A Halloween lizard

 

I’ll occasionally punctuate the posts about our great New Mexico/ West Texas trip with some more-recent goings-on back in Austin. And what could be more appropriate for Halloween than a dead lizard? Mind you, I didn’t think it was dead when I first spotted it in our driveway on the morning of October 25th; I figured the cool temperature had rendered it inert while it waited for more warmth. I went back into the house, put a macro lens and ring flash on my camera, and went back out to the driveway. When I looked more closely at what I take to be a Texas spiny lizard (Sceloporus olivaceus), I noticed tiny movements in the eye socket. Then I realized I was seeing ants, and the lizard was dead. If you’re up for a close look at that, click the thumbnail below. Ghastliness is in the eye of the beholder—and in this case the eye of the photograph’s subject.

Happy Halloween.

 

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

On and near the boulders

 

The last two posts have featured scenes from our October 12th visit to City of Rocks State Park, which is in southwestern New Mexico. While the arrays of boulders are the park’s major draw, as a photographer I also got attracted to things on and near the boulders. Include among them the chartreuse lichens on a shaded boulder, as shown above. Grass seed heads stood out against the darker base of another boulder:

 

Did I mention that the chartreuse lichens on a shaded boulder caught my fancy?

 

 

In the underbrush near some other boulders the Lady Eve noticed something moving. It turned out to be a tarantula, which I coaxed onto a stick so I could hold it up for a portrait before setting it gently back on the ground in the place it had come from.

 

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

More from City of Rocks

 

As you saw last time, on October 12th we spent some scenic hours at City of Rocks State Park, which is in southwestern New Mexico. In addition to the arrays of boulders that are the park’s prime attraction, I found much to like in a prominent mesa called Table Mountain, shown above with a yucca in the foreground. (You caught a glimpse of it in yesterday’s top picture.) The mesa also served as a distant backdrop for another desert plant, ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens).

 

 

On the other side of the park and viewed in a mostly opposite direction,
one boulder stood isolated on the plain with different mountains in the distance:

 

  

Here’s a boulder couple, along with a barrel cactus:

 

 

And here’s yet another boulder group (perhaps you see an animal’s head facing left):

 

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

Stonehenge comes to New Mexico

 

Okay, so Stonehenge didn’t really come to New Mexico—not even a replica of it like the one in central Texas. That said, naturally occurring groups of upright boulders that we visited on October 12th did remind me of Stonehenge, and also of the moai on Easter Island. The “native” groups of giant stones in southwestern New Mexico have become centerpieces at City of Rocks State Park.

 

 

One grouping of stones sits on a hill apart from all the others in the plain. We drove up there first, and although we had a good view of all the other groupings below, I took very few pictures looking back down. That’s because the state has put campsites right at the base of many of the boulders, and any detailed photograph of the whole layout inevitably includes a slew of recreational vehicles. (If you want such views, you can have them.) In the few photographs I took that included the majority of the stones on the plain, I used a wide-angle lens to make New Mexico’s “Stonehenge” minuscule, thereby hiding the camping vehicles that were there. The top picture is an example of that: the main group of stones appears in the distance at the left.

 

 

Mostly I played nature purist and took pictures which included no human elements. That often meant having to scrunch down and aim upwards, something I’m used to doing anyhow to avoid unwanted objects.

 

 

Some formations are more suggestive than others.

 

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

Waiting not for Godot but for sunset

 

We’d found a good place for scoping out the Organ Mountains at sunrise and sunset: the eastern end of Paseo de Oñate in Las Cruces, New Mexico. On October 11th, after freshening up at our hotel following a busy day at White Sands National Park and the Aguirre Springs Recreation area, we headed over to the Paseo de Oñate a little before sunset and hoped for a great display. Unfortunately we didn’t get one, as you see above. Eventually some clouds turned pastel colors that were pleasant enough but not fantastic:

 

 

We walked back to the car and headed for our hotel. As we drove west along East Lohman Avenue, the clouds in front of us turned from pastel to fiery. I hastily pulled into the parking lot for some stores, scampered about for vantage points that would exclude or at least minimize buildings, poles, signs, and wires, and finally got my saturated New Mexico sunset.

 

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Before and after White Sands National Park

 

It takes about an hour to drive northeast along US 70 from Las Cruces, New Mexico, to White Sands National Park. The highway climbs over a part of the Organ Mountains and then comes down into the plain* that is the home of the sprawling White Sands Missile Range, near the northern boundary of which the first atomic bomb was detonated. That history and continued missile testing aside, the top picture shows you how peaceful the range looked on the misty morning of October 11th. In the distance may be the San Andres Mountains. In the afternoon we returned to Las Cruces along the same route and saw this view of the Organ Mountains:

 

 

After I saw a sign for the Aguirre Springs Recreation Area I impulsively turned off US 70 and followed the country road to get closer to the mountains. One peak seemed almost conical:

 

 

* I originally wrote plane, which is etymologically the same word as plain.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Wildflowers at White Sands National Park

 

My photographic attention in New Mexico went mostly to scenic geological features that I can’t find in central Texas. At White Sands National Park on October 11th that meant primarily the dunes, but I did photograph a few wildflowers there as well. Right outside the visitor center was a densely flowering bush that might have been a species of Chrysothamnus. I saw several aster plants flowering, including a fasciated one:

 

 

And there were some evening-primroses, Oenothera sp.

 

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

Shadows and textures

 

At White Sands National Park on October 11th shadows and textures
on the gypsum dunes drew out the abstract photographer in me.

 

 

The plant that cast the shadows in the middle picture was a yucca.
I don’t know what kind of remains cast the crooked shadow below.

 

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

White Sands National Park

 

A big reason for our spending time in Las Cruces, New Mexico, was the proximity of White Sands National Park, which we visited on the morning of October 11th. Because the sand there got created from gypsum, and because rain had recently drenched the area, we found walking on the dunes easy, as contrasted with typical sand dunes that take a lot of effort to walk in. Confounding my life as a nature photographer was that people had tramped over or slid down virtually all of the dunes close to parking areas. I had to go farther afield to search for pristine areas, but find some I did. Me being me, I maximized some minimalist views. In the second one, mountains made the scene a little less minimal.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Back to the Land of Enchantment

 

Bet you can tell these pictures aren’t from Austin. On the morning of October 10th we headed west from home and pushed the 620 miles to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Past trips had taken us through there and across southwestern New Mexico but only as a means of getting to Arizona or California. On this trip I intended to spend some time in that part of New Mexico for its own sake before driving up to the more familiar and better known northern part of the state.

Late in the afternoon on October 10th, as we set out to find a place for supper in Las Cruces, I noticed—how could I not?—that a good sunset was taking place. Unfamiliar with the town, I drove east looking for a high vantage for pictures. By the time I found one, it was too late. We went back there the next morning to see what sunrise was like over the Organ Mountains: the top picture shows you.

  

About half an hour later, a little north of Las Cruces,
the clouds over the Organ Mountains were still photogenic.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman