Monthly Archives: December 2015

Deep Winter Color

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The deeper into winter we get the more the colors go away. The vibrant palette of summer has been replaced with the drab, dead looking shades of winter. The colors are not really gone, they’ve just become dormant. Walk around your neighborhood and look closely at the various bushes and shrubbery and notice how the stalks of the plants still have much of their color left. Check out the guys house just down the block who has just painted it in the neon colors of his favorite football team and pray that his team loses so he’ll change it back. Watch for the winter birds, maybe you’ll see the bright red of a cardinal or the colors of a Cedar Waxwing eating berries that are still bright and shiny. Color is still here, you just have to seek it out.

If you’re down in here in Santa Fe the colors are a different collection. This part of the Southwest has decided on a pastel range of earth tones that don’t seem all that colorful at first glance, but wait a little while. The light will begin to change and suddenly these shades take on a hue that is a perfect choice for this time of year with a uniqueness that you can only find here. Muted colors that blend together in a perfect harmony of shades and intensities. And they do it in a very pleasing way. The great bold shapes of the buildings create wonderful palettes of color that are even more distinctive by their size. You are surrounded by amazing shapes, planes and shadows that each have their own colors and it is a mix and match of wonderful shades that make Santa Fe such a wonderful place.

Even the freezing cold of a high desert winter can’t subdue these shades of Deep Winter Color.

On Duty

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This is a coyote pup. We didn’t get his name, we barely got this picture before he ducked down into the grass and was gone. Just to the right of this image is a large jumble of rocks all piled on top of each other. There are brambles and mountain mahogany and other plants growing all over and around them making an almost impenetrable barrier keeping everyone one out except Mom and the oldest of the pups.

At first glance this doesn’t look like prime coyote nesting area. Usually the dens are dug into a hillside on the many sunny-sided slopes throughout the park. Lately however there has been a change and  now the coyotes have been denning in the roughest country they can find. The entrance to this den here in Brambleville is so cunningly hidden, that even though hours were spent here photographing this coyote family, we still could not make out where the actual entrance was.

The reason for this abrupt change in coyote behavior is not readily noticeable to the average observer. But then the average observer has probably not seen a wolf pack digging up a coyote den and methodically killing everything in it. I know, there’s going to be a collective gasp from the general population at the thought, but this is Nature, and it has different rules than we do. Even though coyotes are the “Hey! Can’t we all just get a long?” bunch in the canine family, wolves aren’t. They’re more the “Alright people listen up. We told you once this place ain’t big enough for the both of us, so here’s the deal. We ‘re going to hunt you down and wipe out every last one of you, no exceptions. The only exceptions are those of you that can get out of here before we get to you.” and that’s that.

But coyotes are not dummies. They’ve managed to survive every bit as long as the wolves and they are nothing if not adaptable. So they change where they put their dens, they teach the oldest pups to stand guard and they hunt and bring back food for their young by using a different path each time they leave and return and by being very careful.

This young coyote has been taught well and saw us as two-legged wolves and in moments was gone leaving behind nothing but a small bark of warning. The pups didn’t show themselves for twenty minutes or so but then Mom returned with takeout and after giving a little sound of all clear the pups came out and Mom divvied up the food and stood watch while the kids ate. She wasn’t worried about us but she never let up searching the surrounding area for the wolves. After everyone ate their fill she sent all but one down the coyote hole and left to hunt again. This time junior stood guard in a place where we couldn’t get a clear picture of him. But you knew he was on duty.

Terraforming – Good or Bad?

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Since our post titled ‘Behind The Ridge’ http://www.bigshotsnow.com/behind-the-ridge/ was posted the other day our mailboxes have been filled with a huge amount of mail, some protesting vehemently our misuse of our Nations natural resources, “How dare you move a national landmark!”  “We’ll see you tarred and Feathered you….!”   “I’m telling my congressman, you bastard !!!”    “We’re coming out there and when we get our hands on you you’ll wish you were….!” These were just a few of the printable comments we received from those with a slightly different viewpoint than ours.

We also received many comments in support of our project.” Rad, Dude.” was one.  “That was awesome!” was another. “What are you guys talking about anyway?” This one kind of fell in the middle so we put it in the plus column. But the one we want to focus on is this one ” How did you guys do that and like, not screw up the earth, man?”

