Tag Archives: southwest

Unexpected Views

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Just North of Mexican Hat, Utah as you travel Hwy163 to where it joins with Hwy 261 the San Juan river makes a mighty bend in its generally East to West flow. It flows past the town of Bluff on the East and makes it way in a serpentine fashion westward where it meets the Colorado river and finally dumps into Lake Powell.

The junction of the two highways is just a place in the road where you decide if you want to turn left on Hwy 261 and head on up to Moki Dugway and Muley Point or stay on 163 until you finally get back to Bluff. Lots of times as you’re traveling from one incredibly scenic spot to another you get into traveling mode. As there may be 100 or so miles between places you want to see you put yourself in autopilot and head down the road at the most prudent speed you can tolerate and watch the mile markers tick off  the miles. After all you can’t be late for something spectacular.

The roadside scenery, as incredible as it is, becomes a blurred streak outside your windows and it isn’t until you check back in to reality and find that you have to stop to make a decision about which route you need to take or let the dog out to take a whiz, that you begin to notice your surroundings again.

That’s when you realize that everywhere you look is an unexpected view. If these particular hills have a name, we’ve unofficially named them the Zig-Zag mountains, it’s  not on a sign anywhere. We looked. That doesn’t lessen their scenic quality one little bit. What it does though is make you want to retrace your path to see what else you missed while you were speeding along getting to some place else where there might be scenery. That’s the one huge problem in traveling through the Southwest, there are unexpected views all over the place. Next trip will be to see all the unexpected places instead of racing to see the expected ones.

Terraforming – Good or Bad?

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Since our post titled ‘Behind The Ridge’ http://www.bigshotsnow.com/behind-the-ridge/ was posted the other day our mailboxes have been filled with a huge amount of mail, some protesting vehemently our misuse of our Nations natural resources, “How dare you move a national landmark!”  “We’ll see you tarred and Feathered you….!”   “I’m telling my congressman, you bastard !!!”    “We’re coming out there and when we get our hands on you you’ll wish you were….!” These were just a few of the printable comments we received from those with a slightly different viewpoint than ours.

We also received many comments in support of our project.” Rad, Dude.” was one.  “That was awesome!” was another. “What are you guys talking about anyway?” This one kind of fell in the middle so we put it in the plus column. But the one we want to focus on is this one ” How did you guys do that and like, not screw up the earth, man?”

This question points to something that goes right to the heart of The Institute’s core values. Which as we have stated countless time before is “Do No Harm. None. Not Any.” If there might be harm, like my dad used to say “Doan Doit…I mean it, You doit you get  a whippin.” So our prime directive is in place and guides us through all of our major projects. Even the ones where it looks like we are defiling, but not raping, that would be bad, the land.

How is this possible then, you might ask. How do you move a mountain and not leave permanent damage. The answer of course is Terraforming. Terraforming is a term that simply means the Earth-Shaping of a planet, moon or other body and is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, surface, topography or ecology to be similar enough to the environment of Earth to make it habitable by Earth-like life. That’s all there is to it. Put it back like it was. Or how it should have been had it been done right in the first place, or even make it cool again after you screw it up.

Moving the mountain in the first place was fairly simple. We simply drilled holes in the bottom of the mountain, set pins with hook eyes in them, glued them in with gorilla glue, tied a whole bunch of helium-filled balloons to the hook eyes until it lifted, then hooked a small plane to the front and hauled it off. Our tow plane was a 1946 PIPER J3, C-65HP, TTA 1286, 260 SMOH with a midnight blue paint job to cut down on visibility. We timed it to start shortly after sunset on a moonless night and just headed up the Rockies until we got to The Institute. We cut the balloons loose and it dropped right into place. Easy-Peezy. We’re making it seem pretty simple but a lot of planning went into this project. Some of it we have to keep confidential to protect our phony baloney jobs due to slight violations of air space between states, some antiquated laws regarding taking mountains across state lines, endangerment of wildlife excepting birds, some property damage due to falling rocks, but by and large it went pretty well.

The other half of the problem took quite a bit more work. Due to the laws of the sovereign state of Arizona you can not just go off in the back country with D9’s, backhoes, unlicensed four-wheel drives and start rooting around there in the wilderness. That ‘s sacred cow stuff to those folks due to the possibility of contaminating the land, water, and ozone layer. So we had to resort to old-fashioned methods and repair the hole by hand. We sent three eighty passenger busses full of interns down there with all the tools they’d need, like shovels, hoes, Pulaski’s, steel-toed boots, come-a-longs, baseball hats, seven or eight cases of bottled water and set them to work terracing the slopes of the hole we left when we yanked that mountain out of there.

