Foto Friday and Juneteenth rest day
I had a few dispatches lined up for today, one about gentrification and another about data centers, and then I realized it was a national holiday, Juneteenth, and my readers need a break from all of the crazy news. So scroll down for some photos for your viewing pleasure — I hope. (To really see the photos, check them out on the website). And if you’re hankering for some reading, check out some recent Land Desk posts, if you happened to miss them, such as:
The Trump administration is looking to change the management guidelines for wilderness study areas and public lands with wilderness characteristics, which likely will entail a reinterpretation of the non-impairment mandate. There’s still time to weigh in on these changes.
Did you know that Lees Ferry is named after a convicted mass murderer named John D. Lee? And that anti-public lands crusader Sen. Mike Lee is that dude’s great-great-grandson? I didn’t either until I wrote this piece, in which I also lay out the differences between Lees Ferry and Lee Ferry:
The San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico has seen a drilling slowdown in recent years. But many of the 40,000 or so wells drilled over the last century are still spewing methane and other nasty stuff. I mapped a year of “incidents” that included spills or gas releases, along with wells that have been idled.
📸 Foto Friday 🎞️
Your photos are so very beautiful, Jonathan — i can't even begin to tell you which one is my favorite, since it generally happens to be whichever one I'm looking at. But something about the way you captured the vast and varied and extraordinarily vivid landscape of the Dolores River — all those shapes and colors and the ripple of cloud shadows over the rumpled landscape — wow. That would make a wonderful postcard/print. But then so would all the others — you somehow catch all the intricate details that are so easy to overlook — like the earth patterns on the two-tone hill & the arroyo bed — all of them a delight. I'm bookmarking this page so I can refresh my soul with reminders of why I love this crazy part of the world so much. Thank you.
Wonderful photos, Jonathan. Dolores River and White Canyon are my favorites, with the final photo a close third. That tree in the distance is so perfectly framed and the hole in the clouds is really lovely. Great eye.