It's February 22 all over again

Due to a computer glitch that forced me to restore my computer back to an earlier date the post named "Both Sides Now" was lost. So to preserve at least an archive of the entry here's an approximation of the February 22 issue.

Since 2012 when I last visited the Salton Sea I have wanted to return to photograph more desert weirdness and decrepitude. The images I made there that December proved to be my favorites of the entire year and that compelled me to return.

The so-called “sea” emerged from human error wherein the great canal cut from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley breached so that the entire contents of the Colorado flowed into the Salton Sink for two years. That created an inland sea and the largest lake in California. The Salton Sea enjoyed a brief honeymoon in the fifties and has since evaporated into an odiferous repository of agricultural runoff. The sea has no outlet so it brews itself into a toxic tea. So far I missed the highly touted Dead Fish Festival that occurs in mid-July when temperatures reach 120 degrees. 

Seen at the right time of day the view across the placid waters can by quite alluring though the chain link fence that prevents you from entering its recuperative waters suggests otherwise.

And despite its darker properties there are still folks who call the Salton Sea home as is evidenced by RV parks with wall to wall trailers from 1951 and all manner of detritus and graffiti.

On the plus side the Salton Sea boasts more bird varieties than anyplace in the US not named Big Bend.

And the remains of one unfortunate Pelican.

The once and future

Before

I got into the sheep ranching story somewhere in the middle of the book. Both of my encounters with El Cubano Victor Hernandez happened at the end of the grazing chapter and now after trailing the sheep for a dozen or so miles and being part of the shearing festivities last weekend I'm hooked in a big way.

The story began to tell itself during the two day trek to the Abeyta ranch in Mogote, Colorado a couple of weeks ago. The shearing of the sheep, an event that is deeply communal, has given cultural context to the tale. If I treasured meeting Victor and trailing the sheep to Mogote, being part of the shearing has only deepened my appreciation for the rich history and uncertain future of sheep ranching and the proud culture of family, faith and the land in the San Luis Valley.

In the corral

In the chute

Aaron Abeyta gives a push

Inside the shearing trailer

After

Tom Barr's shearing rig

Branson Barr feeding the EZ Baler

400 pound bales of wool

Not so long ago the Abeyta family’s neighbors in Mogote would pitch in to gather the sheep and to prod them through a long chute where each would be shorn with hand shears. It was hard, time consuming work that produced forearms like Popeye’s.

Today a handful of friends and neighbors, all volunteers, arrive at the ranch to help Los Abeytas with the shearing but as much, it seems to me, to be part of an age old ritual and to be part of the clan. The clan is united by a shared history of lean times and the hard work of wresting a living from the earth. It is united in a separateness born of its history, ethnicity, income and loss.

If in the old times the shearing was done by the family and the clan, today the shearing itself is done by Tom Barr’s hired hands who shear a sheep with an electric razor in three minutes or less. Tom and his four assistants hail from the Mormon farming community of Sanford which lies about thirty miles from Mogote just past La Jara. I asked him how long he had owned his roving rig and he told me, “My dad built the thing in 1965 so it’s fifty years old. I remodeled it ten years ago. Put new siding on it. That guy (pointing at the number three shearer) did the work.” To my knowledge Bob has the only family owned shearing operation in southern Colorado and he and his vagabond crew drive as far as Montrose to shear sheep. What happens if Bob folds his tent is a question that looms as large as what happens when the 76 year old Cubano can’t herd the sheep anymore. The forecast is partly cloudy in this part of the San Luis Valley where the future of the Abeyta sheep operation mirrors the uncertainty of the Hispano ranching culture in southern Colorado.

One dead ewe and another just hanging on

Running sheep is not for the meek. There are nicks and cuts from the shearing and not every animal survives the march from the Taos Plateau. "We lose a few each year. Just like human beings, some are not strong enough to make it." Andrew Abeyta tells me. It's a poignant truth in a life rooted as strongly as faith to the land.

Open 2015

Silent Running

Opening March 10 and ending April 3 I’ll be part of the exhibition Open 2015 at PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont. This will be my fourth group show at PhotoPlace. I am honored to have had "Silent Running" selected by the esteemed educator and photographer Jeff Curto, Professor Emeritus of the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.