We think it turned out pretty good. We got it all terraced, set in our own patented erosion control material, even put in a road to get  down to the bottom if you wanted to, absolutely free of charge. The toughest part however was getting the color right. We gathered images from all over the Southwest to get a handle on how we should finish this and we came up with a pretty good color scheme. Fortunately we had and old Sikorsky helicopter left over from another project and after fitting it with a customized spray painting unit on a 360°, computer-controlled laser guided gimbal with integral spray head we went to work. Gallons later of paint, varnish, stain, india ink, crushed up pastel colors, liquitex acrylic paint, custom-made oil finishes, buffing compound, and liquefied stone stabilizer, we were finished. I’d say it looks like it has been there for years myself. One of the city council guys who went out to check on the work couldn’t even find the spot we had done, it looked so real.

So to all those whiners out there who would complain if they were hung with a new rope, we say “Look. Go on out there. We dare you to find where we made the switch.” The proof is in the terraforming. We leave it up to you to answer the question “Terraforming – Good or Bad?” We think good.

Somethin’ Bad Must a Happened

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In our travels around the country we’ve noticed a disturbing trend regarding old buildings. They tend to fall down. It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s one of those wooden, Northern Territorial designs found in remote Montana and Wyoming, or one of the adobe styles found in the desert areas of the Southwest, if you see an old building it is likely falling down. Due to the universality of this phenomenon we were sure Somethin’ bad must a happened.

We were puzzled by this and began comparing it to old buildings in Europe and other oddly foreign places where they’ve had old buildings for years and they don’t fall down. OK Some in upper England fall down and just lay around in a pile of rocks, but we chalked that up to the fact that they have VAT on everything over there.

Why then do ours fall down. We’re a lot smarter than they are. We’re better looking. We don’t have to suck up to royalty and aristocrats and other door knobs that hang out over there. What’s happening then. We build other good stuff that doesn’t fall down. Why are we archaeologically challenged?

We posed that question to a couple of archeologists we found scratching in the dirt along side the road. “Oh My Gosh!” they answered, “Really? Like falling down flat and stuff?” when we asked our question about deteriorating buildings. “Yes,” We said, “completely coming apart, totaled, like that motel room in Daytona you guys had over Spring break. Just a pile now.” They were speechless. We thought it was because they were overwhelmed by the social implications of our infrastructures disintegrating but it turned out they were struck dumb because they couldn’t figure out how we knew about the motel room in Daytona. Upon further questioning it turned out that they weren’t even archaeologists like we thought at all, but two college students collecting beer cans and trash along the road as part of a work release program. We thought those sticks with the nail in the end were an archaeologist’s tool but it was just standard State-issue roadside cleanup implements.

We then went straight to the horse’s mouth, or the archaeologists mouth in this case, and found real archaeologists at the University of Montana. We were not going to be fooled again by people that just looked like archaeologists but didn’t know archeology from a hole in the ground. These guys wore glasses, talked good, and had name tags that said Archeologist on them so we knew we had the real thing.

They were surprised and somewhat startled by our questions and it wasn’t until we began supplying them with photographic proof that they would venture an opinion. The older one, who we thought looked smarter and a lot like an archeologist that would be in the movies remarked that he could make some definite comments regarding the image above, and why there appeared to be some deterioration going on.

“Number one” he said in a deep resonant voice and a far away look in his eye, “was that whoever built this structure made one major mistake. They built it out of dirt, and to my trained eye, they used cheap dirt. Probably procured at rock-bottom prices at some low-end dirt retailer. Not to mention names, but perhaps someone like Dirt Depot. You can tell that by the fact”, he went on learnedly, removing his glasses for emphasis, “that the dirt didn’t cling together as it should have, there’s no clingy-ness or ‘adhesion’ to use an archeology word, and as a result it fell down. We don’t use dirt much these days in building for that simple reason. That and it is nearly impossible to find good quality building dirt anymore at a price someone who is willing to live in a dirt house will pay.”

“Number two, and this is very apparent if you look closely at the picture. Whoever the contractor was neglected to put a roof on the structure. This is of paramount importance when building any kind of building someone would live in or spend any time in. A roof keeps the weather from falling into the building from the top due to gravity. It stops it and sends it to the outer edges of the roof, which again to use an archeology word, is where the ‘eaves’ are located, and the weather, presumably moisture, drips off the top of the building onto the ground making a mess around the outside of the structure, but it does keep it off of the occupants inside and prevents it from soaking and saturating the walls, which has been proven by numerous tests will often make them collapse due to internal muddiness and loss of structural intent. It is my belief that is what happened here. No roof, muddiness ensued, building fell down. Pretty clear-cut to us trained in this kind of stuff.”

