picnic/table

I don’t know: it just struck me as a photo-in-waiting. You know, the ways things do sometimes.

Lamb County, Texas
photographed 11.8.2025

important notice(s)

I cannot speak to the information on the sign on the left.

But I did enjoy the way the Fire Victims sign seems to have elbowed its way into the discussion.

The fire the attorneys are talking about raged across northern New Mexico from April-August 2022, burning over 340,000 acres. The Hermits Peak fire began in early April, when the the US Forest Service lost control of a prescribed burn; three days later the Calf Canyon fire started when an improperly extinguished Forest Service pile burn (from three months earlier!) rekindled. On April 22, as a result of a “major wind event” the two fires burned together and eventually became the largest wildfire in the state. So anyway, those attorneys are probably still pretty busy.

And if you were wondering what that might have looked like from a distance, here’s a photo I made on May 15, 2022, near Chimayó. The fire was so intense that it developed its own weather system, called pyrocumulonimbus. It was awful. But also magnificent, in a way.

Mora, New Mexico
photographed 11.9.2025

sixty nine years in the grave

Isabelita was fifty when she died; her tiny three-crossed marker lives on surrounded by tall grasses, mountains, and New Mexico’s skies.

unnamed cemetery
near Mora, New Mexico
photographed 11.9.2025

peace (and hiking boots)

I was unprepared to take a soak in the hot springs (due in part to my lack of taking the time to research what sorts of things were available to do in the area), but I wandered down the path to the first set of springs. And that’s where I spotted this message carved into the concrete. It gave me a good feeling about the place.

Montezuma, New Mexico
photographed 11.10.2025

style

If you are the kind of person who appreciates a lot of choices when it comes to barber shops, you’d probably like it here in Las Vegas, where it seemed like there was place on every block.

As a bonus today, I present Some History Stuff: the poster on the right side of the image is a 19 year old Cassius Clay (later of course, Mohammed Ali), photographed in 1961 by Flip Schulke. The photo was made in one of the few desegregated pools in the United States, at a hotel in an historically black neighborhood in downtown Miami.

Las Vegas, New Mexico
photographed 11.8.2025