Greetings from San Cristobal, (Taos), NM. This week, New Mexico Treasures 2025 Engagement Calendar. Again, I’m pleased to have my work in this long-running cultural calendar published by the State of New Mexico Cultural Affairs Department and produced by the Museum of New Mexico Press, which reprinted and distributed my book, Rio Grande del Norte: An Intimate Portrait.
Greetings from San Cristobal, (Taos), NM. This week the super blue moonrise over our foothills, not-so-blue but super all the same. Everything but the moon was blue. I liked the whispy cloud that was later obliterated by the bright moon.
Super Blue Moonrise, northern New Mexico.
Earlier in the week, one of the largest (Western Tiger) Swallowtail Butterflies I’ve seen, landed on the coneflowers, (Ecahinacea) in the garden. About the size of a dessert plate, he was battered and torn up with bits missing. Here’s one in a more pristine condition.
Western Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly.
As always, thanks for looking, and all the kind words of friendship and support. Have a great week. Stay cool if you can. G
Greetings from San Cristobal, NM. This week an almost forgotten sunset moonrise over Taos Mountain from the garden wall. We have many viewpoints around the property depending on the moon’s trajectory. You may recall the many pictures I’ve posted from the deck or driveway. The sky was a firey color in mid-July. The moon crept out from behind the layer of clouds like a timid soul moving through the blushing universe.
Sunset Moonrise with Taos Mountain from San Cristobal, NM.
A little later the crows gather in the old cottonwood tree with their backs toward the prevailing night wind. Sometimes there’s one and usually more, sometimes two ravens, rarely more.
Greetings from San Cristobal (Taos), NM. This week the Rio Grande Gorge in its summer finery and gorgeousness.
My hard drives frequently spin as I search for images to print or supply to art directors and clients. This week was no exception. I came up with a few select photos depicting the gorge that divides the plateau between east and west, with views from the rim and canyon, and the expansive vistas that capture the imagination and stir the soul.
If you miss this view below then you are probably asleep and should wake up or you’re driving at night.
Highway 68 and the Gorge view.
If you prefer to take a detour off the main route you will see the following two locations.
The Rio Grande in Orilla Verde Recreation Area.
As you ascend a steep dirt road you will encounter this grand view looking south. Remember to engage the parking break.
Gorgeous Sky.
A short distance on the climb out of the canyon is the Vista Verde Trail. It will take you on a very pleasant hike through lava boulder fields and rocks adorned with indigenous petroglyph art.
Vista Verde Trail.
… to a bench with an overlook of the Rio Grande.
River view from a nice resting spot.
The west rim trail takes you in a northerly direction on mostly level ground for about 10 miles. You’ll feel the cool breeze as it glances off the canyon walls and catch fabulous 360º sunsets.
West Rim Trail.
Driving the 10 miles, if preferred, will bring you to the high bridge where US Highway 64 crosses the Rio Grande Gorge.
Walking across the bridge looking to the north or south you’ll get wonderful views of the river. Looking east toward the mountains is pretty nice too!
Summer light on the gorge bridge. Straight as an arrow to the mountains.
On the same evening from the bridge, this happened.
Lightning over the gorge.
On another occasion a rainbow over the chasm.
Rainbow and storm over the gorge.
There have been many times I’ve traversed the bridge. It shakes a lot especially when semi-trucks cross it hauling full loads of gravel. Don’t let it prevent you from crossing it yourself, but don’t bother with a tripod. I didn’t.
Lastly, one of my favorite and most popular images was taken on a summer evening from the high bridge in 2009. A horizontal crop is on the cover of my book.
Summer evening from the high bridge.
I hope you enjoyed the mini travelog this week. Join me on a photo tour/workshop and I’ll show you around these locations.
Last week I made it to the summit of Gold Hill on my two new feet. 9.8 miles round trip and 3263 elevation gain to 12703′ at the summit. My knees were complaining but I wasn’t. We’ll do Wheeler Peak the highest point in NM (13163′) in a couple of weeks for something a little easier.
As always, thank you for looking. I hope you have a good week. G
Greetings from San Cristobal (Taos), NM. This week on the High Road to Taos in black and white.
This week I had the pleasure of taking my friend Larry on a photo tour on the High Road. Conditions proved to be very conducive for black and white photography. Larry was using a Canon R5 with a 24-105mm lens and I used my Sony a6400 with an 18-135mm lens along with my iPhone.
Larry got some great pictures while I enjoyed a day out in his company, sharing new locations he hadn’t seen on previous trips. He also added a Pygmy Nuthatch to his “life list” of birds, which we spotted in Amole Canyon.
Church at Las Trampas on the High Road to Taos.
