See Beautiful

Since it's been such an emotionally hard week, I thought that picking out photos of the beautiful things in my life would be good for my spirits. This post is inspired by See Beautiful.

During a walk, K and I saw a hummingbird hovering while drinking from an Indian Paintbrush flower.

This week, we saw rain, a rare and beautiful sight, here in our parched and fire-prone part of the world. It had drenched some Fairy Trumpet flowers that K and I saw during a walk. I first noticed these small gems on the day that my beloved dog, Acadia, died almost 9 years ago so I've always associated them with her.

Our world has been full of fluttering butterflies, more butterflies than I've ever seen in our world. Enchanted...

My trail camera caught a glimpse of the first fawn of the year. Mom looked at the camera suspiciously while the fawn sniffed the base of a bear-marking tree.

Nearby, a muscular predator walked through the night. I think that mountain lions are beautiful, and I'm so happy that we humans have learned to coexist with them.

Most of my attention this week has been on K as the ending to her journey feels closer. I captured her beauty one evening.

I also remembered a sight from when we camped in a glorious spot in the San Juan Mountains last summer. We've been so lucky to share so much mountain beauty and love with K.

A precious day

Our morning routine has completely changed because K doesn't want to walk very much in the morning. We've had extra time to watch the Flycatcher couple who have a nest full of babies under our deck.

The parents work so hard, catching flies and delivering them to the nestlings, all day long.

I occasionally saw the couple together this morning. I know from the past dozen years of watching flycatcher parents that the nestlings usually fledge soon after I start seeing the parents away from the nest together.

After a slow-moving morning on the deck watching the Flycatchers, one of K's favorite people, smrp, came to visit her in the afternoon. K had been subdued all day until the three of us sat in the pine needles and played. K lit up, her eyes sparkled, and she seemed truly happy. I didn't take any photos because the time was too precious. But, here's K's serene face after our little get-together.

K's energy was buoyed for the rest of the day, and our little family had a peaceful sunset walk in the meadow near our house. K's spirit amazes me - she loves life with all her heart.

During that sunset hike, I managed to negotiate with R's agent to let me take a photo of him in the sunset light. He's a handsome dude, in my humble opinion.

As the sun dropped lower in the sky, the world and K were embued with a deep red. It felt as if K was being swaddled in the soft warm rays of the sun.

It was another precious day in our journey. As a person who always like to try to take control of life events, it's so hard for me to stand by and let nature take its course. Alas, aside from pain management, that's all that I can do. But, I'll stand by K until the end of the journey, watching over her and showering her with love.

Almost Wordless Wednesday: Yesterday in photos

Yesterday, despite K's illness, we still managed to find our way into the forest for a short jaunt. The photos are here. K is a little worse today but still loving and happy.

Let it be

My K and I took a short wander this morning. Every minute, every instant, is becoming more precious.

It felt like we were in an enchanted forest, with a velvet-antlered trio of bucks standing to watch us. The biggest one was the last to trot away.

Butterflies fluttered everywhere. Enchanted...

Throughout the day, although K is still happy and enthusiastic about life, I shed many tears for I think that I know what is happening, and I think that K knows too. I still hold out hope that we're both wrong.

A verse of a Beatles song kept floating through my mind and heart. I think that there's a message in it for me.

Let it be, let it be
Ah let it be, yeah let it be
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be
And when the night is cloudy
There is still a light that shines on me
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be

Pupdate and wildlife

K is about the same as yesterday. We went to the vet and isolated the problem to her left hind limb (that's not the one that had the original tumor). It could be several different things: a sprain or a tumor on a leg bone or her spine. We are giving her more pain meds and doing acupuncture, and we'll see how she feels in a few days. In the meantime, she's okay, just a bit more subdued than usual and not enthusiastic about walking.

Cancer can be so immune to our attempts to stop it. We've tried all the best therapies for K, and none of them has slowed it. I feel like we've been lobbing boulders at a brick wall, and they just keep bouncing back at us. K has been so brave in the face of it all. She's braver than I am.

