The trip to Glenwood/St. Johns was motivated by a book I read called "Otero Mesa" by Gregory McNamee, Stephen Strom, Stephen Capra, and Bill Richardson. This book was written to try to save a broad area of New Mexico from intensive oil and gas production. As an environmentalist, I find books of this sort, heavily illustrated with photographs, right up my alley as far as my passion for the natural world and photography. I can only hope someday to make photographs that will help save that natural world from destruction. I've always been interested in the grasslands east of Mule Creek, AZ which is on the way to Glenwood so I drove that way to see if I could find a photo. The best photo I make in that area is this one or a lonely tree:
On that same trip I went the mud hills north of St. Johns. I've driven through that area at least once a year for the past 25 years on my way up to visit my brother in Grants, NM. I've always thought about stopping there but when traveling I'm usually there around noon and I prefer photographing either in the evening or early morning. This time I camped in the area and so I was there for sunrise. The mud hills have interesting patterns and pebbles weather out on the surface near the bases of the hills. This is one of the photos I took in that area:
This last weekend, I drove up to the top of Mt. Graham to see if there might be any interesting meadow shots in the old forest fire area. I didn't really get into the forest fire area on this trip but I did take a few photos. I really enjoyed the cool mountain air up there and the smell of pine and fir forests is wonderful. I did find quite a few people camping and making large fires and running generators, and etc. I go to the mountains to enjoy them, listen to the birds sing, drink in the peacefulness, I don't like noisy drunken campers, I try to avoid them.
I've always wanted to take a good photograph of the corn flowers/lilly that are found at these higher elevations (over nine thousand feet in this case) so I shot some in a campground after a rain storm and I like this one.
As ever, click on the photo to see a larger size image.
