Tag Archives: John Wayne

Thunder In The Valley

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This is Monument valley. The same Monument valley John Wayne road thru in Stagecoach and many other films. Usually when you see pictures of the valley it’s under bright sun and clear skies, with the buttes in stark relief against the sky, hardly a cloud to be seen, the timeless desert shot from countless calendars. But that’s not always the case as can be seen in the image above.

Monument valley averages around 7″ of rain a year and as we drove towards the entrance in this storm it looked like it was getting all 7″ at once. If you ‘re from the Midwest or the northern tier of the our country you are used to seeing rain storms that last all day or longer sometimes. That’s usually not how our western storms go. With few exceptions our storms race in with an unconstrained fury and drop all of its moisture in a hurry. Our storms don’t fool around. The energy builds up over the mountains, the clouds grow into the very upper reaches of the sky then all hell  breaks loose. Rain, hail, sometimes even snow if you’re real lucky, and wind to blow your lawn chairs into New Mexico.

This storm has just about completed its job as you can see by the sun trying to break through the clouds, yet it is still raining hard enough on the highway that the windshield wipers are having trouble handling it. When a storm like this happens you just wait it out. The ground is going to be saturated and you want to stay way clear of any arroyos or small ditches, even low depressions in the highway as all that water has to go somewhere and it all doesn’t soak into the ground. It moves through the area with enough force to wash away cars and trucks as it they were rubber ducks and it happens real fast.

The roads in the valley are unpaved and made up of a combination of clay, decomposed sandstone, some gravel and that combination, when water is added to it, turns into an adhesive mixture that will coat your tires and fill up your wheel wells until you cannot turn your steering wheel. Besides having the adhesive strength of gorilla glue it turns into a cement-like substance that nearly has to be jack hammered out when it sets up. The general rule of thumb is, don’t drive on those roads until they’ve had a chance to dry out some.

This shot was taken during April in the mid-afternoon and the next morning you could drive the roads with no problems, in fact in some areas you could raise dust as you drove. That is if you didn’t make the mistake of parking in some low area where water runs through. If you did you’re probably in Lake Powell right now. Things happen quickly out here and you need to pay strict attention to your surroundings, but that’s just part of the drama of the West. Some folks thrive on it.

High Winds and Misdemeanors

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When most people think of Monument Valley they see it in their mind’s eye as the place where they take those beautiful calendar pictures of the rugged reddish buttes and mesas jutting up into nearly cloudless, cobalt blue skies, or where the shots of the wide vistas often shown in the old John Wayne movies like Stage Coach, The Searchers and Fort Apache, to name just a few, were taken. There is a peace and serenity within these views that makes you feel a quietude so vast and deep, it resonates with its silence, while the distances and depth in the images show the vast panoramas of the Southwest.

But the valley has another face that is rarely shown in those images. That’s when the hot, sand-laden winds come blowing up out of the South to race through the valley blasting their names on the sides of the monoliths that mark the valley floor. This morning the sun has just risen and is shining through the sand cloud as it begins it journey. Soon even the largest of the sandstone formations will be just a pale shadow within the depths of the wind-driven storm as the grains of sand are picked up, to gather and join and rise into a huge moving cloud that obliterates the view of everything in its path.

This is a time when man and beast alike hunker down, staying out of the sandstorm’s blistering winds and the sting of the sand against their exposed skin until the storm runs its course. Today it looks like this could build into a big one. The horses will turn their rear ends into the wind, put their heads down, and wait it out huddled together for protection. The sheep make their way to the sheltered areas at the base of the huge rock formations to be out of the brunt of the wind, and the wild things each have their own ways to stay alive.  People, well people do what ever they feel like doing. The smart ones stay home though.

Even the photographers get it and seeing the magnitude of the storm stay out of weather. But not before they grab a few shots of this different look of Monument valley.

Point Of View

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Point of view. Everyone’s got one. Some are political, some religious, some just opinionated, (you know who you are) and for some it is simply what the words say, a point of view. Where you look. Photographers share all those other points of view too, but sometimes they have an extra point of view. A way of looking that is unique and different and perhaps slightly skewed from the normal way of seeing.

