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cholla, ribbon, church
Right about where the road is closed due to lingering danger from the 2022 Hermits Peak/Calf Creek forest fires, there’s a little church settled into the trees. You probably can’t even see it unless you’ve already gone to the end and had to turn around.
The (locked) gate was decorated with pieces of cholla cactus in the shape of a cross, with a yellow ribbon looped around it.
As far as I could tell, the church doesn’t have a name.
El Pornevir, New Mexico
photographed 11.11.2025
fire/bug
I would have preferred for the church to have been unlocked.
But since it wasn’t, I had to resort to my familiar shoot-through-the-window-and-see-what’s-there technique. In this case it was a glass candleholder, with a bugged-topped candle.
La Sagrada Familia Catholic Church
Garita, New Mexico
photographed 11.11.2025
church, unused
My traveling partner and I had a discussion about the appropriateness of opening a closed (but not locked) gate to gain access to this abandoned church and similarly disregarded graveyard.
Argument One: It’s a gate. It’s shut. With a chain hooked on it keeping it shut. We should stay out.
Argument Two: The gate also has a sign that says “Please close gate” which implies that someone has granted us permission to, you know, open it.
Anyway, here’s an old church.
near Sapello, New Mexico
photographed 11.9.2025
under the church
The church was locked.
So all I was left with was peeking underneath it; I’ll admit that the view is really pretty dull but I do like the way the wood lattice on the other side reminds me of leaded glass windows.
Also – while “St. Brendan” might sound like the patron saint of golf shirts or something, he’s actually the patron saint of sailors, travelers, and whales. And if you only take one thing away from this post, I hope it will be that whales have their own saint.
St. Brendan’s Chapel
Benneford Pool, Maine
photographed 9.19.2025
conjoined twins
These concrete cherubs were doing hard work holding up one end of a bench. Maybe their task was made easier by the thin spider web that connected them.
Art, Texas
photographed 10.19.2025
One Day | One Image 