Ojito Wilderness - New Mexico

The area is popular with shootists

These kinds of pictures look dull and boring, but there are places where the topography varies more. I was drawn to the contrast in color & textures in this small bit of "badland."

But it takes determination (mindfulness!) to ignore the unbelievable devastation from over-grazing (BLM public lands "management").

One the cows missed. Note orange flower.

The area is rife with gypsum (CaSO₄·2H₂O). There's a large mine less than a mile from highway 550. 

The mineral appears throughout the area in various forms.

Renowned for the mountain-bike trails, there are also a couple of nicely-graveled parking lots with pit toilets and bear-resistant garbage cans. The sign, topped with two video cameras, is, you can be sure, the BLM's attempt at beneficent "inclusiveness" aimed at exhibitionists.

The Schvoog lost one of his spats on the Comb Wash road (Utah) several weeks ago. Another fell off when we crossed the railroad tracks enroute to the Holiday Market in The Railyard. They were the plastic, $25.00-a-set ones from Walmart and all were cracked from, I think, being whacked by the boys at the tire shop when getting their rotations. The abandoners provoked elimination of the hangers-on. Now The Schvoog can feel some sense of "conformity" in his (currently fashionable) low-brow look. But I'm thinking maybe a wrap of Tabby Stripes or Leopard spots would add a nice bit of distinction.

Something like....?

Addendum:

(Anderson:) I was carrying a lot of electronics (link to Wiki article) so I had to keep unpacking everything and plugging it in and demonstrating how it all worked, and I guess I did seem a little fishy—a lot of this stuff wakes up displaying LED program readouts that have names like Atom Smasher, and so it took a while to convince them that they weren't some kind of portable espionage system. So I've done quite a few of these sort of impromptu new music concerts for small groups of detectives and customs agents and I'd have to keep setting all this stuff up and they'd listen for a while and they'd say: So uh, what's this? And I'd pull out something like (Bergamot:) this filter, and say, now this is what I like to think of as the voice of authority. And it would take me a while to tell them how I used it for songs that were, you know, about various forms of control, and they would say, now why would you want to talk like that? And I'd look around at the SWAT teams, and the undercover agents, and the dogs, and the radio in the corner, tuned to the Super Bowl coverage of the war. And I'd say, take a wild guess.


Anderson's website.

Landfall track listing with excerpts.