Journey To The Center  

Each year when I arrive at my home here in Canada, there is always a stack of mail “too large to forward” to the southwest. Among the junk and other mail, there are generally a few large parcels containing books and magazines. These are usually publications that have made use of one or more of my photos. This spring, there were two very nice books in the mail stack. One is Dennis Paulson’s Dragonflies and Damselflies of the East (Princeton University Press, 2011). My photo of a female Eastern Least Clubtail (Stylogomphus albistylus) appears on page 311. The other is a copy of Carolyn Mallory’s Common Insects of Nunavut, and includes my photo of a Thanatus formicinus crab spider on page 143. The neat thing about this book is that the text is published in both Inuktitut and English. One cover and half of the book is in Inuktitut, and the other in English. Below, I’ve included a photo of the Inuktitut cover. If you would like to read more about the creation of this publication, check out this web page. In any case, these two new books make nice additions to my natural history library of field guides.

Yesterday, Sabrina, Sage and I arrived back in Canada after spending our fourth winter in Bisbee. We took a meandering route homeward this year, on the road and camping here and there for most of the past three weeks. Before leaving Arizona, we visited the Grand Canyon, and Boyce-Thompson Arboretum.

In Utah, we stopped to rest at one of the places I most enjoy camping and hiking – the back country around Kanab – before moving on to see Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef, Arches National Park, and hike to the ruins on the trails around Hovenweep National Monument. See photos above and below of some of these places (click on all images for larger views).

We camped in all sorts of places from forest service camps atop snowy mountains, to sites along Waterpocket Fold in Capitol Reef, and on BLM lands in the high desert beyond Kodachrome Basin.

We followed many a winding road through mind-blowing landscapes.

It is always such a wonder to see and photograph these impossible landscapes and fascinating ruins.