Enchanted White

December 22, 2006

 

I'm a rather happy camper at the moment since I've now got several hours of "found time."

I had thought that I would be buried under the dash of my daughter's beater, aka "The Beast." Since it's been sitting in the garage for the last several months, I had forgotten that it had an "issue" that really needed my attention.

I mean, as far as issues go, it could have been worse, but let me set the stage for you. On day two of our great schlep across America back in August, daughter and I had just switched over the driving. We were way in the north of New Mexico, in one of those sections of the state otherwise know as "in the middle of nowhere."

I have to tell you, in this state, there is nothing out there in nowhere land, absolutely nothing.

Frequently, there are few if any, other vehicles.

So...It was a dark and stormy night.

No, really.

There were storms all around us, lightning lit up the sky from time to time and a steady rain fell.

There was not another car on the road.

There was not another light on the horizon.

And right then and there at 70 miles per hour, the lights just turned off.

Off I'm telling you.

Off

WTF!

Daughter, non-pulsed, simply reached over to the light switch and pulled them on and off, and when that didn't work, she flipped on the bright lights.

Presto, there was light.

Turn of the brights, the regular lights come back on and we continue on our way.

Meanwhile, as the body tries to rid itself of an excess of adrenalin, I ask, so I take it that this has happened before?

"Oh Yes, I just don't generally drive it much at night."

So anyway... when I decided to venture out in the middle of the snowstorm the other afternoon, I had forgotten about the "quirk" with the lights, until I started home and the interior lights flicked off.

OK... seeing how MRS may drive this car out to LA in time to meet up with Daughter the first week in January, I decided that perhaps I should replace the light switch.

And it was easy, and they work.

So I've got a minute to throw up some images from our recent weather event, which although not anything like the 2 feet of snow that Denver got, closed this town down with only 5 or 6 inches.

I decided, that if I wanted to experience a deep New Mexico snow, I had better get out there quickly, because I'm betting that most of it will be gone within a couple of days.

Larger image here

I thought about posting some images from the back yard, but you've all seen snow on the patio so I decided to head on out to the boonies that are close to town.

The only problem was that it kept on snowing, and there was very little light for good photos.

Not only that, but those clouds, kept hanging on the mountain.

True to form, the sun came out the "day after" and the snow started to melt immediately.

Great big panorama image here

What I found really interesting is how much snow had melted or blown off the trees in just 24 hours.

A good photographer would have not included himself in the image, but I suppose you can just call this a kind of self portrait.

Larger image here

I left this image large, because I liked the way the ice and snow all worked with the cactus. This falls into the category of incongruent, although Albuquerque does get something like 8 or 9 inches a year of the white stuff.

I decided to actually go ahead and do a "self portrait" and now you can see the camera, attached to the monopod which I used for my hiking stick on both ventures into the deep white stuff.

When I came upon this tree on the first day, I thought that it would make for a good image, but the sun had just about gone down and there was no getting any kind of decent image.

I actually though that this would look best in black and white, but then played around with the hue/saturation controls and decided that I like this much better. Perhaps since the snow has no color, it is unaffected by the changes to the photograph.

And finally, since the lights were not yet fixed on the Beast, I headed out a bit early, figuring that slogging 4 miles through the snow was enough.

Once again I thought that this would look best in black and white, but the color version suits me just fine.

Several of you have mentioned something to the effect that you are expecting me to come back with some photos after my adventures in Italy.

You don't know the half of it, I'll try and write about it before I leave.