"Juniper light at Arches," Utah, March 2010

Juniper light

This became one of my favorite photos from out weeklong trip through northern Arizona and southeastern Utah. It was the end of a long day of hiking at Arches and we hoped to get one more loop in, out at the end of the park road near the big campground, hiking to Broken Arch and back to the car. But as we made our way along the path, we found ourselves alternating between dense sand and snow drifts up to our shins, even our knees. We grew tired quickly and decided to double back to the car, rather than finish the circuit.

But at least it got me this shot of the late-afternoon sunlight on the arches in the distance and the top of the tree in the foreground. If only I could drop everything now and go back out there ...

"The Watchtower," Grand Canyon, March 2010

Beneath the tower

In a 22- or 23-hour span, we saw much of what the Grand Canyon had to offer -- a snowed-in, cloudy cover of white and a bright, clear winter day along the South Rim. On our way out of the park, headed east along Arizona 64 on the way up to Monument Valley, we stopped at the Watchtower at Desert View for one last look. The tower itself was under renovation (and still open), but we passed on climbing the round, spiral steps. How much better can the view get when it's already so spectacular?

"Shed in the snow," New Jersey, February 2010

Snow shed

Yeah, so we're having a little weather here today. I took these photos this afternoon, when my wife and I went out to shovel the 5-6 inches we had. I usually prefer to wait until the snow stops falling, but because that's projected to be tomorrow morning -- giving us pretty much 24 hours' worth of snowfall -- I figured our muscles and backs would be better off tomorrow if we tackled some of it today. In the five hours since then, we've had about another 4-5 inches. And there's more to come.

Day 365 of 365

Snow on The Fens

It wouldn't be New Year's Eve in Boston without snow. It's happened to us the last several years we've come up here to party with my college roommate, our parents, and dozens of friends. Thankfully, this year's burst was compressed to about a three-hour window from the late morning to mid-afternoon, and hopefully we'll have nothing more the rest of the day.

Day 361 of 365

Pennsylvania winter road

U.S. 220 near Bedford, Pa., as we made our way home from Johnstown to New Jersey through a Currier and Ives countryside -- red barns and white farmhouses set in a snow-dusted field among the undulating hillsides.

Day 359 of 365

A wet white Christmas

This is Christmas in Johnstown, 2009: a light freezing rain pelts the windows and forming a crisp coating over the snow in the yard. Luckily, we're comfortable and warm inside, with no place to go all day.

Happy Christmas to all!

Day 358 of 365

Christmas Eve afternoon

We had a bright, sunny day for our drive across Pennsylvania and we arrived in Johnstown to find about eight inches of snow on the ground. A lot of the pine trees still held snow on their boughs, which I found to be unusual a day or so after the storm. Usually the branches have been cleared off by the wind after the first day.

Upon our arrival, we found ourselves in a festive house, the music piped throughout the first floor by speakers in several rooms, Carol and Jim busy in the kitchen preparing for the party that night. We jumped in to help before getting dressed and starting the festivities a little after five. Eight hours later, we turned in, drunk and exhausted.

Day 357 of 365

Park between the candy canes

This house is just a few blocks from another Griswoldian effort in the neighborhood. Imagine if they'd been next-door neighbors. The main difference -- other than the 10-foot candy canes flanking the driveway of this house -- is that this house has a speaker on the lawn playing Christmas music, while the other one has a sign telling drivers to tune their radios to 94.1. That's some dedication right there.

Day 355 of 365

Tree rings

I've always been a bigger fan of multi-colored lights than white ones, particularly for photographs, so I changed this one up by going black and white.

Day 354 of 365

Now that's a wreath!

We're getting down to the final days of the year. I took this shot on my way into work to begin my final week of 2009, a lovely, abbreviated three-day week (Sunday-Tuesday). It was my first day in the city after the snowstorm, and while I missed all the whited-out streets and the Times Square snowball fight, I still found some not-usually-seen shots like this.

Day 353 of 365

Winter still life

Winter came down heavily today. Only two days after I heard we might get some snow this weekend, the flakes started falling lightly around 1 p.m. By 8 o'clock, street lights were obscured behind the white curtain and the roads melded with the curbs, the lawns, the sidewalks.

Every hour or so, Casey or I would peek at the view from a window to monitor the progress. No point in shoveling to keep ahead of it, I thought, because all that work would be erased by morning. Besides, I'm happy to give the two neighbors with snow blowers a chance to go an extra few feet to clear our sidewalks, as they've done in winters past without a request.

Winter has arrived in earnest a few days before it arrives on the calendar. The days may soon start getting longer, but spring has never seemed so far away.

Day 339 of 365

First snowfall

The first snowfall of the season started as large, fluffy flakes during a transition from an early afternoon of rain. It didn't make for the best photo, but as the ground chilled, the grass and yards soon were dusted with an inch or so of powder, and by evening the roads had a light coating as well.

"Rocky Mountain stop," Colorado, May 2006

Stop for views

There's always that dichotomy in a visit to a national park -- at least those grand, expansive Western national parks that were established to preserve the vast wilderness. How much of the park are you truly experiencing if you don't get too far from the car?

