Nederland Exposure

June 27, 2015 / nicetim / Leave a comment

Brainard Lake, Co - Photo by Tim Giller — Brainard Lake, Co – Photo by Tim Giller

Nederland, CO - Photo by Tim Giller — Nederland, CO – Photo by Tim Giller

There is a nature center right next door to the Mountain Man Outdoor store in Nederland, Colorado. Actually, right next door is the brew pub which, at less than ten paces away, is dangerously close for my old friend John who opened the Mountain Man store with his wife Sasha two years ago. No, a couple doors down in the other direction is the Wild Bear Mountain Ecology Center. Wild Bear is a cozy, walk-in nature center with exhibits on the local ecology. They offer a variety of workshops primarily for children, but there are many adult and family programs as well, with the goal of “fostering a lifelong appreciation of the environment”. Wild Bear also sponsored a volunteer opportunity just hours after we arrived in town to visit our friends. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to get to know the town and some of its residents so we joined in on a clean up of the creek that flows through town and the lakefront it drains into. Like all the creeks and rivers along the Front Range of Colorado, Boulder Creek was running very high with spring runoff from winter snows and the wettest May on record. Because we ended up staying in and around the region for just over two weeks we got to see the town make the transition from spring to summer, the unpredictable period of thunderstorms, clouds, sunny hot afternoons and crisp cool evenings. As the snows that covered the high peaks and shadowed canyons gradually faded away we got the see the creek rise and fall with the daily snowmelt as slowly more mountain rock revealed itself. Exactly two weeks after we cleared the trash from the lakefront we also got the chance to return with another group of locals to remove a few hundred pounds of invasive plants and spread an abundance of native seeds. With all the great vagabonding we’ve been doing it was nice to get our hands dirty in the same spot a couple times.

Perhaps Ned is the perfect small mountain town. John and Sasha seem to love it here. There is a community of about 1500 friendly and quirky people nestled at 8300ft on Colorado’s “Peak-to-Peak Highway”. You can see the 13,000ft crests of the continental divide from almost any point in town and much of the land to the west is national forest including the rugged and beautiful Indian Peaks Wilderness. Our friends live a five minute walk from their store, and have a half dozen backcountry trailheads within a 15 minute drive. They don’t even need to drive. Hopping on a bike or walking out the door gets you to the nearest trails in just a few minutes. In winter it’s snowshoeing, cross-country skiing or hitting the slopes at the small ski area, Eldora where within ten minutes of leaving your door you can be on the first ski chair up the mountain. In a short radius from town we saw people fishing, kayaking, white-water rafting, paragliding, and dozens of folks road cycling. In other words it is exactly what you expect from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

Wildlife Tree, CO - Photo by Tim Giller — Wildlife Tree, CO – Photo by Tim Giller

The boundary between wild nature and civilization is much fuzzier in a place where a moose might wander into town and when your unruly dogs get its attention it might leave a dent in your hood. It’s a place where many town blocks are occupied by aspen groves and wildflowers. A bold young family of foxes dens about 50 yards from where we had Lil’ Squatch parked. We saw one or more of them almost daily making their rounds. I sensed a casual acceptance from the people in town. It’s not so much that the foxes were taken for granted, but that it was the most natural thing to enjoy sharing your neighborhood with these handsome creatures.

Fox, Nederland, Co - Photo by Tim Giller — Fox, Nederland, Co – Photo by Tim Giller

Nederland Exposure

June 27, 2015 / nicetim / Leave a comment

Brainard Lake, Co – Photo by Tim Giller

Nederland, CO – Photo by Tim Giller

Nederland, Co – Photo by Tim Giller

Wildlife Tree, CO – Photo by Tim Giller

Fox, Nederland, Co – Photo by Tim Giller

Endless Spring

June 22, 2015 / rachaelb / 1 Comment

We’ve enjoyed an endless spring for the last two and half months starting with the first few ground flowers and trees covered in bracts all the way back in Georgia in late March. In the course of that time we’ve moved through valleys, up to mountain ridges, drove all the way to 47th parallel north, back down to the 37th and spent the last two weeks mostly above 8000 ft. Driving up highway 119 from Boulder, CO to our friends house in Nederland we could see the snow on all the high peaks. A week later a bright pop of orange caught my eye as we once again took that trip up. I know it wasn’t there just a few days before. Sure enough huge poppies had bloomed. Higher up in town the fuzzy poppy pods were just beginning to form. All the aspen trees in town shook and shimmied in the breeze but on our drive through Rocky Mountain National Park the aspen trees were working ever so hard to get their leaves out in the short growing period there is to be had that high. With the late snow pack and the deluge of May rain in Colorado the grasses are a bright green dotted and highlighted by the yellows, red, whites, pinks and purples of flowers.

