The Ancestral Puebloan Primer

he Ancestral Puebloan Primer

Almost 2 decades ago when Dad moved from the East Coast to the West, I joined in for the ride. Being a pretty smart guy, Dad realized the only way to make the cross county driving trip with a 6 year old (me!) and still be sane at the end would be to make a lot of stops along the way and visit "cool" stuff. I don't remember all the stops, but I know we stopped at the Petrified Forrest and Mesa Verde, where we both became fascinated by the ruins of the ancient Native American culture then known as the Anasazi. Recent years have led to the revelation that the term "Anasazi" isn't the most politically correct name and has been replaced by "Ancestral Puebloans."

Over the years, my dad and I made a number of return trips to the four corners area to explore these magnificent ruins in a seemingly inhospitable land. And about 4 years ago now, the opportunity arose for my dad to leave the coast behind and spend his time in and around the Four Corners area, volunteering at some of the most culturally significant sites of the Ancestral Puebloan. Leading tours of visitors by day, Dad would retire to comfort of his trailer at night to research and write what ultimately became this book.

As he finished writing, Dad sent me the files to proof-read and edit, then with my corrections approved I laid out the pages and assembled the book. The result is a compact easy to read, yet full of information volume that bridges the gap between overly simplified literature and signs at the majority of the parks in the Four Corners and scholarly writings meant to be read only by other scholars. The Ancestral Puebloan Primer can be found here on Amazon.com.

We are currently working on a follow up book, America's Southwestern Treasures, which focuses more on what there is to see and do at these amazing sites as well as offering suggested itineraries for those looking to make the most of their time in the Southwest. Treasures should be available by late spring 2010, check back here for updates.

On a similar note, a few years ago, I had the opportunity to go spend a week visiting Dad while he was still volunteering at the National Monument at Aztec, NM. I was lucky enough to get a personalized tour of both Aztec Ruins and Chaco Canyon from my dad and I've recently uploaded a gallery of photos I shot while I was there. You can find them here in my Ruins of the American Southwest gallery. They were all shot with my little point and shoot camera (this was probably 2 years until I upgraded to my new fancy DSLR) but some of them turned out quite nicely.

Joshua Tree National Park

A Joshua Tree at night, lit by a nearby campfire.

A couple weekends ago I made my first visit to Joshua Tree National Park and it won't be my last. These trees are amazingly cool looking. The dry, high desert climate these trees inhabit shapes them into truly unique beings. After the first year, when they grow about 5 inches, Joshua trees only grow a half inch a year, making the tree shown to the right here several hundreds of years old. For a Joshua Tree to bloom in the spring, it needs to have at least a brief freezing cold spell during the winter, and remember it's a desert area.

The tree shown in the photo to the right was just on the edge of our campsite and on this night, it was illuminated entirely by our campfire. The image was taken long after sunset as my girlfriend and I relaxed from a long day of hiking around the park. Conditions weren't right to create an image of star trails circling the top of this particular tree, so I opted to isolate it against the dark sky instead. By using a medium size aperture, f/8, and a relatively fast shutter, I was able to get a black sky with very few stars showing up. The couple that did show up looked more like mistakes than reality and were edited out.

Hand in hand with the unique trees, the park also houses some very unique geological features. The soft sandstone that composes much of the exposed rock in the park has been eroded into immense boulders pock-marked with interesting features.

Yosemite National Park

A Giant Seqouia in Mariposa Grove

Back in September I left home on an almost two week journey that brought me to Yosemite National Park, Crater Lake National Park, Lava Beds National Monument and Lassen Volcanic National Park. It was quite a journey and there's no better way to learn your camera than getting out to use it!

That's exactly what the trip was for. With the exception of 3 days while I was visiting family in Washington state, I was out in the field with my camera every day for those two weeks. It was really an awesome experience and if I hadn't used all my vacation time up for it, I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

I took nearly 6,000 photos over the course of the trip, and now I can safely say, that's entirely too many. It was good for the learning process, but bad for the processing process. Since I have my camera set to save images in the Raw format, I need to process each image before it's ready for public consumption. Luckily there were quite a few overlapping images of the same subject but with different camera settings, so I was able to pick the best of each bunch and process those.

Yosemite has a number of Giant Seqouia groves. The most accessible for me on this trip (since it was nearby my campsite) was the Mariposa Grove at the southern tip of the park. My camera bag currently lacks an ultra-wide angle lens so it was difficult to capture the full majesty of these enormous trees. That didn't keep me from trying however, and I think this image as the late afternoon sun lit up the tree's bark, comes close.