Sedona, AZ.
Dense smoke from the 3,500-acre nearby Whiskey Fire blankets the Verde Valley as hot air balloons rise in the morning air. Our pilot, who has been flying over Sedona for 45 years, says he has never seen it like this.
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona. (1 of 2).
I watched the sun rise over the most beautiful desert I've ever seen...
Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona. (2 of 2).
...then I stood at the fence until border patrol chased me away.
Nebraska.
Photo featured in "Us of America" magazine, Winter 2018.
Scenic, SD.
"...there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years." - Willa Cather, O Pioneers!
Northwestern Nebraska.
Record drought, record heat. Sunrise over the Shell Puget Sound Refinery in Anacortes, Washington. Smoke from wildfires in the Olympic Peninsula and British Columbia obscures the sky. July 5, 2015.
On the Way to the Holy Land.
Belle Glade, FL.
Stark, beautiful, and harsh…South Florida moves me like no other landscape. So much so that I have cried - in joy and in sadness - when returning there after being away for too long. And I’ve seen others do the same, moved by feelings found only it seems when looking at that unforgiving and shelterless sea of grass.
To me, this photo captures all that is deeply moving - wonderful and terrible - about the environment of Florida. The rich and flat land, the vultures perched on the poles in the hot sun, the drainage canal that never runs dry, and the rickety power lines that are no match for hurricane winds all seem to point out the human folly of trying to control the Everglades. I cry for their beauty, for their loss, and for all the countless, unnamable souls who have toiled under the hot sun there.
The title to this post is a play on words, by the way. The Holey Land is a wildlife management area owned by the state of Florida.
Become a supporter of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. They do good work.
Click to play video.
Bill, WY, June 2017. I found a bridge where I could watch passing coal trains from the Powder River Basin of Eastern Wyoming, North America's busiest coal region. (Edited on YouTube, so I added some music).
"This is the assembly of life that took a billion years to evolve. It has eaten the storms - folded them into its genes - and created the world that created us. It holds the world steady." - Edward O. Wilson
Morning in Everglades National Park, FL.
Joshua Tree National Park, CA.
Somewhere in the northwestern corner of Nebraska.
Olympic National Park, WA.
Thunder Basin National Grassland, WY.
Joshua Tree National Park, CA.
Scenic, SD.
Oglala National Grassland, Nebraska.
“East from Bill, north of Bill, the dirt roads north and east of Bill - whatever exactly it is, it is potent up there: unadorned curve of the earth.” - Merrill Gilfillan, “Magpie Rising."
Bill, WY.