1987 | Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
I climbed up here with Pat White. We like to go beyond where other hikers stop, and this is well above the usual tourist stops in a very popular oasis canyon.
I was ignoring the cool deep pool here, watching my footing on the huge tumbled boulders while working out three more points of contact for my tripod. I thought that I might as well try to photograph everything that I was seeing, including my hat; it had a place there, and I saw no point in leaving my precarious camera position to backtrack through the tight sycamores around the pool, just for moving it aside to make an ‘uninhabited’ picture. So here’s what we have for that day, a full frame.
My camera was set, and before my usual shutter check, as I listen to its timbre and timing first, I noted out of the corner of my right eye a lizard skittering down the rock face into the water. I was not as much startled as I was intrigued – I was unaware that these were swimmers. Pondering that notion, I turned back to my camera to find that my cable release was missing; it must have worked loose as I was bushwhacking to this vantage point, then slithered away. Later, I looked up the desert lizard species and learned that they can swim, but I already knew that cable releases don’t.