Sidetracked Charley

Some decades ago I applied for a job working on an island. A small island.  One with only a couple miles of road. No car needed.  The company provided golf carts. And evidently boats for diving trips just off shore. I had just gotten my open water diving certification and it seemed ideal. Then someone raised the specter of island fever. I had been snowed in most of a winter in a Colorado ski resort and certainly understood cabin fever but don't we all want to be stranded on an island? Besides I would have thirty days twice a year to go back to the mainland USA. And in a moment of stark awareness I realized I would probably spend every single minute of those 60 days driving. Driving has been my way of escape since I was 16. No destination necessary. Just hop in the car and drive. I may have even fallen in love with photography because a camera in the passenger seat gave me an excuse to just drive.  But it doesn't take an island or a snow storm to close you into fe...

Shadows and light in Taos Once again I have been asked about where to live in Taos. And once again I had a difficult time explaining to the friend of a friend that I do not live there. Would not live there. I lived in Taos County for nine years and so wanted to leave that county I was willing to get a divorce to do so. I live on the other side of the mountain now. I try to explain to people how very different this side is. The Mountain Between us We're the wet side. We can drive through the pass to the other side in 45 minutes to an hour. But there is a huge cultural divide between the two sides. Taos was on the Camino Real and settled by the Spanish who took the land from the Native tribes who lived there. Then they enslaved them. The Moreno Valley was settled by miners at Elizabeth town and homesteaders who took advantage of the 1862 homestead act to settle the Black Lake area and the Moreno Valley grasslands. The Trujillos and Torres built huge ranches by blending...

Old Friends I have long known that photographers are only truly happy with a camera in their hands. And paradise may be having a photographer buddy to share fstops with. I say maybe because there are photographers and there are photographers. We don't all want to capture the same subjects. Or talk about the same things while scouring the landscape outside the car looking for the next object of attraction. And there is nothing more awful than being in a vehicle driven by a non-photographer unless you forced yourself to leave your camera at home. Better to travel with just your camera. But the last three days have been awesome with my photographer friend from the east coast visiting. Since her last visit I have been cataloging old trucks to share. And yesterday we hit the truck trail. Some were old friends of mine. And some I had saved for her visit. International at Eagle Nest And some were eureka moments while looking for buffalo and antelope or discussing the nex...

Tour of Eagle Nest Dam Eagle Nest Dam is the largest privately built dam in the United States. It was begun by the Springer family in 1917 and completed in 1920. It and the reservoir beyond it one was privately owned by the CS Ranch which recently sold it to the state of New Mexico. Eagle Nest Lake is now a state park, but the dam and the waters in the lake are another matter all together. Water is well regulated in New Mexico especially during a drought. The lake is now at 25% of its normal capacity, and the water in the lake are water right lease holds of Raton, Cimarron, and historic ranches in the area like the UU Bar and the CS Ranch. Game and Fish department also get involved because the Cimarron River is an active fishery of the state. Our guide was a state engineer and the Gateway Museum secured permission of the land owners below the dam for us to gain access to the area. Some 100 locals and tourists attended this rare event. I have lived here almost twenty years and th...

Federal Highway Stripe Yellow Another of those long empty stretches of highway on the road to Raton. Though if you look very closely there is another vehicle up there heading the same way. And even though there were no buffalo out I made myself stop and take a picture or two. I had told myself I was going to practice on taking pictures of vast open spaces and trying to capture that feeling. Today when I was editing my pictures I played around with the panoramic effect that can be achieved by cropping your photos. Below is what the picture looked like before. Before Okay so I upped the saturation some too but I will argue that the top picture is how the particular sunglasses I was wearing made the road look. It was one of those warm afternoons for the 1st of February and I actually turned off the heater in the car and toyed with the idea of putting on the air conditioner. The warmth of the car was making me sleepy and I was playing my father's mile marker game. He w...