Spring break: Natural Bridges National Monument

Owachomo Bridge at sunrise, Natural Bridges National Monument, Utah.

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I have a love-hate relationship with National Monuments.  Maybe that’s too strong; it’s more love—feel-a-little-trapped.  I appreciate them and am grateful that they exist, buy my favorite places to camp and explore are at the ends of two-track roads or long walks, with no picnic tables, no scenic overlooks, no stinky outhouses, and no handrails protecting you from yourself.  But we promised Bei that this year we would have a more leisurely spring break, with no backpacks.  So we combined forces with our Laramie friends, Dave Fay and Amy Fluet, their kids Sam and Eliza, and Dave's Scotch collection that I augmented with a fancy bottle of Irish Whiskey. We found a nice site in the campground and set up a temporary village around the metal table (chained to the ground) and the double-walled steel fire pit (no wood gathering allowed). 

Natural Bridges National Monument, NBNM for short, occupies the northwest corner of Cedar Mesa, a misnomer because it’s covered in juniper.  But that’s splitting hairs.  If you haven’t been there, the mesa occupies a large chunk of Utah between Blanding and Hanksville, south of the Abajo Mountains and north of the San Juan River, which flows into Lake Powell from the east.  It's almost as high as Laramie, so nights in March are chilly, but the days warm nicely, and soon it will be too hot for humans.  

More important than the “cedars” are the canyons that cut through them and drain either directly into the San Juan or first into Grand Gulch or Comb Wash and then into the San Juan.  The canyons are beautiful and full of Anasazi ruins, pictographs, petroglyphs, and other archaeological debris, which pot robbers have meticulously scavenged.  They are deep, complicated, rugged, increasingly popular, and fun to explore. 

The Monument itself protects several spectacular sandstone bridges that span White Canyon and a tributary, Armstrong Canyon, both of which contain ruins and surprisingly nice hikes with surprisingly few people, at least in March.  It’s worth a stop despite all of the infrastructure.  We camped there all week, using the campground as a base for more remote adventures outside the Monument, where we collected firewood each night before returning to Site #4.   I’ll post images from some of those explorations when I get them organized. 

For now, here are a few pictures taken in NBNM during a hike through a short section of White Canyon and in our camp.

Bei and Eliza looking into White Canyon.

Sam Fay, descending a simulated Anasazi ladder on the way to Supapu Bridge.

Dave Fay at Sipapu Bridge. 

Ellen being protected from herself by a metal railing.

A Puebloan ruin in White Canyon.

Bei and Dave, White Canyon.

Ruin, White Canyon, NBNM.

Double walled fire pit, NBNM.  Scotch not shown.

Ellen and Bei, downclimbing from a ruin, White Canyon.

Handprints near Kachina Bridge.

Sunrise, Owachomo Bridge.

Dirt Piles, Sticks, and Snow

Dirt piles, sticks, and snow, Laramie.

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For me, there comes a time every winter, usually not long before we head south for spring break, that everything having to do with winter starts to feel bleak and uninspiring.  I'm not depressed, just no longer especially interested in white landscapes and cold, colorless expanses, or wind.   

Photographically, I get into a rut and don't get out much until the first bit of spring color starts to lift my creative spirits--often with obligatory pictures of early-blooming pasque flowers, of which I have many.  

In the spirit of late winter photography, I went out this morning and photographed:  piles of dirt covered with snow.  Believe it or not, I've been eyeing these dirt piles for at least a couple of YEARS.  They are near the interstate highway, and I see them frequently as I drive hither and yon.  One especially tall pile is decorated with sticks and conduit, a curiosity.  The way these objects poke out of the top of the dirt pile has always evoked for me tall prayer flags that I saw once near the Mekong River in China (see picture below), or a mountain summit adorned with some country's flag.  I can imagine young climbers struggling to the top of this pile of dirt to triumphantly plant some electrical conduit.   

Maybe there's a universal instinct to poke sticks into places that are tall.  

Plant with dirt.

Dirt, snow, and dead plants.

Dirt piles and pointy apartments.

Dirt with rocks and snow.

Tall pile with sticks and conduit

Sticks in dirt, Laramie.

Prayer flags in dirt, Yunnan Province.

