On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
J R in WV
These photos are mostly relaxing nature photos, all but one from the South-West, and I’ll talk about where they were taken for each photo.
This is a picture of the clouds boiling off the mountains on the other side of the Sulfur Springs Valley from our tiny ranch in the foothills of the Dragoon Mountains. We’re looking ENE toward the Chiricahua National Monument, about 30 miles away.
Desert plants along the road up to our tiny ranch, all of 10 acres of desolate Sonoran Desert countryside. Manzinita is in bloom, you can see it has red bark. Spanish dagger is I think the agaves in front right, a yucca behind that, and a struggling Live Oak in the background.
Even for the Sonoran Desert, this area is experiencing a terrible drought, with the usual Monsoon rains of late summer not happening at all. Average rainfall here is 9 inches a year, lately it has been half that.
One evening the crew was leaving the work site, and I noticed this Sonoran Red Fox watching us drive by! Fortunately I was moving really slowly AND had the camera right beside me.
These foxes are surprisingly inclined to operate in small packs, and are arboreal, dragging their prey into the low trees to protect it from other meaner predators. I learned this from a U A biology professor who plants cameras in the wilderness to capture nocturnal critters, I saw his work on these unusual foxen and looked up his .edu email address, sent him this photo, and he was kind enough to confirm the species. If I hadn’t seen his photo evidence of these guys dragging a deer up into a tree, well, just not believable without evidence, which is why he does what he does with automatically motion triggered cameras.
This is the same guy, turned to bound away from the road. The tail is amazing, as big or bigger than the whole animal. So beautiful!
The same fox, paused in his departure to take another look at our truck. Harder to see here, which is why he felt OK to stop to take a look. I think these are the luckiest photos I’ve taken, because these puppies are scarce and inclined to avoid people, not to mention practically invisible in the brush.
This is the Dragoon Mountain range, just west of our ranch, which is on a knoll foothill of the eastern side of the Dragoons. From Tucson, we drive to Tombstone, and then head east around the southern end of the Dragoons to Gleeson, which was a prosperous mining town until the silver ran out some 70 years ago.
The evening sunset provides the dramatic lighting for this photo. Unfortunately by the time we got up to the ranch, it was moving on towards completely dark, and the solar battery pack had died of old age. In this part of Arizona the geography is relatively flat ground, called basins, between the mountain ranges, which scrape the moisture from the air as it rises over the mountains.
Basin and Range territory the geologists call this.
A typical old adobe shop building from Old Santa Fe, NM. One of the nicest towns we’ve ever visited, full of history, Native American and Spanish culture, art of all kinds, perhaps just behind NYC and Los Angeles in number of art galleries.
Strangely, it rained on our first visit to Sante Fe, just as it rained on my first visit to LA!
This is probably the most recognizable landscape in North America. Amazing miles of rock shelf with towering pinnacles of stone rising straight up. There is a dirt road you can drive into the Monument a little way, but mostly you need a native guide to go off that drive.
They have marked several overlooks where John Ford filmed some the most classic shots in western film. Now there’s a hotel on the edge of this scene, every room has a view of the valley. It was under construction when we were there. The visitor center has a great gallery of Native American art and craft material, fairly priced, and you know that all the money is going to either the Navajo Nation or the individuals who created it. This is not the case everywhere in Indian Country.
This is a little farther into the valley.
What can you say?
Amazing terrain, so beautiful, so stark.
Quick switch to the East Coast. We visited Williamsburg and Yorktown with friends some time ago, and as we drove around the Yorktown battlefield, I saw these guys gliding on a pond just in from the Atlantic shore. Watergirl wanted calming pictures, and I don’t think I have anything more calming in appearance than these swans gliding on this pond.
Of course, if they came out of the water at us, it would instantly be all different, as they are violent and aggressive critters in reality. But they sure do look calm until they go off on you.
WaterGirl
Shocking, I know, but I absolutely LOVE that last photo. So beautiful and calm. Magical.
cope
Well, that bookends it. I started my day with beautiful picture by BIG of the Chinese Garden and finish it with pictures from one of my favorite regions of the country.
Thank you.
Yutsano
I’m all about that fox! It really amazes me how vulpus has adapted all over this planet. Successful enough to live on six continents! Unfortunately not enough food sources to make it in Antarctica. Yet.
FYI I stole those to share on Twitter.
WaterGirl
@cope: In spite of Cole’s shitty post last night griping about the serene photos (!) I am really pleased with how this Election Respite series is going.
I’m hoping you guys have been appreciating it at least half as much as I have.
JanieM
To catch that fox even once would have been amazing, but three pics, all so clear and vivid, beggars belief. Wow.
Still, I love the first shot of Monument Valley the most of this set — however familiar it may be, this is a particular take, and the colors and composition bowl me over.
Dagaetch
Beautiful photos, thank you
WaterGirl
That final fox photo is amazing.
Mary G
@WaterGirl: Evening OTR is now essential, if you can get enough pictures. I’m going to submit a set of cactus and succulents.
JR: these are spectacular, and the first pic of the fox is a textbook example of the different shades of his fur lined up with the corresponding shades of vegetation! I appreciate the swan warning too; I learned that the hard way.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: Send in your pics. :-
Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like morning OTR is the warmup to the day, and After Dark is like the cool down before bedtime.
