Idle Hours

Just Outside the Douglas Unit of Coronado National Forest
Extreme Southeast Corner of Arizona

Diane and I had made a long circle through the Douglas Unit of the Coronado National Forest. We headed up to Portal, New Mexico and then over to Animas, New Mexico before turning west just north of the Mexican border. The southwest corner of New Mexico/southeast corner of Arizona is some of the most remote country in the United States. You are about as far from "civilization" as you can get in this day and age. Along this road are a very few, far-flung ranches. Things around these parts have not changed for a hundred years. This is what the old west must have felt like.
Just past one of these ranches, a small creek flowed through a stand of trees. I was driving at least 20 miles an hour (autobahn fast on these roads) and something in the trees caught my eye. I went past it by a hundred yards or so and then turned around. Diane asked me what I had seen...and all I said was, "Just wait, you'll see."
The chair under the tree just called out to me...and to Diane as well. This was a place I could see just sitting and pondering the world - just like the old rancher who lived there. After a hard day's work with the herd, I am sure that he just sat in this chair with a glass of tea and put the universe all in perspective.
This is one of the very few times when I knew immediately that, beyond the shadow of a doubt, I had made a good picture.
When Diane and I looked at it, she could only say two words, "Uncle Bill." Her uncle Bill Sides would take a chair like this out to Cape Cod and sit on the top of the dunes and take it all in - for hours on end. Bill's son commented, "Yep, looks like my Dad's chair - or one that he had 'acquired' from the school where he was the principal."
I really do hope that you can find yourself - or even your own "Uncle Bill" in this image...I know I can.