PARKS OF NEW MEXICO
Nicky Leach
80 pages. Oversized 10”x13”
ISBN 1-58071-074-3
$12.95

This stunningly beautiful, oversized book is lavishly illustrated with breathtaking color imagery by America’s leading landscape photographers. In addition to the stunning photography, the book also includes detailed maps of the park and region and insightful, heartfelt narratives detailing the parks’ natural and human histories.

New Mexico is 122,666 square miles in size and is centrally located on the southwestern U.S. – Mexico border. It overlaps the Chihuahuan and Sonoran Deserts, the Great Plains, the Southern Rocky Mountains, and the Colorado Plateau. The state contains 13 national parks and monuments, 20 percent of which are dedicated to geological features...

It’s a hot early fall day in northern New Mexico. I’m here on an overnight trip to Chaco Culture National Historical Park, the Vatican City of the early Pueblo world. My companions and I have climbed the narrow slot trail that leads to the clifftop and now stand directly above Chaco’s most famous ruin: Pueblo Bonito. The D-shaped great house, with its 650 rooms and 30 kivas, is impressive enough at ground level; up here, though, it’s obvious that Chaco’s architects designed it to be first seen from above, where the extensive road system enters the canyon via Pueblo Alto.

It takes a leap of imagination to cross centuries and place ourselves inside the minds of Chaco’s leaders. The buildings they erected were designed to last. The entire Chaco environment, suggests Chaco archaeologist Stephen Lekson, is a “ritual landscape,” where the man-made environment speaks directly to the natural world. Public structures, architectural features, and roads—with alignments to cardinal directions; the moon, stars, and planets; as well as mountains, cliffs, buttes, and other natural features—reflect a uniquely Chacoan, highly ordered way of viewing the universe. It’s one where even the smallest details, such as ineffably beautiful mosaic-like walls hidden beneath thick plaster, still move us in a way we struggle to comprehend.

—From “Parks of New Mexico” by Nicky Leach

PARKS OF NEW MEXICO
Nicky Leach
80 pages. Oversized 10”x13”
ISBN 1-58071-074-3
$12.95