Smiles

When I'm not feeling good and the world seems scary like in the photo above, I look for things to cheer me up. My little bike rides with K almost always bring a smile to my face.

Today, even while K and I gazed at our beloved mountains, I felt too bad to smile.

The problem is that when I get serious back pain, the rest of my body goes haywire too - I think of it as collateral damage. I get headaches (caused by my neck problems) and nauseous. I lose weight and have little energy.

To fight the blues, I make a big effort to focus on the good parts of my life. K is in the midst of a course of antibiotics for her latest UTI, an ongoing story since April. She feels great. However, the pattern has been that she always feels great while on the antibiotics. Then, after the antibiotics end, she gets sick again. We're probably paying a visit to the nearest Vet School to try to figure out why. In the meantime, I'll just rejoice that she's feeling good *now*.

As you're probably seeing, today was a day of actively trying to find ways to lift my spirits. A great strategy is that I search for beautiful things in my world to appreciate. We still have some wildflowers in bloom, and I took the time to appreciate them today. My favorite deep purple and gold aster is singing its late summer song all over our forests and meadows.

I found this aster near a rocky slope at the end of the most desolate trail that I ever mountain bike. I've never seen another person on this trail. In fact, the trail is disappearing as the forest is gradually reclaiming it. It would be better to call it a "route" because an uninitiated hiker or bike rider would never be able follow it. But, if you can follow it, you're rewarded with glowing purple asters!

After I took the photo above, I lay down in the sun. I felt too inert to stir myself for a long time. It's rare that I feel so devoid of spark. But, I know that I'm lucky to have places to go where I find complete solitude, aside from the birds, butterflies, chipmunks, squirrels, bobcats, coyotes, bears and mountain lions. Yes, even the thought of the big animals makes me smile because it means that our world still has truly wild places.

Another thing that can lift my spirits is a great photo on a wildlife camera. In the past two days, I've captured two sets of bobcat photos (I'm saving those for a future post) and lots of deer photos. I normally don't share the zillion deer photos that I get but a few of them were distinctive.

One photo of a doe showed scars. My first guess was that she'd been unsuccessfully attacked by a mountain lion. After thinking about it more carefully, I realized that there are lots of other possible explanations for her scars but I still like the lion attack scenario the most.

She walked too close to the camera so the photos are blurry but the scars are evident.
Also on the deer front, it seems that a band of bucks have decided to try to cheer me up by posing for a cam that's very close to my house.

This guy has a big set of antlers given that he's part of a hunted population!

Then, last night, either the same buck or another one got really close to the cam which I'd moved during the previous day.

As if that wasn't close enough, he moved even closer for the next photo that was taken 30 seconds later.

Look at ME, he seems to be saying.

Tomorrow, I hope to post about another leg of our recent trip when I rode my mountain bike up Imogene Pass. It was a truly amazing day with the view shown below from near the Pass!

Until then, keep smiling! I'm going to keep working at it.