"Top Gun" at Cliff's Edge

Luna, NM. If you ever spend time reading product reviews or discussion forums on digital cameras, well, I hope you get more out of them than I do. It's far easier to just say that the "best" camera is the one that gets taken -- every time.

Recently I was chewing myself out for forgetting my camera on the short dog-walk when Coffee Girl treed the coatimundi, the first I've ever seen. It's so easy to do so because short walks don't seem to "count." 

A few days after the coatimundi sighting: "Come on down, whoever you are, and I'll go easy on ya!"

Chastened by self-nagging, I went for a late afternoon dog-walk, this time with my camera. Out the RV door we went, walking up the short distance to the cliff's edge.

Although I could camp -- and in fact have camped -- right at the cliff-line for a dramatic view, experience has shown it best to camp a short distance away. This is a statement that many optical sybarites would never buy. I can think of one Lazy Daze motorhomer who would back his living room and IMAX window right up to -- or even hang over -- the cliff, if he were here. (grin)

The situation here is analogous to RVers trying to jockey their beached whales right onto the sand, when they camp in Baja California. What they won't go through to get the biggest window to face the ocean! They do so because it reminds them of a front cover on some glossie RV magazine. The result is wind, sand, and salt spray. They are lucky if they escape getting stuck in the sand.

Although it almost seemed perverse, it worked better to camp on the inland side of the highway, hidden (!) from the ocean view by small sand dunes. Then, every brief dog-walk out to the beach produced a blast across the eyeballs, a blast that refreshes you because you are conscious of it. Each variation in the viewscape is like an incoming ocean wave itself: you can sense the wave, but not the ocean.


The beach was a mirror, with incoming waves on one side, and our brief and recurring dog-walks on the other side, as the mirror image.

And so it was that we went on a short dog-walk to the cliff's edge, with the camera. A few steps away from the RV's door I noticed something odd.

A large bird, probably a raptor of some kind, was levitating about 50 feet from the edge of the cliff, just ahead of us. By 'levitating' I mean that his wings were not flapping and his ground speed was zero. So perfectly stationary was he that a camera on a tripod could have filmed him for 30 seconds or more, without moving the camera!

When the fumbling over the camera was over, I noticed the wind, the ridge lift, that the raptor was exploiting. "Wind whispering in the pines" is a hackneyed expression; "Whispering Pines" is a stereotypical name for a resort cabin lodge.

"Whispering," eh? This was no nambie-pambie sibilant sound.  The wind in the tops of the ponderosas sounded like a freight train. That was the other reason I gave up on camping right at the edge of the cliff: I was afraid of ponderosa pines falling on me.

Since this area is so volcanic, the ponderosas develop shallow root systems. The volcanic rock is porous, so water soaks in and leaves tinder-dry ponderosas, hence the monster fires that the area is prone to.

There have been many times when I've admired birds at cliffs or ridgelines. Frequently it is ravens who seem to display an intelligent playfulness when disporting with ridge-lift. But this situation did not require intelligence; it took sheer guts and athleticism. I've never seen anything like it.

White breast and hooked beak.

  I've got to take up hang gliding!