It’s hard enough to choose images to submit to shows with themes. It’s something else again to select a handful of images from about a million. Ever since I started to develop the Fog Series in 2013 it has hovered near the surface of my consciousness so when choosing photographs to submit all were from that series. I happen to know Jeff has a poetic streak and may even have a soft spot for lyrical images.

Appropriately enough Silent Running was taken during the Putney Regatta on the Connecticut River in Putney, Vermont several years back. It's rather pictorialist I think, something Alfred Stieglitz relegated to the photographic dust bin a century ago. Maybe it's coming back.

To see all the images in the show click on the link below and page down.

www.vtphotoworkplace.com/id277.html

Pie in the sky

The history of homesteading in America began with the Homestead Act of 1862 and continued through 1950s mostly in Alaska and the great barrens of Southern California. In the Homestead Act of 1938 five acre patches of the Morongo Valley east of Twentynine Palms were leased to the delusional for $5.00 and the pledge to develop the land in the most minimal way. For most that was to build a simple cabin or buy one pre-built for $1,000 or so. Water, alas, was not as easily accessed and at the sole expense of said lessee. For those who created a habitable abode a “Patent”, a kind of ownership, was awarded. 

It should be no surprise that the vast majority of these homesteads have become feral denizens of the unforgiving desert. A few survive today and can be had for $30,000 or $40,000 complete with water, electric and A/C.

If there is a community hub for this vast aridness it is Wonder Valley where there’s a bar and restaurant that looked like it could actually function though there’s no guarantee of that. 

Of homesteading in general the intrepid John Wesley Powell proffered that it’s a pretty good idea when there’s sufficient water and land to support a family unit but that west of say the longitude of central Texas you're selling folks some pie in the sky and world of hurt.

First Ewe. Last shepherd.

I walked for two days with Victor Hernandez as he trailed his sheep from their forage across US 285 from San Antonio Mountain in northern New Mexico to their late winter pasture in Mogote, Colorado just east of Antonito. Make that two epically muddy slogs through ankle deep sludge that left my shins aching for a week. Victor looks like he’s sauntering but I could barely keep up.

While Victor did the trailing it was the Australian Sheep Dogs, Daddy and Puppy, that did the real herding, nipping at the occasional tail to keep the flock moving.

Starting out on a diagonal course to US 285

Victor and the flock with the north flank of San Antonio Mountain in the background

Entering the pasture in Mogote. Hay and water at the ready.

I learned that Victor had been bivouacked with los borregos at San Antonio since September and had earlier grazed the sheep in the high mountains of the Cruces Basin.

The sheep, all descendants of single ewe from the 1920s, will be sheared on February 20 or 21 depending on the availability of the shearers. According to patron Andrew Abeyta there will be nicks and cuts aplenty, some of which can have deadly consequences. I will be there for the assembly line but hope to miss any mortal wounds.

Lambing will occur in March and in September the critters will be sold to the buyer in Center, Colorado at the sweet little price of $2.00 a pound give or take. Last year the Abeytas sold 400 at about 100 pounds per. Andrew was prompted to say, “I wish I had more at those prices.” Still there are no guarantees in the up and down market for baby sheep.

Did you know that most ewes birth twins or that the sheep eat snow to get their fluids?

On the road to Wind Mountain

The first right that accesses the Taos Plateau north of US 64 on US 285 is marked Wind Mountain. TP 178 if memory serves. Barely a mile in I spied a ramshackle corral in six inches of new snow. Corrals, as you know by now, draw me like Manchego cheese to Marcona almonds. And as a bonus beyond the corral sat this well worn abode. That sky didn't hurt either.

Corral close up.

Sheepherding adventures to grace these pages shortly.

Flat out beautiful

The Taos Plateau from the west rim of the Rio Grande Gorge just above the John Dunn Bridge

Between Victor "Cuba" Hernandez and the Taos Plateau you've endured a plague of arid expanses on these pages. The Plateau is a sweep of land that exemplifies William deBuys' description of dry places making the lamentable transition from grasslands to desert scrub. It's also part of the new Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, the lesser part to almost everybody but me.