A distraction from my heartache has been lots of activity at my wildlife cameras. I'll just show you footage from one of them. Here I am, leaving the other day after I set it up.

Here was the next photo on the camera - a bedgraggled looking mountain lion moving fast past the camera.

A few hours later, a bear passed the same spot, ignoring the bear marking tree in the background. I think that mating season is over.

Here's the last photo of that bear. Notice that it was at almost 1:08 PM.

Seven minutes later, a mountain lion appeared in the same spot as the bear had just vacated. The agile lion hightailed it up the hill. He'd approached from the same direction as the bear had been traveling toward so I wonder if they crossed paths or if they just avoid each other.

A half hour later, the lion came past the camera again. This is not a big lion. I suspect that it's a sub-adult male or a female. Yet, when I was standing in the same spot looking at this photo, the lion looked huge to me!

This time, he turned downhill and disappeared for a while.

Later that night, lion was still in the area and passed the camera yet again. Upon seeing so many photos of a lion in one small area, I got nervous, wondering if s/he was still nearby and perhaps had a kill cached in the forest close to me. I took out my pepper spray, and I finished my "camera work" quickly.

There's nothing like the chill that runs up my spine when I realize that I'm standing in a hotbed of lion activity. My guess is that this lion killed a deer near this spot and hid it. If I'm right, I may be getting some more photos of the lion in the coming days.

Of course, all of that was merely a distraction, I'm watching K with an eagle eye, hoping that her leg starts to feel better. Improvement would mean that it's a normal injury to her hind leg rather than the scourge of cancer spreading still further.

In either case, we'll enjoy what we're capable of doing together. Yesterday, we took a long relaxed nap on a dog bed together.

Dark clouds

I cannot lie - this has been a hard day, so far.

K and I headed out for our morning hike, and I immediately noticed that she didn't feel good. She stayed right on my heels at first as we walked through the drenched forest.

Then, about 100 yards into the walk, she stopped and sat behind me. Her message reached me loud and clear... she didn't want to hike through our beloved forest. For K, that's serious. I let her rest, and then I checked whether she was interested in walking. No, she didn't want to walk. I cannot lie - I wept.

I took K home, hoping that maybe, just maybe, she's just tired from playing with our nephews yesterday. In the photo below, one of them put the Duo through their paces. Everyone seemed to be having fun.

After our aborted hike this morning, K stayed home to snooze with the boys, and I headed out on a bike ride with a heavy heart. I spent the beginning of the ride trying to convince myself that it was just a bad day and K would rebound. Only time will tell if she will climb to Hug Hill again, like she did so easily yesterday.

My mountain bike ride was rough... My spine hurt, my tooth hurt, my knee hurt, and my heart hurt. The world was gloomy due to dark clouds hovering over it. I rode through big piles of hail left behind by last night's storms. It's hard to tell from a photo but this pile of hail was about 3" deep.

I only felt worse the further I rode, counter to the usual soothing effect of bike riding for me. So, I turned toward home just as the clouds truly enveloped the forest. Never has a nature scene reflected my mood so perfectly.

K is still snoozing, hopefully rebounding for a better day tomorrow.

Rain!

We've had more than 2" of rain in the past 36 hours. Woo hoo!

I slept late because that nasty tooth is still making me feel bad. But, the air was still below 60 degrees when K and I started our hike this morning, making K more playful than she's been in a while. During our rests, I was focused on the wildflowers that perked up overnight from more rain in the past two days than in all of June combined!

K watched over me while I photographed the gems.

A bumblebee waved to all of us from atop a flower on Hug Hill.

I hope that you're all enjoying your weekends, be they sunny or rainy! Yay for rain and for more on the way. Look at the clouds behind K!

Miraculous journey

Over the years, I've tended to avoid books and movies about the "story of a dog's life" because I know how it's going to end and that it's going to remind me of my past losses. I cried and cried and cried when I read and then watched "Marley and Me".

