When The Rain Comes

When rain finally comes to a parched landscape, the earth seems to give a sigh of relief. In the high desert of northwest New Mexico, the Rio Puerco Valley hasn’t seen appreciable moisture since last summer. And now the skies are opening. The result is a study in contrasts.

And the biggest contrast is that of life and death. There is a very real danger of dying of dehydration in this unforgiving environment. The image below shows the irony of being so near yet so far from the life-giving flow.

With the rains come the dramatic skies that are so common in New Mexico in the summer. The wide horizons allow the sky to, seemingly, stretch to infinity; it feels as if you could actually fall into it.

This image was taken at the Guadalupe ruins, a Chacoan outlier that sits atop a small butte deep in the Rio Puerco Valley. It was inhabited  from about 900-1150 CE. This view is to the north across the Rio Puerco with Cabezon Peak and Cerro Cochito in the distance. There just happened to be a rainbow sitting on the horizon which made this moment even more worth capturing.

I spend a lot of time in this valley, and it is pretty rare to see water in the drainages. I was immediately drawn to this scene as I drove past it, so I stopped to make this image. The light was just perfect and the sky emphasized the mood.

As I was driving out to the highway, I noticed these ominous looking clouds hovering over Cabezon Peak and had to race to the stretch of road I wanted to use in this image. I lost some of the light in the process, but I think I managed to capture most of the drama.