Fiery Sunrise Sierra Blanca

A crazy-dramatic, mid-winter sunrise in Colorado: The 14,000 ft+ high peaks of the Sierra Blanca are catching the first light of the rising sun, creating the illusion that the mountains are on fire. And the fact that the snow is blowing of the craggy granite peaks further enhances the impression.

Photographer: Christoph Stopka

Hiking in the Lincoln National Forrest

Hiking in the Lincoln National Forrest

The Lincoln National Forest is a beautiful and diverse area located in southern New Mexico. It is home to various terrain, including mountains, canyons, and forests, making it an excellent destination for hikers of all levels. The Crest Trail is one of the most popular hikes in the Lincoln National Forest. This trail is a long-distance backpacking route that runs through the heart of the forest…

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The three studies I did earlier this year of Sierra Blanca from Three Rivers, NM. oil on canvas boards.

i should have written this podcast.

Road-Tripping from Spains Andalusian Coast to Gibraltar

by Deirdre Frost Taking a road trip to explore and savor the rich culture and history of the Andalusian region in Spain and Gibraltar is an exciting adventure through a colorful panoply of cultures. I set off this fall to explore this part of the Mediterranean Coast and experience some of its most exciting areas and resort destinations. Just a mere 87-mile journey included a beautiful mosaic of…

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XPLORALYA: SANTA MARTA – COLOMBIA, un Destino Turístico recomendado.

XPLORALYA: SANTA MARTA – COLOMBIA, a recommended Tourist Destination. GUILLERMO LOZANO SHARAH Prensa Especializada En estos días de Semana Santa, me fui a la ciudad de Santa Marta, a las orillas del mar caribe, que fue fundada por Rodrigo de Bastidas, y donde murió el Libertador de muchos países de América don Simón Bolívar. In these days of Holy Week, I went to the city of Santa Marta, on the…

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An Unnatural Canyon - May 2022 This gap in the mountains created by Interstate 10 is located near Sierra Blanca, Texas. If this canyon had been created by river erosion, people would travel to see the beauty of the exposed layers of limestone. Instead, most people ignore that same beauty while driving through on the interstate. MWM

No eh mu cerrao pero lo hablo, y sementiende... y mencanta, ca´día má. Soy de una tierra que mandaba emperadores a Roma antes de que otros empezaran a ser algo, una tierra que ha visto pasar a tartesos, fenicios, cartagineses, romanos, visigodos, árabes, judíos y cristianos; una tierra donde se levantaron la Giralda, la Alhambra, la Mezquita de Cçordoba, el Monasterio de la Cartuja, Real Alcázar de Sevilla, Palacio del Virrey Laserna,una tierra que dio de mamar a Trajano, Séneca y Adriano, a Maimónides y Averroes, que descubrió un continente, que vio nacer a Lorca, Cernuda, Vicente Aleixandre y Bécquer, a los Machado,Juan Ramón Jiménez y los Álvarez Quintero, a Montañés y Mesa, a Velázquez y Murillo, Picasso,Valdés Leal, Alonso Cano, Vázquez Díaz y a Falla y Turina,Victoria Kent, Mariana Pineda, Amalia López Cabrera, María Zambrano y Marcelo Spínola, y a muchos más; una tierra donde la cultura y la historia brotan en cualquier esquina a cualquier hora; una tierra que no es más pero, sobre todo, no es menos que ninguna; una tierra que te permite llevar la blanca y verde dentro y no por ello dejar de querer a la roja y gualda, porque Andalucía sin España no se entiende y España sin Andalucía no sería ella... Y que no se olvide, casi 1000 km de playa, sierras, el Coto Doñana, nieve y montañas y desierto, y yo...

