You gotta love geography. Or is it topography?

mesas and lizards and stink bugs, oh my!

Yesterday morning we drove out to Tent Rocks, passing through the Cochiti Indian Reservation. It’s an amazing place, with cone-shaped tuff rock formations and narrow, curving slot canyons carved out of the earth by rivers long since diverted or dried up. Giant boulders balance on top of rock pillars and look like sculpture against the insanely blue New Mexico sky.

The canyons are sinuous, at times so narrow I had to take off my backpack and tripod to fit through. During the rainy season, flash floods can race through the canyons, pushing piles of debris: branches, rocks, and occasionally people.

The contrast between the shadowy canyons and the bright sun atop the mesas makes this a challenging place to photograph, but I played around with the auto exposure bracket feature on my camera and I think I learned something.

Only two of us made it up to the very top: me, and the class assistant who’s young enough to be my son. And yes, I know it’s bragging, but I got there first.