Taken while walking Bear in April, had my 100-400mm with me.
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Not a Candidate
It’s Fat Bear Week at the National Park Service where you can vote for your favorite chonk fattened up for the Alaskan winter. No matter how much you love him you can’t vote for this Bear however as he’s lost over 20 pounds since we adopted him. I didn’t take him hiking much over the summer since you have to be up pretty early to beat the heat and I couldn’t manage it. We’re back at it now but he’s gotten pretty out of shape and is gassed by the end of our normal hikes, so I’ve switched him to shorter hikes while he builds back his endurance.
Thankfully he does ask to lie down when he wants a break and on this occasion when we stopped for water it gave me a chance to photograph him as though he was paying homage to my favorite saguaro, which I call The Green Elephant. In truth he still isn’t interested in her, putting her in good company as he’s also not interested in bobcats, rattlesnakes, and tarantulas. He is interested in just about anything that moves in front of him but I’ll say this for the great matriarch, she doesn’t move much.
Consolation Prize
This picture is a little bittersweet as while watching animals feed on saguaros is one of my favorite things, I shouldn’t have been there. It was a Thursday and a succinct note in my hiking journal says “Couldn’t sleep, so a quick hike before work”. I’m thankful I have trails nearby as after a short drive and hike I got to watch this white-winged dove enjoying breakfast for quite a while. Too soon it was time to leave and get ready for work with hopes the next night would be more restful.
KEEP OUT!
One of the tarantulas living in our backyard covers its hole before sunrise with a patchwork of webbing, removing it come nightfall when it emerges to wait for prey to walk by. I hear crickets in our front yard and elsewhere in the neighborhood but not in our backyard for some strange reason. While many spiders spin webs to catch prey this is more like a ‘No Solicitors’ or ‘No Vacancy’ sign. A larger tarantula living 12 feet away doesn’t cover its entrance hole however.
I’m not the only one taking a break for the fall and winter, they have both sealed their entrances with dirt and rocks as they tuck in for the cooler months, the larger one a couple of weeks ago and this one last night. Enjoy your long rest, see you in the spring.
Truth Coming Out of Her Well
Whenever I see the tarantulas living in our backyard I’m reminded of the painting “Truth Coming Out of Her Well” by Jean-Léon Gérôme, as contrary to how they are often portrayed on screen they just come out at night and sit beside their holes and wait for prey to walk past. I decided to try to photograph the one that’s easiest to see, in the darkness it required a 15 second exposure at ISO 3200. I left the exposure dark to emphasize this is a night shot of a nocturnal predator, but light enough that you get a feel of the beauty of what I see when I take Bear out at night and catch a glimpse of one of them at the diffuse edges of the flashlight’s beam.
Find the River
Me, my thoughts are flower strewn
Ocean storm, bayberry moon
I have got to leave to find my way
Watch the road and memorize
This life that passed before my eyes
And nothing is going my wayThe ocean is the river’s goal
A need to leave the water knows
We’re closer now than light years to goI have got to find the river
Bergamot and vetiver
Run through my head and fall away
Leave the road and memorize
This life that passed before my eyes
And nothing is going my way
Excerpt from R.E.M.’s “Find the River”
My leave of absence has been planned for a long time with only the timing uncertain. During that time my mind kept returning to one of my favorite songs by my favorite band, thinking of how I needed to step away from the hectic pace of normal life and let my mind be quiet and reflective for a while. The image that formed in my head was always this one, taken fifteen years ago of a shallow stream in the Hoh Rain Forest. If I was condemned to only visit one park for the rest of my life, it would be Olympic National Park. Whether I’ll ever get back is a mystery these clouded eyes can’t foresee, but if not I’m grateful for each of my visits to that wonderland.
A Lucky Break
I’ll be posting more frequently the next few months and I feel I ought to explain why.
Last year after we adopted Bear I was caught off guard by how intensely homesick I suddenly felt for Portland (this is Ellie and I playing in the snow in our backyard a decade ago). It’s not that I hadn’t missed Oregon before — you can’t love a place as much as I loved the Northwest and not miss it when you leave — rather I missed it in the same way I’d miss the desert if I could snap my fingers and give us our old lives back. But I’ve never had a problem mourning the beautiful things I’ve lost as long as it doesn’t keep me from loving the beautiful things I have and have gained. And if you’ve followed me long you know how much I love the Sonoran Desert.
