See Beautiful: Resilience and Strength

It is "See Beautiful" Friday, a bloghop that I love participating in.

My idea of beauty may not conform to the "normal", as you'll see from my examples of beauty from the last month.

This was the start of a beautiful series of photos of a species that was pushed to the brink of extinction by bounty hunting for much of the 1900's. Can you guess what animal it is from this photo?

Now you can see the whole beautiful animal. He's a mountain lion (a.k.a., cougar or puma), sniffing at the base of a tree that I've monitored for almost three full years now. Lots of animals, including multiple cougars have marked the area under the snow that this mountain lion was sniffing.

He didn't stay long. He seemed to know exactly where he was going. I was able to follow his tracks today, and he was on a mission. He was following a route that many mountains lions have followed in the past. It's not a trail - the only way that I know that the lions love this "route" is by tracking them in the winter.

Much to my delight, he stuck with the standard mountain lion route so I captured more photos of him at another site. I am referring to "him" for no particular reason. I don't know the sex of this lion.

After a quick sniff of the ground, he was on his way, again following the standard route.

Mountain lions had bounties on their heads in Colorado until 1965. Yet, a small population of secretive cats survived and have multiplied. I suspect that their persecution selected for the most secretive cats, which is why we almost never see these resilient and strong animals, except by motion-activated cameras.

When I checked the second trail camera that the lion had passed, I saw that a coyote had lazed in the sunshine in this spot before the mountain lion came through. That may have been why the mountain lion sniffed the spot. The coyote is another persecuted species who is thriving despite some humans' best efforts. Coyotes define "resilience" in my mind.

Continuing with the resilience and strength theme, we presently have a few brave wild crocuses ("Pasqueflowers") who are thriving despite our wildly fluctuating weather. This morning, the Pasqueflowers were hunkered down under the stress of low temperatures and light snow.

Then, the sun came out and the Pasqueflowers stood tall with amazing resilience and strength.

Last, but certainly not least, my girl Shyla is the definition of resilience in my mind. She is learning to trust and to stand tall. She has known fear intimately - and thus has earned the right to be called courageous. Her strength humbles me.

All month long, I "saw beautiful" in the resilience and strength of the world and beings around me.