Truth be told I don’t have that good of a camera. Don’t get me wrong it’s a good overall camera however, anytime I want it to do something specific things get weird. Luckily I seem to do ok with the camera for macro images and seeing as how I love taking pictures of flowers I manage a few good pics every now and then.

A few days ago while out for a quick jaunt down a trail I stopped to document some of the floral kaleidoscope. At the first set of bright pink-purple flowers (Beardtongue) I also noticed a tiny black and white caterpillar so I took his picture too. After this I meant to catch up with my hiking partners but then I noticed a pretty little sunflower and one of the biggest ladybug beetles I’ve ever seen. Naturally I had to take his picture as well. At this point I figure I better just keep taking pictures while waiting for my friends to make their way back. One plant, just beginning to bud out, was covered in ants, must have had some sticky sweetness to attract them. In attempting to take their picture my eyes got caught a shiny congregation of Dogbane Beetles on the grasses directly behind the ants.

A hike is a fun form of “exercise”. One hopes to see pretty trees, vistas and if you’re lucky some charismatic mega-fauna. A botany walk gets one down to the ground. One hopes to see pretty flowers, neat plants (hopefully a rare one) and most likely a lot of bugs. On a hike you might get a few miles or more in, on my impromptu botany walk I went all of five feet. Both give me the satisfaction of being outdoors. I do love stopping to acknowledge the tiny world near my feet every once in awhile. I suppose it’s the closest to the Fairy world that this believer will ever get.

Endless Spring

June 22, 2015June 22, 2015 / rachaelb / 1 Comment

We’ve enjoyed an endless spring for the last two and half months starting with the first few ground flowers and trees covered in bracts all the way back in Georgia in late March. In the course of that time we’ve moved through valleys, up to mountain ridges, drove all the way to 47^th parallel north, back down to the 37^th and spent the last two weeks mostly above 8000 ft. Driving up highway 119 from Boulder, CO to our friends house in Nederland we could see the snow on all the high peaks. A week later a bright pop of orange caught my eye as we once again took that trip up. I know it wasn’t there just a few days before. Sure enough huge poppies had bloomed. Higher up in town the fuzzy poppy pods were just beginning to form. All the aspen trees in town shook and shimmied in the breeze but on our drive through Rocky Mountain National Park the aspen trees were working ever so hard to get their leaves out in the short growing period there is to be had that high. With the late snow pack and the deluge of May rain in Colorado the grasses are a bright green dotted and highlighted by the yellows, red, whites, pinks and purples of flowers.

Hail Cocktail Party

June 20, 2015 / nicetim / 1 Comment

Spanish Peaks, CO - Photo by Tim Giller — Spanish Peaks, CO – Photo by Tim Giller

Leaving the Pawnee Grasslands we were listing to starboard because we had a stiff crosswind from the southeast. As we approached Fort Collins we met up with a strong and gusty headwind out of the west pushing down off the Rockies onto the prairie. These converging winds whipped up dust devils and stench across cattle feedlots forcing me to grip the wheel more tightly and downshift. Our little box on wheels can really get pushed around. Ominous thunderclouds dominated the sky and we had entered “Hail Alley”, not to be confused with the nearby “Tornado Alley”. This is a tough neighborhood.

