Today was lovely. Not too hot, and as locals are quick to point out it’s a dry heat. Looking back at photos of our flight here from KS yesterday, it’s interesting to notice the drying trend as we approached the Rockies. Kansas has green and brown patterns from natural rainfall and irrigation.
0859 KS Shapes
Endlessly fascinating interactions of agriculture and the spectrum of other human activities abound.
0861 Home & Farm
Some people might say Kansas isn’t interesting but we never tire of the interactions between people and prairie.
0864 Radius
The geometric and random shapes are everywhere, dancing atop the gentle undulations of the land and telling stories about changes over time.
0869 Hardy History
Toward the rain shadow of the Rockies, the land and the human traces tell a more hardy tale of dry years. Before long even the low scrub all but vanishes, and the land looks dry. Human signs become more sparse, and more often related to things other than agriculture.
0877 Old Oil
You can see where the wind has rearranged anything not heavy enough to stay put. When we landed in Eastern Colorado for a break, Tripp exchanged glances with a less fortunate plane that hasn’t flown for quite a while.
0890 Memories of Flight
Any plane tied to the ground long enough for the tires to all go flat has to be sad, seems to me. The fairly dry weather here has been less unkind than some climates, but still…
Back in the air, different patterns emerged no less interesting than in Kansas yet with a Colorado flair.
0892 Open Circle
I like to ponder what goes into a landscape design, and the one above is a great example. Trying to create a wind break for protection from every direction? Privacy? Ease of tending trees that are never more than a short walk?
Then we began to see more traces of natural water in isolated areas like the winding creeks that were drying into their Summer look.
0907 Last Water
This bend is part of a vast network carved by eons of flow out to the hazy dry horizon.
0908 Maze
In places a rock ledge would offer shelter from the drying sun at a deep place in the creek that would provide a slightly longer season for all the water life before months of dry.
0945 Shelter
Today we strolled the ancient downtown core of Santa Fe, keeping to shade and enjoying the turbulent wind in the trees as we sat in a courtyard shelter of our own sipping margaritas.
0988 Old Santa Fe
John & Anne Wiley 
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