Does it ever feel like the dark shadows are stalking you? Shyla might feel that way at sunrise!
I don't have much time to write today but a shadow captured me this weekend. I'm feeling more overwhelmed by it than normal because of the other things in my life, like my dad's health, that are weighing on me. By contrast, the fact that I probably tore my ACL this weekend isn't a really big deal. However, I'm still sad about it because of the adventures that it may cause me to miss.
I am seeing an orthopedist today, and we'll go from there. The swelling is astoundingly huge, and now part of the knee is turning black and blue too!
If you've been reading for a while, you probably are not surprised that I immediately asked permission to keep riding a bike. Riding a bike doesn't hurt very much, although my pain scale is a bit skewed by having experienced nerve pain from my back. Nerve pain is an order of magnitude worse for me than any other kind. In any case, I still rode my bike this morning... and I lived to talk about it!
I will keep trying to look on the bright side, away from the shadows!
One miraculous bright side is that my Dad is doing well. I'm about to go see him at his home, with huge gratitude that he survived, and we can have more time together.
Last week, I decided to grind my very wide fat bike tires through unpacked snow to check some trail cameras. The amount of snow on my route varied from 8" to zero, depending on the sun exposure.
As I started my ride, big and wide mountain lion tracks joined my route to lead me to my cameras.
I had no doubt that they were mountain lion tracks. They were big, although far from the biggest that I've ever seen. My chemical handwarmer is 3.25" long and is in the next photo for scale.
As I followed the lion, I got to see all the small deviations between his route and the path covered by my cameras. I dropped my bike and carried my GPS as I recorded his route to examine later and possibly adjust a camera location. He evaded one camera by climbing up a hillside. Then, he passed by another camera to let us see him.
Somehow, after passing my trail camera that takes still photos, he wiggled his route to completely miss a nearby video camera.
Then, we came into an open area, and there was no snow to record tracks. However, a quick check of a camera showed that the lion had come through there. I'm learning that this open area is very special to the mountain lions. It is one of the few areas where they feel comfortable enough to be out in daylight on a regular basis. I sure hope that humans don't discover it!
The lion who I'd been following was only the most recent one - there had been an unprecedented number of lions wandering around our neck of the woods over the past few weeks. I think that the mild winter might be the reason why they are staying at our relatively high elevation this winter.
The "mild" temperatures came to a halt for the weekend. I watched the temperature plummet by 25°F in a very short time on Friday night. Then, it started to snow. I really wanted to check another camera for this post so I made a quick foray to it, barely keeping myself from freezing while standing still to deal with the cam. However, it was worth it - I found even more footage of lions! I'm glad that I endured the agony to my poor Raynaud's addled fingers.
I made a video (on Youtube) of the activities of the mountain lions over the past couple of weeks, including one lion who went up on his hind limbs to sniff high in a tree! Almost all the lions looked very healthy and well fed.
I hope that you've enjoyed my Wildlife Monday post!
Our black dog has enjoyed a healthy streak, and we've enjoyed it too. You might remember that he had a cancer scare recently but a bunch of tests showed the tumors to be (probably) benign. His happiness and high energy were a big reason why we felt fairly confident that he was healthy even before the vets said the same thing.
On occasion, I get to have both halves of the Labraduo join me on a bike ride. They are an absolutely wild pair because they love to play while sprinting at top speed in circles around my bike. I usually stop to enforce some calmness fairly early in the ride.
We practice recalls, which turn into highly competitive races. Shyla is the faster dog but R's competitive spirit tends to scare her a tiny bit so she hangs back in the races.
After R gets one step on Shyla, he cuts in front of her to make sure that she can't win.
Although I wish that Shyla wasn't scared by R's intensity, it is cool to note that he couldn't muster the speed to beat her in a recall race prior to his elbow surgery more than 1.5 years ago. With his "new elbow", he is definitely faster! How great is that?
I tried an experiment to see if I could infuse Shyla with confidence. I gave Shyla a head start of a couple of strides, hoping that she'd find the confidence to win. It didn't really work. You can see that she started out ahead but her ears were back and her face was worried as if she was focused on what R was doing.
