A springtime sunset hike

We recently had a sunset hike that made us appreciate where we live so very much!
First, the Duo romped stood and took in the sights together in the sunset light.

Then, they launched off their boulder to come see me.

Just about then, we saw a raptor swoop over the meadow and land atop a Ponderosa Pine. We leashed the dogs and started walking inconspicuously toward the bird hoping to identify him/her.

When we were just getting close enough to get a good look, the bird soared away from us. We never saw the top of his tail but my best guess was that he was a red-tailed hawk.

The raptor soared over top of a fence on the edge of the meadow, and we spotted a mountain bluebird perched there, his blue plumage standing out in the golden light.

Believe it or not, as we gazed at the bluebird, the elk herd started stirring about 50 yards behind the bluebird. It felt as if we lived in the most vibrant and beautiful world as the wild animals moved all around us.

During all our wildlife watching, the light had dimmed but there was still a bit more time for the Duo to romp. K blurred a little as I panned my camera with her.

A few minutes later, the meadow had lost its sunlight, and the speed of R was too much for my camera. The tops of the brown grass looked like streaks on his black fur as I panned with his sprint.

The hike ended with a spectacular sunset as storm clouds sat over the Divide and were lit on fire by the sun.

As dusk began to fall, we hurried home.

What a miraculously beautiful place to call our home! I feel so lucky K is still with our pack enjoying the blossoming of spring.

Sunset, bobcat, and sunrise

I hiked with the Duo yesterday evening, in the serene and soft moments just before the sun dipped below the mountains to our west.
Then, this morning, K and I started our mountain bike ride shortly before sunrise, reaching our favorite lookout point in the rosy hue of the first sun rays.
At the start of our ride, K snarled and growled with agitation as we departed from our clearing. Only later, I discovered that a bobcat visited the area under our birdfeeders last night. He managed to hide his face behind a fireweed plant but we can see the rest of him. I wonder if this is the same cat who visited us regularly last winter? Maybe I can tell if I do a side-by-side comparison of their leg stripes and tails.
Based on the stripes inside the front right leg, I think that our visitor is a different bobcat from the one who passed one of my cameras shortly before it was stolen.
Autumn is here. The temperature hovered at freezing when K and I started our ride, and crystalline frost covered green leaves of Golden Banner wildflowers.
The leaves that the sun had touched dripped with melted frost, like this aspen leaf whose gold is emerging.
After I dropped K at home, I accidentally rousted a hawk from the ground cover under a pine forest canopy. He tried again and again to take off but carried a heavy load in his talons. His expansive wings flapped powerfully but he couldn't get the lift that he needed to gain altitude. I quietly backed up, trying to undo my bumbling entry into the scene with no success. Eventually, he left his prey on the ground and flew up to a branch to watch me. I believe that he's a Northern Goshawk, a large raptor with a 21" body length and 41" wingspan.
I quickly investigated his prey, a rabbit whose front end had been picked clean but whose hind end remained, and departed. Like always, I felt mixed up - happy that the hawk had a full stomach but sad for the innocent rabbit.

Have a great weekend!

Dogs, hawks, coyotes, and my spine

Yesterday, I had packed my favorite snow bike trails to perfection. I could hammer along the hard snow, riding almost like I do on dirt. Then, the wind swept in from the west, hurling the fine dry powder into the air. For some reason, powder tends to settle in the trail depressions. Then, the top layer becomes an almost impenetrable layer of windpacked crust. As I tried to ride the same trails that were so perfect yesterday, the snow crust shattered into pieces, like a glass breaking, leaving behind scattered jigsaw puzzle pieces. After shattering the crust, I foundered in the fine powder below it. It was tough riding to say the least.

K didn't mind in the least. She zipped around like a wild animal, left ear wildly flying into the air.

We stopped and enjoyed the crystal clear view of the Divide. The cloudless blue sky felt endless. If I gaze at it for long enough, I feel like the world is limitless.

After K and I slipped and slid around our trail network, I dropped her off at home and switched bikes to my winter bike with studded tires so that I could ride on our dirt roads. Sometimes, riding becomes like meditation for me. Today, I found myself mind completely absorbed in pedaling and breathing - with no other thoughts - for miles. It was a wonderful escape.

Then, nature caught my attention. A hawk soared low over my head and alighted on atop a pine tree. At first, he turned his back and ignored me. Notice the fiery red tail hiding under the black tips of his folded wings. The light streaks higher on his wings provided another clue.
Then, he warily watched me but let me take more photos. His chest feathers were a streaked light color.
His face was dark and his beak tips hooked downward.

All of these features told me that he was a Red-Tailed Hawk. I'd never seen one perched so close. He was perched over a small meadow, likely watching for rodents or small birds to snag for breakfast.

A little later in my ride, I passed a frozen lake that almost melds with the snowy meadow in mid-winter. I spotted three coyotes crossing the lake. A friend recently saw a trio of coyotes frolicking like puppies on a frozen lake. Today's coyotes didn't play. My presence seemed to alarm them. It's funny that animals seem more afraid of a person on foot or on a bike than in a vehicle.
Interestingly, we had a trio of coyotes visit the area under our birdfeeder last night. The lake was about 6 miles from here so I doubt that both trios were the same coyotes.
Later in the same evening, a buck visited. Over the 7 months with our wildlife camera outside the house, this was only the second deer visitor.

