Winter’s Veil: Snowy Peaks Along AZ 89 Picture or the Week - Congress, Arizona

Road leading to snow-covered Weaver Mountains in Arizona under blue skies
Winter’s Veil: Snowy Peaks Along AZ 89—The scenic Route AZ 89 cuts through the arid terrain, leading towards the snow-laden Weaver Mountains. It captures a rare and serene moment of winter’s touch in the heart of Arizona’s landscape.

Growing up in Pennsylvania, snow days were the surprise holiday every kid dreamed of. Schools shuttered—not just for our safety, I reckon, but for teachers to catch a break, too. We, oblivious to any danger, greeted the snow with the enthusiasm a child could muster. Clad in mittens, we carved new paths with our sleds, turning the white blanket into our playground. Then, the West Coast called, and I bid farewell to those spontaneous winter celebrations—until the desert showed me it, too, could play host to such marvels.

Fast forward a few decades to last month’s surprise in the desert. Snow days, they returned, albeit cloaked in an Arizona guise. The saguaros, sentinels in their own right, stood frosted—a sight as unexpected as snowflakes in the sunshine. And just like that, the desert transformed into a wintery ballroom, with creatures great and small stepping out for a dance in their frost-touched finery. The desert, it seems, had been harboring its childhood joy, awaiting just the right moment to release it into the wild.

School’s Out For Everyone

The desert flora isn’t just tough; it’s runway-ready, even in the cold. Take the plant in Desert Glow—it might look like a typical weed, but as the sun breaks, it turns into a golden firework. You could say it’s the desert’s way of holding onto the warmth any way it can, glowing defiantly against the nippy morning air.

Imagine, if you will, the desert’s snow day transforming into an arena for the most endearing of animal antics. Jackrabbits accessorize with fluffy earmuffs, while roadrunners trade their famed sprint for graceful glides across the ice. Enter the mule deer, the unexpected champions of snowball mischief. They masterfully dip their noses into the snow, crafting frosty pellets in their nostrils only to launch them at unsuspecting quail. It’s as if the desert whispers its tales of frolic and play under the winter sky. Here, amidst the silence of the snow, the fauna engages in a playful dodgeball match, where snowballs fly, and laughter echoes through the crisp air.

Out here, snow angels are more like snow lizards, and snowball fights are postponed due to lack of thumbs. But the quails seem delighted by the extra fluff on the ground and the coyotes? Let’s say they’ve never seen their shadow quite like this before.

Backlit desert plant glowing with a straw flower-like appearance at sunrise
Desert Glow: Sunrise Illuminates a Wild Shrub – A desert plant, bathed in the warm morning sunlight, transforms into a beacon of golden radiance against the tranquil backdrop of the Southwestern wilderness.

The Photos

The quest to capture nature’s impromptu art show was not without its slapstick moments—convincing a cactus wren it wasn’t auditioning for March of the Penguins or mistaking a cholla’s frosty disguise for a benign bush, a prickly mistake I won’t soon forget. Yet amidst these playful blunders, a simple desert shrub, caught in the soft glow of dawn, stole the show, its silhouette aglow with a warmth that only the morning sun could paint.

However, the lead in this week’s wintry saga is Arizona 89, our gateway to the high country. This asphalt ribbon, featured in Winter’s Veil, guides us from the snow’s gentle beginnings at the Weaver’s base, ascending to a crescendo of white in Prescott, where the snow day is not a mere memory but a living joy for children who, much like I once did, greet the snow with hearts wide open and sleds at the ready.

As the sun sets on our desert snow day, we’re reminded that life can sparkle, even with a chill in the air. And just like the desert after a rare snowfall, we come out on the other side, a little bit stronger and much more enjoyable. For a closer look at the day’s enchantment, I’ve posted larger versions of this week’s images on my website and Fine Art America. Feel the crisp air and witness the silent dance of winter in the desert by clicking [here for my website] and [here for FAA].

I’d love to hear about your most unexpected nature encounters! Please share your stories in the comments below, and let’s swap tales of when the weather went wild. Did you snap any cool critter pics? Let’s see them!

Until our next frosty surprise, keep your gloves close and your camera closer, but don’t put your tongue on the frozen glass.
jw

March Survey

Don’t forget to take a minute to fill out our March survey. Your feedback is as rare and valuable as snow in the Sonoran, and it helps us keep our content as fresh as a winter bloom. You’re all set if you filled it out last week—thank you! If not, here’s another chance to help shape our newsletter. Find the survey [here] or at the top of this email.

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Eagle Crags Picture of the Week

Eagle Crags - Red-rock Vermilion Cliff outcrops covered in snow make a perfect Christmas greeting card.
Eagle Crags – Red-rock Vermilion Cliff outcrops covered in the snow make a perfect Christmas greeting card.

Have you ever been in a situation where you had to resort to Plan B at the last moment—and in the end, Plan B was always the better choice? In a convoluted way, that’s what I did to bring you this week’s picture. Let me start at the beginning.

When I set up my December project, I already had four photos picked out. Three of them went up without a hitch, and the last was scheduled for today. I thought it was a doozy—a view of looking down the stairwell of the Hassayampa Inn. You know, one of those shots where the stairs wrap around the frame and seem to go on forever. In the photography world, if you see a shot like that and don’t snap the photo, they will revoke your Artist License.

When I looked at the file closely this week, it was too blurry. The stairwell was dark, and I didn’t hold the camera steady enough while the shutter was open. If you saw it from across a large room, you couldn’t tell, but on close inspection, it looked like something my Aunt Kay would take. I gave up and deleted the file like the professors told me.

Now I panicked and started looking through my files for an alternative. This is where I got distracted and began chasing squirrels. My RAW image files are only halfway organized. I started a system a couple of years ago where I keep them grouped by State-Location-Year (I have so many Arizona pictures that I include a county folder, State-County-Location-Year). Since we moved to Congress, I’ve used this system, but my older files haven’t yet been sorted. It’s one of those Round-To-It things. You’ve probably guessed that I picked this week to start organizing and forgot that I was looking for this week’s post.

I was working on a 12-year-old file from a trip that my friend Jeff and I made to Zion National Park. We’d driven there on the long Thanksgiving weekend and shared a motel room. One image mixed in among the others was a shot of a Vermillion Cliffs uplift called Eagle Crags. When I looked at this image, I wondered, “Why haven’t I ever shown this file?” The mystery was solved when I looked at the file data. The camera that I used had a limited file size and couldn’t be used to make decent prints, so I considered it a snapshot of the weekend.

As I looked at the broken snow-covered sandstone, I remembered that Adobe had added a Photoshop tool that added pixels to an image from thin air—using artificial intelligence. So, I dug around and processed my small file using the “Super-Rez” tool, and the results were impressive. The original file would comfortably fit on a 5”x4” photo, but if you visit my store, you can see what it would look like 5 feet wide. It’s good enough to include on my Web Pages. So while I’m stuck in the house recovering from the crud Queen Anne passed to me, I can wade through more files and discover other hidden gems.

You can see a larger version of Eagle Crags on its Webpage by clicking here. I hope you agree that it’s a lovely Christmas card from Queen Anne and me. Next week we begin a New Year, a new month, and a new project. Be sure to come back then and see where the road takes us.

Till next time
Jw

BTW:

From the Witkowski household to you, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.