Tag Archives: New Mexico

He’s So Mean He’d Bite His Own Self

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Rattlesnakes. That’s all you’ve got to say to give many people the Heebie Jeebies. And rightfully so. My old man, who I loving referred to as Dad, or Father if I’d done something really bad like wreck the family car or torn out the centerfold in his Playboy magazine, used to say about somebody he didn’t like much that “He’s so mean he’d bite his own self.” to make a point about the person’s character. Now biting one’s own self conjures up a picture of somebody that just couldn’t hold that meanness in no matter what and if there weren’t no one around to be mean to they’d just go ahead and bite their own selves just to feel good about being so mean.

Rattlesnakes are low down. That’s in the western, cowboy sense of not being tall, or in another way, not being of good moral fiber as in “He’s a no-good low-down snake in the grass.” meaning, well, he’s a low-down no-good snake in the grass. Stay away from it and don’t have no truck with it at all. Don’t do anything fun with it like go camping or maybe out to dinner, or even just have a friendly conversation on a hot muggy day. Because they’ll bite ya. Even if you don’t need getting bit. They’ll do it just to see that look on your face.

A really good friend of mine, a lady of good reputation from North Carolina, was one time jumping over one when it reared up and bit her in the foot. There wasn’t no need for it  to do that. She was just trying to get out of her garage and saw it laying there so rather than step on it, she’d been well brought up by a loving southern family and taught not to go stomping around on snakes, so she took a mighty leap in the air to avoid it, but that didn’t mean anything to that no-good low-down snake. It just up and bit her good while she was in mid-air.  She survived after using up most of the anti-snake venom in the western speaking world and to this day doesn’t think very highly of rattlesnakes. See that just illustrates my point. For a good southern woman who likes everything and is good her own self to everybody and everything to be made to feel that way is just not right. Rattlesnakes are just mean.

 “Why do they have to be so damned bitey all the time?” is a question asked by many snake bit or unsnake bit folks who happened to be minding their own business when coming close to one, who then experienced their meanness in one shape or another. “We wasn’t doing nothing to it and it tried to bite us. That’s low down.” See that’s the problem with the world today. There’s this feeling that everything in the natural world has got to be your friend. Well that flat is untrue. Wrong. There’s plenty of stuff in the world that doesn’t give a flat flying fig about you at all. Snakes, particularly Rattlesnakes don’t care about you. Politicians, and I almost have to apologize to snakes when I lump them together, don’t care about you. And I almost forgot, Badgers. Badgers are almost worse than snakes when it comes to not caring. For proof of that just type in badgers in the search box at the top of this page and you’ll see lots of stories about how mean and uncaring badgers is. The Thing About Badgers is just one story that proves my point. Great White Sharks is another. When is that last time you heard about a Great White Shark gently nudging a drowning baby back to the boat to be rescued. Nope you haven’t. Know why? They don’t like you. They is just mean.

The snake in the picture above is a case in point. It is currently doing life in a New Mexico, correctional facility for biting a god-fearing, but upstanding citizen who wasn’t doing nothing but trying to hit it with a stick. Unfortunately for the citizen that stick was too short and well, it ended badly. Now the snake is doing hard time for just being true to itself. Which is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. They should lock them all up and it wouldn’t bother me at all. This one is participating in a new type of therapeutic rehabilitation where it is exposed to people by being placed on display in a glass cage where people can come up and bang on the glass to annoy it. The idea being that this will change the snakes attitude about people and it might, maybe could be, released back into society. It seems to be working as the snake has become pretty indifferent to people in general. But every once in a while a cute little kid will come up to the cage and raise their delicate little kid hand to smack the glass a good one when the snake will suddenly lunge at it, rapping its fangs a good one on the glass just millimeters away from burying those long teeth it that pudgy little hand. So I guess it needs a little more time in the box, so to speak.

I guess if there’s a moral to this story it’s not everything wild in this world likes you. So leave it alone. Don’t mess with it. And try to have good luck when all else fails. Because there are things out there that are so mean they’ll bite their own self just for the hell of it. Rattlesnakes is one of them. Or if you can’t do that make sure your stick is long enough.

Diamond Creek Crown Dancers

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On April 26th Through the 28th the Gathering of Nations, the largest powwow in the United States was held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There were over 3500 dancers (this is not a misprint) in the Grand Entry seen by over 80,000 attendees. 785 tribes were represented from the U.S. and Canada. It was a spectacular event.

This image is of a spirit dancer from the White River Apache Diamond Creek Crown Dancers group that participated and performed out on the open avenue in front of Tingley Arena. They are members of the White Mountain Apache tribe and have performed all over the United States.

