Moon over Hopper Ranch, by Amanda Holland
Kathryn’s cousin Amanda Holland writes from her great adventure helping to rescue the California Condor, with this photo of the Moon, behind clouds and haze, over the mountains, from Hopper Ranch.
Here’s where I feel the pangs of leaving biology behind for rhetoric, then politics and law. Probably the best part of research in biology was the places one had to go. The best adventures involve getting to and back from the places researchers must go to get data or samples.
And now, with electronic cameras and cards that will easily accommodate 1,000 photos, images are easy to capture.
Some of the images I wish I could get back: Moonrise over Shiprock*; the rattlesnake who liked to hide in the equipment box at the New Mexico Agriculture Experiment Station; the field of asparagus at the Experiment Station, poking up through the desert for the first time (I wonder if they decided to grow asparagus); thunderstorms at Shiprock and over Kimberly, New Mexico; sunrise in Huntington Canyon, Utah; looking nearly into Nevada through crystal air after a summer thunderstorm near Seeley Mountain. There are a lot more, really.
Adventures past: We remember them warmly. Getting out in the wild, doing the hard, grunt work necessary to learn about endangered species, or save them, or just improve conservation practices, is close to godliness, and among the greatest pleasures life can offer.
More:
- See this photo of Shiprock and Moon, probably by a photography named William Stone; this photo of Shiprock and storm, by Radeka, is good, too; at one time my job was to drive from Farmington, New Mexico, past the Shiprock everyday, to get air pollution samples. The Shiprock rivals Mt. Timpanogos in my personal pantheon of great mountains I grew up with.
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
