Sierra Club Wilderness Calendar

From Arizona's Monument Valley to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and Oahu's Waimea Bay, stunning Southwest USA photos feature in the 2008 Sierra Club Wilderness Calendar.

Among my favorite Christmas presents this year is the 2008 Sierra Club Wilderness Calendar, full of stunning photographs of natural landscapes across the USA. I'm not one of those people who can patiently wait for each new picture to be revealed at the start of every month. I can't resist a quick flick through, and I'm thrilled to find that half the year features places in the Southwest USA and Hawaii.

January starts off in my home state of Arizona with a winter scene of quaking aspen in the snow-covered Coconino National Forest that looks more like Colorado. February returns to type with an impressive textured shot of beetle tracks in sand dunes of Monument Valley.

It vies with March for my favorite photo: a gorgeous orange and yellow blanket of California poppies and goldfields in the Tehachapi Mountains that heralds spring. By contrast, April's giant wave breaking at Waimea Bay, Oahu, is sheer drama.

June presents an eerie landscape of hoodoos and eroded volcanic ash in a little-known spot in New Mexico, the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument. In December it's back to Hawaii to finish off the year with a bang – an erupting spatter cone and lava at the Kilauea Volcano at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.

The calendar was a gift from my dear friend Maryann in Vermont. While we haven't visited these exact locations together, we've trekked through many more like them since our university days in Colorado.

I'll see in New Year's Day by hanging the Sierra Club Wilderness Calendar on my office wall, where it will no doubt inspire many Southwest stories in 2008 – that is, when it's not distracting me with memories of many happy days spent in the great outdoors. Thanks Maryann!

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