This question points to something that goes right to the heart of The Institute’s core values. Which as we have stated countless time before is “Do No Harm. None. Not Any.” If there might be harm, like my dad used to say “Doan Doit…I mean it, You doit you get  a whippin.” So our prime directive is in place and guides us through all of our major projects. Even the ones where it looks like we are defiling, but not raping, that would be bad, the land.

How is this possible then, you might ask. How do you move a mountain and not leave permanent damage. The answer of course is Terraforming. Terraforming is a term that simply means the Earth-Shaping of a planet, moon or other body and is the hypothetical process of deliberately modifying its atmosphere, temperature, surface, topography or ecology to be similar enough to the environment of Earth to make it habitable by Earth-like life. That’s all there is to it. Put it back like it was. Or how it should have been had it been done right in the first place, or even make it cool again after you screw it up.

Moving the mountain in the first place was fairly simple. We simply drilled holes in the bottom of the mountain, set pins with hook eyes in them, glued them in with gorilla glue, tied a whole bunch of helium-filled balloons to the hook eyes until it lifted, then hooked a small plane to the front and hauled it off. Our tow plane was a 1946 PIPER J3, C-65HP, TTA 1286, 260 SMOH with a midnight blue paint job to cut down on visibility. We timed it to start shortly after sunset on a moonless night and just headed up the Rockies until we got to The Institute. We cut the balloons loose and it dropped right into place. Easy-Peezy. We’re making it seem pretty simple but a lot of planning went into this project. Some of it we have to keep confidential to protect our phony baloney jobs due to slight violations of air space between states, some antiquated laws regarding taking mountains across state lines, endangerment of wildlife excepting birds, some property damage due to falling rocks, but by and large it went pretty well.

The other half of the problem took quite a bit more work. Due to the laws of the sovereign state of Arizona you can not just go off in the back country with D9’s, backhoes, unlicensed four-wheel drives and start rooting around there in the wilderness. That ‘s sacred cow stuff to those folks due to the possibility of contaminating the land, water, and ozone layer. So we had to resort to old-fashioned methods and repair the hole by hand. We sent three eighty passenger busses full of interns down there with all the tools they’d need, like shovels, hoes, Pulaski’s, steel-toed boots, come-a-longs, baseball hats, seven or eight cases of bottled water and set them to work terracing the slopes of the hole we left when we yanked that mountain out of there.

We think it turned out pretty good. We got it all terraced, set in our own patented erosion control material, even put in a road to get  down to the bottom if you wanted to, absolutely free of charge. The toughest part however was getting the color right. We gathered images from all over the Southwest to get a handle on how we should finish this and we came up with a pretty good color scheme. Fortunately we had and old Sikorsky helicopter left over from another project and after fitting it with a customized spray painting unit on a 360°, computer-controlled laser guided gimbal with integral spray head we went to work. Gallons later of paint, varnish, stain, india ink, crushed up pastel colors, liquitex acrylic paint, custom-made oil finishes, buffing compound, and liquefied stone stabilizer, we were finished. I’d say it looks like it has been there for years myself. One of the city council guys who went out to check on the work couldn’t even find the spot we had done, it looked so real.

So to all those whiners out there who would complain if they were hung with a new rope, we say “Look. Go on out there. We dare you to find where we made the switch.” The proof is in the terraforming. We leave it up to you to answer the question “Terraforming – Good or Bad?” We think good.

Behind The Ridge

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Those of you who have visited The Institute know that there is more to it than the cluster of magnificent buildings housing some of the most high-tech equipment and knowledge on planet earth. You also know about some of the other activities we have in progress that require their own set of buildings, such as our world famous Observatory placed on the mountain top that overshadows and shelters The Institute.

And there is our world-famous weather modification program that is housed its own tuff shed because of the intricacy of the equipment needed, and the need to keep that equipment out of the weather. We use a lot of tuff sheds because we can get them from Home Depot and have them delivered right to the compound complex. They’re tuff enough for the modifications we make to them to handle things like the hook up for the incredible amount of electrical power needed to change the weather. We bring some of our power in from the outside world and have to use 36″ culverts for conduits which makes it heavy and difficult to connect. It takes three interns just to pick up the plug and stuff it in the socket installed in the side of the tuff shed. Plus if we have to unplug it the tuff shed walls can withstand the force of the pickup pulling on the plug to disconnect it. So we need to use tuff sheds for some of the larger installations. We’re dealing with 111,000 amps here with a three-prong plug nearly 8′ in diameter so a tuff shed is the only way to go.