This can be a blessing or a curse. The good part is you see things that are new and different that many others have missed. The bad part is this happens all the time, constantly, everywhere you look. If you go to a new place you can be overwhelmed with new sights  to the point where you don’t know where to look next but you have to shoot it. It’s a situation where no shots can be left behind.

Many of these different views require you to do strange but weird things to get the image. Such as lying flat on your slightly but manly rotund belly on the ground in the middle of the path, kind of like a beached whale, blocking everyone else’s movement while you futz around trying to get the shot just right. Normally most people are understanding of your behavior because they know this is a beautiful place and it’s obvious you’re trying to get the ultimate shot, but others are less caring and more than a little impatient with you. These are the ones who are most likely to step on the back of your head with nary an apology as they hurry to get their sightseeing done. I don’t like those people. They’re also very likely to step on your elbow so they can get into a better position to step on the back of your head. These people probably don’t like puppies either, or Jesus, or John Wayne, or even art, the bastards.

However the results of your efforts, if you persevere, are often marvelous to behold and almost worth the knot on the back of your head. This image of a section of the lower portion of Antelope canyon is the result of lying on the floor to get this angle. The result was it brought out a small amount of detail that was down close to the floor and was missed by almost everyone walking by. Those kind souls who waited patiently and didn’t step on me were rewarded with suddenly seeing a part of the canyon they would have missed. And now you, for whatever it’s worth, get to share it too. Thanks for waiting.

Red Chaps In The Sunset

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This post has been moved to OpenChutes.com. All future postings of Powwows, Indian Relay Races, Rodeos and Rendezvous will be posted there from now on exclusively. So if you’re looking for new images and posts for all those events attended this year, plus all the old posts posted on BigShotsNow.com check out OpenChutes.com. See you there!

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As we were sitting here planning our activity schedule for the rest of the summer it occurred to us that we had not checked in with our sister city, The Hampton’s, to see what they were up to this year. As you know we rarely spend any time there, and although we have few to none important ties with our neighbors on the East Coast, it’s always fun to see what the cousins are doing.

Now THEY have got a busy summer planned. You wonder how they find time to attend all these events let alone plan them. Here are just a few we’re sorry we can’t attend. In July alone there is the “Opening Day of Polo for the Monty Waterbury Cup”, “The 26th Annual American Picnic with Grucci Fireworks!”,  “The 28th Annual Garden Tour & Wine Tasting”, we took Aunt Pheeb and Uncle Skid to that one last year. That didn’t work out so well. “Cocktails at Holly Hall”, “The Midsummer Party at the Parish” That was black tie and all of ours were tie-died so we couldn’t get in. And the always rough & tumble anything goes “Annual Hampton Designer Showhouse Gala Preview Party” Man oh man, that’s one you gotta attend. Those guys really know how to throw a party. You pair up a wine sizzler with a watercress sandwich and you’ve got way too much excitement. I for one was glad they had security on hand that night. We were at it to nearly 10 o’clock before saying goodnight.

I know, right, how do you even compete with stuff like that. Then I had a thought, why not check our summer event schedule here in the West. Well, am I glad I did!. We got stuff going on. Out here lots of people keep horses as a part of their everyday life. They ride them, feed them, clean up after them and some even use them for work. So it’s not surprising that we should have organized events celebrating one of the symbols of the West. And by symbol I mean the horse. We call these events Rodeos and they take place all over the West. You can see one in small towns and large cities almost all summer long. It’s kind of like “The Season” as they call it in the Hampton’s and they’re very popular with people who like to drink beer, wear jeans with gigantic buckles and never take their hats off, unless they’re talking to a lady, or some one mentions John Wayne.

For instance, we have “Bring your Saddle Bronc to Work Day” where proud cowboys bring their favorite Saddle Bronc to work and show off some of their jumping skills. The cowboy’s jumping skills that is. The horse has to try and stay under him for 10 seconds or he loses and has to herd sheep for the next week.

