The Precambrian lava at the tops of the cliffs eight hundred feet above the Rio Grande near Pilar is something like 1.8 billion years old, some of the oldest exposed rock in the state of New Mexico. This rock, those rocks, freezing and shattering high above, dark brown with a hint of red, falling and [...]
Pilar
Got a pull to it don’t it
I took this picture today standing deep inside the canyon of the Rio Grande near Pilar. The river is running high right now. There’s so much water moving so fast. Such a deep greenish-blue. It’s an amazing thing to see here in the terrible high desert. That’s not what you’re looking at, of course. This [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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