We have the command center located in the middle of the Institute complex that we call the Big House, which is where our very own Director maintains his own living quarters so he can oversee the immense multiplicity of activities that take place here, and have the kind of living space that he has become famous for, and only the misuse of huge amounts of Institute funds can provide. We have the staff quarters where we house some of more lucid PhD’s, and the compound where Tent city is located to accommodate the many interns that come and go. We have the zoo, the 1.2563 million gallon aquarium, our own high country botanical center with specimens from around the world plus the new ones we have developed right here in-house. We have our own privately owned shock-collar wearing Wolf pack that patrols the property itself. It took nearly herculean effort to bury the power cable around the perimeter of The Institute so the collars would work and apply the necessary voltage to our canine friends to keep them from leaving the property, but not totally kill anyone who accidently wandered onto our property. But it was necessary to keep the pack contained. I mean one or two of the villagers kids go missing and there is a hell of a row. We just don’t have time for that.

We have our incredible data center where we have our very own Cray super computer that we purchased for pennies on the dollar from CSU when they were going to throw it out, if fact some of it was already in the dumpster and we had to dig it out.  Plus, not to mention the hundreds if not dozens of specially modified IBM 8086 floppy disk drive PC’s, daisy-chained together with usb cables and 4″ link log chain to produce another super computer, plus cut down on theft. They were modified because originally the 8086 IBM computer didn’t have a usb connector. We didn’t realize that many of our readers weren’t aware of that. We weren’t either when we purchased them. We just thought we got a good deal. But live and learn, fortunately our trained IT technicians were able to weld the proper usb connectors in place so we ‘re good to go now. The only other issue we’re dealing with is where to store all those millions of 5″ floppy disks that have been accumulating. We may have solved that problem already as our head IT person found storage in the magnetron building where we store all of our spare magnets. So our backups are secure now.

We could go on and on about the yacht harbor on the North Fork of the Cache La Poudre river, our helipad, the Bentley restoration garage, but The Institute is more than these shallow but very cool and desirable things that many of us could not live without. These items mentioned are just the trappings of a wildly successful Institute that brings in bales of money. The projects come and go like financial raindrops. Sometimes you have a torrential monsoon of wealth literally falling out of the sky, other times there is but a drizzle and we’re as broke as the Ten Commandments.

What we also have in abundance is the property itself, and that is what some people think is the most important part of our operation. The miles and miles of limited access wilderness that we oversee. If you have been following the blog for any time at all you know our property encompasses every thing from the driest deserts to the highest mountains and everything in between. Do you have any idea of how much razor wire it takes to fence a spread like this, lots, like really a lot. We have trains full of it pulling into our siding every day.

Recently we have acquired this new piece of property and had it shipped here with everything you see in the image above. The trees, the rocks, the fog, the light. It was simply going to waste in Arizona and because their state budget is strapped because of housing all of the illegal aliens and even some of those from other countries, plus the money it takes to keep that wall polished and in good repair, we were able to get this property at a tremendous discount. Plus all we have to do is let some of the guys in the city council down there come up here and hang out on it every so often and we can even defer the interest on the promissory note for it. I’m telling you, we made out like scalded cats on this deal.

There were some objections raised about the feasibility of moving another mountain here by some of those on our board of directors but after we made known our plans to bring back the Lamprey Surprise menu at the commissary and cut off their contact with the outside world, which meant no internet, no running down to the 7-11 for Slurpee’s, no conjugal visits, they changed their minds and welcomed the idea.

Plus we were able to shoehorn it in where we had that disastrous hazardous waste dump site that was so lucrative for us, until they stopped running a lot of those nuclear power plants and prohibited shipping those 55 gal. drums across state lines. Man did we take it in the shorts on that deal. Dealing with all those EPA guys and losing all those interns we sent down there to try and bury that stuff. That was about as much fun as a tornado in a trailer park.