Picture for a winter day

Bei outside Oaxaca, Mexico in 2007.

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I finally succumbed to the crud that's been rampant on campus here in Laramie.  It's not the flu, but it's nasty anyway, and I haven't moved much today except to eat--strangely and annoyingly, my appetite is undiminished by illness.

It's the dog days of winter, so here's a favorite image from a warmer place.  This was taken in a village near the city of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, on a Thanksgiving trip in 2007.  

Happy Valentine's Day

Heart, Oaxaca, Mexico

OK...I'm scraping a little here, but Happy Valentine's Day anyway!  I hope you all have a great one.

-- Ken

Abandoned refinery, Laramie

Cemetery, Wyoming

Ranch building

Horses

On a String Stables, Laramie.

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I've been looking forward shooting some pictures of Laramie during an actual snowstorm, but since the Northeast is getting ALL the snow, and we're getting NONE, I'll post pictures of horses instead.  I've always loved photographs of horses, and there are a lot of them in Wyoming.  For a while, Bei took riding lessons at a stable near Laramie, and while she rode I could wander around outside the arena with my camera, trying to get them to pose for me.  Having grown up in the suburbs of Washington D.C. with nary a horse in sight, they are still strange creatures to me, with surprising personalities, curiosity, and senses of humor.

Here's a random collection of shots, mostly from Wyoming but also from the time when we lived in China, where a horse is a "ma," but only if you use the right tone so you don't insult all of the mothers within earshot.

Bei at On-a-String, Laramie.

Winter, On-a-String Stables.

Bei at On-a-String.

Joker.

On-a-String Stables.

A picture of a 7-year-old Bei that the 11-year-old Bei would hate for her father to put on the internet.

On-a-String Stable with the lights of Laramie in the background.

Winter in the Laramie Basin.

Loading a horse on a boat to cross the Yangtze River, China.

Bei trekking in China.

Horses and Wind Rivers, Wyoming.

Laramie Basin.

Prayer Flags

Tibetan prayer flags, Zhongdian, China

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Tibetan monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India were recently in Laramie creating, and then ritually destroying, an intricate sand painting called a mandala.  They are members of a group that travels and educates people about Tibetan and Buddhist culture.

In the winter that we lived in China, I hiked along the Mekong River and into the mountains to a Tibetan village called Yubeng near the Tibetan border.  Yubeng is beautiful, nestled at the intersection of three valleys beneath the spectacular 20,000+ foot peaks of the Meili XueShan (Beautiful Snow Mountains).  The village is is a destination for many Tibetan pilgrims, who travel long distances with great austerity to visit a sacred waterfall nearby.  

While I was in Yubeng, I met a group of friendly Chinese hikers from Beijing, some of whom spoke good English, and we hiked together on a stormy day to the waterfall.  The Chinese have never forgiven the Japanese for their atrocities before WWII, and as we hiked up the well worn trail to the base of the enormous glacier where the waterfall is found, thunder sounded from the fog surrounding the high peaks.  A Chinese woman, oblivious to the irony, related conspiratorially to me that, "there is a joke that if a Japanese tourist arrives in Deqin (the closest big town), the weather will grow terrible because the Mountain God hates the Japanese."

Chinese settlers continue to pour into Tibet, a strategy designed to dilute and emasculate Tibetan culture.  Tibetan monks recently mourned one hundred Tibetans who have self-immolated in protest of Chinese oppression.  

Prayer flags near sacred waterfall, Yubeng, China, on the Tibetan border.

Prayer flags, Zhongdian.

In front of our house in Laramie, before the winds shredded them and carried them away.

Along the Mekong River, China.

Near Yubeng.

Obama's Inauguration

 

Monterey Beach, California.  October 2008.

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What an amazing time--we just inaugurated our first black president for his second term, and in his inauguration speech he proclaimed that everyone, gays included, should have equal rights.  We have a long way to go, but we're inching along.

"It is now our generation's task to carry on what those pioneers began.  For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.  Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law - for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well."  - from Obama's inauguration speech.

Wow!

So, in honor of the inauguration, a few photos from my vast collection...

Laramie, Wyoming.  March 2008.

Laramie, March 2008.

Passing some hope, Laramie 2008.

Kampala, Uganda. 2009.

Laramie, 2008.