Their performance was one of the hits if not the high point of the various dance groups that performed over the length of the event. An entire article, actually an entire book, could be written about the meaning of the dances they perform, the regalia they wear, the songs they sing, and the symbols they paint on their bodies, but that will have to be left for another time. For now this image represents their amazing culture and traditions and they deserve a debt of gratitude for sharing it with us.

Full Moon Over The Crow Camp

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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!

It was nearly midnight as I walked through the camp. It had been a long day. It was Crow Fair 2016 and as always it was spectacular. Starting early in the morning to photograph the staging of the parade, following and shooting the dance competitions, watching the evening performances, it was a day packed full of excitement. This was the last day and I was heading home in the morning.

It had been cloudy and although the sky was covered by those clouds, occasionally the full moon would show itself but never long enough to get a good shot of it. But as luck sometimes favors the photographer the clouds seemed to dissolve and there it was in all its glory, full and round and positioned exactly where it needed to be to make this image. I was given a present in the form of this last memory. Walking through the cool night, feeling the moonlight wash over me, hearing the sound of laughter, singing, people calling out to each other, this was the perfect ending to a summer-long trip along the Powwow trail.

I began the summer in late April with the opportunity to photograph the largest powwow in North America, the Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Thousands of dancers, singers, drummers, participants, spectators, all brought together to celebrate their culture. This was spectacle at its grandest. At one point there were over 2800 dancers coming and going from the arena floor. This is like the Superbowl of powwows.

As the summer progressed I had the opportunity to attend powwows and meet people from nearly every tribe in the western part of the United States. There were Shoshone, Arapaho, Bannock, Cree, Chippewa, Blackfeet, Nez Perce, Sioux, Comanche, Apache, Navajo, Hopi, and many other tribes. There were people from the Cree And Chippewa tribes that came down from Canada to participate in the Chippewa/Cree powwow at Rocky Boy Montana. This event was held in the rolling hills of Northern Montana on a hillside where you could see for two days in any direction. No buildings in sight, nothing but the golden prairie stretching on for miles and miles. The sound of drums and singing and the people dancing carried on the wind for days. The reservation in nestled up against the Canadian border just east of Glacier National Park and it was one of the most natural, authentic places I had the good fortune to visit.

People from the various tribes in Washington and Oregon were at different events along the way. It was a chance to see their different regalia and styles of dancing. All were welcome and made to feel like part of the family. That’s what these gatherings felt like. Large family gatherings where you got to see cousins that you hadn’t seen in years. A place where acquaintances were made and spiritual ceremonies brought everyone close together. The sense of community was strong. It felt good to be there.

Over the course of the summer I took over 20,000 images, many were of the various rodeos that were part of the powwow, but never the less, I took a lot of photographs. Now that I am back at my studio I will begin the daunting task of processing these images and posting them on the site. Hopefully the wait hasn’t been too long for those wanting to see the shots of their powwows. Each event will have its images posted as I get to them. My apologies for the delay.

This has been an incredible summer and I couldn’t be more thankful for the opportunity to observe, photograph, join in. I got to march in the Color Guard at the Western Shoshone/ Bannock Grand Entry where they celebrated the Vets that had served in all the wars. That was the first time in over 50 years that I have had the opportunity to participate in something like that and I will cherish the experience forever. But just as importantly it was the ability to be able to be a very small part in the total experience. Thank you one and all for making that experience possible for me.

As time goes on I will get the photographs you want to see posted. If you don’t see your event, don’t worry it’ll be there. Also please feel free to email me if you have any questions. Thanks for a great summer.

Cloud Cutting

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Many of you long time readers are aware of *The Institute’s weather modification program. We developed this ability to modify and even create certain kinds of weather early on in The Institute’s development. This was done for many reasons, all of them altruistic, but mainly for money. The Institute is expensive to run and maintain and we seek funds wherever we might find them.

We have different projects in the works constantly to fund our operation, from our innovative metal can retrieval program from the roadsides of our Nation’s highways to assisting NASA with their Space Program by supporting probes to Uranus and beyond. We have an outreach program where we have housebound or incarcerated individuals address envelopes for various corporations to help keep the Post Office’s Junk Mail program alive. That keeps untold dozens of postal workers busy and gainfully employed. There is no project too small if it assists us in maintaining the integrity and longevity of The Institute and brings in a buck or two.

Our supremacy had been untouchable in the weather modification arena and we had been so far out front that you had to jump up in the air real high to even see our dust. Then the Aussie’s got in the game. Man, they are tough. Their program to limit rain and cause desertification of huge areas, if not all of their country, has been unassailable. Our program to “drought up” California has been good but we can’t even touch what the Australians are capable of. Which is difficult for us to admit. Right now they’re the ones we watch.