📖Digo, no se había visto antes ningún edificio con un frente semicircular, que habrá visto usted que abarca toda la esquina, y mucho menos con una torre así, tan alta y tan delgada, que encima se veía desde lejos como una gran vela plantada en medio de una torta muy blanca como con vainillas en los bordes. ¡Y las ventanas cuadradas con persianas de enrollar! Acá, cuanto mucho, en las casas de los vecinos más acomodados, había de esas ventanas larguiruchas que se cerraban con postigos. ¿Y el reloj cuadrado de la torre? En ese entonces los relojes eran redondos y punto. Esto de Salamone era tan distinto que, en general, yo creo que incomodaba, y de ahí lo de adefesio… A mí, en cambio, me gustaba. Para mí tenía una belleza rara, como de esas cosas que parecen un poco fuera de lugar, quizá porque así también me sentía yo. Y, con los años, he apreciado mucho que en vez de tanto mármol y tanta cosa cara traída de afuera, como hacían los ricos, Salamone usara los materiales de la zona: cemento, piedras de Sierras Bayas, granito reconstituido[…] La cuestión es que cuando mi padre iba a Chaves al Mercado Municipal —que también lo había hecho Salamone y como habrá visto usted queda ahí nomás, a cuadra y media de la Municipalidad—, bueno, mientras él llevaba algunas cosas de la chacra para vender o se iba después a comprar algo que nos hacía falta, yo le decía que me iba a la iglesia, pero no iba nada a la iglesia, que tenía un cura, el padre Pedro Grave, para quien todo era grave —esa broma le hacía siempre a mis hermanos—, porque el cura me decía que jugar al fútbol era pecado grave, que una mujer tenía que hacer cosas de mujeres… y dejarse crecer el pelo. Y a mí me enojaba tanto todo eso que, cada vez que podía, me las ingeniaba para hacerle notar que la torre de la municipalidad era más alta que la de la iglesia, y que además tenía un reloj que funcionaba bien. Así que, bueno, cuando mi padre iba al pueblo, yo esquivaba la iglesia, me iba a la entrada de la muni, subía los escalones negros de la entrada, me metía en el hall, que tenía los pisos de un verde que, a mí, comparado con el piso de ladrillos que teníamos en la casa de la chacra, me parecía como de piedras preciosas…

🖋Patricia Ratto 📕Ruta Salamone Ediciones Bonaerenses https://edicionesbonaerenses.sg.gba.gob.ar/…/ruta…/ 📷2023

Located just four miles west of Carrizozo, Valley of Fires is one of the youngest lava flows in the continental United States, the second youngest in New Mexico behind the McCartys flow in the El Malpais National Monument.

Volcanic vents on Little Black Peak starting oozing lava about 5,000 years ago, filling the northern end of the Tularosa Valley with streams of molten rock for about 30 years. The volcanic field is associated with the Rio Grande Rift, a part of the Earth’s crust that is being gradually pulled apart. This creates faults, which provide paths for magma to reach the Earth’s surface. Whereas most of the volcanic activity has been steady seepage, the last eruption, about 1,500-2,000 years ago, was more explosive.

In total, the Carrizozo Malpais lava flow is 4-6 miles wide, 44-miles long, and approximately 160-feet thick, covering 125 square miles of the Tularosa Basin. The view from the top of Sierra Blanca is outstanding on a clear day. Valley of Fires lava flows extend from the north end of the Tularosa Basin to 14 miles north of the gypsum dunes of White Sands National Park. Dark and light. The geologic contrast is striking enough, and large enough, to be seen from space.

Suddenly, Letters from Watson dumps us in the middle of the Great American Desert (part 1 of "On the Great Alkali Plain," 2/7/24). This is not anywhere I expected to be transported from London, and the contrast makes the Mountain West feel exotic for a minute.

The Great American Desert -- stretching from about Grand Island, Nebraska to the Sierras and pretty much the entire north-south length of the U.S. -- had become a thing of legend since explorers' accounts in the 1820s. When Dad and I drove across it in 2022, we talked about how incredibly daunting it must have been for emigrants seeking their land of milk and honey on the Pacific coast.

The way we went, out I-80, Nebraska shifts from green to gray as it rises toward the Rockies. After a while, the wind picks up as you go uphill into Wyoming. There's a lot of Wyoming, and after Cheyenne and Laramie (both of which would be small towns in most states), it's very, very empty. When we finally started the descent toward Salt Lake City, and the little valleys beside the road turned green with running water, it was truly like entering paradise.

Of course, in 1847, Salt Lake City was just barely being settled, as Brigham Young led his Latter Day Saints west from Council Bluffs, and its location wasn't part of the U.S. yet.