Not surprisingly, R found a way to come around her by leaping a rock to her side. Note how Shyla stuck her tongue out at that moment.
R is a unique spirit. A lot of people wouldn't be able to handle his over-the-top exuberance and intensity. We were told that he was rejected as a competitive field Lab because of a lack of intensity. That story makes us chuckle as we imagine the personalities of the dogs who were *more intense* than R! I often feel as if he may explode with excitement over the smallest fun things.
I hope that I have another day on the trails with R soon!
This is my Angel K. She's been gone since 2012 but I shall never forget anything about her. I loved her eyes. Each eye had a star like pattern around the pupil.
Here's a close-up of one of her unique and glorious eyes.
I thought of K's starry eyes as I went through some of my star photos that I hadn't processed yet. This one was from our time in early September high in the San Juan mountains of southwest Colorado. The mountain ranges visible from our campsite are on the horizon. The moon was bright so not many stars were visible. This photo shows their motion around the North Star over 1.5 hours.
I'm doing the Dogwood weekly photo challenge this year. This week's challenge was "alternating rhythm" which is defined as "alternate patterns of light to bring depth and rhythm to the photograph". I was really stuck about how to meet this challenge while using something natural as my subject. I finally decided that a star trail photo includes an alternating pattern of light.
This one is from K's Rock showing a combination of 120 photos taken over 1 hour and 20 minutes. I took the series when we were in the desert in October. The North Star is in the middle of the circles, just about at the top of K's Rock. The rock was lit by a bright moon that was setting just as I started the series of photos. The rest of the series was taken with no moon so many stars are visible, each tracing its path around the North Star.
I love that I think of Angel K's eyes when I gaze at the magical stars.
We had a stretch of days with almost no morning sunshine. I'd awaken excited to get out into the sun, and it would be a dull drab day. Flat and gray days make me feel the same way.
But then, the sun shined again on a recent morning. We sprinted up to a high plateau to stand in the sun's rays. I turned my face toward the sun to feel it's subtle warmth. I love the sun!!! It makes me smile.
It was cold so we didn't stay still for long. I called Shyla who accelerated toward me on a recall.
She is so beautiful to me, especially when she's glowing in the sunrise light and has her golden eyes pinned to mine as she sprints.
We couldn't play in the sun for too long because I had a spine appointment in town. It's a place where Shyla is welcome to accompany me. She and I received the greatest compliment in the waiting room. Shyla was sitting facing me, totally focused on me. Another patient said "Your dog is so attentive to you. Is she a service dog?".
I do realize that a dog in a medical waiting room is more likely to be a service dog than a dog on a trail... but I still was thrilled that her behavior lived up to a standard that would make someone ask that question!
After this photo, we were off to the races, doing our ride and heading to town. It's amazing how a sunny morning can make me happier!
To help me laugh more despite the serious stuff of life that has taken hold of me, Shyla and I have been playing lots of funny games during our morning outings.
She's become very good at the game where I toss a treat (in the foreground and out of focus) and then photograph her trying to snarf it. You can see her focus...
This was less than a second later as she started to open her mouth...
She snarfed it... but somehow my silly camera missed that instant.
Shyla has trouble when my aim is off, like in this one. I love how the treat is in focus but Shyla is not. Her eyes are tracking the treat but it's not close enough to her.
By far, her favorite game is the nose balance game. She gets very serious during the balancing part.
When she flips the treats into the air, somehow she picks out one to focus on. She snarfs that one and picks up the rest from the ground.
The instant after she flipped the treats into the air...
As she snarfed one of them, she knocked the others off their trajectories so they scattered far and wide.
We have such fun on our morning outings - whether we run a lot or play a lot - we both come home happy and tired.
She went back and forth. You can see the small opening to her den behind her to her left.
Three hours later, she was still pacing.
The sow paced all day and into the evening. She must have either been in labor or felt it coming on. I know from the sound of her cubs crying inside the den that she gave birth to 2 cubs in the wee hours of January 31st 2016. Of course, I had no trail cameras inside the den so it was a couple of months before we glimpsed the cubs outside the den.
I have a video of that exciting day and night from 2016. (Here is the Youtube Link).
2016 was the second winter that a bear occupied the den. The den is empty this year but I am hoping for another year with a bear family hibernating in it the future!