More storms will hit in the coming days with temperatures plummeting below zero. Over the course of my ride, thin clouds formed over the Divide, portending the coming storms.
The upcoming week holds some scary steps for me. To make a very long story short, I have 5 very bad discs in my neck, some of which are deforming my spinal cord as it travels towards my trunk and legs. They also are pinching the spinal nerves that go to my arms. I also have a huge disc herniation in my lower back. Surprise, surprise, it's the disc directly above the fused part of my lower back. It's a classic long term complication of spinal fusion. For now, the docs suggest that I 'try to ignore the lower back disc herniation' because the neck situation is much more dire. Thus, on Monday, I'm having an epidural steroid injection around the spinal cord in the worst section of my neck. The hope is that it will reduce my symptoms - at least until I've made a decision about whether to get my neck fused. I also have an appointment with an awesome surgeon but not until the new year, unless I can pull some strings.

I'm curious if anyone has experience with having neck fusion at 4 or 5 levels (i.e., 4 or 5 discs removed and replaced with bone). Do you know anyone with such a massive fusion? If you do, I'd love to hear about how well they've been able to function with so little neck mobility.

After looking at my MRIs, the doc asked me "how do you do it?". I had to ask him to clarify because I had no idea what he was asking. He explained that he wanted to know how someone functions with the level of pain that I must experience on a daily basis. He knows that I don't take many drugs for it. I explained about daily exercise and meditation being my holistic methods to cope with pain. He asked lots of questions - saying that he hoped to pass along advice to other patients. I felt vindicated. I always wonder if I overdramatize the pain in my mind. I guess not.

Living and riding in the midst of nature

One of the simple pleasures of springtime is having my morning coffee on the deck. This morning, the thermometer read 42 deg, so I donned an extra layer to venture outside. Yes, 42 deg at 7AM is warm here! Spring is everywhere, especially in the plethora of newly blooming flowers, like the Pin Cherry shrub below.
As I drank my coffee on the deck, I listened to the flute-like song of my favorite summer bird, the Hermit Thrush, who arrived on Saturday. A pair sang back and forth, their ethereal notes cascading down from the tops of pine trees. I almost never see these birds - they're invisible singers. But, I stop in my tracks for their songs.

As I listened, my husband and the trio of labs hiked past. About a minute later, a jet black form galloped away from our property into the forest. I thought, there goes R, our young black lab, charting his own course like a typical teenager. Then, my sleepy brain wondered why I didn't hear my husband calling R back to him. I peered around the corner and saw all three dogs with my husband disappearing into the forest. I'm mentally slow before my coffee kicks in but I realized that I'd actually seen a wild animal, not R, sprinting into the forest. Then, I remembered the big thump that we'd heard under the deck just before crawling out of bed and the nervous barking by our dogs while I made coffee. Hmmm, I thought, I bet I saw a black bear who'd been lurking at the forest edge watching me eat breakfast.

Later, my husband said that S let loose with his 'spooky barking' near the start of the walk - he stared into the forest and barked menacingly, seemingly at nothing. Bears trigger his spooky barking. My guess is that our bear-visitation season has officially begun. We always have a flurry of visits in May and June until the bears learn that no food is accessible here.

Unfortunately, the bear didn't visit the base of our bear-proof bird feeders - so our wildlife camera didn't snap his photo. But, a coyote visited around 1AM last night, and again, K and R went directly to the spot where he'd stood, and had their photos taken, when they started the walk this morning.
After my coffee, K and I rolled onto sun-bathed trails. At high elevation, the sun heats the world rapidly so it was already 20 degrees warmer than when I first ventured onto the deck. We made a bee-line to a trail that immediately plunges into wilderness. Our turnaround point was a mountain meadow that showed only subtle stirrings of spring but had stupendous mountain views.
The warm sun has been cooking the mountain snow, transforming our usually languid creeks into fast-flowing torrents. More dark spots appear on the mountains daily.
As the sun soaked my skin and K's fur, we both heated up. K slurped water from my camelbak.
When I arrived home to drop off K, a hawk stood at the base of a pine tree by our bird feeders. His massive wings lifted him off the ground sluggishly, carrying prey in his talons as he flew low to the ground, maneuvering through the pine trees. A pile of feathers, from a hapless white-breasted nuthatch, littered the ground. I'm not sure if the raptor was a Northern Harrier or a Cooper's Hawk but I'm beginning to think that we need to deter him. He's sporadically hunted at our bird feeders for a couple of weeks but this is our first direct evidence of a kill. The birds and rodents craftily vanish when they see him arrive but flock back to the feeders when he leaves. While I know that he and his young need to eat, I also feel as if I'm setting out an 'all-you-can-eat' buffet for him. I'm not sure what to do about it.
As I rolled along solo through a meadow, a Red-Tailed Hawk swooped close to me. He landed on the apex of a young Ponderosa Pine tree.As I moved closer, he soared away.
Later in the ride, a hummingbird hovered among the branches of a shrub (a red currant bush, Ribes cereum). As he hovered, he was sipping nectar from ornate and tiny (less than 5 mm across) tubular flowers that looked ideal for hummingbird beaks and long tongues. Pollination will transform the pink flowers into red currant berries that bears can feast on this summer.The tubular flowers of a blooming Milk Vetch (Astragalus shortianus) looked hummingbird-friendly too.
After photographing the flowers, I enjoyed the simplicity of navigating my bike along rocky trails. I have one stretch that I ride regularly. It's technically challenging with loose rocks, boulders, and jutting roots. I found myself smoothly rolling over the obstacles, feeling more confident than ever before. The many hours of snowbiking this past winter improved my confidence on rough trails. Tomorrow, I'm joining a very good mountain biker for a ride - so I'll be able to gauge whether I've actually improved or just think that I have.

