One of the things I love most about the desert is its honesty. Survival there isn’t given - it’s earned. Every form of life has to fight for it, and over time the plants and animals have perfected ingenious strategies to withstand the sun, the heat, and the drought. While my first instinct is usually to chase sweeping landscape photographs, before long I’m pulled downward - into the details of cactus spines, the delicate blooms of wildflowers, or the quick movement of a lizard darting across the sand. In their own way, these small lives carry the same intensity as the vast red cliffs above them. You can feel it.
Desert plants - succulents, shrubs, grasses, and wildflowers - are masterworks of adaptation. Fleshy stems store precious water, sprawling root systems mine hidden reserves, and waxy leaves or sharp spines guard against loss. Their very forms are sculptures of survival. Photographing them has always been more than a hobby for me - it’s a way of learning, of understanding the desert’s language.
Six years after falling under that spell, my family and I began our westward migration. Stage one: leaving New York for Colorado. Living there meant I was only six or seven hours from the desert I craved. Close, but not close enough. The memories of backpacking and photographing in canyon country had left me with a hunger that couldn’t quite be satisfied.
Surprisingly, I found that same intensity in a place that looked nothing like the desert: the Alpine Tundra. Just a short drive from our home was the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, where the treeless world of tundra stretched between 11,000 and 14,000 feet. Here, long winters, ferocious winds, and short growing seasons prevent trees from taking hold. Instead, low mats of cushion plants, hardy grasses, and delicate wildflowers cling to the thin soil. The resemblance to desert flora was uncanny. Once again, life was pared down to its essence, shaped by scarcity and struggle - and you could feel it.
I photographed the tundra plants often during those years, mostly with film. Those images now sit in boxes, and I’ve never felt the urge to digitize them. They were always less about art than about study - bringing the plants home to examine them, to learn. And that was enough. The tundra had other gifts.
When the desert scorches at 110 degrees, the tundra can feel downright cold. To step from blistering canyon heat into brisk mountain air is like walking between worlds. It’s a seasonal escape, but also a reminder of the extremes this land holds.
And then there are the mountain goats. Of all the creatures of the high country, they remain my favorite. Encounters with them in Colorado's central and southwestern mountain ranges - especially the San Juan Mountains (my favorite range) - have been unforgettable. There is a surreal stillness in being alone among a herd: the soft vocalizations, the rhythmic clatter of hooves on rock, and the immense silence of the alpine air. Calming, yet edged with unease. These are not domesticated animals; they are wild and powerful, and deserve respect.
I shot most of my goat photos with a 250mm lens, always keeping my distance. Both males and females wear horns, and both can be aggressive at times - males during the rut in November, females in spring when protecting their kids. Nursery herds of nannies and young fill the summer meadows, and though they may look docile, they’re anything but. Caution is the best lens you can bring.
The Alpine Tundra and the desert - two places so different, yet so alike. Both are harsh, both are beautiful, both ask more of life than most environments ever will. To walk in them is to feel that paradox of being at home in an alien world.
These photos offer only a glimpse into the remarkable, fragile, and intense world of the tundra - but like the desert, it’s a world that leaves its mark on you long after you leave.
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