And speaking of the immortal Cuba, I'm excited to report that I will helping him herd 500 sheep to Colorado within the week. Patron Alfonzo Abeyta's grazing lease ends on January 31 and the borregos must head north or be left to wander the plateau for eternity.

And now I can say "more to come" with absolute certainty. Applause line.

An abandoned corral east of Pinahetosa Peaks

                  

Old homestead near Cerro Chilla

"Monument" will be the subject of a two person show in May at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art in Taos I will share the spotlight with the talented painter Peggy Immel. Be there or be square in the parlance of the sixties.

Working Hands

This photograph dates back more than forty years. It's from Old Sturbridge Village in western Massachusetts on one of our frequent visits to the charming recreation of a New England farm town in the 1820s. It’s a place our family loved when the children were young and when we were first in the thrall of the four seasons, the patina and the history of early America. Still are.

Old Sturbridge depicts life in rural Massachusetts of that early time. Interpreters play the roles of blacksmiths, basket makers, coopers and the like. It was a magical place to celebrate Thanksgiving in the old tavern, something we did several times when we lived in Wellesley.

The elder shown here deftly wields his knife to forge a whistle out of a pea pod. His weathered hands pay homage to rigorous life on the frontier. The brim of his straw hat shields hands from the high November sun.

It's a scan of a negative from my first DSLR, the seminal Pentax Spotmatic, and though I've lost some shadow detail, the image carries me back to the richness of New England and deep feelings that will never fade.

I can't hear you

Starting with Monday's post (This just in from Cuba) readers have been unable to leave their comments. I can comment but you can't for reasons I cannot fathom. My settings are as "open" as they can be yet reader comments are lost in space.

I'm asking for your comments to this post so I can assess whether the last post was an anomaly or is a continuing problem.

Thanks for your help. 

This just in from Cuba

The post about Sr. Hernandez two weeks ago sparked the most attention in while. That’s mighty gratifying and it sparks my interest in digging deeper into the lore and legend of sheep ranching in these parts. More will be revealed.

These shots are a combination of ones taken in January 2011 and from my recent visit with Victor. There’s a paucity of copy in this one probably because I have paucity of ideas for same. The older ones in color give a better sense of the breadth of my beloved Taos Plateau with the Sangre de Cristos reaching skyward in the distance. They also do a better job of connecting Victor and his perros to the sheep grazing on the llano.

Southside Johnnie

JT in Santa Fe

This taut and sinewy dude claimed he was a Chicago street tough in an earlier life. According to JT only a zencentric martial arts discipline and some gaudy hip-hop dance moves saved him from the Cook County jail with the crib next to a gangbanger named Tyreese.

While I’m not a big nose ring fan, he carries off nostril décor better than most.

Cuba's Gift

Victor "Cuba" Hernandez

I first introduced you to Victor Hernandez also known as Cuba in my January 29, 2011 post. Then last Friday I encountered him again at his campsite on the flank of a sheep strewn hillock across from San Antonio Mountain.  The second time was every bit as special.

Peggy and I and our son Garrett and his wife Michelle were exploring along US 285 north of Tres Piedras hoping for a decent photograph to declare itself. My expectations were along the lines of getting one keeper of a landscape for a show that Peggy and I have scheduled for May. Anything more would be gravy. 

Prophetically, just as our conversation had turned to my 2011 adventure with Cuba I turned east to the Taos Plateau. After half a mile we passed between two shallow hills with rocky spines and I spied a corrugated trailer with hundreds of grazing borregos just beyond. “It’s Cuba,” I shouted with total delight. I couldn’t have shown the timelessness of northern New Mexico any better. It was an absolute gift.

As we got close to the trailer a slightly hunched figure came out to greet us. My passengers were just a little apprehensive since Cuba was packing heat. I rolled down the window greet him while summoning my slightly improved Spanish to remind him that I had visited several years before, that I had photographed him with his dogs Daddy and Puppy and had mailed photographs of him and his perros to his patron, Alfonso Abeyta. His eyes lit up as he described the photographs as “grande.” They were, in point of fact, not so grande 8”x10"s but no matter.