Because of their (we’re talking about those miserably overachieving Aussies here) ability to make inroads into the weather modification business in general, we have had to look for other areas of the business to augment our extensive programs. We believe we’ve hit on something the rest of the WeatherMod group hasn’t touched yet and that is the untouched field of Boutique Weather. This is a small business at this time but we think the potential is absolutely enormous.

There are many very wealthy States that have incredible tourism businesses. States like Colorado, Utah, Arizona ( a biggie ) Montana, parts of New Mexico and when they pay their bills (which is why we have them in a “droughtie” right now) Northern California that are looking for that edge to keep those tourists coming in and to keep them there longer. That’s where we come in. We are already supplying many of those states and other small touristy kind of countries with custom-designed sunrises and sunsets. With our new custom “Cloud Cutting” ability we can custom tailor those sunrises and sunsets by ‘cutting’ the edges and shapes of the clouds so that they can feature or highlight a tourist drawing element, by allowing the light to be directed on them for maximum viewing pleasure. Think, Devil’s Tower, or parts of the Grand Canyon, Isis for instance, where before you had a pleasant sunset that sort of showed off the various elements of the scene, but now with our Patented Applied For “Cloud Cutting” technology, those individual elements can be seen by those money-toting tourists much more clearly and colorfully than ever before. Talk about making it rain greenbacks, we can hardly keep up with the demand for these new custom tailored clouds. Now coupled with our ability to create clouds of any size, shape or profile we feel we have a real winner here. Need God beams, we can do that. Need tiny or large holes or openings in your cloud for extra special effects? We can do that. Right now the sky’s the limit, so to speak.

The image featured above is over the Eastern edge of The Institute’s testing grounds where we work on many of our new weather projects. This is the program at work using the new “Sun nibbling” feature where we are sculpting the edge of the cloud to perhaps highlight a small secluded cove on the Eastern Seaboard, or perhaps one of the little canyons that feed into the Grand Canyon, or a meadow up in Yellowstone where elk graze in the early morning or evening. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

We have high hopes for this new element in our Weather modification program and already interest is running high for this unique new addition and we see big things on the horizon. Watch the sky above and stay tuned for further innovations.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind.

Chaco Canyon Redux

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As alert readers you may have noticed a decided lack of fresh new posts with their scintillating images and incredibly succinct prose lately. That’s because The Director here at The Institute said “OK, I’m taking a break. We have not been on one road trip this year and I’m tired of looking at all these Monet’s and Rembrandt’s here in The Institute’s main art gallery. I’m tired of looking at all these first editions in the Presidential library. You can only look up so many words in the Gutenberg Dictionary before it gets to be boring. I want to go out and experience life again amongst things and places that are real. That have relevance in the real world. “So fire up the Bokeh Maru. Load the stores. Find room for the interns and we leave at first light.” The Bokeh Maru as many of you know, is our smaller research vessel and is used primarily for our shorter excursions.

That was it. About a week or so ago we followed the moonlight down the mountain having rigged the Bokeh Maru for silent running so as to not disturb the neighbors and turned her bow South by Southwest. We had two main agendas to complete. First and foremost we were headed to the Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico to attend the largest gathering of Native American tribes in the United States and Canada for a weekend of dancing, competitions, fellowship and fun, (much more on that in future posts) and secondly, we needed to stop and revisit *Chaco Canyon Historical Park, one of the singularly magical places you can visit.

* http://www.bigshotsnow.com/life-and-other-things-of-interest/

* http://www.bigshotsnow.com/la-ventana-de-oro/

It was a brisk morning with the sun just rising and burning off the light fog that covered highway 287. The Bokeh Maru was in rare form wanting to run into the wind as she hadn’t had a real outing since last fall. It was a trial just holding her back to maintain the speed limit. It didn’t help that the interns were frisky as well and had taken to bouncing up and down in the back of the rig just aft of the head causing the Bokeh Maru to wallow and list and nearly raising the front wheels off the pavement. After several admonishments and stern warnings to cease that childish behavior we stopped, tied several of the ring leaders to the back bumper and set off down the road. The anguished cries and sweating faces pressed up against the rear window soon had the rest quieted down and our progress became smooth again.

Our first stop was Chaco. Chaco is a place every human being should visit once in their lives. Not all of you at once of course, but make sure you do it. Check with your neighbors so you don’t all cram in there at the same time. It ought to be in the top ten of your bucket list. Above is an image from Pueblo Bonito, one of the main building sites in the park, there are many more of course, but Pueblo Bonito is the largest building constructed by the ancient ones and feels like it has the most magic.

