Yesterday, Timber Press released the latest in the Best Little Book of Birds series… Hooray for the East Sides of Washington and Oregon.Â
With gratitude to Greg Smith for the amazing photos and to the editors and staff at Timber Press for making this beauty happen.Â
The annual photo round-up ranges from New Mexico to Oman and New Zealand. It was an unexpected year in many ways. I trust 2026 will be a delightful change of course and pace. May it bring you joy.
with gratitude, xoxo T
With gratitude to the Timber Press team of editors, photo editors, layout and design people, publicists, and the whole crew that worked behind the cover. Thank you!
I recently spent two weeks in Oman visiting a dear old friend. He indulged me and (surprise!) we did a road trip down the coast. ‘The coast’ is the Gulf of Oman on the Arabian Sea in the Indian Ocean. The Tropic of Cancer runs through the capital city of Muscat, where we began our journey, and the water was nothing short of tropical delight bordered by all forms of desert. I never knew there were so many variations in desert habitat – dunes, rocky plains, wadis (dry river beds), rocky ridgelines, scrubby- shrubby plains, scattered trees. We saw camels, both owned and wild, and frankincense trees–the power behind Oman’s ancient wealth and expansive empire. We explored the Arabian oryx sanctuary, and the sea turtle research center, went to the dhow shipyards, archeological sites, and industrial ports.
The return road from Salalah, a tropical enclave surrounded by mountains near the Yemen border, also went through desert. This stretch of desert, called the ‘Empty Quarter,’ lacked the bordering ocean, and we decided that the Empty Quarter, which runs some 600 miles from the Yemen border to the northern mountains, should be renamed the ‘Empty Three-quarters.’ There’s a town in the middle of this expanse, strategically placed because it’s in the middle of this expanse. Travelers stop for the night. No frills, but after a day of desert, and before a day of desert, it’s a welcome respite.
Photos more or less in order from north to south and back again…
The Grand Mosque, Muscat
Daymaniyat Islands
Roadside camel
Sea turtle reserve, Mom at the beach
Arabian oryx
Oryx reserve
Dhows in port
Salalah farm stand
Al Baleed Archeological Park, Salalah, Dhofar, built in the 6th century
The Empty Three-quarters
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything… though not the length of the Paleozoic. Fear not, I’ve been busy writing away on a variety of projects. Including this:
Talking about ancient life and the Paleozoic Era (252 to 541 million years ago) in New Mexico elicits various unexpected responses. Oh, cool! The ancient Puebloans. Well, no. A little further back. Great! Dinosaurs. Charismatic megafauna get all the press, but no, earlier in geologic time. Occasionally, Oh. I tried that diet. No, again. Long before people living the Paleo diet, those who walked through White Sands at the end of the last ice age, and before New Mexico’s famous dinosaurs, the Bisti Beast and Coelophysis (74 and 208 million years ago, respectively), what we now call New Mexico was a dynamic landscape teeming with life.
This is the opening paragraph from a piece I wrote that was just published in El Palacio, in collaboration with the Museum of New Mexico Foundation and the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. Before the famous fossils: Ancient Life in the Paleozoic Era of New Mexico (click to read!) is a brief history of 250 million years, and an introduction to the new permanent Ancient Life exhibition that opened at the museum in February.
If you’re in Albuquerque anytime soon, I hope you’ll take it in.Â
Some photos not published in the magazine follow.
Cockroaches still rule!
I wish you all peace, love, and joy for 2025.
xoxo T
Moon set
Porch sitter
Desert milkweed
Horny toad!
Cactus color
Out the front door
Virga
Dry spell
Summer storm
Petrified wood
Painterly sky
