Pines and Aspens

Pines & Aspens (Sangre de Cristo Mountains) - New Mexico  2012

For he who does not understand that the wilderness of mountains serves us far more than their tameness, understands very little. Slopes given to the plow may serve us less than the vast, stony undulations that are patterned gray and green in the spring, and gray and gold in October, with the quaking aspens. All up the Sangre de Cristo, the pine and aspen patterns make a hieroglyph still undeciphered, except as you find the key to it in the script of pagan thinking, at the back of the mind of man.

~ Mary Austin, Land of Journeys’ Ending, 1934

Kay and Mike did a short day hike in the high altitude October light starting from the Big Tesuque trailhead in the Santa Fe National Forest, in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.