For many years (1993-2007) I lived in New Mexico, specifically Los Alamos, where I worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a physicist is the Technical Division, researching nonlinear waves and other nonlinear phenomenon, and also renewable energy technologies. Los Alamos is situated on the Pajarito (“pa-ha-REE-toe”) Plateau, a broad swath of volcanic tuff that stretches out from the Jemez (“Hay-mez”) Mountains that form the rim of a massive complex of volcanos that created the Plateau about 1 million years ago. The Plateau is riven with canyons carved out by the water which flows down to the Rio Grande. The following photos and captions paint a picture of this incredible landscape:
The Pajarito Plateau as seen in the morning from some miles away to the east, looking west, in winter. The small knolls in the Rio Grande valley in the foreground are dotted with pinon and juniper trees. The (snowy) Jemez Mountains rise in the background. The canyons can be clearly seen. Some large structures in Los Alamos (including a water tower) can just be seen to the left atop the Plateau. The Rio Grande River flows across the valley at the base of the Plateau, hidden from view here by the knolls. 
A view looking east from near the end of one of the long fingers of the Plateau jutting out to the east, where an ancient trail of the ancestral pueblo peoples that once inhabited the canyons (and whose descendants still live nearby in the valley) passes down into the canyon. One of the many places I wandered with my guitar. 
A view of Mortandad Canyon, a place I particularly liked to visit, sometimes at night until I realized how many rattlesnakes were out and about then. this canyon is haunted with ancestral pueblo cliff dwellings and petroglyphs. 
Some of the fantastic ancient images etched into the charcoal covering the walls of a cave kiva in Mortandad Canyon. Note the cubby holes along the bottom of the back wall, where various items were probably once stored. 
Some of the cliff dwellings in Frijoles Canyon, still clearly displaying the playing the once covered the walls, and the post holes from which roofs once jutted out. The canyons of the Pajarito Plateau actually have thousands of such dwellings, grouped into committees ranging in size from a handful to hundreds of units. 
A view looking down Frijoles Canyon. 
One of the myriad ancient paths worn into the soft tuff by generations of ancestral pueblo inhabitants. 
One of many photos I took of Ponderosa Pine snags in the craggy heights of the Jemez Mountains. Their fantastic shapes result in part from the swirling patterns of their grain. 
A petroglyph found high on a canyon wall on narrow path up that I used to climb while precariously holding onto the guitar. 
Some petroglyphs along the Rio Rande. 
One of the canyons on the Plateau, looking west towards the Sangre de Cristo mountains, at the base of which lies Santa Fe, NM. 
A view of the grasslands in the Valles Caldera, a vast valley in the volcanic caldera ringed by the Jemez Mountains. The hills you see here are all ancient lava domes from which the volcanos once spewed volcanic material, some of which has been found hundreds of miles away. 
The rugged, arid landscape of Northern New Mexico, as seen from Satellite. The Caldera be seen center left. 
One of many photos I took of Ponderosa Pine snags in the craggy heights of the Jemez Mountains. Their fantastic shapes result in part from the swirling patterns of their grain.
During those years, I lived right on the edge of one of the canyons. I began journeying into them on occasion with my guitar, utilizing a drone tuning that I had developed years before one night while playing to an electrical storm, and composing “Stoneflower“: Tuning the lowest two strings down one full step. This creates a nice drone in the lower end that one can over on the upper strings. And of course the guitar has an incredibly beautiful sound. And of course it’s an intrinsically rhythmic instrument, which can be played a tempo matching one’s footsteps.
On these walks in New Mexico I would often leave early on a Saturday morning, park at a trailhead somewhere, and walk anywhere from a few to upwards of 20 miles, playing softly the entire time, and arriving back at my car in the evening. Over the years – 14 in all – I eventually built up a large set of different themes this way, all created in response to each of the landscapes I was walking through, each one reflective of that place. I have no photographs of myself doing this, but here is photo my playing to the landscape that someone took in Vermont, around the time this adventure began, playing something reflective of that place:
In 2008 I relocated to Vermont, and some years later I started playing these pieces with my wife Janice. She created beautiful sweeping keyboard parts to go along, and we finally recorded them. Here is a video version of the album that resulted, that we showed at the CD Release Party. The inside cover with the song titles appears below. Note that the first piece takes awhile to fade in!
Here is the Desert Suite album as embedded from Bandcamp, where it can be purchased for download and also freely streamed.