Right now we haven’t exactly figured out how we’re going to monetize this property but there has to be an angle where we can produce some kind of revenue stream, even if it is only charging a rather expensive but excessive rescue operation for those city council guys that come up and want to use it. That’s some rough country down there before you even get to the hazardous waste dump place. Plus there’s some really deep areas, bottomless ravines and stuff, and cracks that go on for miles. So where we had some install problems fitting that property in there makes it a little dicey to navigate through. You don’t just casually drop a new mountain in place without having something not fit right. So there are places where if you go you might never be seen again, but that’s wilderness, Right?

Any way we thought you might enjoy being brought up to speed on some of the improvements happening here at The Institute. Stop in sometime, but make sure you call first. Seriously, call. Ever since the election started our security people are kind of jumpy. They don’t know what kind of  weirdo might be trying to get in and access our people, so they tend to be rather liberal with the use of those depleted plutonium bullets they carry. Just a warning, especially if you have an expensive comb-over. We’d like to see you but call first.

Bad Coyote

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What we have here is a failure to communicate. This is a portrait of a bad coyote. In every society there are a few individuals that just will not follow the rules. They flaunt authority, thumb their muzzles at the law, and generally are looking for a way to game the system.

This coyote is presently on park arrest and must wear a neck bracelet because the ones for his ankle keep falling off. This means his whereabouts are tracked and he is under observation 24/7. This is a hardcore felon and not to be taken for your usual nice,  or good, coyote. Because this is not a good coyote.

The park operates on a strict three strikes and you’re out policy as far as serious infractions of the law are concerned. The first two offenses put the individual on notice that they are on thin ice. The third strike is a lethal injection of a toxic substance which at this point in time is, lead. You may have noticed the orange ear tags. They signify offenses committed by the accused. By placing the orange ear tags in the coyotes ear when it has committed a serious crime the authorities can observe what level of badness the offender is currently at. We’re not talking about stealing a leg bone from a mulie fawn that was taken by a black bear, we’re talking running Gin into the park for underage coyotes barely older than pups. That was the left ear, tag number one.

His last offense was presenting himself as a registered pet sitter. If a guest brings a pet to the park many times they will ask management for a pet sitter to stay with their pet, watch over them, take them for walks into the forest behind some thick bushes, and various other types of services. This coyote had falsified his credentials and had gained access to the pet sitting data on the park digital bulletin board and convinced the guest that he would cater to their pets every need. Unfortunately the only catering done was the pet joining the coyote for an early brunch behind the thick bushes in the woods.

After 39 of the 39 pets entrusted to the coyote’s care by trusting tourists turned up unavailable, or “they just run off” according to the coyote, the complaints grew so loud that the park officials had to investigate. What they found was shocking. Back behind those thick bushes there were little gnawed on cat bones, a few dog collars, a little engraved medallion with the words ” Pindy we love you, your family the Mueller’s, 970-885-xxxx”.

All the evidence pointed to foul play on the part of the coyote. Even though 39 of those ID Chips they put in pets so if they was lost they would be found, were located in various places in his intestinal track, he had lawyered up and after stating that he had found those chips just laying there “all by their ownselves” according to him, right there next to those bushes and in checking them out he had accidentally swallowed them. He made bail. That was the right ear, tag number two.

Right now the case is pending until they can get a judge in from Boise to hear the case, and until they find a jury of his peers, he’s out. Scott free. He’s out there walking around, not concerned about the neck bracelet at all as he can find all the bad he needs right there in the park. So a quick word of caution to any of you who travel with your pets, Don’t use a pet sitter even if it means you can’t go see Old Faithful because no pets are allowed. And if you see this coyote don’t pet him and don’t introduce him to your pet no matter how friendly he appears. Not even if he says nice things about your pets. Like how shapely they are, or how pleasantly plump, This is a bad coyote.

Flash Frozen

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What we have here is a very strange and unusual sight. Many of you out there in reader land, not being buffalologists, do not know that there are several type’s of Buffalo in Yellowstone park. The Institute in its quest for knowledge and a new way to twist the facts for our own ends, have discovered a hither to unknown variety of buffalo which we have named bison bison congelata which loosely translated from the Latin means “one frozen ass buffalo”. We apologize for the rude language but the Latin’s were a crude people, not withstanding the fact that they could speak Latin, which now-a-days would make them really smart.