We had several more “Yeah, But…” questions but these were busy guys and soon they were off to do archeologist things in some god-forsaken wind-swept desolation that these guys like to hang out in. We yelled our thanks as they drove off in their jeep and one cheerfully waved a pick axe at us in farewell. We weren’t entirely convinced of our experts opinion but as we had no more time to spend on this problem and we were hungry we decided to do lunch. We passed by several restaurants built with this dirt type of construction for one that was made out of cinder blocks. We figured this was much less likely to fall down around our tacos than the dirt ones. If you are in the market for Western real estate we highly recommend a cinder block building or even a well made double-wide with tie-downs. You’ll be a lot happier a few years down the road.

This Is Not Your Grandmother’s Sand

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You know how you’re sometimes paging through a magazine or looking at pictures on the net and you come across one that stops you in your tracks and you say “Ok, Now that’s pretty neat.” Well that’s the kind of views you get when you look around Great Sand Dunes National Park, especially at sunset.  That’s when you get that great light coming out of the west. The kind that turns the sand into molten gold and the mountains into an icy blue backdrop.

 This is not your grandmother’s sand. This isn’t litter box grey or the blinding white you get at your favorite beach. There are millions of colors trapped in these grains of sand just waiting for the light to release them, and release them it does. It just takes the right angle, the right intensity, the right time, and you to be there to witness them.

This was taken at the end of March at about 6 P.M. and although it was cold, as you can see by the snow still tucked in the valley there in the mountains, the light was fantastic. Because it was early Spring and fragments of Winter were still hanging on, there weren’t many people around to walk the dunes and leave their tracks across the unblemished faces of sand. Even if there had been the wind would have soon have re-sculpted the dunes faces, scouring them clean, erasing all signs that anyone had walked there. Tracks don’t last long on the dunes. This is not a place to permanently leave your mark. This is a place to view and etch the scene permanently into your memory or record it with your camera, or better yet both.

The Great Sand Dunes is a place where you can experience solitude, feel what it’s like to be out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the towering dunes, the blue mountains behind them, the wind blowing by. To see the last of the sunlight making the dunes fire up in all their blazing glory, a place where you can experience Nature at her best.  If you’re out here wandering around the Southwest stop by the Great Sand Dunes and be prepared  to be amazed.

Vermillion Cliffs Another Color Lesson

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We talked about how color out here in the west works in the past, but  in reviewing this image of the Vermillion cliffs I noticed something new. If you look closely you will notice that there is just about every color available in the southwest in this shot. Click on it, the picture I mean, and look at all the different shades. I don’t even think there are names for some of these colors. The only other place I’ve seen that comes close to displaying these many shades is the Grand Canyon, but the canyon spreads its color over such a wide, deep space it is difficult to find a photographic area that you can shoot to include all these colors in one shot. Even wide-angle lens in the canyon don’t give you these effects.

We’re probably looking at several miles of cliff face from a distance of several more miles away and it was photographed as a panorama of 19 different images using a telephoto lens, then stitched together into one large image. That was done to bring the cliffs in closer in the image, as using a wide angle lens would have resulted in a tiny squinty little line of purple cliffs across the image that would have had you saying “What the hell, can’t that guy even take a picture?” and I don’t like it when people say that.

The rosy-purple of the cliffs in the center of the shot is produced by the shadows of the incoming storm clouds. Right before the clouds moved in that purple-ish series of cliffs was the same color as the taller line of cliffs behind it. The darker cliffs are some distance in front of the taller ones so the break in the clouds let light in on the back row, but out in the front row the denseness of the clouds put the cliffs in shadow which brought out the deep rich color you see.

None of this would be as noticeable if you were closer. It takes the distance in this case to bring out all the color available and to show the harmonious interplay between them. The lesson being that sometimes you have to step way back to see the overall effect in play. Like a couple of miles. Now I didn’t say this was going to be a great big Ansel Adams type of lesson. It’s just a tiny little lesson, one that doesn’t require a lot of brain power by either of us but sometimes that’s ok. And if all this is turning Greek to you just look at the picture instead of trying to figure it out. That’s what I do.

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.

