O' Christmas Tree

In blackness, complete silent blackness, everything blends. The body and mind and surroundings evaporate. Hands drift off with rocks. Feet spread into places above and beyond and inside. Thoughts are now and gone and later. I am a boy reaching and falling, and I am an old gasp. I have yet to live and I am always.

And … I turn my headlamp back on, kiss the rock next to me, remember I’m not the metaphysical type, and drop deeper into the cave I’m exploring.

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“Lets go to Carlsbad Caverns,” Jared, my middle school chum, proposes. “I found a map that tells where the backcountry caves are.”

Well, I grew up claustrophobic to the point that I would walk twenty flights of stairs to avoid a confining elevator, so caves were never my forte. But, after watching the “Caves” episode of Planet Earth, I knew it was time to face the fear.

Jared picks me up in his girlfriend’s truck. Zeppelin screams, “Hangman, hangman, pray tell me that I'm free to ride,” through the dry falsetto air and we are off.

Three hours into the drive and my hiking boots have run off. For twenty-five dollars Wal-Mart equips me with the worst boots money can buy.

At 10 pm a hellish yellow Camp-on-Arrival (KOA) sign welcomes us to what Edward Abbey called Industrial Tourism.

KOA’s website describes their Carlsbad location as a place to, “Kick back and relax with family and friends at this eight year-old campground, which is truly an oasis. KOA will spoil you with its 2,000-square-foot community room, meals delivered to your site, a beautiful commercial laundry, outstanding restrooms, a fenced dog park, a heated pool and an adult hot tub.”

We see a skunk under a floodlight, a white flash screams off its back. Glowing red coke machines buzz and burp consuming nature’s serenity. Deer eat from open dumpsters. Water spigots drip, drip, drip New Mexico’s water into dying grass. The lights erase the stars. TV’s advertise Oprah’s new weight loss program from the open windows of RVs.

But I am happy. The more people that call this camping, the less people there are in real wilderness.

Jared opens a beer and tosses me one. We pore out a little for the skunks stalking us in circles, and make bets on whether a drunk skunk is less or more likely to spray us. They scratch at our tent most of the night, but we don’t smell much worse in the morning.

We are on the trail by 8:00 am. It is 102 degrees. We have three gallons of water between us, plus 30 pounds of lenses, lights, tripods, and a camera. Sweat gushes from me faster than I can refill it. Heat snakes off the rocks.

Two miles and hundreds of feet up, we find a hole, the entrance. Jared’s map suggested the use of a repelling harness, but said the drop was only twenty feet and could be free climbed. We did not bring a harness.

I tie some webbing to a rock, grab hold, lean back and remember it has been ten years since I last repelled. But, hand over hand, arms shaking, I plunge.

Jared has never free climbed or repelled.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he stammers.

At the bottom my heart still pounds. “It is easy,” I lie.

He declines.

I turn from the entrance, look into the abyss, and take a step.

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Rock-cicles stab from the ceiling. Goblins and goliaths, frozen, perch and hunker in shadows. Columns like twisting teeth bend in on me as I stare up.

Between each chamber is another squeeze. Once through is another cacophony of spines, orbs, ringed stumps and fluted spires. I am too excited to be claustrophobic.

A cave is two worlds. First it is natural, black, alone, a mind’s playground. Then, a light blinks on. A blue castle, sparkling, hangs upside down from the ceiling.

Another light, a ten-foot brain, red to orange, shimmers with its oblivious thoughts.

Light three ignites a petrified furnace of terraced teacups. Surrounding are shelves like tree fungus that cling to the walls and collect milky dust.

Out of the black flashes an emerald saber-tooth slashing the midnight from ceiling to cellar.

Then, from above, looms the cavern’s namesake, a Christmas tree – a two-story high dimpled rock pyramid that rests on a two-foot wide stone stump. I could spend days circling it, but Jared waits up top and I’ve spent 3 hours inside so I light it, frame it in my shot, and set the tripod.

Click, the camera is set for a two-minute exposure. The stationary lighting looks good, but I need a few flashes for the rest. I only have one.

I change the exposure to three minutes so there is time to move around for multiple flashings. The shutter opens and I stumble through the dark to the chosen locations.

I flash the ceiling; flash the foreground, flash to fill the gaps left by the fixed lights. Walking, the ground feels unstable.

Back at the camera the shot is blurred. Checking the lens, the focus is accurate. My movements must have shaken it. Is the floor solid? Deeper cavities often lurk under caverns thought fully explored. This level hasn’t collapsed yet I guess.

My last attempt I am a panther slithering over and between the formations with grace. After the last flash I try to hold my excitement from perturbing the ground and camera. I look, Success.

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I start to collect my lights. My fear turns on as the lights go off. I remember where I am, in a deep confined space, my nemesis.

Shadow spreads its velvet cloak behind and above and around me. Trying to move faster my feet are like two of the three stooges. The goblins are back, but bigger now and their fingers rip at my clothes. I nearly run. I can’t breath. Taunting echoes reverberate through the air. Should I go left or right, up or down?

Then … Jared calls my name, light from the entrance squeezes though, he drops the rope, and I am out.

