Blooming Yucca, Bisti Badlands. Northwestern New Mexico’s Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness is a place of otherworldly, arid, desolate beauty. It’s rightly known for a dramatic, alien-looking landscape with hoodoos, ridges, arches, and side canyons punctuated by occasional petrified logs. It’s not the kind of place where a nature photographer would go looking for spring flowers.

But after an unusually wet winter and spring, this solitary little yucca would beg to differ.

Tech info: Nikon D850 camera with Nikon 28-300mm lens at 82mm, 1/800 sec. at f/16, ISO 500

Image ©2023 James D. Peterson