We awakened on Friday to a hazy summer day, a welcome change after a cold and rainy day on Thursday. The sun shined through the haze in a reddish glow that caught Shyla's beautiful eyes as she relaxed in a sun puddle.
She had no idea what a fun day we had ahead of us. The forecast looked benign for the highest mountains near us so I planned to "get high" with her. She got to swim in a glacier-fed mountain lake. She shook off wildly after her first dip.
I'll write more about it but it was wonderful to be up above the trees with the pikas and marmots.
The wildflowers have been thick and lush this summer. We had a drought for the first part of the summer so I was afraid that the show would end early. Fortunately, the monsoon rains have begun. Maybe that will keep the flower show going longer!
Shyla actually naturally chose to stand with her face framed by yellow flowers. I loved it!
In one of our favorite meadows of yellow flowers, some purples are joining the show.
Here's a closeup of one of those purples from the meadow that Shyla was running through in the previous photo.
It's a little different from our predominant purple these days, the Bee Balm.
Almost every morning, Shyla plays "hide in the Bee Balm" with me. I love seeing her golden eyes peeking out from it!
I wish that summer didn't feel so fleeting... but I try to see the beauty in each day of it! The wildflowers are such a highlight. The intense colors make me smile every day.
On a side note, I spent more time searching for my phone in the forest today, and I found it!!!! And, the Otter Box did its job. Despite an incredibly intense downpour last night, the phone still works! I am very grateful for that surprise.
This post is part of a blog hop, hosted by our furry friends in California.
I lost my smartphone somewhere in the woods while riding my bike. I spent nearly all day Wednesday riding back and forth over my route trying to find it. Although I'd set up the "find my iPhone" option in my apple account, my phone is invisible. That put me into a lousy state of mind.
However, Thankful Thursday is a good way to yank me back to reality. It's just a stupid phone. The most important parts of my life are fine (except for some continued GI upset in our carcass-eating chocolate Lab who is spending Thursday at the vet).
I love the mountains and our Shyla, and they're both fine!
I love our black dog and all of the wildflowers. They're still fine too!
Modern life can make me lose perspective. Losing a phone is really not a big deal although communication will be difficult until I can get a new one.
Shyla is still not 100% recovered from having bones in her GI tract but we've still been having fun in the wildflowers. The Horse Mint (a.k.a., "Bee's Balm") is taller than she is.
When I call her from behind the Bee's Balm, she chooses to leap over it to get to me. She must be feeling generally okay even though her GI tract isn't right yet.
She gets some serious hang time as she floats over top of it.
She landed gracefully.
And then she smiled very widely as she sprinted to me.
To help us not have a carcass make her sick again, we are taking a course on "recalls" so that I can learn to call her away from carcasses. We also bought her a "radio locator collar" called Marco Polo. The beacon that attaches to her collar is very small, and I carry a larger "receiver". The idea is that this will let me find her very quickly if she discovers a fresh carcass. The problem in the past was that I couldn't locate her even if she was only 100 yards away in the forest because of the dense trees and boulders. I've tested it out, and it works beautifully.
Here's to getting Shyla better and then keeping her healthy!
Our resident huge male bear, Milton, recently took a long walk westward. I have his favorite route through our neck of the woods nailed - I got lots and lots of photos and videos until he passed out of range of my trail cams.
I am including some of the more notable photos of him here, and I have video footage at the end of the post.
One poor pine sapling has been reduced to a trunk and one small branch by Milton's crazy marking of it over the years. Milton marks this tree more than any other bear.
It's not a tall tree and it's invisible behind him in this photo. It's short enough that he often squats down to rub his back on it.
Then, he reaches back to find the top of the trunk.
At the very end, I imagined that he let out a celebratory whoop - which is why his mouth is wide open in this photo!
As a side note, I took a wild bear behavior course a few years ago. I spent time very close to wild bears, and none had teeth that looked as healthy as Milton's!
After walking another mile or so, he arrived at another favorite marking tree. This one has flourished despite his vociferous dancing while rubbing his back on it multiple times per summer.
During this journey, he was heading generally in the direction where a large male bear was killed the next day. I hope that Milton is okay -- and that he will be back again this autumn like usual. Every summer, our resident male bears disappear at this time of year as
they travel far and wide to find food. Thus, I am trying not to worry
about Milton. We probably won't see him again for a while even if he is fine.
I'm sending good luck to Milton in his search for food. Most of our early bear foods failed due to crazy weather. However, some berries and many ant colonies are flourishing now so I hope that he can find all the calories that he needs!
We saw an incredible sunset last weekend while Shyla was in the hospital. It felt so odd to go hiking with just three of us. And then, as soon as I saw the blazing sky, I thought "silhouette"! Then, I remembered that my silhouette model wasn't with us.