What makes these buffalo different from your run of mill buffalo that brings traffic to a stand still while they lay in the middle of the road chewing their cud like big fat lumps? Well for one, they’re cold-blooded. That’s right, just like a lizard, or a snake, which in certain light and after a quart of Everclear they have been mistaken for. We have had interns screaming “Snake, Snake!” when it’s only been one of these buffalo. But then we have had that same intern screaming “Buffalo, Buffalo!” when it has been a snake so take all that screaming with a grain of salt.

Scorpions are also cold-blooded creatures which will sting you stupid with their poisonous tail but so far our researchers have not ascertained whether this new breed of buffalo can sting with its tail or not. We know for sure that when they’re active they can flat stomp you into the ground then hook you if they see you twitching. But so far no stings.

This particular buffalo has been caught in the classic dilemma facing all cold-blooded creatures. When your blood runs cold natures’ defense is to get you somewhere warm, otherwise your blood congeals to the point of peanut butter and it can no longer flow through your body and keep you active. As the blood cools and congeals cold-blooded creatures begin to get muddled and forgetful, often misplacing things like their car keys or that Post it note telling them to get somewhere warm before it gets cold. Then they become completely immobile, literally freezing in place.

That’s what has happened here. This cold-blooded buffalo had been crossing the Gibbon river to get to the warming shed before the temperature dropped any further when he made the classic bovine mistake. He stopped to eat some of the grass there along the river bank. Stuck his big fat head right into a clump of buffalo grass. There you are, game over, the temp dropped and that was it. Dumb mistake, but remember the muddled part, which probably played a big part in its becoming Flash Frozen.

There’s no fixing it now. These guys weigh in at about 2000 lbs so you’re not going to be dragging it off somewhere. Plus you’d have to get in that water which right now is very cold and if you didn’t bring waders and a come-a-long you’re not going to get much done. However all is not lost here. Being a cold-blooded creature as soon as the sun comes out in the morning he’ll start to warm up, finish chewing that mouthful of grass and be on his way. That is if the wolves don’t find him during the night.

This is a worrisome thought for the buffalo as he is not dead, he is just temporarily frozen, he can hear, probably even see even if he can’t turn his head, so the night is long and filled with terrors if you’re a flash frozen buffalo. We had heard the pack howling earlier but it seemed a long way off. They probably won’t find him.

The Moral of this tale is, “Pay Attention. Keep an eye on the weather. Don’t lose the damn Post it. And don’t believe everything you read.”

Before The Mist Clears

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Sometimes people will ask “Where’d all the color come from in that picture, then?” Or they’ll say “I was there. I never saw anything like that.” This is usually accompanied by a suspicious glare. Other times they’ll simply say “No way, dude, That is a load of condensed owl manure.” What they don’t know is they are not looking in the right places for these images, or at the right time.”

These images exist in nature by the quintillious millions. You are literally walking through them every time you are someplace like the Firehole river here in Yellowstone. The deal is, it takes some practice to see them in their full glorious color like this. For instance this particular image was lurking within the mist just waiting for someone to stop and photograph it. Think of it like this. You know how a movie is made with 30, 60, 120 frames per second and when it is played back the rapid display of the individual images or frames merge into a flow that shows the movement and creates the scene or movie.

Well that’s exactly what nature does. These images are lined up one behind the other into infinity and as you look at the scene they are speeding by you so quickly that you don’t see each individual frame. An individual image like this is often missed. It had already gone by so fast you didn’t have a chance to get your camera up to your eye let alone take a picture.

The secret to taking a picture like this, aside from a rapid dunking in Photoshop, is to kind of check out where the next image might appear, then slowly walk by the place being very careful not to glance at it directly. If you do look it tips the projector guy off that you have seen what’s coming, and he’ll speed the film up, so to speak, making it that much more difficult to take the shot.

While you’re fiddling around pretending you don’t see the picture coming up, surreptitiously set your camera to all the proper settings, then whirl around and snap the photo. That’s all there is to it. The settings for this shot were 1/800,000 of a second at f 2100. Make certain you have set the HISS (Hidden Imaginary Scene Selector) switch located on the lower left side of the lens housing on most professional cameras, to Automatic. If you don’t have this switch on your camera then it is time to upgrade as it is nearly impossible to catch an image like this without one.  Check with your local camera dealer for the most up to date information So there you have it. Photography made easy. You’re welcome.