A lazy day, with photos.
I spent the day at our place on Howard Mesa today. It was a lazy day. I read, ate (too much), napped, chatted on the phone, wrote and posted blog posts, and took a walk.
In the late afternoon, I noticed what I thought was a cow just outside the gate, alongside the road. Howard Mesa is open range land and the only way you can keep cows off your property is to fence them out. We’re one of only two lots on top of the mesa that’s completely fenced in. We did it primarily to keep the horses in, since open range cattle rarely come up here. But my friends had their yard destroyed by cattle one day, so I’m glad our place is fenced in — even though there isn’t much here for them to destroy. (Who wants cow poop all over the place anyway?)
I walked down to the road with Jack the Dog to check out the cow. And that’s when I realized it wasn’t a cow. It was a bull. How could I tell? Balls instead of udders.
It didn’t have any horns, so I think it may have been young. Of course, the horns could have been cut off. I think ranchers do that sometimes. It was very interested in us, but I kept my distance. I’ve been to rodeos and I’ve seen cowboys and rodeo clowns chased. I didn’t want to be a rodeo clown.
I took some pictures with my phone and sent them to TwitPic and my TumbleLog. But this photo, taken with my CoolPix, is much better, especially after a trip though Photoshop Elements for exposure correction and cropping.
Later, I went for a walk, partially to walk off all the food I’d eaten. I find that I eat a lot when I’m up here — probably because there isn’t much else to do for distraction and I always bring along food I really like. Jack and I hit the road and took a right. I was hoping to see some other property owners, but I knew how unlikely that would be. There aren’t many places with less going on. I did see a truck drive by earlier today, but I don’t know where it went. I didn’t see it come back. I thought that there was a slight chance that I’d see where it went and possibly meet the people that were in it.
I didn’t. I didn’t see anyone. But what I did see was some neat textured dirt alongside the road. The ground gets like this in the spring, after numerous snowfalls and freezes have melted away. This stretches go on forever up here, with few tire tracks or animal tracks to disturb them. I like textures, so I took the picture.
I figure I walked about a mile round trip without seeing a soul. Even the bull was gone. It was so quiet, my ears hummed. All I could hear was the sound of the breeze in the pinon and juniper trees around me.
When I got back to the shed, I paused long enough to take a photo of Mount Kendricks (left) and the San Francisco Peaks (right) in the distance. The zoom on my CoolPix shortened up the distances — the snow-capped peaks are at least 50 miles from here but, as you can see, are clearly visible.
The sun’s getting low now and will set within the next 30 minutes or so. I’m looking forward to getting some shots of the moonrise. There are wisps of cirrus clouds in the sky, but I don’t think they’ll spoil my view. We’ll see.
Early yesterday morning, Mike and I were at the airport, pulling the helicopter out and fueling it up for the flight down to Falcon Field.* Mike was coming with me for the Phoenix Tour portion of the day; I needed someone reliable to safely “hot” load and unload my passengers, since shutting down after each flight would be far too time consuming. He wanted to fly with me on the photo shoot, but I would have a cameraman and director onboard and the added weight of a fourth person would have severely restricted my performance. As it turned out, we didn’t have room for him — the cameraman brought all kinds of stuff with him that took up the other seat.
The flight down to Falcon Field was relatively uneventful. We took a route that scouted around the south sides of Deer Valley’s and Scottsdale’s airspace. Normally, I’d fly between Squaw Peak and Camelback, but I wanted to preview the area I’d be flying for the photo shoot. I’d found it on Google Maps; as you can see here in a Google Maps satellite view, it’s on the side of a mountain at the end of a canyon. (I don’t want to identify the house in question or even provide details on where it is. Even though it’s in a gated community, 
So yes — I know what a subdivision looks like from the air. And a school with ball fields. And a park and a town pool. I’ve seen all kinds of backyards, from perfectly trimmed, walled-in plots of grass or decorative rock to sprawling, weed- and junk-filled patches of desert. I’ve seen small downtowns, both dead and alive. I’ve seen where the pavement turns to dirt and what lies five miles beyond. Or ten. Or fifty.
I’ve seen desert lakes and rivers winding through canyons. I’ve seen dams along the Colorado and canals stretching as far as the eye can see. I’ve seen, from the air, natural wonders, like the Grand Canyon, Meteor Crater, the Little Colorado River Gorge, the Grand Falls of the Little Colorado River, and Rainbow Bridge. I’ve flown beside red rocks in Sedona and Monument Valley buttes. I’ve peeked into open pit mines from above and have felt as small as a speck flying down the emptiness of Death Valley. Recently, I’ve flown over Alaskan glaciers blanketed with fresh, pristine snow that went on for twenty, thirty, or forty miles without so much as a footprint to disturb it.
That doesn’t mean I’m bored with the view. While I’ll admit that spending 20 minutes to cross an empty valley in some of the more remote areas of Nevada and California can get pretty dull, there’s always something interesting to notice along the way. Perhaps it’s a deserted homestead, half blown away by wind or covered by sand. Or some ATVs speeding along a transmission line road, sending up a cloud of dust that reveals their position. Or maybe it’s just an odd rock formation, jutting out of the otherwise flat terrain like the ruins of a half-sunken ship.