Circling Georgia O’Keeffe’s beloved Cerro Pedernal, with Abiquiu Lake behind and Georgia’s Ghost Ranch beyond the Lake in the distance. This sliver of rock jutting out of the mountains was one of her favorite things to paint.

I tried to imagine what it must have been like to travel there in 1929 (the Great Crash!) when O’Keeffe first started visiting Santa Fe, Taos and Northern New Mexico, where she would eventually move, drawn to this wild, remote, peaceful and gorgeous landscape.

I wondered whether she had been able to fly over it in a small plane like I was doing, and what that would have looked like from above almost 90 years ago.

I loved seeing the Pedernal as nature, the Universe, the Goddess, created it, but, truthfully, I’ve become so used to Georgia’s artistic interpretation of it, that I prefer her painterly versions, one of which, from the O’Keeffe Museum, I’ve attached here for comparison.

Toward the end of my short video, you can hear me point out to my co-pilot, who took the controls so I could shoot, that the shadow of our plane was cast upon the side of the Pedernal.

From there we flew to Angel Fire, through the mountain passes, getting bumped around by the wind, which blew the haze away that was hanging over Abiquiu Lake. This was shot late morningish MST, and when I downloaded the video I was a bit worried about the haze and the sunlight bouncing off of it into the camera lens. But when I was looking for a Georgia O’Keeffe painting to complement the photo…even her painting exhibited that beautiful haze, which does indeed make you work even harder to focus. Not a bad thing…but not so great in a small plane!

But I will take this landscape however it is, cold, hot, in the winter or spring, it matters not to me.

Note: Shot with a Canon 80D equipped with an EF 24-105mm lens. On this camera I don’t have a set-up so that I can plug my headset into my camera, so the faint voice you hear is my own (when I’m speaking to my co-Pilot), picked up by the camera mic.

#GeorgiaOKeeffe #CerroPedernal #AbiquiuLake