“Stunning, It’s All Stunning!”

Rio Grande near Pilar

Canyon walls, not mountains. Aieeee!

This spot beside the Rio Grande is twenty minutes and a thousand feet lower down the road from where we live. Twenty minutes, that’s all it takes, and what a different world. [You’re looking downstream here.] The water yesterday was clearer than I’ve ever seen it. With the right angle on the sunlight, there was one place I could see boulders on the sandy bottom from the car. This is radical in my lifelong experience with rivers.

There’s a certain modest little campground in the Orilla Verde section of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument with beautiful old stone steps that lead down to a sliver of sandy beach. I was walking down the path carrying my Pentax with the telephoto lens and hood attached and a sling case over my shoulder when I met a man coming up the other way. He asked if I was a professional photographer, because the view upriver he’d just come from was exceptional. I thanked him for the tip and said this was a beautiful spot, all right.

“Stunning,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s all stunning!”

Of course this meant that I could trust him, but we parted ways.

Sign up for email delivery of JHFARR.COM posts via Substack! Same content sooner with bigger photos! ⬇︎

John Hamilton Farr lives at 7,000 feet in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it, John is “a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” This JHFARR.COM site is the master writing archive. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on About page. For a complete list of all John’s writing, photography, NFTs, and social media links, please visit JHFARR.ART  

  • M.J. October 26, 2015, 7:18 PM

    Beautiful!

  • judyinboston October 26, 2015, 7:36 PM

    It truly is stunning. You are fortunate to live everyday in such beautiful country.

    • JHF October 26, 2015, 7:46 PM

      It’s not all like this. But when it is, look out!

{ 3 comments… add one }

Leave a Comment

Browse ARCHIVES

Browse CATEGORIES

Latest Posts