You can enter into the ruins and wander and sometimes crawl through the small openings from one room into another. Touching the cool walls deep in the recesses of the palace, calling it a palace is no exaggeration by the way, feeling the reflections of past lives pass by you, listening to the quiet that is so deep and profound until the wind finds its way through the passages, rubbing against the cool stone walls to finally brush up against your face, is an experience that cannot be duplicated. TV and movies just don’t cut it, you need to be there. Occasionally you will hear a raven call as it flies high up against the cliff face that stands behind the building it’s plaintive squawking filtering down upon you. This is a special, special place and the feeling you have is not unlike entering a cathedral, the same feeling of exhilaration and profound peace is there.

It was at Chaco that several of our interns wandered off into the desert in search of whatever was in their minds at the time. This happens. We start off with a dozen or so interns and as the trip progresses there is a certain attrition and we come back with fewer if any when the trip is over. That’s why we always take more with us than we need. One word of caution to the potential visitor to the park. You must want, really want, to get there as the last 16 miles of dirt roads will test your resolve. Anything over ten miles an hour will have a disastrous effect on your vehicle. The Bokeh Maru made it without mishap but it let its displeasure be known to us by showing everyone all the new squeaks and rattles and fallen off bits that it incurred during the trip there.

After Chaco we returned to roads that had blacktop and concrete on them and things got easy again. We arrived at the Gathering of Nations without further mishap and although we had been told it was big, we were unprepared for the enormity that greeted us. It was held in the West Pies arena in Albuquerque and the word was thousands upon thousands of visitors attended it. This was probably an understatement as it felt like a lot more. There were over 2800 registered dancers and competitors alone registered for the show. It is almost beyond words to describe the cacophony of color and sound and whirling bodies and drums and singers that assaulted your senses in a good way when you walked into the arena. This was a huge event and we’ll be posting images from it for some time trying to give you some feeling for how it felt to be there.

This is where we lost the rest of our interns. There were only seven or eight left by that point anyway. We should have known better. It was just too overwhelming an event to thrust these young minds into. Occasionally we would see one of our interns out in the middle of the arena floor dancing with abandonment, eyes rolled up into their heads, oblivious to the modern world, then they would be lost in the swirling crowds of dancers on the floor and that would be our last glimpse of them. We were sorry to lose them of course but it did improve the Bokeh Maru’s gas mileage on the trip home.

Soon, as our processing department catches up on the several thousand images taken while we were there we will begin posting them for you viewing pleasure. As always it feels good to make it back to The Institute unscathed, or perhaps just a little scathed. Everything connected to The Institute’s grounds survived our absence and we’re beginning to regroup and prepare for the next excursion. The summer is filled with exciting events to attend and we’ve scheduled many of them. Stayed tuned for details of our travels and adventures. Maybe we’ll see you out there.

Stop Look At Me

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Sometimes you’re just walking along minding your own business intent on getting somewhere cool where you can take incredible pictures. Someplace where the light is fantastic, the content perfect, and all the elements are exactly where they should be. That place is probably down this path, around the corner and will be there right in front of you, the perfect incredible view. You just have to hurry so you get there before the light changes.

In your mind you see the type of images you want and you single-mindedly forge ahead, eyes down, brain shut down to everything but what might be right around the corner. You haven’t been to this spot yet and you haven’t actually seen the views you believe are there but you’re pretty sure they must be. So you don’t look to the right or the left you just plow ahead.

 As a photographer you train yourself to be aware of your surroundings, to look everywhere because that great shot might be right next to you and that works until you let your imagination put blinders on you. When that happens you can pass right by the picture you were looking for. That’s what happened when this picture was taken.

What had been a non-descript image because the light was flat and hidden behind a cloud made this view one you would walk right by, not giving it a second glance. The wall was ok but nothing special and the background wasn’t even noticeable. Let’s go, don’t waste your time here, let’s get to where the good pictures are. Then the sun came out. And like a deep-sea Angler fish dangling its lighted bait in front of it, it highlighted the spectacular lime green leaves to draw you in, painted the grass a beautiful golden orange and caused the small trunks of the willows behind it to go pure black in perfect contrast, and there you were, you were hooked. Here it was the image you had been hunting for, the one you had written off in your mind, right here in front of your face. Your red embarrassed face. You nearly lost this shot. The morale of this story is. Keep your imagination but turn the blinders off. Keep looking everywhere, and most importantly, a picture in your viewfinder is worth two in the bush.

Note: If you want to see this view for yourself go to Aztec Ruins National Monument near Farmington, New Mexico. Take the path to the left and watch. Pay particular attention to the drab, non-descript foliage and when you see the sun come out and the foliage begins saying Stop Look at Me, take your picture.

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.