Nature's mystique

About three weeks ago, we spent an autumn weekend in Aspen. The dogs and I hiked in the morning sunshine on the first day. As we climbed up to a panoramic point, a photographer, with much fancier equipment than mine, asked if I would pose the dogs for him. He just sent me a pair of special photos of R and K, with a blur of autumn leaves in the background.

He also wrote in his email: "Your dogs are the best behaved of any who I've ever met." That comment made my day. We certainly work hard at training them so that they are good citizens. But, the other half of my brain blurted out: "He must not have met very many dogs"!

Seeing his photos makes me think that I could learn a thing or two from a photography course. His images are so crystal clearly focused on the dogs with the rest of the world in a blur. That's a gorgeous effect.

Today, I felt tired from riding a lot over the past couple of days. Despite the fatigue, the amazing natural world drew me into another fun ride. The sun was warm, the air was still, and sunlight bathed our forest. The only clouds in the sky hovered over the Divide, sitting behind K.

K and I rolled through the forest, to the accompaniment of myriad chirping birds. Chickadees shouted warnings of our arrival. Stellar's Jays squawked their disapproval. Robins flew overhead with their rusty breasts glowing in the sunshine. And, the magpies seemed to know that deer rifle season opens tomorrow, as they rarely visit the depths of our forests but were omnipresent today. They clean up after hunters, working over the 'gut piles' left behind after a hunter field dresses a deer or elk.

The first weekend of deer rifle season always feels like the most dangerous weekend of the year in the forest. I'm glad that we're clad in orange. Even from behind, K's orange catches the eye.

However, K's orange vest needed repair after this sequence during which she crawled under one of the many barbed wire fences left behind in the forest. She started under the fence.

She's almost all the way under.

But, as she emerged, the tongue flick indicated that something had stressed her out. I realized that she'd snagged her vest on the fence and was stuck. I freed her but the vest was ripped.

We rolled further, past the spot where I think that I saw a lion, and perhaps a recently killed buck, the other day. I'm not planning to investigate for a few weeks. A lion might hang around, protecting his kill, for as long as two weeks. So, as we went past that boulder-filled area, I called K into a heel next to my bike.

I called my contact at the D.O.W. to report the horse leg that I found two days ago. As we chatted, he asked me to alert him to any fresh deer or elk kills in our area so that he could capture and radio collar the lion. Hmm. Believe it or not, I'm not certain that I want our lions collared because they lose some of their freedom and mystique if we can turn on a scanner and locate them. If a lion hasn't threatened humans, should he lose his right to roam unseen and unknown to humans? I have my doubts even though I know that radio collars provide incredible scientific information about lion behavior.

However, it's likely a moot point. Whenever my dogs strongly indicate that a carcass sits nearby, I call them off of it and don't go near that spot for weeks to give the lion time to move on. So, I doubt that I'll ever be absolutely certain that a fresh lion kill is stashed in a specific place unless I accidentally stumble on it.

Today, as K and I rolled through the forest, we caught a glimpse of a snowy mountain. Winter has, without a shadow of a doubt, taken full control of the high mountains. Soon, it'll overtake our forests, meadows, and aspen groves as well.

I think that it's time to fully enjoy the remaining mountain biking on dirt trails. Soon, I'll dust off my snow bike to slip and slide my way through real snow. That's fun but I love 'real mountain biking' the most.

Unsettled and sad forest ride

K and I rolled out the door early, to find an unsettled world, with weather and odd forest findings whirling around us. We climbed into a gale force headwind to our favorite lookout, to find a cloudy and windy world with spates of rain showers flying through our area. Although most mountains had vanished behind the clouds, a rainbow arced in their place.
When I looked to the south, I gazed at towering and massive faraway peak, covered in snow.
K and I didn't linger for long in the cold wind. We headed down into the forest for some fun. Almost right away, after I dropped off a boulder awkwardly banging my back wheel on the ground, I realized that I had a flat tire. I was so glad that K guarded me while I changed it. I always feel very vulnerable to predators while I hunch over my bike, totally focused on fixing it.
After that tire change, we rolled to another viewpoint, and the rainbow dominated the sky. Both ends illuminated the forests that they penetrated but the top of the arc was missing.
As we rolled further, I was surprised to see the two meanest dogs in the area, off-leash and hiking toward us. Fortunately, K knows to avoid these dogs, and we turned abruptly to take a different route. I don't know what caused it but these two Border Collies simply attack other dogs, unprovoked, when they meet them on the trails. K has been attacked more than once and is happy to flee when she spots them.

We whooshed through bare aspen groves that bear no semblance to the fiery orange worlds that they were two weeks ago.Suddenly, K's nose hit the ground, and she zeroed in on a leg skeleton. In the photo below, I'd just told her to 'leave it', and she complied beautifully.
I started taking photos, operating on the assumption that it was a deer or elk hind limb.
I must have been 90% asleep at this point because it is beyond obvious that it's NOT from a deer but rather from a very small, perhaps miniature, horse. The hoof tipped off this sleepy rider. The bottom of the hoof is shown in the photo below. For a side view, click on the photo above and zoom in on the hoof.
The tip-off is that a horse hoof is all one big structure. In fact, through evolution, horses and other equines have retained only the third digit in the front and rear feet - that corresponds to our middle finger. The hoof is equivalent to our fingernail but it's dramatically expanded so that horses can walk on the tip of their one remaining toe.

Contrast the horse hoof to the elk hoof below. The elk hoof has two toes. Through evolution, all artiodactyls, including deer and elk, have retained the third and fourth digits (our middle and ring fingers). They walk on the tips of those toes.
The horse hoof was only about 1.5" long from the back to front - an extremely small horse hoof. The femur, or thigh bone, measured less than a foot long. Those measurements told me that this leg came from a very small horse, perhaps a miniature horse. I suppose it could've been a young horse but the robustness of the bones made me think that the horse was mature.

I ended up feeling sad, realizing that I'd probably just found the leg of someone's pet horse. A couple of years ago, a mountain lion killed a miniature horse nearby. The lion moved onto local dogs and, a stupid dog owner shot the lion when he attacked a puppy left out overnight on a chain. Leaving the dog out on a chain in the heart of mountain lion territory was a sin that exceeds my imagination.

Based on my find today, I wonder if another miniature horse went missing sometime in the past couple of months. This leg was fresh and stinky so I don't think that it was very old.

With a heavy heart, K and I rolled toward home, finding along the way that a tree had fallen on our path since we passed under it about 30 minutes earlier. Whew, a close call...

After I dropped K at home, I went exploring, working to connect two trails that I like. This time, for a rare surprise, I was successful! It was fun following my instincts and seeing that someone else had built a trail where I thought that one should exist. It was sweet and tacky singletrack that cut off a couple of miles of dirt road riding.
To answer a few questions from the comments yesterday, my jaw still hurts but it's getting better, albeit very very slowly. If you ever have a tooth extracted, do everything in your power to avoid dry socket! Not only does it hurt but you have to visit the dentist every 24-48 hours until it gets better.

Also, K's health tests didn't come back clean - she still has casts in her urine, at the same low concentration as last week. The composition of the casts suggests that she has minor kidney damage, probably from a disease process. I was so disappointed to hear that news. In any case, I'm feeling a bit worried about her, as you can all imagine. K is only 6 years old - her health shouldn't be failing already.

For the moment, we'll continue to seize the day, enjoying each chance to play together. K is what I call a 'soul dog' for me - she's touched the core of my soul and brought me incredible happiness. What a dog!