We'd decided to go for a hike rather than go visit Shyla in the hospital. The reason was that the vets and techs said that she was very relaxed and outgoing - which is a minor miracle given her fear issues. I'd given them a long list of instructions on "how to handle Shyla's fear", and they said that she'd been remarkably relaxed, even during unpleasant procedures. That report made us think that it would be better for Shyla if we didn't visit and possibly upset her equilibrium.
I must say, though, that I felt that all of our hard work in accustoming her to strangers paid off during her hospitalization!
Now I can truly appreciate the flaming sky colors that we saw on that hike because I know that Shyla is on the mend.
The afternoon was stormy but then a slit of sky opened up just above the Divide to our west. That is the recipe for an amazing sunset show.
The storms have persisted this week. It's actually been nice for Shyla as she's gradually been getting her strength back. She's been doing some biking with me, and the cool weather suits her!
And, if she gets hot, she can duck below the wildflowers to rest in the shade. The flowers are like a forest right now!
We are still in flower season here in the mountains. This meadow is just behind our house.
It's amazing, though, how different the flowers are up high! The bright purple lupines thrive up at higher elevation than our house.
Part of the reason is that the summer starts so much later up there than "down" here at 8200'! We ran into lots of snow on our recent trip. This was at 13,000'.
On south facing slopes up at 13,000', the Columbines were going wild. They grew on talus slopes, which are slopes that appear to be made up entirely of loose rocks. The plants poke their heads up between the rocks.
Every evening at sunset, we went to visit the columbines.
Ah, I just couldn't get enough of them!
Some appeared to be almost bleached white while others had the more traditional wild Columbine look.
I remind myself each day to take some time to enjoy the flowers. We have had such a dry summer that I suspect that there may not be many flowers singing during the second half of summer.
Even though this last photo is a little "impressionistic", I love the crazy kaleidoscope of yellow flowers.
I took this photo of Shyla in the yellow flowers today. She's getting stronger every day. She did get a secondary infection but it doesn't seem to be bothering her too much. I'll write about what I'm doing to try to prevent such a thing from happening again in a future post.
We'd just arrived up high in the alpine zone, and Shyla seemed awed the view of the high craggy peaks.
However, she was glad to turn on a dime and sprint to me when I called her.
Some parts of the high country were still covered in thick layers of snow, actually limiting where I could ride my mountain bike.
I am so thankful that our country sees fit to keep some land open and natural, for people and other animals to enjoy.
I hope that we'll be out camping above treeline again, enjoying mellow sunsets, before too long.
Even when we had to go home from our trip earlier than expected, the incredible beauty of the mountains was waiting for us to remind me that there's beauty everywhere.
I love the mountains, and I'm so thankful for every day that I have with our pack up high!
My trail cameras picked up lots and lots of footage of bears throughout June until early July. Both big male bears and mother-cub pairs were marching along the Black Bear Trail. I think that this photo is the male bear, Bandit, who demolished one of my trail cams earlier this year.
One of our biggest male bears, Milton, was on a mission, marching east to west over many hours. He marked every single bear marking tree that he passed. Then, he departed the area where I have cams. I'm quite worried about him because he was heading in the general direction of a place where a very large male bear was killed a day later. I doubt that it was him but I will worry until he shows up on my cams again. He's been around since I started using trail cams almost a decade ago.
I plan to make a video of Milton's journey and tree marking but, for now, I wanted to share a photo of him vociferously marking a poor stunted bear tree.
I truly hope that we see Milton again. A lot of bears are getting in trouble in Colorado because our late May snowstorm that followed very warm weather killed a lot of their natural foods. They are turning to human food sources.... so I'll be worrying about all of them.
On a lighter note, our mother bear who has a cub this year has been visiting water holes. I'm not surprised because it's been hot and dry. The two of them want to drink and cool off!
I made a video of their escapades, including some of the most extensive bathing I've ever seen by a bear. The mother bear carefully cleaned her face, behind her ears, and even a paw! The odd thing is that her bath water was the stinkiest of any around here. I don't have a clue why she'd prefer to bathe in that water hole rather than a clean one. I almost gag if I even splash some of the stinky water on my leg while checking my cam!
Here's the video. You can also watch it at Youtube.
Please let all our bears stay safe. For locals, please bring in food sources, and learn from your mistake if a bear does find food at your home. Please don't blame the bear and sentence him or her to death by reporting the bear. Instead, tighten up your defenses so that it doesn't happen again.
Let's take the responsibility on ourselves to keep our bears alive through this very lean period. They are amazing creatures!
