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the waiting
The train station in Lamy was busier than maybe I would have expected, with a smattering of people waiting on the 12:58 train from Albuquerque. There was the stationmaster, who told me that the station was “sometimes busy.” There was a woman with a ticket to Chicago and quite a bit of luggage. And there was this guy – and when the train arrived, I saw him helping a very old woman off the train.
Lamy, New Mexico
photographed 5.15.2022
the nicest smile I saw all day
“Just TALK to someone. Say you like their smile and then have a chat. Then ask if you can take their picture. It’s not that hard. You can do it.” – oft-repeated advice from my photographer pal Don. I am sure he thought I never heard him say that to me any of the approximately one hundred times he happened to mention it.
Surprise!
Santa Fe, New Mexico
photographed 5.16.2022
before everything comes undone
Here are some more distant forest fires. The one on the right expanded from a barely-visible wisp of dark smoke to what you see here in about three minutes. It was fascinating. It was horrifying. It was unbelievable. And as sometimes happens, a song lyric presented itself to my brain as I made this image. I heard “got to cover some ground before everything comes undone” from the Bruce Cockburn song “40 Years in the Wilderness”.
Galisteo, New Mexico
photographed 5.15.2022
where there is smoke
I could not look away. For an entire day, no matter where I was, my eyes sought out the awful (yet strangely beautiful) smoke from nearby forest fires.
The fires were so intense that by the end of the day they would have created their own weather system, clouds known as pyrocumulonimbus, which contain lightning storms that can in turn ignite more fires. An article in Scientific American says, when you see these clouds, “you know you’ve got big trouble below.”
near Chimayó, New Mexico
photographed 5.15.2022
new forest, eventually, maybe
It’s going to take a minute or so, but maybe one day these little sprouts will turn into a forest…
Nambé, New Mexico
photographed 9.1.2019
One Day | One Image 