The Mexican-American war had started the prior year, 1846, and was still going. Spring-summer of 1846 saw the Bear Flag Revolt in California, followed by the U.S. just annexing the state. Gold wouldn't be discovered at Sutter's Mill until 1849, so while emigration to California happened -- the Donner Party made their ill-fated trip in 1846-47 -- it wasn't anything like the scope of movement along the Oregon Trail.

As far as I can tell, "Sierra Blanco" is not a real place. There's a Sierra Blanca in New Mexico -- which would fit with all the specific landscape, plus White Sands National Park in New Mexico specifically has alkali flats. Last time I drove through New Mexico on I-40, in late 2018, it was delightfully desolate, so I can buy that in 1847, it seemed completely empty, with even the native peoples avoiding some stretches.

Why anyone would be crossing New Mexico is a mystery, since neither Arizona nor southern California were much settled by Americans. There was some sort of wagon route across New Mexico used by U.S. soldiers during the Mexican-American War, so if I'd expect anyone to be about, it'd be the U.S. Army.

Utah, now, is downright famous for its salt flat, but that's west of the site of Salt Lake City.

Regardless, parties screwing up their trip to the west by taking an imprudent shortcut or mistaking the route was definitely both a thing that happened and, thanks to the Donner Party, a trope. Our haggard and starving traveler sounds about right.

Then he reveals a Plucky Innocent Victorian Child.

That "pretty little girl of about five years of age" is the absolute ideal of Victorian childhood, being perfectly behaved, utterly imperturbable, determined to see the best in all things, sweet, trusting, and looking forward to being reunited with her mother in heaven.

This kind of child is why Louisa May Alcott was seen as innovative for writing Little Woman about girls who worked on their character flaws. (This is also the ideal the March girls were being aimed at. Polly in An Old-Fashioned Girl comes closer, but even Polly would have been upset about being hopelessly lost in the desert with no water.) Contrast this with the street urchins that Holmes employs in his investigation, who are good enough sorts but scrappy, resourceful, and street smart.

Ordinarily, a Victorian child who was utterly sweet and pious would be a cinnamon roll, literally too good, too pure for this world, and thus would die beautifully but tragically before long. Being lost in the desert seems ideal for this, but --

She turns to prayer, and since someone must survive in order for this scene to be relevant,

Yes, darn it, I am on the edge of my seat to know what happens. I'm also grateful that crossing the Great American Desert in 2022 was a quicker process. I've been reading Carey Williams' old-but-interesting California: The Great Exception, which has a lot to say about how 19th century isolation shaped California's economy and power structure, not always for good. But that's neither here nor there -- I don't think we're headed to California.

Is there any fun fact about you or a thing you'd like to share that you've never been asked about or had the opportunity to tell?

Any interests you don't post much about? I'd love to know <3

HM-i don't have many secrets these days i guess, but i dont think ive ever talked about how i used to love to camp and hike/overnight hike a lot, i was super outdoorsy when i was a kid. imagine that!

things i have never really been able to tell or talk about involving this random interest o' mine, all of this is falling under interests and fun facts: i watched my dad get chased around the campsite by a juvenile brown bear in the Gila Mountains when i was 9. always keep your food packed tight, kids.

almost drove a car off the side of the turnpike in a freak snowstorm in Lincoln national forest.

lost all my camping gear off the top of the same car cuz it wasnt tied down properly going over a pass.

saw an abandoned amusement park in the middle of nowhere that i cant seem to find on a map or any information about, had a whole ass conversation about it with my old man but thinking about it now he wasn't from around there either so how would he have known about it? (on a highway in between sierra blanca and Balmorhea st park in texas.

really interested in rocks. like...just rocks. thunder eggs and agate and rando stuff you could just go pick up. use to rockhound in the national parks around us when you were allowed to do so. back then there were a lot of weird little rock shops around too, mostly in the middle of nowhere. my fave was in tiny lil ghost town called Orogrande out on highway 54, a town famous for its forest (it was one tree.) somewhere i have a large rock collection. i love me a good rock-

anyway all of this chatter makes me want to pick that up again haha. thanks for the ask Anon!

Opulent Villa

I created this villa from Sierra Blanca, Marbella. This lot can be downloaded on my Patreon. You will need cc from BlueTeas and Cowbuild for some items to show up, But most cc is included in the download folder.

6 bedroom and 7 bathrooms

Lot size 64x64

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