After going to Moab early this summer to visit Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, I told myself I needed to go see some of the other amazing Southwest sites I’d long heard about but put off visiting.

As the summer rolled on, a cheery weekend day in August gave me enough incentive to day trip over to Chinle, Arizona, to take in Canyon de Chelly, and it was more than worth the drive from Albuquerque.

And in the back of my mind, the Bisti “Badlands” continued to invite me to visit them.

The Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness is a 42,000 acre wilderness area south of Farmington, NM, which features some of the most unique geological and topographical formations in the Southwest. It is a popular destination due to its mystical, otherworldly landscape. The wilderness area has two access areas- the De-Na-Zin to the south, and the Bisti to the north.

Over the last several years, friends and colleagues brought it up as an amazing place to visit, so this last weekend, Bisti called again and the time seemed right, so after sitting around for three days of a long Thanksgiving weekend, I woke up on Sunday ready to roll. Clothes collected, maps and guides in hand, and music CD’s selected, I locked up the house and got on the road about 9:45 AM.

The drive there itself was interesting. A stern cold wind from the southwest pushed against the truck for much of my drive on I-40 west towards Gallup. When I stopped at a station by the Continental Divide for a photo opp and to get gas, even though the sun was strong, the chilly air was biting. I was reminded, I am doing this in winter.

In my slow slog, I ended up getting off of I-40 about 11:30 at Thoreau, and went into the Giant gas mart there on the barren main strip of town seeking something warm to eat. To my delight, I found a slow cooker full of green chile stew sitting by the coffee machines, so I bought a carton of some- and the stew turned out to be delicious. After warming up with that, I left the Giant parking lot and headed off again, north on Highway 371, aiming for Crownpoint and then for the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area. A gray cloud bank lingered much of the early afternoon to the west, and I stopped at several points in this stretch to photograph scenery of interest- a broad plain here, a mesa there, unique rocks over there.

Around 2:30, the sign for the De-Na-Zin Area Access Road greeted me on the right, followed by the turnoff. Following a guidebook’s advice, I went past it and on north another 7 miles to the Bisti Area Access Road, and turning right onto it, I slowly drove the rocky runneled route to the parking area. Unsurprisingly, arriving at the lot I was greeted by nothing except a sign, a wire fence, and a gate for access into the wilderness area. I was clearly alone.

I bundled up, donning 4 long sleeve tops under my coat, and then a second thick pair of socks over the first, my shoes, and then two wool knitted caps. I locked up the truck and walked to enter the park. While the wind remained feisty for a while, I didn’t notice it and was warm in my layers, and the sky brightened as the sun came out from behind clouds.

The Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area is very informal. At the Bisti Area entrance, you go through a gate, and then you walk towards clustered mounds a stone throw off to your right, and then when you are by them, you either look for a canyon to enter that separates the raised clusters, or you climb one of the mounds and begin your visual adventure. There are no trails- just rises and falls and strange formations and colors and textures, and after each rise is another unique canyon with unusual formations and colors.

Once beyond the gate, I headed for the mounds off to my right. In no time, I was climbing the first mound and making my first mental notes, and then looking for best passage onto elevations deeper in this sprawl of mounds and crevices.

After forty minutes of navigating south across a first section of mounds and valleys, I came to normal grassy earth on a knoll. When I looked east, though, I saw a longer, broader swath of bizarro earth not more than 25 yards from the one I just climbed out of, and I quickly made my way to and into it- and was more overwhelmed by the odd formations I found within it. There were many eroded structures that looked like tabletops perched on fins or thin centered legs.

By this time in the late afternoon, the sun was beginning to drop towards the horizon in the west beneath a bank of clouds, and its light was vivid. To the east, dark storm clouds spanning the sky were pushing towards the west, deepening in blues and grays as they approached, and so I did what seemed best. I just took pictures.

As the sun walked west, the color of the rocks and soil deepened, and everything was lighter and richer and fuller. And I knew I needed to use the light as much as I could to bring out the terrain.

Within 15 minutes or so, a cloud lifted from the horizon and dulled the light, and grateful for the photos I had been able to take that afternoon, I decided I had better start heading back to my truck.

I prayed and thanked God for the amazing experience of the afternoon as I walked, and quietly I hoped for one last gift of good light before leaving the locale. The wind stirred up again, a soft push against my chest, and to the east, the dark clouds approached, ominous and large. In the weakening light, it took me 10 minutes or so to climb down into a substantial crevice and then up and onto a crest line, and then to follow it north until I could climb down into another canyon that would dump into the open area that went back to the parking lot.

But when I began to climb down from my moundtop path towards the broad canyon floor, it happened.

Suddenly the sun came out from behind the cloud, and its light, thrown across the earth from the horizon, burned golden and strong, and the walls of the mounds and piles across from me lit up, illuminated and detailed. And right about that time, I felt something cold strike my neck, and then my hand, and then both, and I looked around me, and tiny white pellets fell all around me. In the bright day-end light, it was snowing. And the sky was a canvas of colors.

The snow fell on the formations around me like clouds running across the sky.

Stunned, I emptied a handful of images off of my now full phone so I could get a few more photos of the moment.

And then I just stopped and stood silent and watched the falling clouds march on the formation tops in front of me, and said a quiet prayer of thanks. And with moist eyes, I took a few more photos.

In a short time, the sun dropped behind another veil of clouds, and the light weakened. Shadows crept up the sides of the formations on my right, and the clouds passing over and by darkened or dissipated. And the clouds reclining higher to the north pinkened as the sun disappeared.

I walked back to my truck quietly, full, shrouded in peace.

The drive home was fun. Thinking that heading to Farmington, and then taking 550 from Farmington to Bernalillo would be a quicker route, I left the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area and headed north- straight into snow flurries that slowed travel for 20 miles outside of Farmington. In farmington, though, the snow was done. I stopped for a Blake’s Lotaburger and to refuel, and then I set out for Albuquerque. While I did not drive in any falling snow in that leg, there was adequate snow on the ground between the entrance to Chaco Canyon and Cuba to slow traffic significantly. And once I was out of Cuba, the roads were dry.

It was a pretty remarkable day trip.