The light in northern New Mexico is outstanding and ominous at times.
Shrine near Placitas.
Chapel belfry, Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, Placitas.
Below is the church in Llano de San Juan. It has one of the nicest belfries around, with the big bell exposed and not cloistered behind chicken wire or lattice to keep the pigeons out.
Church belfry in Llano de San Juan, NM.
Grave marker in Las Trampas, photographed by Ansel Adams in the 1940s.
Greetings from San Cristobal, (Taos), NM. This week storms brought fabulous rain to our neck of the woods. The southern end of our rocky mountains looked like the first image on several occasions this week.
The monsoons continue. They began earlier this year. Some systems are specific, pouring on one side of the valleys and plateau while missing other areas entirely, I think the picture below indicates that is the case as a storm drops much-needed rain on the mountains and valleys.
Storms move through the Taos Mountains.
Only two photos this week. I just finished working on the image below from a couple of months ago, taken from my favorite spot on the rim of the Rio Grande Gorge with the river and Ute Mountain. You know the one.
Ute Mountain with the Rio Grande, NM.
As always, thank you for looking and all the wonderful comments and compliments. Have a great week. G
Greetings from San Cristobal, NM. This week a beautiful swallowtail butterfly and the business end of a rainbow across the valley. Sometimes it seems that the world presents itself at my doorstep. It reminds me of a favorite quote:
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” Franz Kafka
The swallowtail butterfly has a routine it follows. Shortly after my morning ablutions the butterfly arrives and proceeds with its morning route around the garden. Same plants every day. A creature of habit.
Swallowtail Butterfly.
This pine shoot caught my eye on the trail, spotlighted in the morning sunshine.
Pine shoot, Italianos Canyon Trail, NM.
Without leaving my room, without leaving my chair, this presented itself over the ridge, across the valley. I did get up and go out for the shot.
Rainbow Cloud, San Cristobal, NM.
A closer observation with a 400mm lens.
Close-up of the Rainbow Cloud, San Cristobal, NM.
Does anyone have a precise identification of this bird? It showed up on the feeder about a week ago and I haven’t seen it since. Thanks in advance for the help. Thanks to my friend Larry for his offerings.
Mystery bird.
As always, thank you for looking, and a big thank you for all the comments and compliments on last week’s post on “Random Abstraction”. I appreciate it very much. Have a great week where you are. G
PS: The bird ID app Merlin suggests it is a Juvenile European Starling.
“Stocky and dark overall with short tail and triangular wings. A close look reveals beautiful plumage: in breeding season, look for purple and green iridescence and a yellow bill. In winter, shows extensive white and buffy spots over the entire body. Juveniles are plain grayish-brown; note bill shape. Native to Eurasia; introduced extensively across the globe. Often abundant, gathering in large flocks in open agricultural areas and towns and cities. Makes a variety of squeaky vocalizations, and often mimics other species.”
Greetings from San Cristobal, NM. This week an iPhone panorama of my first view of Williams Lake in six years. I was watching the birds in the garden again when I wasn’t out walking this week. Black-chinned and Broad-tailed hummingbirds along with the same family of cowbirds, magpies, western flycatchers, and doves.
The trip yesterday to Williams Lake was spontaneous, I was heading somewhere else and decided to go in a different direction… up! It’s not a long hike and the trail was clear of most of the snow banks. Muddy and wet but the crossings were easier than I expected, an observation I made, I went up here on July 4, 1994, with my four-month-old son on my back, and the snow was so deep I had to turn around and go back down. It’s June 12 and for the most part, the trail is clear of almost all snow. Click on photos to enlarge.
Williams Lake with Wheeler Peak on the left, NM.
And on July 23, 2011…
Williams Lake 2011
Back to the garden…
The hummingbirds are enjoying the new feeder, the Eurasian-collared Doves are reconstructing last year’s nest in the ash tree and the feeders are attracting all sorts of others.
The Western Flycatcher the Ash-throated Warbler and a Juniper Titmouse are back. The Tufted Titmouse has returned after two years of absence only to find I bunged up the hole in the siding on our home where it had previously made a nest. It will have to nest somewhere else this year, perhaps in a tree!
Below is one of two Broad-tailed Hummingbirds. I love the little tongue. I believe that this is an immature female.
These Eurasian-collared Doves built a nest in the ash tree late last summer. They are earlier this year. The female sits in the nest and the male brings twigs to reinforce it to sustain it against the winds.
Greetings from San Cristobal, NM. This week features the day of April 17th from ten years of my archives.
