New Mexico Landscape Photos

When I moved to north-central New Mexico I thought that I would use this area as a launching point for excursions all over the Colorado Plateau—I was happily mistaken. There is more to see and experience near to me than I ever could have imagined, and my list of landscapes to explore and beautiful vistas never seemed to get shorter or less interesting. But you won’t see it from the freeway, in fact the state looks a bit understated at 80 MPH. There are countless hidden wonders here and there; many can only be seen by taking a hike.

I’m living in the high desert country near Santa Fe, at a crossroads of geography, climate and culture. It’s where Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Mexico meet. I’ve got the Sangre de Cristo Mountains ten miles east of me, hundreds of millions of years old. To the west are the Jemez Mountains, only one or two million years of age—young and volcanic. Farther west is the San Juan Basin, millions upon millions of years of stone layered with petrified trunks of trees and the bones of dinosaurs. Nearby are vast lava beds, some from eruptions mere thousands of years ago. There are thousand-year-old roads out in the desert, while fragments of “modern” Route 66 still cross the state. It’s a place of many contrasts. And it’s photographic, too!