Huge Problem

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HugeProblem2660Setting Sun – Coral Sands State Park – Utah

Well, our intrepid field researchers have found another huge problem in the Southwest corner of our country. What looks like a pretty, calendar-worthy shot of the desert hides the fact that there is a huge freaking problem developing that could have a major impact on many aspects of our lives. The Institute, being in the forefront of identifying non-threatening, minor situations and blowing them completely out of proportion for our own personal gain has found yet one more problem. Just in time too, because the coffers here at the Institute have nearly run dry and we had nothing in the works that we could use to base a grant on, to get some of those tax dollars we work so hard to obtain.

In a nutshell what is happening is that sand, which are tiny particles of gritty stuff, have begun gathering in areas that are hot and hard to get to, and begun to pile on top of each other, over and over, until they make great big piles. That in itself wouldn’t be  a problem if they were quiet and kept to themselves but they don’t. They feel some inexplicable need to go forth and multiply and get in your face. Much like Moonies.

Yes they’re the Hari Krishna of the mineral world. Their agenda, besides world domination, is as yet unclear, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous. In fact the insidious nature of their plan is their secret weapon. You might look out and see a small bunch of sand, as they like to call themselves, way off in the distance and when you look back at it several hundred years later, they’re right on your doorstep ready to cover up everything you own in layer upon layer of themselves. Soon you can’t find anything you own. When you look around for it you come to realize its all under there. Where’s the Lexus? you might ask. Under the sand, that’s where, and that’s where it’s going to stay because you can’t shovel fast enough to get it out before more of those little sand things, particles as it were, pile up and slide into where you’ve been digging. You can’t even stop to go in and get a refreshing cold beverage and some lunch and maybe watch the ‘Young and The Restless’, without the sand slithering in and erasing all your hard-won efforts. So soon you give it up for the hopeless task it is, but you’re still going to have to make the payments on that Lexus.

Yes sir, the bank doesn’t care if the sand covered it up. The don’t even care about global warming or the healthcare debacle. They don’t even care about puppies. They’re soul-less. They just want your money. So you can see how this could develop into a monumental problem, what with everybody throwing sand in their neighbors yards, as they try to dig out their own Lexus’s because where else are you going to put it. It’s everywhere, like dry hot snow. Soon there would be anarchy, social unrest, grit between your teeth, insane spending on eye drops. And eventually the breakdown of our social structure. Who wants that, besides certain radical, mean, religious orders that already live in conditions like that and are used to it already.

OK, so you’re getting the picture here of how this problem can cause you personally, a certain amount of inconvenience. But what can we do about it, you ask. The first thing you can do and the most important is to write a huge check made out to The Institute, please include your driver’s license number and home phone on the check, so that we can continue to carry on our important work.

The second thing is to NOT try the method being used by certain governmental agencies to try and contain the encroaching sand. As you can see in the image above, constructing an incredibly expensive buck and rail fence has done absolutely nothing to contain the sand. The sand has found a way to leak out from under the bottom of the fence and is already on its way to your home. Sand is notoriously tricky and can weasel its way around and into and over all kinds of stuff. It has been a colossal waste of the taxpayers money. That money could have been put to much better use by funding our organization, The Institute, so that we can feed and shelter the homeless and displaced people that have been the victims of desertification, help some of our indigent citizens with their Lexus payments, and fund a research study to stem this attack on our American way of life. And also to create a puppy shelter.

The third thing is send this message out to everyone you know. Resend this post in its entirety to your whole contact list. Have them send it to their contact list and so on. The more people who become aware of this problem the quicker we can find a solution to it and the greater chance we have of actually getting some additional funding by our crass but necessary panhandling tactics. We need the funds to carry on. Our efforts have saved the day for many folks who had no where else to turn, but we need your help. Besides money we have other needs you might fill. We’ve listed just a few below so if you can, give and give generously. Send these items or the plane fare so we can come and pick them up, and know that your generosity will be put to good use. Thank you and Bless you.

Items we are in Urgent Need of:

A Lear jet

A small island in the Azores, need not be uninhabited

Canned goods

A lifetime membership to Atlantis

A yacht, anything over 100′ with global positioning navigation and a security contingency for when we do our work in the South China sea

A large vacuum

As many Lexus as you can spare

Personal Hygiene products, toothbrushes, hair removal aids, chapstick, Sunblock

Water

A Eurail pass, The global one not the Regional one or the One Country pass

Any old gold you have that you’re not using, wedding rings, plates, Rolexes,

A Left rear Tail light to fit a 2002 dodge 1500 ram 4-wheel drive pickup

Unsigned Bearer’ bonds or stock certificates

These are just a few of the items we need desperately, there are many, many more. Please help. Give what you can.