We have one of my favorite parties of the year, the annual “Red Chaps at Sunset” event where they put red chaps on a cowboy then ask him to ride a horse that hates the color Red. This can make for some hilarious moments as the two of them work out their differences. It’s a cloud pleaser all right.

We also have big charity events where money is raised for many worthy causes. There is the “Ground Pounder for Mental Health” to name just one, a charitable event where sponsors sponsor a cowboy and his horse and pledge a certain amount of money for every time the horses hooves ‘pound the ground’. All monies raised are used to care for bull riders who have developed cognitive problems, or no longer can remember who they are, or need plastic surgery to remove the hoof print from their faces, or remove chunks of horn they didn’t get out at the clinic. It’s a worthy cause and many bull riders have benefited from their generosity. In fact new ones almost every time they try and ride bulls.

These are just a few of the things going on out here. I plan to visit more of them as the summer goes by and let you know all the terrific events we have. Now you don’t have to travel back to the Hampton’s to have summer fun. Stay right here, go watch Rodeo events, drink beer, and remember to take your hat off if anyone mentions John Wayne.

 

Fishkiller

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Bosque del Apache can sometimes be a rough place if you’re a bird or more likely if you’re a fish. Located in the southern part of New Mexico near Socorro, it is nestled right where lots of drama of the most violent kind has occurred. The entire area has been a hotbed of bad behavior since people have known about it, with more than its share of seedy characters of all sorts hanging around doing dastardly deeds and generally being unrepentantly unrepentant.

You can go far enough back in history to find that even one patch of dirt didn’t like the patch next to it in the area around Bosque del Apache and it didn’t get any better as time went on. Just recently, like in the 1700’s, the Comanche’s, the bad boys of the southwestern tribes were active and doing every manner of awful stuff, raiding settlements, capturing or killing the inhabitants, causing a high level of fearfulness to the point where people just said the hell with it and moved back to where ever they came from.

Then you had the Mexicans who ran the place with a pretty tough hand in the early 1800’s, they forced everybody to eat those really hot little green chilies, habernos I think they’re called, it makes my mouth burn just to say the name, whether they wanted to or not. That ought to have been a hanging offense right there. Even Kit Carson, and you know how bad he was, he was like the Honey Badger who wasn’t scared of nothing said “OK I was going to retire here and start a sheep ranch, but these people are just too damn hard to get along with.” and he packed up and went somewhere safer like the Indian Nation or somewhere, and this was in the mid-1800’s already. They had movable type back east and weren’t far off from electric lights and radios by then, and he was scared to live there. Kit Carson! That would be like John Wayne saying he was scared to live near L.A.

Billy the Kid was a regular and you know he liked to tear stuff up. The place was just stuffed to the gills with outlaws. Even today in the 21st century they will charge you more for gasoline down there than anywhere else and just laugh at you when you complain about it. It’s a rough place that New Mexico, just watch it when you go down there.

All through its history the desperadoes, malcontents and just downright mean characters have passed through this neighborhood and one of the worst to come down the pike has been this guy. Simply known as Fishkiller, no ones knows his real name, where he’s from or  how long he’s going to stay, nothing at all, except they know not to mess with him. When you see him sitting there on the bank putting out that evil eye you know that soon some fish is going to die. Known to be a holy terror with that rapier-like bill he has no compunction what so ever about removing the life force from any living fish he sees. There’s many a grieving carp widow hiding in the long grass under the bank sobbing over her missing husband because he went out for a minnow and never came home. All that remained was the sinister shadow of the Fishkiller splayed across the calm surface of the stream and the spreading ripples of the departed.

I told you Bosque del Apache could be dangerous. I wasn’t kidding. So if you’re going to be down there some time and you have a favorite fish don’t be calling for him if you even think the Fishkiller is in the area. I’m just saying. Not wanting to tell you what to do or anything but now you know and if you go ahead and get that fish killed it’s on you. I warned you. OK then, have a nice day.