Ambling Along Redington Road
March, 2010
Coronado National Forest, Tucson, AZ., USA
At least once in every photographers life they get blessed with a day that can only be described as magical. Our drive along the Redington Road, east of Tucson Arizona was just such a day.
We were in Tucson for the annual AZLRO Rally and took some extra time to explore the area on our own. The winter in the southwest this year had been uncommonly wet, and the heavy rains had super cleaned the air and left the landscape moist. So the colours were particularly rich. On this special day, the weather gods had seen fit to provide us with beautiful sunshine, and a rich turquoise blue sky loaded with tons of small, low level puffy white clouds. In a word, it was stunning!
Since we had the advantage of being permanently unemployed, we were able to take the drive on a weekday, and as such, didn't meet another sole along the road. It made for a peaceful amble where we could stop at any time to expose some pixels.
Just before we got to the end of the pavement, and the start of Redington Road, we had to cross this small river that was running across it. The high volume of rainfall created this situation, and had in fact caused all of the rivers in the southwest to flow heavily. Many of these rivers can remain dry for years at a time. But being people from a part of the world that gets inches of rainfall on a weekly basis, and where rivers are almost always flowing, we never gave this high volume of water a second thought. It wasn't until we were talking with local residents attending the Land Rover Rally that we learned we were experiencing a very rare event. Something that was confirmed in each of the four subsequent years when we visited the southwest, and found the rivers that were full in 2010 to be completely dry.
