Monthly Archives: April 2014

Lifting Of The Night Fog

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MistOnTheYellowstone7874-editYellowstone River Hayden Valley       click to enlarge

By nature I was never a morning person. Getting up at the crack of dawn, looking forward to the coming day, being cheerful and enthusiastic about whatever the day might bring, that never was my strong point. I was more of the “Is my coffee ready yet? What catastrophe is waiting for me today. Who do I have to kill this morning.” kind of guy. Then I got older.

One of the unexplainable things about aging is that every habit you’ve had in your life changes. If you were Type A, now you’re mellow or at least mellower. If you were someone who regularly pounded out 8-10 hours of sleep and couldn’t wait for the weekend so you could sleep til noon, now you’re getting up at 4:30 in the morning and you can’t get back to sleep. I mean you can’t get back to sleep. The sleeping thing in your brain says “no, dude, you’re up, deal with it.” This is one of the most difficult changes to come to grips with.

My dad, who was one for saying sayings, used to say “If you find yourself in hot water, take a bath.” He also said “A bird in the hand makes it really difficult to blow your nose.” So I learned pretty early on which sayings were useful and which weren’t. The ‘take a bath’ one comes in handy for getting through adverse situations, but because it is often a hard thing to do, not many people do it. The ‘bird in the hand’ one, well, that was just dad.

Going to Yellowstone to photograph the park in all its glory was the thing that turned waking up really early into a 14 carat advantage. I was up, the park was too. It was beautiful, what was I doing sitting here drinking coffee when I could be out there doing what I came for. I began to understand what the poor misguided but enthusiastic, idiots had been talking about when they blathered on in their bubbly manner about the beauty of the sunrise and how good it felt to be out and about in the crisp morning air. I almost forgave myself for the black murderous thoughts I had about slowly strangling them in the crisp morning air of their beautiful sunrise, but not quite. Some of them actually would have deserved it.

The biggest shock though was that I had suddenly become one of them. Not the enthusiastic bubbly airhead kind but just the realization that it was beautiful and there was a whole new world to be seen before 10:00 am. and it was ok to be up for it. I was careful to not spread the cheer to those still stuck in the “If god meant for you to wake up early, it would happen automatically” stage of their life, they have enough going on without some jerk adding to their misery. Things would work out for them or they wouldn’t. I recognized the point they were at but I knew I had changed. The gods are nothing if not capricious. It must have amused them no end to have me standing out there in the pre-dawn cold freezing my hiney off waiting for the light to turn so I could get the shot. The worst part of it though was making me enjoy it.

The image above is the sun rising over the Yellowstone river in the Hayden valley on a very cold morning. I was there waiting for it. In fact I had been there early because I was up anyway. And it was worth every freezing second.

Golden Eagles Sky Dancing

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Goldens2047Golden Eagles Colorado                     click to enlarge

High above the cliffs in the foothills North of Ft. Collins, a pair of Golden eagles perform a courting ritual. They have reoccupied their nest which clings precariously to the face of the cliff wall that juts several hundred vertical feet into the sky and are now in the process of re-bonding, prior to mating and laying eggs.

For several hours in an on again, off again manner, they suddenly take wing and perform amazing acrobatics and synchronized flying that appears to be choreographed or at least very well practiced. They will fly within inches of each other, turning and swooping, diving and tumbling until they finally tire and return to the nest.

The female will sit on the nest while the male goes off and hunts for nesting material, returning with a new branch or something to line the inside of the nest. He rarely brings back food as the female isn’t sitting on eggs at this point. I have been photographing this pair of birds for several years and noticed that they leave the nest area to mate. They fly together for a while in another aerial display, then land on a point of rock or the top edge of the cliff to mate, returning to the nest afterwards. They may mate at the nest site, it’s just that in all my time observing them I have never seen it.

These particular birds are nesting about 3-4 miles from my home but because of a distinctive feather pattern of missing primaries on one of the birds I recognized them as the pair that have been using the rock-face behind the house as a resting and observation point for their hunting. They may be the parents that have brought their offspring here to dump them when it was time for them to leave the nest as described in a pervious post.  http://www.bigshotsnow.com/higher-than-the-clouds-lower-than-the-heavens/

This year because of the damage sustained during the flood of September 2013 the area of the river which runs in front of the cliff where the nest is located was severely damaged and the restoration will apparently take most of the summer to complete and consequently the entire area has been placed off-limits. So it looks like the family gets a pass from being photographed this year. As the nest and the eagles are easily 1/4 mile from the observation area photographing them is not intrusive. It does take some powerful glass however to get even mediocre pictures of them.

