My motivation for trying my hand at photography were the amazing vistas I’ve seen while hiking on skyline trails above the tree line. I was fed up with my cell phone not capturing the sentiment I felt looking out over the expansive landscape. But I bought my new camera in January, which is not a particularly amenable time to hike at 12k feet, especially if you prefer frequent warm-ups during snow play. So I’m starting out more local with some photos of my “extended back yard”, and I’m pleased to find scenes that I’ve walked past innumerable times that are worth photographing.

Ponderosa pines are without a doubt my favorite New Mexican tree. They are tall and majestic with their long needles, which make a soothing sound in the wind like no other, and the “inside-out” look to the bark is fascinating. But I think the real reason I love them is because the best running trails are ubiquitously through the ponderosas. It’s a chicken-and-the-egg question: Do ponderosas only grow where the ground is good soft dirt, or have ponderosas in ages past transformed the rocks into a smooth path? Either way, running through them centers my chi.

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Alligator cedars are another unique tree and a rare gem in the Sandias. Zoom in close and look at the bark — it’s textured like an alligator! Overall, they are relatively rare, except in a couple of places I’ve found where they’re almost dense enough to constitute a grove. For these images, I took a little time to play with some different filters. In the last one, the pups were asking pretty hard to keep walking down the trail.

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