This year’s photos cross landscapes and time, the eternal and ephemeral. From the spiraling mazes of Southwest canyons to the glowing night sky of the Arctic and a handful of people in between, 2023 was about scale.
May 2024 flow easily and provide expanded horizons.
Thanks for tagging along. xoxo T
The view from Round Mountain to the west includes the town of Round Mountain and its range of protective mountains.
The view east from the town of Round Mountain is not of Round Mountain any longer but of its remains. In extreme mountaintop removal, gold was extracted in flakes and nuggets, and the mountain was moved, grain by grain, to the valley. The neatly stacked tailings contrast with the geologic structure of the flanking mountains, snow still clinging to the upper crevices.
Another mine is relandscaping a different piece of real estate. Rolling slopes and gentle peaks have become unscalable walls and plateaus upon plateaus.
Can the mountains survive when earth-moving trucks come on tires twice the size of pick-up trucks? Has anyone asked for mountaintop approval?
Yesterday, I flew from Portland, Oregon, to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I read about the melting of Antarctica as I looked down on the Nevada canyons and desert.
It was a surreal juxtaposition of time and place and global dilemma – adding to my carbon footprint while judging Man for our follies.
Antarctica may look like Nevada sooner than we think.
On the executioner’s block: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah
It is already true that one can be dropped on any commercial strip in the USA and have no idea where they are. Each is so much the same, so not unique, that Chattanooga and Bakersfield look much the same. We have eradicated the prairies, slaughtered the forests, and filled the wetlands, must we also quash the individuality of the national monuments and make them conform to the ideals of capitalism, consumerism, and corporate expansion? What of calm, contentment, and courage to step outside of the box, to appreciate the subtle realm of time, space, and light that is not under our control? Where will we go for peace when we have used up all that is wild?
You have seen my photos over the last year. Many of those photos were taken in national monuments (including the two on this page). If you enjoyed my meager attempts at conveying the intensity of these landscapes, you will enjoy this (free ebook) photographic journey through the national monuments by exquisite landscape photographers
And, I hope you will send comments in support of retaining the national monuments.
https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=DOI-2017-0002-0001
Stay the executions.
Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument
The Great Basin, Nevada