I starting thinking about my blog in those terms and hoping, with all my heart, that you, like me, are learning about the joy of life by traveling this journey with K. I hope that all of us can embrace life with even more vigor by seeing how K is living joyfully despite her illness.

We've lived a life so full of highs and lows since K's diagnosis on Christmas Eve. The highs have been more precious because we know that the end of K's life is not far away. I've learned so much about making the most of our days together - to find the beauty and happiness and love that resides inside us all. I hope that you leave my blog most days feeling that life is a glorious journey rather than feeling sad about the inevitable closing chapter.

By contemplating death, life becomes even more precious.

And love becomes the thread weaves lives together, like the lives of K and R. In this photo, R looks like he's becoming a "big brother", watching out for his sister, rather than the young dog that he is. A miracle...

All around us, there are miracles. A pair of Cordilleran Flycatchers nest under our deck each year. It's a miracle that they survive the bi-yearly migration and arrive strong enough to build a nest like they did in June. Both parents gathered all sorts of dry vegetation to take under our deck for their nest.

Then, they filled the nest with eggs, which miraculously hatched. The parents raised those baby birds one fly at a time. I've watched each parent snag flies out of the air with incredible ease and then fly under the deck to feed the babies. This flycatcher has a fly in his beak that he's about to deliver to the nestlings.

Life is miraculous. It is like this long and winding trail that I rode on my mountain bike recently. You never know what's around the next curve or what's going to happen on the journey- if you'll be battered by storms or meet a bear - but, regardless, the journey is a gift.

I hope that's how you feel when you leave my blog posts. Of course, I feel a huge weight of sadness these days but I also realize that, by traveling the journey towards the end of K's life with her, I am learning things about life that I can't learn any other way.

Fire and Floods

Thanks for all of your supportive comments. You all help me so much each time we get bad news about K's cancer. I know that it must sometimes be painful to read about our journey - but I am grateful that you are sticking with me through thick and thin. It helps more than you can imagine.

It's been a rough week in more than one way. Not only did we get the bad, but not unexpected, news about K but I got a very painful tooth infection and abscess. It was shocking how fast it progressed from a barely noticeable twinge to excruciating pain that prevented me from eating. I've been on heavy-duty medications, and I had a root canal today, and now the pain is screaming.

Regardless of my tooth pain, I've been getting out in the woods with K every single day. Today, K charged to me when I called her off a scent. When I see photos like this, I literally cannot believe that she is terminally ill. I think that I'll just try to forget for as long as I can.

And, we visited Hug Hill with foreboding clouds already enveloping the Divide early in the morning.

Later in the day, we got hard rain and hail, and it was wonderful. I can't remember the last time it rained so hard.

Believe it or not, in this land of fires, we had flooding after the rain. The areas that have been burned in recent years cannot absorb the rain and it runs off rapidly, creating flash floods.

Fortunately, aside from a few closed roads, the flooding wasn't too bad. I think that this is the definition of "global weirding", a term coined by Friedman.

On the wildlife front, bear mating season is winding down, as the bears head into the phase of the year when they eat all day and try to gain enough weight to make it through the winter. They essentially eat enough calories to survive the whole year in a couple of months of summer after mating season. I worry about them this year, with the lack of food due to the drought.

A male bear marked a tree a few days ago, either as a closing act of mating season or simply to mark territory. The tree is so much smaller than him that you can barely see it behind him.

He rubbed his back vigorously.

Then, he leaned his whole weight into the tree, before lumbering on his way. No other bears followed his scent, as I would expect for waning days of the mating season.

I've also been getting a lot of photos of a small band of bull elk with velvet antlers. Some bull elk stay at our elevation all year long while the cow elk go up to high elevations to raise their calves in the land of lush green alpine meadows.

Look at the size of this guy's rack, so early in the season! He also doesn't look too thin, which I'm happy to see.

Let's hope that it rains some more here and that both K and I feel well enough to play in the morning!