I learned late on Tuesday that the Forest Service was planning to close the Sandia mountains at 8:00 this morning. I’d known the closure was coming and suspected it would be before Memorial Day — the fire risk has been way too high to count on us humans behaving ourselves over a holiday weekend — but I thought we’d still have one more week of freedom. I was wrong.
So I spent much of yesterday in the highest reaches of the Sandias. There are often patches of snow up there — sometimes entire snowdrifts — through May, but this year it was dry as a bone. I tried to soak as much of that lovely mountain air and scenery as possible into my soul, and into my camera as well.
I was thrilled to find a Rocky Mountain iris1 blooming at about 10,000 feet (above), and was grateful that the comma (below) allowed me to take its photo. Commas are so named because of comma-like markings on their underwings; they’re closely related to question marks, which have the same markings plus a little dot beneath them.
There is a tree up there — not a certain kind of tree, but one single tree — that often grows beautiful maroon pinecone thingies around this time of the year.2 Although I’ve been obsessed with that tree for just about forever, I’ve never once been able to take photos I’ve liked of it. I wasn’t even thinking about it yesterday but ended up there twice after some bushwhacking (in what I imagined to be two different directions — ha!).
The light was super harsh and glare-y yesterday, and I was so sure I’d once again failed in my efforts to get decent shots that I didn’t even download my photos until this morning. To my great surprise, this one time — one of the few times I didn’t even intend to take shots of the tree — I finally got some photos I liked.
The aspens at 10,000 feet were just barely starting to leaf out; they and the sky made up the background in the photo above.
The Sandias are due to reopen on July 18, two long months from now. I’m already missing all the butterflies and wildflowers.
They’re also known as blue flag irises.
My apologies. With the exceptions of junipers, piñons, ponderosas, and redwoods, I am completely hopeless when it comes to identifying conifers. Ditto those pink things, which are about 10mm in diameter — are they really pinecones, do any of you know?
Beautiful photos. But so sad for how much you will miss your dear Sandia. On to chasing trains?!
They look like pinecones to me! May July 18th come around quickly for 'our favorite photographer'