U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Open Spaces Blog

If you need a reminder that the Earth is held together by stone, look to the Sandia and Manzano mountains in central New Mexico. Born of what must have been violent tremors, the Rio Grande slices down a natural rift left behind by massive movements of whole plates of planet Earth that birthed these mountains. Where the southern Rockies end, these new and different mountains emerge. From Placitas to El Paso the west face of a long chain of dry crags reveal the past.

In these tilted wedges, the remains of sea-dwelling creatures swim forever entombed in limestone 10,000 feet above sea level. Along this front of friable mountains, few people live. Night skies are inky black and you feel you can still reach out and touch the cosmos rarely concealed by clouds. No clouds—no rain. The sky governs fate in the American Southwest.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Open Spaces Blog