They blend in better when their butts don’t show!
Behold another shot from the epic Super Bowl afternoon at the Orilla Verde area of the new Rio Grande del Norte National Monument! Down along the river, in other words, which is flowing strong and clear right now. It’s amazing that money sometimes does get spent for something this important, and I think the whole damn country should be proud. They probably don’t know about it, though.
These are obviously bighorn sheep. We were heading back home when my wife asked, “What are all those animals up there?”
My God, twenty-one of them! The most and only ones I’d ever seen before were two. (Search for “bighorn” in the box below for several treats.) I took picture after picture—we were stopped right in the road—but they were chowing down, so mostly what I got were bighorn butts until that fellow turned around.
Earlier today I uploaded a similar photo to Medium as part of a new photo-essay called “High Desert Rio Grande” (see above) that covers much of the ground as my last few posts, but packaged in a different way. There are also photos that I haven’t published here yet, like that one of an underwater boulder in the sun, but it’ll end up here soon enough.
Have a look! I think you’ll like it if you’re reading this.
Tags:
bighorns,
digital publishing,
photo essay,
Rio Grande
Motherlode of truth
Tell me we’re not surrounded by love. See the different blues and greens and reds, the backlit droplets bouncing off the rocks, the reflections and the light. The water is moving fast from right to left. It’s all alive. We’ve even got two female goldeneyes (ducks) in there. I mean, you could start a religion here.
Nobody made this. It just is.
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Tags:
love,
New Mexico,
Rio Grande,
water
February 3, 2014 11:54 PM
by JHF
in
New Mexico
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Only the sound of the water
Just look at all that water! This is the Rio Grande as seen from “downtown” Pilar—you’re looking downstream—and what a sight it is.
There are homes on both sides of the river. We often imagine what it would be like to live here if we could: peaceful, certainly, and rather isolated. Taos is twenty minutes north (left). The closest grocery store would be in Dixon, ten minutes away in the opposite direction. Cell phone service could be iffy. I know that just down the road from here, I can’t get a signal from Verizon.
It’s just so different by the water. Startling, really. And the birdwatching would be spectacular. Most migrating species stop here, obviously, and the weather is warmer here than up in Taos, so you’d see all kinds of things.
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Tags:
Orilla Verde,
Pilar,
Rio Grande,
water
No marsh, this
I could have taken this anywhere there are ducks, I suppose. But this is 800 feet below the level of the surrounding landscape at the bottom of the Rio Grande Gorge just north of Pilar. Up at the top, it’s sagebrush, piñon, juniper, and cactus.
The weird thing is that you can go hiking far above—amidst the sagebrush, piñon, juniper, and cactus—and never be aware of this narrow strip of an utterly different ecological zone along the river where ducks and geese fly by, eagles soar, and mountain lions roam. It’s like a different channel, and all you have to do to tune it in is fall off a cliff!
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ducks,
Orilla Verde,
Pilar,
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Mallards and goldeneyes behind the geese
What an incredible visit to the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument today. A bald eagle flew right over our heads, and afterwards we spotted two more. It could have been the same one, I suppose, but thinking we saw three eagles feels a whole lot better. We also saw several kinds of ducks, numerous Canada geese, and a great blue heron. Before we left the canyon at Pilar, my wife spotted a herd of twenty-one bighorn sheep feeding on the slope of the opposite bank. We’ve never seen so many all at once.
Today was overwhelming. The beauty was staggering, and almost no one else was there. I was able to stop the car right in the road and take as many pictures as I wanted. I must be doing something right.
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Tags:
Canada geese,
ducks,
Orilla Verde,
Pilar,
Rio Grande
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