Photography Mojo

An Ansel Adams story

Through a series of frustrating events back in the mid 1980s I found myself living in the Permian Basin of Texas. That is not where I wanted to be. I wanted to live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I had moved from Los Angeles to Texas which was a move I considered to be an evolutionary step backwards but I kept telling myself that it was only temporary. The whole purpose for being in Texas was just to save up enough money to move to Santa Fe.

What I was blissfully unaware of is that there was actually a much more important purpose for being there.

I was in my minimalism period during that year in Texas. I was living in an unfurnished apartment and I never bothered to have the electricity turned on. (I was trying to save money.) The only furniture in the apartment was my writing desk which I fashioned by taking the bedroom door off its hinges and placing it across two saw horses. I slept on the floor, cooked on a propane camp stove and for light to write by I had a battery-powered camp lantern.

(Women I brought to the apartment were not impressed.)

The walls in the apartment were all bare except for one spot near my writing desk. On this small patch of wall I taped up some Ansel Adams photographs that I cut out of an Ansel Adams calendar that I had bought. (Cheap art.) I had always loved the photography of Ansel Adams because of the stark intensity he captured so well of the American West (the only place in the world that I feel at home).

In that calendar were four photographs taken in the state of New Mexico and these were the photos that I taped to the wall. I wanted to see them every day and be reminded of my goal of wanting to move there as soon as it was financially feasible. I wanted to be able to mentally transport myself out of Texas through those pictures.

Well, the true main purpose for being in Texas showed up at the door to my apartment one day. I had not seen her in over two years. How did she find out where I lived? Anyway, three days later we got married.

She asked me about the four photographs on my wall so I told her of my burning desire to get the hell out of Texas and move to New Mexico and how the photographs helped me maintain my goal. We both stared at those photos a lot.

It was just a few months later that we did it. My newlywed bride and I got the hell out of Texas and moved to Santa Fe where we lived for a couple of years and had many experiences. We also had a daughter while there. We then moved to an old ghost town in the middle of the desert where we lived for a few months. And then we moved to the tiny town of Penasco, way, way, way up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Taos County.

We rented a little house with incredible views and a heater that barely worked. The house was on the main — and only paved — road in town. Behind the house was a narrow dirt road that led to several farms and then into the forest.

Going for walks is a big part of my daily life and this dirt road behind the house was perfect for that. It was on one of my very first walks on this dirt road that my mind was thoroughly blown away.

I had only walked about fifty yards away from the house when I looked to my left and immediately stopped in my tracks. What I saw was so very familiar.

Could it be? Could it really be?

I rushed back the house where I dug out a box of personal items. In the box was a large manila envelope that had those four photographs that I had taped to the wall back in Texas. I gathered my bride and our daughter saying they had to come with to see something incredible.

The three of us walked to that spot so close to our house and we stopped. I handed the photograph that I was carrying to my honey.

She looked at it and said, “Yeah, this is one of those photos you had on your wall in Texas.”

“Yes it is. Now turn to your left and look over there,” I pointed.

She looked at the hillside beyond a large cow pasture. Then she looked back at the photograph. She looked back and forth several times between the hillside and the photo. Then she looked at me, “Oh my God! I don’t believe it.”

“You know what this means?”

“Yeah, it means that we are currently standing on the very same exact spot that Ansel Adams once stood on!” She looked down at the ground then back at me.

I laughed, “Is that crazy, or what?”

“Oh my God. I don’t believe it. It’s like this photo sucked us right through time and space to the very spot where it was taken!”

Anyway, ever since then I have been very careful about what photographs I hang on my walls.

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