Something else was going on.
A big part of it was I had been having trouble sleeping, leaving me physically and mentally exhausted. Bear was more of a challenge to integrate into our lives than Ellie had been. Sam died around the same time, not that any of their death’s have been easy but I always knew his would be hard. There was pandemic fatigue, the school shooting in Uvalde, the stress of a car commute after so many years taking the train, an especially challenging project. To top it off I got sick twice and had to miss a week of work each time, burning off a huge chunk of my time off, time I usually spend letting my mind spin down. And even though I try to live in the moment and am keenly aware of how good my life is and how many people are genuinely suffering each day of their lives, I still reached a point where I couldn’t keep going and needed to find a way to retire.
Thankfully my boss offered an option to take a leave of absence instead and I took him up on it. Tomorrow I start my four month break and I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to step away and recharge. I may not get to play with Bear in the snow as I did Ellie, but he is about to start going on a lot more desert hikes. Looking forward to doing more photography and editing old pictures, my backlog goes back many years (including this one!).
The Powder Room
One of my favorite sights of spring in the Sonoran Desert is when the birds have faces completely pancaked with saguaro pollen. When I finally got around to getting my first Nikon so I could do more macro photography I wanted to get a close-up of these large flowers, the desert’s powder rooms. However each saguaro blossom only lasts for about a day and I needed to find one on a day off when I was up early and with no wind and with a saguaro with an arm that bent towards the ground and was right next to the trail and which wasn’t covered in bees. It proved to be a tall order but on Memorial Day I was up before sunrise and found an obliging giant.
Due to some mix of the early hour and lack of practice and a general tendency to forget to setup the camera properly when I get excited, I left the shutter speed far too low and even with almost no breeze ended up with a little motion blur. Plus I should have stopped down one more stop so there would be less blur in the focus stack due to the large separation between stigma and stamens.
Nevertheless these shots will bring a smile to my face for years to come. As I wrote in my hiking journal while lamenting my mistake but hoping the pictures would come out: “It was great fun regardless”. The breeze soon picked up so I went home and got Bear and came back for a hike out to see the saguaro I call Witch Hazel, my first time seeing her in bloom.
Just a lovely day all around.
Bear the Spotter
I had four days off for the Labor Day weekend and not coincidentally Bear and I went on four hikes in the desert. After rain Thursday night on Friday I waited for a gap where the trails would have dried out but before the next rain showers hit. Temperatures had plummeted so I took Bear up to the overlook on Brown’s Mountain, as I didn’t let him do it all summer as I won’t let him do big elevation changes in the heat.
On the way down he paused for a while, I thought it was the expansive view as he does enjoy the view from up high. After giving him a moment I encouraged him onward as I wanted to beat the rain if we could. As we descended further he came to a standstill and it took me a moment but I eventually saw what he saw (or smelled): a gray fox peeking out through the desert scrub! A new species for both of us!
It was more Boo-sized than Bear-sized so I was glad it wasn’t scared of him (or me) and we were able to watch it for a while as it sauntered across the hill side, occasionally looking back at us before continuing on. What a glorious tail! When it finally disappeared into the hills we continued on down the mountain and arrived at the car as the first raindrops fell.
A Vignette
A quick snap from the spring of an owl atop a boulder with wildflowers blooming in the desert below. I was busy and didn’t look closely at the picture until much later, when I realized an owlet was also looking out. And it was months after that as I finally edited the picture I realized an antelope squirrel was running down the rock on the right. I took other pictures as we circled around the loop, some with compositions I like better or with softer light, but I love this little slice of life. This section of the desert has few saguaros and the wildlife is dominated by small mammals and those that eat them.
You won’t see Bear in the picture but I do, not only was he standing beside me but I only found this trail because of him, as it is the easiest to access from our house and a great place to hike with him when I’m short on time. So for me this picture is as much about a slice of my life as theirs.
Boolie 