Cuba and Daddy

I got out of the car for a proper handshake when he immediately showed me the weapon he was toting while describing its provenance in rich Spanish only detail. He told me that his meticulously maintained Mauser España bolt action had once been used by Pancho Villa. The rifle was dated 1890 and if Victor says the Villistas used it they used it.

He proudly declared that he was seventy years old and said he would be camped with his sheep till February and then would herd them to the Abeyta spread just over the Colorado border. It was minus 15 in his neck of the woods last night. You get the picture.

The portrait up top was worth the price of admission.

Less is Less

In keeping with last week’s homage to the old and short, here’s the image that launched about a million photographs since October 2, 2003. This is the one that yanked me by the drawers into the digital age. I have to blame something.

Butternut Squash, Fryeburg, Maine

Dusty Reaches

It’s been a long while since I’ve plundered the archives for a blog image.  For the last year there’s been enough new material from my wanderings that deep research hasn't been needed. Occasionally, though, no fresh subject is clawing at the walls to get out. And sometimes, as is the case today, pressing matters namely moving Peggy into her new studio dictate brevity.

So here are a couple of still lifes from the dusty reaches of what's left of my memory. 

Sunflowers near Fort Garland, Colorado, 2010

Silvery leaves from the Huntington Museum in Pasadena, California , 2007

A dozen years ago when I returned to photography, a choice prompted by the digital revolution, my first meaningful portfolio was of still lifes which populated a category I referred to as Studies and Abstractions. It's a pleasure to revisit that very focussed kind of work today.

Simple Tastes

At the end of September I returned to Gaucin, the Andalusian pueblo blanco where Peggy and I spent 2-1/2 weeks back in April. Part of the impetus was to re-shoot lost images from our spring trip and another was to dine again at La Granada Divino, the wonderful restaurant led by Chef Neil Brown. Love the place. Neil’s farm and dock to table cuisine is simple and fresh with every flavor a perfect note. His unfussy food reminds me of Fred Muller's at El Meze here in Taos and Chris Schlesinger's at the venerable East Coast Grill in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I learned more about cooking from Chris than anybody I worked with during my forty years in the restaurant business.

La Granada Divino

My Aussie mates on the rooftop terrace which boasts a view to Gibraltar and Morocco during daylight hours

The simplest of salads with Arugula, Figs and Manchego

Seabream fresh from the dock in Estepona yesterday

More figs of which I cannot get enough. This special order comped by Chef  Neil. That's a copa of cava top right

La Granada Divino was even better than I remembered but I detected an air of melancholy in Neil’s manner. We had become friends in the spring so while sipping a glass of wine at the end of the first evening’s dinner I asked him how he was doing and got a shrug of the shoulders, “It’s been okay. At least we’ve been busy.” 

Chef Neil Brown with the world's simplest kitchen in the background

He went on to ask, “You know what happened don’t you?” I replied, “No. What you do you mean?”

“We just did Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay.”

I expressed total surprise. “Your kitchen’s not a nightmare by any stretch of the imagination, Neil. That's a great little kitchen. How the hell did that happen?”

He said, “It was the owners’ idea. They thought the coverage would be good for business.” 

“Not so good for your self-esteem.” I thought to myself.

I told Neil, “I thought you owned the place.”

“No. I’m a working stiff. I’m just the chef and manager of the restaurant. I have a wife and two kids. I need to work.”

“How was it? Was he the asshole he seems to be on TV?” I asked.

“He was okay. I think he knew not to screw (not precisely the word he used) with me too much. But it was a real drill. First I spent four weeks with one of his producers in the kitchen and then a week with Gordon and a cast of thousands taping the show. Not a lot of fun. Then I wound up with his menu actually until this week. The show airs October 6 but I refuse to watch the thing. It’s the UK version of the show but you might be able to find it in the US.”

I tried to view the La Granada Divino episode without success. If any of you figure it out please let me know.

PS. Chris Schlesinger sold his extraordinary East Coast Grill in the spring of 2013 after twenty five years. It continues it's run under the able stewardship of Jason Heard. SI