SAW Photography

About SAW

Born in D.C. and grown in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maine, and New Mexico, Sarah Anne Wharton's photographic experience began as a ten-year-old with a 110-film format camera: a sleek, black tube, half the size of a sandwich. She brought it with her everywhere, congratulating herself on a solid choice of future career when she caught two chipmunks eating nuts in one frame. From then on, traveling from state to state, country to country, and person to person, SAW has kept at least one camera strapped around her neck.

She is curious and exuberant, and loves to bake, whistle, and photograph your face.

Sarah currently works, lives, and plays between rural central Pennsylvania and urban Brooklyn, New York, but travels often and everywhere. Come visit and you can meet her coyote mutt puppy, Boon, and listen to the constant rain spatter of the PA mountains from her deck.

Southern Points, Pt. 1

10/1/2011

After the spectacular failure of our first camping trip south, I decided to do it again the next weekend and revisit everything I felt we had missed. The plan was to slowly meander back down NM-380 to Carrizozo, camp Friday night at Valley of Fires State Park, wake up to explore the area around Carrizozo, head through the Lincoln National Forest around Ruidoso and Cloudcroft, stop at some pistachio farms outside of Alamogordo, and spend Saturday night at Aguirre Springs on the east side of the Organ Mountains.

It was such a fun, slow, explore wherever/whatever you want kind of trip – the best kind. I stopped at every roadside Historical Marker and changed plans on a whim.

NM-380 is vastly empty, cradled between San Antonio and its two famous burger joints and Carrizozo and its two gas stations, none of which had coffee creamer.

Valley of Fires is a huge lava flow that runs north-south along the spine of the San Andreas. It is amazing at some points to see the black strip of lava with the pale strip of White Sands behind it. Years and years ago when my family was living out here, my tiny cousin Maria remarked in her toddler lisp – “Yots of yava.” And there was.

White Oaks is a near-ghost town ten or thirteen miles north of Carrizozo into the mountains. It used to to be a bustling little place, but is now just a few locals and houses of a bygone era tucked back into the foothills. Because of the proximity to the Lincoln National Forest and that historical area, the graves reflected some of the Lincoln County war, with at least one man having been shot by William H. Bonney.

Heading through the Lincoln National Forest to Ruidoso and Cloudcroft was lovely. NM-220 had a few nice surprises, like the Merchant Marine cemetery.

In Alamogordo, there are pistachios and wineries all over. Pistachios growing on the trees are so, so pretty. Heading east from Alamogordo into the Sacramento Mountains around Cloudcroft was a nice respite from the heat of the lower altitudes. Putzing around in the mountain greenery was a good way to end the day before heading down to Aguirre Springs.

Aguirre Springs is one of my favorite campgrounds ever. The Organ Mountains are so sharp and majestic-looking from that angle. They loom up above you, craggy and toothy, every nook and split in the rock visible depending on where the sun is casting shadows.