"Rare California in Deep Moments," A Gallery in Progress (5 images)

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"A Wind Citadel Before the Range of Light"

The Sierra Nevada from Owens Lake

"The Sentinel Life of a Stone Eater"

White Mountains, Mono County, California

"Power Line Spirit Thief"
Inyo County, California

What the Storm Whispered,"

Alabama Hills, Inyo County, California

"The Gravity of Irrigation in a Vertical World,” 

YOSEMITE N.P.

Wiamea Canyon, Grand Canyon of the Pacific, a gallery in progress (2 images)

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 "Land of Fire and Rain"

Waimea Canyon from the West Rim 

What happens when a dead grey moonscape of hot volcanic ash has hundreds of thousands of years to compact, harden into tufa, and then erode in the rain?

The wind and birds bring in a whole new nature on their wings, and life with a tenacity bordering on miraculous creates a unique new world. If you were to cross those mountains in the distance, you would walk into a landscape so verdant that it would feel as if you were not even on the same planet as this canyon; but it would be the other side of the same volcano.

That terrain has been one of the wettest places on Earth with over 450 inches of rainfall a year since 1912 when records were first kept. 

Kauai's mountainous center forms a rain shadow trapping most of the wind-born moisture on the north and east sides of the island. The southwest side, like the continental United States, is much more arid. 

Since the same volcano made the soil that grows both the jungle and the more sparsely vegetated Waimea Canyon, the dramatic difference is a powerful model of how climate determines everything in an environment.

"Memory of a Distant Cloud"

How Rain Shapes an Unprotected Landscape

Many places on this planet have the combination of barren land and occasional heavy rainfall. This allows the great aqua sculptor elbowroom because what comes in a hurry and has no plant life sponge restraint, leaves in a hurry taking with it anything that isn't, so to speak, "nailed down." 

The revelations that follow are some of the most spectacular places on Earth. The Canyonlands and Grand Canyon of the Colorado, The Kali Gandaki Gorge in Nepal, The Cotahuasi Canyon in Peru, and this Wiamea Canyon on the Island of Kauai are all examples of the aqua sculptor’s craft. The horizontal banding on the distant cliff faces reveals the many explosive eruptions that made the magma and ash layer cake that forms the island.

ITALY, Land of renaissance, a gallery in progress (4 images)

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"THE VALLE SPOLETINA 
FROM THE SPELLO CITY WALL" 

UMBRIA

"MONISTARY IN THE MARCHE HILL COUNTRY"

"CHURCH WINDOW, PONTE DELLA TORRE" 

SPOLETTO, UMBRIA

"FIELD HOUSE FOR OUR LADIES OF THE SUN" 

TUSCANY

The Teton Range and Yellowstone Basin, a Landscape of Force and Fire, a gallery in progress (2 images)

"AS DAWN ROSE OUT OF DARKNESS, THE IDEA THAT GLORY IN THIS LIFE COMES FROM ACQUIRING WEALTH AND POWER, SEEMED LIKE A TATTERED CURTAIN IN A WINDOW BEING FOREVER ABANDONED"

 Jackson Lake, Teton National Park

"ANOTHER DAY FADES WEST OF GRAND TETON"

Finlandia of the Western Landscape, Arches National Park, Grand County, Utah a gallery (4 images)

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 "THE JEWELERS BENCH," 

 The Fiery Furnace

“SOMETHING OF FOREVER WITNESSED ON THE FRINGE OF THE FIREY FURNACE"

"MILLENNIA BEFORE PHYSICS OR EXTREME SPORTS 

WERE EVEN DREAMED OF BY THE CARBON UNITS, 

SANDSTONE HAD BEEN PERFORMING SURPRISING FEATS"

"AND THEN FOR NO REASON, 

THE WAY OUT GOT ALL DIFFICULT LIKE A WOMAN"

The Carribean, Visions of an Island Realm, a gallery (3 images)

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RESIDENT CONDUCTOR OF THE TRADE WINDS SYMPHONY

ST. THOMAS, UNITED STATES VIRGIN ISLANDS

Relaxing in Caribbean hammocks and looking up at various kinds of island flora, I have wondered why the sound of wind in leaves isn't given a higher status on the music charts.         

"The Great Coco Key Sand Wing" 

Bahamas

 

The beautiful white beaches of the Caribbean and Bahamian Islands are primarily coral sand.

When ocean currents move through straits between islands the sand can be swept into long graceful streamers.

This one appears as if the sea is in a dream of flight.

"Freighter Long Aground in the Twilight"

Turks and Cacos Islands

 

Imagine how the captain of this freighter felt when either he or his crew failed to note how close they were to an offshore sand reef not unlike the one pictured above, which grounded the ship so firmly that it has been stranded there for years.

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Ghost Towns, America's Past in Aspic, a gallery (3 images)

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"THE DRAMA CONTINUES LONG AFTER 
THE FINAL CURTAIN CALL"

COSMOPOLITAN HOTEL, BELMONT, NEVADA

 

This photograph of the Cosmopolitan Hotel was taken in the early 1970s.  As it too often happens, some guys, overcome by their testosterone, destroyed the building just for the hell of it about ten years after I took the photograph. 

I’ve often wondered how much money those individuals would have wanted, to do the same work, if someone had hired them to trash this piece of American history. I'll bet it would probably have taken more than minimum wage to even interest them.

Up until the silver mines closed in 1905 and the population drifted away, the Cosmopolitan was probably the best place a traveler could come for a drink, a night’s relaxation and whatever entertainment could be arranged in a landscape of vast desert valleys and mountains that still seem to go on forever. 

For that small segment of time, at least, the Cosmopolitan was indeed the opposite of loneliness. 

Do thoughts like these ever cross the minds of males who, because they subconsciously doubt it, need to prove they are men?

"GHOST TOWN CURB APPEAL" 

BODIE, CALIFORNIA

   

There are roughly three kinds of Ghost Towns.

Those preserved by national, state or local governments as public trusts,

Those that have been bought up and resettled by private individuals, technically making them post ghost towns,

And places where there used to be a ghost town. See the Cosmopolitan story above.

The reason Bodie is the quintessential American ghost town is that gradually as the mines played out, one hold-out resident kept buying up the town as people left. Before he died, he deeded the whole place to the State of California with the stipulation that it remain an historic park. It survives now, thanks to continuous maintenance in a state of arrested decay.

Thank you, James Cain, his family 

and the State of California.

“MIRRORS OF SILENCE, WINDOWS OF MEMORY," 

BODIE HOTEL,  MONO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

In June 2002, 30 years after the "Curb Appeal, "image was taken, the thriller novelist, Gary Braver, and I came to Bodie, me to reconnect with the West in my blood, him to fill his creative mind with a broader experience to inspire his craft. 

I was delighted that the natural decay had been arrested and locked up so well that it looked like no time had passed since 1972. 

Sometimes governments can do stuff real well.