While that is disappointing, this being Colorado and an area rich in wildlife, there will be plenty of subject matter to train my lens on. I’ve already got my eye on a new nest of Great Horned Owls and my old standby’s, the Bald eagle family, is revving up for a new season. So I’m tanned, I’m rested, and I’m ready for the summer. How about you?

Look to The Heavens

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FallRiverRoad1480Tree Line – Old Fall River Road – Rocky Mountain National Park
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Old Fall River road in Rocky Mountain National Park is one of the original park roads built back in 1920 and used by those hardy souls back in the day who had a death wish. They drove rickety old cars with wooden wheels and like only two gears and didn’t think a thing about it. They were stout-hearted folk. The road runs from down at a sane elevation where you can breathe, and travels up in a convoluted fashion to an elevation where you can’t. Well you can if you stand perfectly still and carefully check to see if your chest is moving in and out and then don’t do anything more strenuous than tilt your head back slowly to gaze at Nature’s awe-inspiring wonders. Word of caution, if you tilt your head back too far or tilt it too swiftly, it will stay in that position for the rest of the trip and the only remedy for it is to descend to a lower elevation and drink a cold orange IZZE as fast as you can. This will cause your head to snap back into its proper position and you can proceed with your sightseeing.

Another word of caution. Do not smoke up here. The road is as smooth as a bare baby’s butt from where they have dragged the bodies off into the brush of those who have closed down their blood vessels even further from smoking. The complete and total cessation of oxygen to the central nervous system can and usually does cause the act of being to end. The devil nicotine gets it’s due up here, brother. But hey, this is America and it’s your choice.

The problem here is that it so beautiful up amongst the clouds and if you can breathe the air smells so good it makes you all tingly just to be outside that you will probably just throw caution to the winds and say the hell with it, I’m going. And if you’re that kind of person I’ll see you up there.

When you begin your journey from Endovalley and head on up the hill most of the first-timers have abandoned all hope, because once you start you must finish as the road is one-way all the way to the top. You can’t chicken out and jump out to walk back down. Who is going to get your car? Besides there are people coming up behind you with less sense than you have and they’ll blow their horns if you block the road. You will drive slowly unless you are definitely on a suicide mission, and travel up past one gorgeous view after another until you reach the summit 11,796′ and 11 miles later. It will have been worth it. First because you lived and secondly because you have just seen one of the most beautiful spots on earth. Besides it good to recharge the heart once in a while.

The image above is a panorama taken near the Chapin Creek trailhead and shows you that as high up as you are, you can go yet higher if you’ve a mind to. Most people don’t.

Early Birds

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EarlyBirds2176Bluebirds                                             click to enlarge

“Lets go up early you said. Lets get up there before the rest of them so we can get the best nest site. It’ll be great, we’ll have the jump on everybody else, we ‘ll lay around and eat worms until everybody else gets here. Catch a few rays, fool around a little, have the nest half done before everybody else even gets started. So what are we doing Loogie? You’re shoveling snow so we got a place to sit so I don’t get a wet ass, I’m freezing my feet off. I can’t feel my toenails. I can’t get my feathers to lie down straight, I haven’t had a worm since Waco, this whole thing has been a monumental screw up since we left Boca Raton.”

“What about it Loogie? You still think this was a good idea. I musta had rocks in my head to listen to you. I shoulda listened to my mother, she had you pegged. A dumbass she said. She didn’t know the half of it. Next year I’m coming up with Alonzo, at least he likes to stop once in a while, hang out at the beach, catch fireflies at sunset. When’s the last time you stopped and caught fireflies, I’ll tell you when. Never, Loogie, never.”

“I suppose its going to snow like this until June. My sister stayed in Tucson, said it was really nice. Never snows there Loogie, it’s 71° there for gods sake! She said everyone goes out for worm fries on the weekend and then hits Rico’s for Pina Coladas. Do you see a Rico’s around here Loogie? I didn’t think so. No we’re going to stay here in the snow until my pinfeathers stick together and watch it snow some more. I’m sick of this Loogie. S – I – C – K of it. And one more thing….”

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be the early bird.

It’s A Dangerous Business

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DangerousBusiness6540Monument valley                                click to enlarge

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
―     J.R.R. Tolkien,     The Lord of the Rings    

The road is calling and I am unable to close my ears and not hear. The pull is getting stronger everyday and soon I will be helpless against its forces and shall be swept out with the tide to points unknown. There is no destination yet marked in black ink on my journeyer’s map but I will fill it in later when I know where I have been.

I chanced across this image this morning and the call of its secrets, of what is over the next hill, caught me unaware and I immediately began the mental process of what to put in the rucksack and what to leave behind. This is a sure sign that I am being moved by unseen forces and will soon be off. The road is long and I am certain I shall never see its end but I shall try. I am ready for this Dangerous business.