I hope everyone had a good week. April has been beautiful in northern New Mexico,,, so far. I know I said I wouldn’t say anymore regarding my feet but I’m averaging 2-3 miles a day and getting 4-6 mile hikes in. I’m so happy with my two new feet.
Over the last month, my friend, David, and I have been hiking stretches of the road through the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument that traverses the gorge rim and skirts around the base of Ute Mountain. We have hiked a different section each week with the mountain always present, beckoning. All being well, this summer will culminate in an accent of Ute Mountain.
Back to the present that began in the past, here are pictures from April 17th taken from my photo of the day archive from 2006 to 2016.
Beginning in 2016 and working back to 2006. This day we had snow and I made this image. It makes a beautiful print. A couple of hours after taking this photo, the snow was all gone.
Willow tree lane, Arroyo Seco, April 2016.
A roadside Descanso, San Ildefonso, 2015. The internet says “Descansos are deeply rooted in Southwestern Hispanic culture. The word means “resting place” and is believed to refer to the days when coffins were transported by horse and cart or carried by hand over many miles for burial in a camposanto.”
Roadside Descanso, San Ildefonso, NM.
Some vistas around Taos have since been transformed… developed. 2014
Taos Mountain from El Prado, NM.
Here’s a shot of mine and Pami’s shadow in Arroyo Hondo on the drive home from Taos back in 2013.
Arroyo Hondo evening shadows, 2013.
Here’s a former living plant that grew out of a crack in a rock in the Orilla Verde Recreation Area of the now Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, 2012.
Rock brush, Orilla Verde, NM, 2012.
A ubiquitous Taos Raven. They are known to perch in ones or twos. This raven was probably calling for or waiting on its better half. 2011
Raven in a bare tree, Taos, 2011.
I’m still searching for the original high resolution file of this picture of Garetto Rivas, so I’ve added a higher resolution second image from the same day below this one. I’ve forgotten the name of his gorgeous blond horse. The second horse in tow and in training is named “Beauty”.
Garetto Rivas, a Taos Cowboy, 2010.
Garetto Rivas, Taos Cowboy, 2010.
The image below was scanned from a Kodachrome 64, transparency shot in the mid 1990’s and published on my website’s photo of the day archive on April 17, 2009.
Indian paintbrush, 2009.
Just around the corner from my former gallery in Arroyo Seco was a yoga studio festooned in Tibetan prayer flags. I recall shooting this one out of my car window in 2008.
Prayer flags in Arroyo Seco, NM. 2008.
I shot the image below in 1990 and published it on my website in 2007. It has since been published in a couple of local magazines.
Saint Francis church reflecting in my 1958 Volkswagen Beetle wing mirror, 2007.
On April 17, 2006 I paid a visit to the National Cemetery in Santa Fe NM. It’s the only time I’ve been there. Since then I usually post this image on social media on Memorial Day.
The National Cemetery in Santa Fe, NM. 2006
As always, thank you for looking. I hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane. You can see more from my photo of the day archive here.
Greetings from San Cristobal and beyond. This week a two-day photo tour around northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Nature and the elements gave up some wonderful photo opportunities, beginning with Taos Mountain and the iconic grove of cottonwoods.
On a photo tour of Taos and northern New Mexico.
The next stop on the photo tour was in Questa at an old house off the highway set back amongst some trees. I checked with a friend who said he would try and find me some information on this charming building and quiet setting.
House in Questa, NM.
Following a couple of stops en route, to photograph some wild horses, we wound up at this lake in the San Luis Valley. Moody and brooding skies were the order of the day.
Lake Tree, San Luis Valley, Colorado.
Speaking of the skies. Highway 142 crosses the Rio Grande in Colorado between the old town of San Luis and Heading west to Manassa home of Jack Dempsey, the “Manassa Mauler”.
The sky over Highway 142, Colorado.
Continuing the photo tour, there is also a stark view of a very subdued Rio Grande from the road bridge as it crosses the river.
The Rio Grande from Highway 142, Colorado.
I came across some of last year’s milkweed pods enduring against the elements. Did I mention the frigid cold winds? My guests were admirably brave, and filled with enthusiasm for whatever conditions confronted us.
On the second day, we encountered a troupe of young Bighorn Sheep in the Orilla Verde area of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument walking on the road ahead of us.
Bighorn Sheep Orilla Verde, NM.
We parked the car and followed uphill and enjoyed watching and photographing them in their prime, natural environment. I can’t help but think that the one in the middle is telling them to “gather round” and show us their best side!
Bighorn Sheep gathering Orilla Verde, NM.
There were many more picture opportunities. I had to stop at some point. If you are planning to be in the area this year, join me on a photo tour/workshop and I’ll show you around.
As always, thank you for looking. Have a great week. G
