Snow Squall, Gila Mountains New Mexico

This part of New Mexico has always been a favorite of mine and I find a way to pass through it when I can – no easy task, as it is 60 miles of two-lane road to the nearest town of any size and over 100 miles to the interstate. At this altitude the weather can be a little hairy in the winter months and more than one time I have questioned my sanity as I made my way down the switchbacks to the Arizona side a little further down the road. Often when I am here I just pull over to the side of the road, set up a chair and read for a while to the amusement of grazing livestock or the occasional owner of said livestock passing by in their pickups. Big white van with Ohio plates, big guy under a black cloth with an old wood camera, or just sitting there in the sun – must warrant some curious conversation over the dinner table. Maybe someday I will get to meet the ranchers who call this home.

Geronimo counted this as part of his territory making frequent trips to the Gila River, probably in the summer when lack of water, game and high temperatures dictated moving from his other areas like the Superstition Mountains near Phoenix. Hollywood would have us believe that all Native Americans lived in Tee Pees but most were transient, especially the Chiricahua Apache (Ndeh native people) with territories that exceed those of any peoples I’ve read about. My Mother’s family arrived a good bit north of here around the end of the 19th century via wagon train as homesteaders, something they had done in both Texas and Oklahoma before that. It is no mystery where my wandering comes from. As a boy I heard stories of my Grandfather drifting from ranch to ranch in west Texas and northern New Mexico with a stint or two as a hired hand on the Goodnight Ranch, one of the largest and most famous cattle ranches of its day. He later took up his wandering again taking my uncles with him from time to time, much to the consternation of my Grandmother left on the ranch to raise my mother and her sisters. Although I never got to know him as he passed around the time I was born, I think of him when I am up here near the Gila Mountains listening to the wind pass through the juniper and grasslands of these foothills. When I read Cormac McCarthy’s border trilogy I felt I could see these lands in that time, far from the New Mexico portrayed on travel posters.

As I lack easy access to this land I must count on luck with the weather, both for driving and for making pictures. If I was a different kind of artist, I suppose I could make an image here and Photoshop a sky from another time for dramatic effect. But the journey is important, how else will you recognize the destination if you don’t embrace the value and learning that taking those steps bring to you? I’ve stood here many times with clear skies and gentle breezes with no urge to make an image. So, on this day, with snow squalls setting up over the Gilas, wind blowing through the grasslands, and a sky full of opinion and argumentative in it’s expression, I was able to make an image that spoke of this place on many levels. Isn’t that what the camera does best? Isn’t that what we are charged with when we are given talent and the opportunity to say something with our work?
Travel Journal
November 2005