(Legal Disclaimer: The events in this story may or may not have happened in the way described)

Ute's Kingdom

In January, 2009 I was hired for a photography assignment (shoot the Taos Gorge/Ute Mountain region). Here is the story:

In preparation for my trip, and because it is January, I check the weather – eighty percent chance of snow with temperatures dipping below -10. My kind of weather. I pack accordingly, or so I think, and head north, alone.

The first day is uneventful. I drive around for a while pissed off for no reason and scout possible shots.

At night I decide to camp. I do this for two reasons: one, I am broke; and two, I am a man and therefore not afraid of a little cold.

Unbeknownst to me, two kinds of people seem to live in the region surrounding Taos – old school hippies that live in strange round homes called Earthships that are built into the ground to save energy, and gun-toting crystal-meth-cookers. I camp in no man’s land between the two groups.

Every hour I am awoken by said meth-maniacs driving by my tent, stopping, yelling obscenities at me, completing their drug deals and speeding off. Between this and the ass-chapping cold, I sleep little.

Day two, I awake shivering and tired, but more or less alive. All my cooking water is frozen so I head to town for breakfast. A breakfast burrito full of fat and goodness gets me goin’, but now comes decision time.

A nature photographer, unlike most other artists who have a lot of control over what they create, is at the whim of Mother Nature. I cannot make up a compelling scene. I have to wait for clouds to form and the light to pop and for the drunken tourist wearing the, “My Bush Ate your Gore,” T-shirt to get out of the way. Because of this, I am constantly stressed about where I choose to shoot – will the light be best from the east or west? should I head into the mountains or stay in the valley? should I go for a basic shot I know I can get or gamble on a once-in-a-lifetime masterpiece? and on and on.

After an hour of consternation, I choose the easy one. I was hired for this trip, so I figured I better come back with something.

I toss on my snowshoes and head up a hill for a view of the Taos Gorge. Pretty shot of the Gorge … check.

It is getting dark and I am hungry so I find a nice bar in town. After a couple margaritas, a beer, and a failed attempt at getting laid later, I drive off to try this winter camping again.

Despite being shot down by the Taos tart, I feel good. The moon is shining while some sparse clouds dispense snow. I drive on past hippy-meth-land to a more isolated region.

I find a spot at the base of a volcanic rise and promptly sink my trunk in two feet of snow. The alcohol still in charge, I decide I can dig it out. No shovel, no problem. I’ll use a ski pole. Four hours, two broken ski poles, and a retreating ego later, my truck is now three feet deep. The wind is cruel and my hands look blue. I tie my tent into the bed of the truck to keep it from blowing away and call it a night.

Now I have found it to be true that when it rains it pours. In this instance I translated that to mean: when my truck is stuck in the snow it will keep snowing till I remove it. The night dumped another foot, which the wind turned into a house-size snowdrift over my truck.

I decide I need help. With my phone nearly dead, I called my mom. “Mom, ummmm, I’m stuck. Can you call AAA and get me a tow, please?” Mom, being one of the most awesome in the world, has a truck there in a couple hours.

Oh course, when they finally arrive, another foot has fallen. They don’t want to risk getting stuck themselves, but I offer another $100 and I’m out in 30 minutes.

Getting out took so long that I just find a better campsite and call it a day. This night is the coldest. Im’ not sure I am sleeping at all and my throat feels like a cactus.

The morning finds my left nostril frostbitten shut.

But this is it, the day I’ve been wait for. The clouds separate but hang around like rosy-cheeked drunks lingering after a party. The sun, blinking through the openings, separates each layer of the landscape into depths of complexity like a fractal.

The road to my location is, as my dad says, slicker than snot. I pass at least five cars that called the ditch home for the night. But I escape unscathed and arrive on the plains to the west of the Gorge.

Luckily it was too windy here for the snow to stick so it is only a foot deep. I apply my snowshoes and winter-warrior gear. My ski poles are a shadow of their former glory but I take them anyway.

I’m in a race now. The sun is my stopwatch. It is time to see the future. I must find my subjects and compose my shot all while imagining what the light will be later.

I pick Ute Mountain as my background focus. Most of the plain is barren, but a small grove of juniper trees congregates off to the south a few miles. They will be my foreground.

I move as fast as I can. Which is not very fast considering I’ve only snow shoed twice before.

The land elongates as I move across it. What I thought was 3 miles becomes 6. The sun drops like a bat carrying a cannon ball. My throat screams for water, but I press on. Photo possibilities abound, but I must ignore them to make it to the shot I’ve envisioned.

Then finally, I am here. I stand on a slight roll to get depth. I compose the shot and set the exposure. My heart beats and my hand shakes and … the sun goes behind a cloud. So I wait.

Clouds go from white to orange to red above my head, but I still have no foreground illumination. So I wait.

My hands tingle and my feet spasm in the cold. The wind picks up slicing across my face. Still I wait.

Then… Something moves behind me. A cloud is dislodged. The sun begins slowly exhaling orange across the plain. One by one the inch high crests of snow along the expanse start to ignite. Red waves follow, lapping at the junipers. I hold my breath and take hold of the camera’s trigger. Excitement cascades down my spine. A scream builds in my stomach.

Like just before imminent death, time stops, the stillness is tangible. Then … glory. The world explodes in emeralds and rubies. Sapphire skies frame clouds on fire. Ute Mountain presides over his kingdom. I snap the shutter and remember what it is to be alive.

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(Legal Disclaimer: The events in this story may or may not have happened in the way described)