The Bisti De-Na-Zin Wilderness

I first heard of the Bisti Badlands in the 1970s, while I was in high school. It’s actually called the Bisti De-Na-Zin Wilderness. Three decades later, in 2005, I finally paid a visit. After all, I had lived in New Mexico for four years, and it was about time. I became fascinated by the hoodoo landscape and returned the very next weekend—250 miles each way!

The following years I took many, many trips to other badlands in northwest New Mexico. Even though it was the farthest away, sometimes the Bisti Badlands was a welcome fallback. During threatening weather—the kind that gives photographers skies to die for—it’s comforting to know that the road’s paved nearly all of the way, with a well-maintained gravel road for the last few miles.

Each trip I wandered aimlessly, always finding new oddities. My attempts to find a previously visited location almost always led to wonders I had never seen before. No GPS, no map, just wandering around. You would be hard pressed to get really lost there, since all of the dry washes eventually head west to the parking areas. If you want the coordinates of this set of rocks or that, then I can’t give them to you—I never recorded them. Eventually I found those famous rocks, but only by chance. I found much more along the way.

Most of these images are also in my New Mexico Badlands and More New Mexico Badlands galleries, but here they are in one place, along with a dozen other photos. As a diversion I’ll take you on the Mini-Jeep Tour. No wilderness was harmed on that little excursion.