Comrade Colette
Oh my goodness, that last photo of the fox! It’s a perfect trompe l’oeil embodiment of your description – “practically invisible in the brush.”
Thanks, I feel better now.
Sab
Those swans reminds me of a time when I came across a few swans in my small canoe in Michigan. Not so peaceful feeling when they are at eye level with you. But beautiful.
WaterGirl
@Sab: Hey Sab! Photos coming soon? :-)
stinger
I love the Where’s Waldo pic — hiding in plain sight! The Monument Valley shots put me in mind of Albatrossity’s photos of James Hutton/Siccar Point and our planet’s deep time. And the first image, with layer upon horizontal layer and the spiky bush in the foreground giving perspective — beautifully composed shot.
Benw
Beautiful landscapes and colors! How nice to have (even a tiny) ranch in AZ. Your fox stole the show
Sab
@WaterGirl: can’t figure out how to email them. My new phone only wants to send to a phone. Can you email me a number? Three of them are taken on my phone. Other two on husband’s iphone. I am only askimg about my phone. My old phome would send to email accounts. The new one doesn’t seem to be able to.
Sab
@WaterGirl: Maybe I can forward them to my husband’s iphone and forward them to you tomorrow a.m. with email. He hasn’t been cooperative lately. Election nerves. Hopefully settled now.
eclare
What amazing photos of that fox! Thank you for sharing.
JustRuss
I used to work at a resort in Hawaii, the grounds had waterfalls and lush foliage and streams and exotic birds, including a couple swans. One day the CEO of a company who brought a bunch of of execs on a junket was standing at the top of a waterfall, and as he began to address his minions below a swan attacked him. Hilarity ensued, and he wasn’t hurt, just got nipped in the ankle.
Richard
Thank you for beautiful photos. I especially enjoyed the ones from Cochise county. I recognized some familiar scenes. My brother and his girlfriend live there. When i got out of hospital, i stayed with them for a few months. That is some beautiful country. If you visit, give it some time. Last 2 years, almost no rain.
Lapassionara
Thank you. Once upon a time, we lived in Arizona, and I became a big fan of the Desert Museum there. These photos are lovely.
WaterGirl
@Sab: I was already in bed when you posted this, but I sent you the email just now. You can both text me photos from your phones.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
If you want to learn a little of the history of the area around the Chiricahua and Dragoon mountains, there’s a great book by David Roberts – Once They Moved Like the Wind: Cochise, Geronimo, and the Apache Wars. These photos are great.
susanna
Such beauty this country must preserve so that it can’t ever be un-protected for any reason. These photos show what is available to experience in person and feel the awe of nature’s strength that affects everyone’s experience.
Beautiful pictures like this make me want to have a push to include the environment as a subject into elementary schools.
The foxy is a gem pic! His feelings right there. And making a connection here…
J R in WV
Thanks for the kind words, everyone. It helps to have fascinating subjects, doesn’t it?
Cochise county is the most old West place we’ve been out west, excepting perhaps Taos, which is also a unique old West locale. You’ve got ranching, the AmerIndian museum, trails walked by great Native American leaders and dunderheaded genocidial US Military leaders, mines, famous minerals, The Earp brothers and Tombstone, Bisbee, Hispanic border culture, wildlife, mountains, the valley, Sandhill Cranes all winter in huge clouds of twittering birds. People still operate tiny hobby mines for gold and silver all over the county.
Regarding the fox… I actually have many more photos of Reynard, but in many of them he is practically invisible unless you have the full resolution image and can blow it up to the maximum extent, and then, really, still invisible. Matches the foliage perfectly! I was really so lucky to glance to my left driving out after a day of work building the house and see him. Or her.
The saddest thing about Cochise county is the mining of fossil water for wildly profligate high intensity farming, and the plunging ground water levels that go along with that. Once that fossil water is gone, the Sulfur Springs valley will become uninhabitable. My cousin’s well went dry, there are two half-mile center pivot irrigation systems across the Ranch Road from her tiny place, 18 inch bore holes pumping a million gallons a day onto corn or alfalfa. One day her little water pump pushed mud into all the pipes in her house and that was all she wrote. Now she has water delivered from the town nearby and her asparagus beds dried out and died.
And of course this is true of many places in the American West, wherever you see those round green spots, center pivot irrigation, from an airliner, there is irreplaceable water being pumped for Agricultural profits. Eventually the unsustainable end will be reached, and all those “farmers” and Big Ag Corporations will become bankrupt overnight. I fully expect them to go crying to the federal government begging for something wildly expensive and ill-advised to be done to save them from their own folly. Just say no!!
way2blue
Stunning photos of Monument Valley. Thanks! Love the fox & its long bushy tail.
Years ago, I’d driven way back into private timberland for field work. Had a picnic lunch, then as we headed back out—a mountain lion burst across the track in front of our vehicle. Beautiful deep reddish brown color with a long bushy tail (not as bushy as your fox). Nothing like my mental image of mountain lions. “Did you see that!”, I asked our kids in the back seat? Then BAM, another mountain lion burst across the track, chasing the first. Juveniles I *think*. Described this scene to the QIN naturalist who assisted us, and he was envious. After 20+ years, he’d only seen one…