Whenever we walk up to our sunset lookout point, a sky that looks like this makes me hurry! That cloud is so gorgeous!
My trusty model, Shyla, works for treats. I am an extravagant payer so she hops right up on Coyote Rock (this is a rock that I saw a group of coyotes standing on and surveying the meadow).
It was an amazing sky because the clear part was super blue.
As the cloud's color began to fade, Shyla picked up a scent in the wind.
The last photo before I invited Shyla down because the sunset light was fading...
My heart and spirit are so attuned to the natural world that just seeing a beautiful cloud like this can lift my mood sky high. This was in the midst of a very rough week so I was so grateful to have the time to enjoy the colors with the Labraduo! R serves as the director, barking out instructions to Shyla and me. I'm the photographer, and Shyla is the superstar model.
Mother Nature decided to cheer me up yesterday morning. I saw a faint orange glow filtering through the trees from the east. It looked faint enough that I almost didn't put my drone up to photograph it. I'm really glad that I decided to fly!
I had to keep the drone very low due to wind up higher but I still got a great view of the brilliant clouds. This view is to the east but the full 360° was brilliant too (see video at the end of the post).
Shortly after the sunrise, I headed out on my fat bike with both halves of the Labraduo. It is always a wild start to a ride when I have both of them with me because they wrestle while running at top speed. To add to the chaos, R barks with such excitement that our friends all around us know what's going on! I ran into one friend on the trail who said that he heard R all the way from his house and knew that he'd see me with both dogs.
This photo gives a hint of how excitable R was!
All in all, the stars aligned to make me smile today! That sure was a great change from yesterday.
If you would like to see a 360° panorama of today's stupendous sunrise, check out the video below or at Youtube.
Happy Saturday! I'm hoping for life to calm down toward normal very soon.
I awakened feeling tired and sad to the bones. It's been a rough couple of weeks, and the reality of it is hitting home now that the crisis phase is passing. I did as I always do when I'm blue - I headed out the door into the forest on my bike. I rode my Meriwether fat bike today because our forests are snowy (although much less so than in "normal" years).
It was gray and snowing lightly for most of my time in the forest. However, occasionally, the clouds would recede to lower elevations, and we'd see a little blue sky and sun. I'd pull out my camera really fast for those moments!
Alas, today, my usual bike riding "cure" for the blues didn't do the job. At least I have a lovable pair of pups to keep me company.
Their happy presence makes me feel better, even if they're just snoozing nearby.
I did everything in my power to get great lunar eclipse photos. My alarm went off at 5AM. I was on my bike soon thereafter pedaling in the snow toward Hug Hill, one of the highest hills around here. I was carrying a tripod and a camera with a long lens in a backpack.
As I pedaled up the hill, I was hit with gusts of wind that knocked me off my bike. After one gust, I got off to push my bike with my meager headlamp leading the way. I looked up as I walked, and I saw stars glittering directly overhead, giving me hope that the western horizon was clear enough to let the moon shine through.
I made it to the top in plenty of time... but there was no moon - only clouds. As a consolation prize, I saw some brilliant colors as the sun rose behind the clouds.
As dawn crept up me, I could see the clouds that were obscuring my view of the moon. It looked as if the flat lands below us were completely socked in. Do you see a couple of faint lights from the town below us?
Then, the sunrise colors spread to that part of the sky, with a sea of clouds below me.
By the time the low clouds were threatening to engulf me, the moonset time had passed so I knew that I wouldn't see anything of the eclipse. I rode back down the big hill to pick up Shyla for a ride. She didn't do the very early part of the ride with me because I never allow her to be off-leash in the dark.
Seeing her atop Hug Hill showed how strong the wind was. As an aside, I was literally blown to the ground shortly before these photos.
The "ruff" or "crest" on top of her head was created by the wind hitting her from behind and making her fur stand up straight!
She managed to wave to everyone while keeping her balance.
Then I called her to me, and we headed for a more protected area.
I was sad not to see the lunar eclipse but it was still a memorable morning of riding up a steep hill in the dark and on the snow with wind gusts so strong that they knocked me over. I'll remember that ride for a long time!