The world buzzed with spring energy today. I spotted too many newly blooming flowers to take photos of all of them. Almost all of the aspens and willows sported leaves - some had both catkins and leaves. The world is transforming before my eyes, from a barren landscape to a colorful bursting-with-life landscape. I find it worth slowing down and noticing the details because the dawning of a new season is truly amazing.

Life's ambiguities

An amazing about-face in our weather led to 60 degree temperatures yesterday. The sun baked the snow, leaving its surface cupped and its depths soupy like oatmeal. In the evening, the two younger pups and I played in the snow while S took a road walk.

The setting sun glowed on the textured snow surface as K porpoised purposefully as if she smelled a deer or elk.R still imitates K's behaviors and zoomed in the same direction. A recall brought the two of them porpoising toward me with K in the lead and R trailing. I trudged on my skis through the wet snow to a view of the setting sun over the mountains. The rough snow surface reflected the sunset with an other-worldly glow.It feels wrong to have only a pair, and not a trio, of dogs with me on my evening wanderings. I get a heavy, indescribably sick feeling in my gut, when I ponder the missing S. Although I optimistically believe that he'll likely join us soon again when snow conditions are better for his arthritis, a day will come when he won't. Life never seems long enough.

On a lighter note (literally), the rising sun gently wakes me earlier and earlier as its rays shine on our bed through our towering east-facing windows. This morning, I pedaled my mountain bike on the dirt roads again, as the trails are bogged down in deep soupy snow that's not passable with my Fatback snowbike. The deep blue sky behind snowy mountains awed me.
The wildlife has started venturing out on the snow, likely at night when it's firmer and easier for travel. This set caught my eye because of the gait, a non-direct-registering walk (i.e., the hind print overstepped the front print), the relatively long stride length for a walk, and the purposeful path taken by the animal.

In my observations in our forest, coyotes and bobcats always use direct-registering walking gaits in snow. That gait probably saves energy because only the front paw has to 'break trail' by packing down the snow and the back paw simply falls into its trough. Indeed, coyote observers say that when a group of coyotes move through deep snow, they move single-file and carefully step exactly in the tracks of the coyote in front of them, just like a group of cross-country skiers precisely follow in each other's tracks. The coyote's tracks can trick someone into thinking that only one coyote traveled the path. So, the lack of direct-registering front and hind paws suggests that the tracks that I saw today are not from a coyote, a group of coyotes, or a bobcat.

The track pattern made me think of the big cat tracks that I've seen this winter - but I couldn't see any paw details so that's a wild guess.













As I passed a meadow, the Wyoming Ground Squirrels peeked out of their snow-capped burrows again - having recently stirred from their six month hibernation. Indeed, four heads popped out of one hole in the snow, briefly making me wonder if I'd misidentified these rodents. I wasn't aware that any squirrel species lived communally. However, some reading has told me that Wyoming Ground Squirrels live in colonies in high elevation meadows. It's not clear how strong their social ties are but my observations of the last couple of days suggest that they like to hang out close together. The females go into estrus within 5 days of waking up from hibernation - and that fact may explain why these squirrels are venturing outside their burrows despite the risks of being exposed to predators on the snow.

Today, I was slow with my camera so I captured only two squirrels at one snowy burrow. At almost the same instant, a Red-Tailed Hawk swooped over the group and perched in a nearby small Ponderosa Pine tree. I think that the sharp contrast between the dark squirrels and the white snow has made this colony's territory a feasting spot for hawks and other raptors.













After this wildlife stop, I pedaled around most of the area's drying dirt roads. When my life feels out of kilter (and S's illness, among other things, has tilted my world), the single-mindedness of riding my bike helps me focus on soaking up each moment rather than projecting into the future. I love focusing all my energy on something as simple as riding fast up a hill. Pushing my physical limits is simple compared to real life. Of course, at times during my rides, I lose myself in the wandering paths of my mind - but the sheer physical challenge of riding soon pulls me back to the present. At other times, the snowy tapestry of our mountains is a magnet that keeps me living in the moment.I love the crisp lines between the snowy mountains and the deep blue sky. Sometimes I wish that life felt so clear-cut. At other times, I'm able to appreciate that the ambiguities of life are part of what makes it so precious and wild.