Artistically, this is my favorite picture from my own collection. As with most good pictures, it has a story.

A few years ago, I took a 14,000-mile bicycle trip around North America. I rode from Seattle to Maine, down to Florida, over to California, and up to Alaska. I had always considered writing a book about it, so this past spring I spent ten days in a tent in the Arizona woods working on a manuscript. I don't know if I'll ever publish it, but it was well worth the effort to produce a rough draft.

One of those evenings in the tent, I decided to hike to a ridge I'd been looking at for days. I took off, and it was farther than I had thought. It was great to be out of the tent, exploring the area I had made home for such a significant undertaking. I got to the ridge just about sunset, and the twisted old trees grew magical in the changing light. I love the reaching fingers of the tree, the reds of the trunk and branches against the blue of the sky, the slight hint of twilight on the horizon. I can feel the dryness of the desert in this photograph, and the shelter of the alpine forest. It was a very unique time and place, which I am happy to have caught a piece of.