When my former college roommate and I went out West on a weeklong road trip to mark our 30th birthdays, we devised a grand loop that began and ended in Denver and went as far north and west as Yellowstone and Idaho and as far east as Billings and Cheyenne and that little southwestern corner of Nebraska.

After spending the first two nights in Boulder, we drove through Rocky Mountain National Park on our way north into Wyoming. We stopped at parking areas and vistas, spent a little time walking along the ridges and gazing into the valleys, but we didn't truly leave the car behind and traipse down a mountain path to truly get a feel for the place, the way we did on a college trip to Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

On the one hand, I would've preferred to spend more time -- more quiet time -- in the Rocky Mountain NP, but on the other, we wouldn't have been able to do and see as much as we did if we'd allotted more time for any of our stops. We would've had to cut something out of Boulder, Rocky Mountain NP, Jackson Hole (and the Tetons and Yellowstone), Little Bighorn National Monument, Cheyenne or our last night in Denver. As it was, we didn't get to actually enter Teton NP or detour to Devil's Tower (I definitely have to get back to that one).

But in the end, I think I'd rather spend a little time at more places on the first visit and come back a second time to experience a place more fully. And then someday, when I'm independently wealthy or comfortably retired, I'll simply be able to do whatever, wherever, whenever, for however long I'd like.

Or so I can dream...

Day 61 of 365

Summer's on deck

My half-birthday is marked by a nor'easter that dropped three or four inches in a couple of hours after midnight and probably six or eight by now. I'll lie low for a little longer, until I'm sure it's stopped, then head out to shovel.

Day 38 of 365

Earflop

Clark enjoys a romp in my friend's yard on a pleasant 50-degree afternoon in central New Jersey.

Day 19 of 365

Green beneath the snow

It's been three weeks, yet our Christmas tree remains on the curb. Not sure what the deal is with that. I figured they would've picked it up at some point in the last 21 days. But as long as the snow is on it, the wind shouldn't blow it down the street -- as it has before -- then it's not that big a deal.

Day 15 of 365

15: Falls in black and white

As winter arrived in force this week, I drove up the road to Paterson to see the Great Falls in suspended animation. As I had hoped, snow and ice clung to the rocks as the still free-flowing sections of the Passaic River cascaded over the cliff. The bright afternoon sunshine prevented exposures that were too long (even with a neutral-density filter allowing for a few more hundredths of a second to be added on), but I managed to blur the falls enough to satisfy me, given the conditions.

It was a cold, frigid day, and so I toyed with the idea of taking a 20-minute ride east, back to Edgewater, where we used to live, to see if the Hudson River had any chunks of ice floating on it. Several years ago, when I could see the river from our apartment, sizeable icebergs littered the waterway between New Jersey and Manhattan. But thinking (correctly) that it hadn't been cold enough for enough days, I scrapped the idea. Had I taken the drive, however, I would've arrived on River Road within minutes of the US Airways jet's emergency landing.

Day 10 of 365

Snow on the hat

I'm going with this one as the photo of the day because, with Casey as the subject, it's a departure from what I've been posting. I don't think she'll mind. She did know I was taking the photo.

"Waiting, Clifton Station," February 2008

Waiting, Clifton Station

Winter really hit us last week. We'd had a few snowfalls here and there, two or three days where I had to get out the shovel and clear the sidewalks, but our first storm of the season came on Friday. Four or five inches covered the ground by the time we left for work at 8 a.m. and we walked down the middle of our street because the inch or two that had fallen since the plow came through made it easier to walk than trudging along the untouched sidewalks. Trains were running a little behind schedule, but we settled into a seat and watched the blanketed landscape as we passed through the towns and crossed the Meadowlands. On the bridge over the marshes, the clouds obscured everything to the north, so that looking out over the water we saw nothing beyond a few hundred feet -- no sports complex, no Harmon Meadow office complex and condo tower, no highways. It could have been the open ocean out there in the mist.

"American bison, Yellowstone," May 2006

"American bison, Yellowstone," May 2006

It may have been May, but in the high elevations of northwestern Wyoming -- in Yellowstone National Park -- you can get winter weather late into the year. The day began cool and overcast, and it wouldn't have been a bad one to tour the park, but when we found ourselves getting out of the car in the rain to see a thermal spring, or when I had to tuck my camera under my coat to keep the snow off it when looking at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the river's Lower Falls, it got to be a little much.

At this point, we were on our way out of the park, completing the loop we had started and about to hit the road south that would take us back to Jackson Hole. We noticed ahead a car coming in the opposite direction that had stopped; the vehicle in front of us braked and I noticed, through the falling snow, a bison crossing the road. As we approached the spot, we saw that the one that had crossed was following another; back on the right side of the pavement, where the first two had come from, three others remained.

Conveniently, the two bison had crossed at a turnout, so I turned into it and we waited. The second one to cross stopped barely 50 feet from the road -- where a half-dozen cars were now scattered, watching. As the huge animal turned and walked back to the edge of where the macadam met the grass, one woman got out of her car to get a photo, and Bryan and I laughed at the idiocy of this arrogant tourist. She returned to her car without incident, and we watched as the three lagging bison made their way, one by one, across to join the first two. This shot is of two of those final three, plus the one who crossed and waited, setting off into the valley.