for miles and miles....

In the United States, the farther west you go, the fewer vestiges of European influence and heritage you see. Until you get out here. This is the American West, where the boiling sun seems to reduce the stuff of our culture right down to the pulp. This is straight-up cowboy land. Scorpions and rattlesnakes and saguaros. Coyotes and roadrunners too--I'm dead serious. (And just FYI.... coyotes are the faster of the two.)

Now, for some reason I can't fathom, whenever I roadtrip with my family (places like Arizona, Utah, California, Nevada....), I still pack along my Nintendo 3DS, thinking Gosh, it's gonna be a looong car ride; I'd better have something to do when I'm not driving.

Why do I do this to myself? The window is all I need. It's better than TV. This is also why I love to ride instead of drive.... so my eyes can be free to drink in the alien rocks, the interminable deserts, the purple crags and copper spires and melting rainbow mounds in the dusty dregs of ancient seas and lakes.

This is where I live. For the Where I Live contest at #CRPhotography: [link]


It's an older pic, I know. I don't know why I never upload my photos.... For this contest I thought about taking a picture of myself hugging a saguaro, but.... that would have been a temporally costly excursion, and I had too much homework. So I used this pic instead. Enjoy.