The Aerial Horizon
Forget where your feet are and simply enjoy the view.
Dreams of the Moon
Ever dream of walking on the moon, or, better yet, flying over its surface? The earth possesses places of similar mystery waiting to be explored. That’s the thought that fills my mind as I look upon these craters and cones northeast of Tonopah, Nevada in the Great Basin…Buy a ticket, go for a ride, look out your window and use your imagination…Forget where your feet are and enjoy the view.
Breakthrough
Sunbeams break through the morning’s layer of clouds, illuminating the shadowy spaces of earth below while the sun, resting behind her veil, reveals herself in a brilliant silhouette.
Dixie Burning
North of Zion in the Dixie National Forest, a fire rages along an isolated ridge line. Smoke fills the surrounding valleys in such a way that it begins to look like weather, clouds and fog trapped by the high terrain, but for the telltale marker of the smoke emanating from a single point source before flowing out into the mass of “cloud.” This is some of the most beautiful landscape in the west and the possibility of careless destruction is saddening.
Abstract Landscape – Rock, Salt, and Water
Layer upon layer of rock, salt, and water floating in the Great Basin as if a grand melee of rafts, unmoored and unbound by our perceptions of depth.
Dawn’s Spectre
More a mirror than a shadow, the dawn casts our Brocken Spectre on the horizon as we cruise wrapped in a glory of reflected light.
Sense of Humility
The mountains express their grandeur as if shrouded in a greater sense of humility…They await the vainglorious sun to strafe their grand features with beams of light and shifting shadows, allowing others to do their boasting while they rest, contentedly, as the backdrop for the dramatic scenes of the day.
Abstract Landscape – Laguna del Perro
In the flat expanse of land that occupies the space between the mountain ranges of New Mexico, we follow the trail of Laguna del Perro’s sandy recesses as if picking up the shadowy accents of deep tracks left on a muddy bank.
Abstract Landscape: Signs of Age
In the absence of growth, we watch the epochal process of aging…though there is no discernable greenery here in the Navajo backcountry, make no mistake, this is an integral part of living planet. Imagine an earthen solar field collecting and reflecting heat from the atmosphere, feeding the process of evaporation in the hydrologic cycle. Millennia of erosion have created finely articulated surfaces on the face of the desert, expanding its surface area…growing but not growing, as if some zen riddle. It’s going to be a long hot summer…
In a Moment
In a moment, the last moment before the sun breaks the horizon, the atmosphere is cast in a warm glow of soft predawn light. In a moment, the moment after sunrise, we will no longer be able to look eastward due to the painful glare of unfiltered light. We enjoy it while it lasts and recognize this moment for the gift that it is…a moment of illumination, an inspiration.
First Glimpses
As we climb through the weather that dominates our morning, we get our first glimpses of sunlight illuminating the roiling surface of the cloud deck from which we emerged and giving texture and dimension to what seemed an ominous void only moments before…Illumination changes everything.
Abstract Landscape – Adding Dimension
Following the echoing lines of Chaco Canyon, we barely perceive its depth…A shift in perspective is essential to understanding a place…Like so many others, we observe the beauty but cannot see the significance…Until, at last, we touch earth and experience the tangible splendor of these earthen patterns…their depth, their weight, their history, and their spirit.
Reward in Light
Waking in darkness, venturing through the night, passing myriad coffee stands yet to open…we work our way toward the sky…As we escape the shadows and fly tangent to the troposphere we join in the sunrise…As the terminator slips away from us, our Brocken specter bending dawn’s light as it reflects back toward us, we receive the reward for our predawn toil.
Bending Missouri
Looking upon the seemingly motionless flow of the Missouri River as it winds through middle America in late spring, the massive yet graceful bends in her meanders betray the force of her waters.
Fateful Glimmering
We have choices. Climate change is bigger than any of us. Weather cycles are just that. Absent human influences, these cycles will continue and sometimes result in environments where current species may not thrive. Given human influences, we contribute to an acceleration of these cycles and the cycles that once surpassed the capacity of human memory, now may take place within our lifetimes…If we are students of earth and observers of the world around us, we can understand this and accept our potential fate, while also recognizing our holy duty as stewards of this planet to do what we can to mitigate the impact of our excesses.
There are visionary leaders among us who, recognizing the value of science, apply its lessons without sentimentality toward archaic and shortsighted energy schemes in order to lead us collectively to become better stewards despite the personal political risks and short term costs…to do what they can… Yet, there are others who would allow the potential benefits of changing our ways to be obscured by the grim smoke of intransigence and selfishness, denying our role in the sustainability of our planet…in short, treasuring the value of sloth.
We, the people may wander the desert devoid of leadership for some time until the light leads us to see a glimmering as a signpost toward a different fate…Then, if we are wise, we may accept our role and rise to the challenge…
Spring Snow – Telluride in June
Peeking through a frame of snow topped peaks, we find Telluride, Colorado in transition to summer…lingering snow, some fairly fresh, reminds us of the temporal nature of Spring as Summer rapidly approaches.
Letting Go – Glen Canyon
Crossing the Colorado River at Page, Arizona, we watch the arrested flow of the river push against the arched back of the Glen Canyon Dam. With what little remaining view we have of the walls of Glen Canyon, we get a hint of the magnificence this canyon displayed prior to the construction of the dam. When we built this dam, we let go of some of our past, sacrificing geological and archeological treasures for the sake of saving water and extracting energy…perhaps, someday we will let go of that idea too and set the waters free so that we may once again marvel at the canyon and explore its hidden treasures.
Deconstructing Earth
As though nibbling on the edges of the Sierras, mining operations deconstruct the earth as they appear to pull down the mountains toward the desert floor from which they sprang.
Abstract Landscape – The American Fabric
We bring a constant newness to an old landscape…on the plains, dry streams and shallow hills and valleys are subdivided with grid lines, crops are planted while other fields lay fallow, the colors of seasons, purpose, and time dye the patterns of the landscape while the nature of the land imposes its will on those who seek to control it, as evident in the underlying patterns left by furrows and wheels that echo the contours of the earth like the moire of fabric shimmering in sunlight…now in this place, we seek to harness the wind and we raise towers and lines above the plain, playing to the nature of airflow across that irregular landscape…another pattern for another time.
Abstract Landscape – California Highway
Traveling along a horizontal plane, the twists and turns of the road seem the only threat as the road is level and immovable…From above, that immovable roadway begins to look like a delicate ribbon clinging precariously to the contours of the mountainside…each curve, the ebb and flow of shifting earth.
Cloud Dance – Navajo Mountain
We wandered in and out of clouds, catching glimpses of the inspired terrain beneath us. Lost in the brightness of the white vaporous aerial landscape, we resigned ourselves to the sensory deprivation of a weather day, but kept the hunters’ sense of what lay beneath us unseen…and then, as though a well of inspiration opened in front of us, the hot earth reflection burned away the weather to reveal Navajo mountain at our feet and the rising vapor appeared as if dancing in rejoice.
The Aerial Horizon – Photography
The Aerial Horizon 