building cairns just about anywhere someone finds idle time and a pile of rock has led to people getting off route when hiking. Not only that, but they clutter up an otherwise natural view of the surroundings. I’ve built a cairn or two myself, e.g. on a beach, but never in a remote area where they might be confused as a trail marker. In the backcountry, I think cairns are either good, (i.e. marking the trail) or bad (i.e. leading to misdirection and needlessly marring the landscape). If happen across a bad cairn, I typically dismantle it and scatter the rocks.
Live Long and Prosper
Monument Valley, Arizona
2022
It’s always hard to drive through Monument Valley without spending some time there, but that’s what we did on our way home from Tubac in March. About all we did was to stop along the side of the road for lunch and to snap a few quick images. It’s always hard to get interesting landscape images in the harsh light of midday in the desert, but when it’s either that or nothing, one must do what they can with the views at hand.
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A Slow, Subtle War
Gray Mountain, Arizona
2022
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