Friday Night Views

 

Was it smoke from distant fires? I began seeing it in Tucson on Thursday, drifting behind the mountains to the north, and the gauzy scarf was still trailing in the sky on Friday evening, visible from Dos Cabezas Pioneer Cemetery.

Cranes Again

 Today I photographed the sandhill cranes at the same place, Twin Lakes outside Willcox, Arizona, but with the snow-capped peaks of the Chiricahua Mountains (instead of buttes and Dos Cabezas Mountains) in the background.

Cranes at rest

Cranes in flight

Cranes against the sun

Masters of the Cochise County Winter Sky

 

They were not airborne when I arrived at Twin Lakes about 1 p.m. but all clustered in the shallow water. The ones that look the most out of focus above are reflections of the standing birds. 

I drove around to another part of the pond, where the background of my photos would be the peaks of Dos Cabezas. And for some reason totally unclear to me, the birds took flight. It was not my presence; there were several other vehicles and even a couple of photographers with tripods. No problem, of course, because they are magnificent in the air. The only trouble I'm having now, as I look at what my camera caught, is deciding which is my favorite -- if I had to pick just one. What do you think? And I'm making it easy! I'm not posting every shot!

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

eight

nine

ten

Light Magic Without a Lot of Color

 

Rabbit brush blooms yellow in the summer, 

turns pale ivory when it goes to seed.

Vine climbed hackberry tree and left behind

a coyote gourd, like an ornament.

And always, the ghostly remains of last summer's

brilliant red and blue morning glories --

All it takes is light

and open, seeing eyes!

Jack Frost in the Philadelphia Wash

Glory in the Morning

 

A desiccated floral beauty in the wash caught my eye the other morning, and I asked my hiking partner what it was. "Morning glory," she said, pointing out the dry vine twisted around branches of its host. 

Suddenly, then, I began seeing it everywhere, wrapped around branches much the way Therese and I had wrapped Christmas lights around the century plant "Christmas tree" for the weekend show at the gallery.

And now, at last, I could make sense of this phone photo Therese sent me last summer, when the morning glories were all in glorious bloom in the wash.

A couple buildings in Tucumcari, New Mexico

 

"The Tucumcari landmark Rock Island-Southern Pacific depot opened in 1927, when Tucumcari was enjoying the rise of auto traffic on old Route 66. Built in the Spanish Mission-style, this depot is massively long, encompassing both a large passenger area and a significant freight area under one roof."

(https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMM9TE_Rock_Island_Southern_Pacific_RR_Depot_Tucumcari_NM)

The second building highlighted here today (of many, many noteworthy architectural/historic buildings in Tucumcari) is the home of the Bowen Electric Corporation, with not simply one mural wall but all walls of the complicated building decorated with brightly colored, stylized Southwestern images.