Here, you’ll find unfortunately true tales of an accidental naturalist’s misadventures in the wild, as well as shorter, inspirational reflections of nature
Priest Gulch
Took a drive up to Lizard Head Pass last Saturday, April 21, and there was too much snow to hike the trail. Up there, in the San Miguels, I caught the north facing slopes, and there was much more snow than on the west-facing slopes of the La Platas, my home range, […]
Place water here
When I post (which hasn’t been for a while), I often place some picture at the top of some fantastical place you might want to visit. In the photo above, you’ll see a more ordinary world, what I see almost every day: Summit Lake. Doesn’t look like much of a lake, […]
Dibe’ Ntsaa, Mountain of the North
The mountain you see is known as Dibe’ Ntsaa, the Navajo Sacred Mountain of the North. It represents the northern boundary of Dine’tah, or Navajoland. The old stories associate it with the color black. First Man created it as a replica of mountains in the Fourth World. With […]
San Miguels
You’re looking at the backside of the San Miguels, near a place called Groundhog, in mid-March. It’s still near impossible to get to the actual Groundhog Lake this time of year. Snow and mud will stop you out, as two vehicles which passed me by as I walked the road found out. […]
Narraguinnep Canyon
River of Sorrows. The Dolores and its environs. That’s what you see in the above pic. The canyon system sculpted by the Dolores River, one of the unsung rivers of the west. I took this picture above Bradfield Bridge. The view is southwest, and the distant range atop the rim is Sleeping […]
Tiny rafting party, Narrow Canyon
My father used to work the building trades in Chicago as an electrician. He worked on some of the tallest buildings in the world at the time, and he was not faint of heart. During World War II, he watched men burned alive as kamikazes hit the deck of […]
Mt. Trumbull and the Uinkarets, on the horizon
What would you do if you had to come here to hide? The Crippy, a novel which contains elements of mystery, suspense, science fiction and fantasy, will introduce you to these trackless lands.
You’re looking inside a 277-mile-long throat, almost 20 miles wide in places, and up […]
The Henry Mountains, from Cedar Mesa
The distant peaks in the frame above are the Henry Mountains, the last mapped mountain range in the lower 48 States. The Navajo called them the Nameless Mountains, or No Name. If you look at them on a Four Corners topo map, you’ll see the 40-mile-long range surrounded […]
from Madden Peak
Okay, not from Madden Peak, but from near Madden. I mean, hell, it’s winter, alright? End of February. In the high country where I stand, weather forecasts are rumor. NOAA predictionz don’t hold above 8,000 feet. So, you wait for somebody to tell you what the weather’s gonna be. May seem […]
Moki Dugway
Do you know what a dugway is? I didn’t either, until I happened upon one. The photo above is taken from an outcrop along Cedar Mesa in southern Utah. It shows a long and winding road excavated by U miners in the second uranium boom during the Cold war. Driving up or […]