Image of the Week: Abandoned Cabin, Anza-Borrego Desert, California

It's about this time of the year that I start thinking warmer thoughts and about sunnier climes, and when that happens, my mind drifts to the desert.

About twice a year I jump a plane to escape frigid New England and visit the high desert canyons of Southern Utah or the warmer, arid expanses of Southern California. One of my favorite places is the Anza-Borrego, a stretch of dry barrens skirting the Mexican border between San Diego and El Centro, California.

One of the remarkable things about the desert are the effects of such low rainfall. Not only does it make the desert explode with color after an early spring shower, but human-made objects undergo a certain kind of desert "mummification", and the landscape is left with these anachronistic structures. Abandoned adobe cabins, wooden-wheeled camp trailers from the 1920s, Wild West era stagecoach stations -- it'll make you feel like you've just stepped out of a time machine.

Lacking water's competition, the sun, wind, and sand take their toll rounding the edges, drying the wood, and baking the metals and plastics. All that's left are the bleached skeletons of humankind's tools and shelters, standing as monuments in the unapologetic desert light.

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Technical Data

I photographed Abandoned Cabin, Anza-Borrego Desert, California with a Nikon D300 and a 17-35mm ƒ/2.8 Nikkor lens. The exposure was 1/60 second at ƒ/11.

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