The Desert Tree

Amtrak’s Southwest Chief rolls out of Chicago, trading the urban commuter lines of Illinois and Missouri for the gently rolling hills and then great plains of Kansas and Colorado before taking a jog to the south around the base of the Rocky Mountains and resuming its westward journey through the mesas, bluffs, and canyons of New Mexico and Arizona. Then with its last bit of energy, it thunders across the Mojave Desert and into the Los Angeles Basin.

For almost 40 hours the view on the other side of the thick glass of my compartment’s window unwound like a spool of film, one scene replacing the next as the light shifted from day to night to day and then towards night again. My camera sat ready at my side, its own spool of (digital) film ready to go… until the right moment arrived and it sprung upward, ready to go to work.

New Mexico 2026

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