Badlands National Park - Photo by Tim Giller — Badlands National Park – Photo by Tim Giller

Our ground level experience is a smaller scale representation of bigger phenomena and some of the most dynamic weather on the planet. This nice hot day on the prairie was heating up some moist air blown up from the Gulf of Mexico. As this rises to meet cold dry air rushing off the western mountains any and all chaotic thunderstorm participants can show up. Moisture rises into colder upper air condensing and building into massive expanding 40,000 ft towers of cumulonimbus thunderheads. Sheets of rain can develop, often as ethereal virga curtains across a horizon so dry that they evaporate before reaching the ground. If updraft winds are steady and strong the condensing water is held aloft in subfreezing air forming hailstones. When that vertical wind holds at over 100 mph those stones can become baseballs or bigger before they outgrow that wind and fall disastrously to earth. All this water changing states and moving through the clouds creates huge amounts of static electricity and brings some loud and flashy cohorts to the party, lightning shortly followed by his boisterous partner thunder. These are all overshadowed if a tornado shows up. The high speed winds meeting at opposing angles creates a log roll of air that when tilted vertically makes a force so devastating that we have yet contrive a sturdy enough device to accurately measure it.

With these characters in mind, we were grateful to have a cozy home to arrive at, though Nancy cautioned us that her property had twice been hit by lightning with some unpleasant consequences. I decided to go out and cover our solar panels in case those consequences included icy foul balls from the sky. Curious about the what the meteorologists had to say about all this we cut on the TV to find that the local station had preempted everything to show one of their storm-chasers tracking an active supercell a couple hours south of us. We watched live as a dark grey funnel dropped to the ground forming a tornado as our videographer wisely put his vehicle in reverse to find safer ground. The drama continued for over an hour and thankfully no one was harmed. Shutting off the television didn’t end the show with lightning flashes brightening the darkened house into the wee hours.

Hailstones, Fort Collins, CO - Photo by Tim Giller — Hailstones, Fort Collins, CO – Photo by Tim Giller

The morning broke to another crisp clear Colorado day. However it was warm and that brings the key player in all this. Heat is the driver of this atmospheric activity and as the wide prairie bakes in the sun that energy inspires another round of afternoon puffy clouds. I had been thinking about how the previous day all we got was wet and that maybe I should uncover the panels and put the tarp away. I guess I hadn’t noticed that the puffy clouds had brought some friends and that they had all grown up into puffy white mountains. No sooner had I folded back most of the protective covering than I heard the first metallic “clinks”. Before I could confirm that sound, something cold and hard bounced off the back of my head. I got the tarp back on and was under the cover of Nancy’s garage just in time enjoy the chaos of a hundred thousand frozen nickels and quarters pummeling the neighborhood, wild sounds of hail impacting metal, wood, concrete and asphalt, bouncing and rebounding. As they began to collect it occurred to me that this is a lot of underutilized ice. So I got a glass, a little gin and a splash of bitters. How often does one get a chance to have a cocktail served over natural ice cubes from the gods?

San Luis Valley, CO - Photo by Tim Giller — San Luis Valley, CO – Photo by Tim Giller

Great Sand Dunes National Park - Photo by Tim Giller — Great Sand Dunes National Park – Photo by Tim Giller

Springtime in the Rockies means that this is an almost daily cycle. Each afternoon mythical castles of white clouds are built up then blown away overnight. Days later in the wide San Luis valley we had perhaps the best venue for the performance. Sitting in a hot spring on the north end of the valley our stage was 70 miles wide framed by the San Juan Mountains on stage right, the Sangre de Cristo Range on the left. Fast moving thunderheads extending from the valley rim to the Jet Stream cruised across the landscape, their dark underbellies shooting white thunderbolts to the ground every few miles, alternating with the strobing purple of interior cloud lightning. With the sun dropping behind the mountains the towering clouds remain illuminated by the last rays of the day. Billowing folds of pastel pink and peach and constantly morphing domes of richer oranges and reds. All this drama could make you forget that there is still another quiet member of our party. A rainbow must always arrive as a surprise guest, pleasantly catching the corner of our eye as the last low rays of sun sneak under the clouds of a darkening sky.

Badlands National Park, SD - Photo by Tim Giller — Badlands National Park, SD – Photo by Tim Giller

Hail Cocktail Party

June 20, 2015 / nicetim / 1 Comment

Spanish Peaks, CO – Photo by Tim Giller

Badlands National Park – Photo by Tim Giller

Hailstones, Fort Collins, CO – Photo by Tim Giller

San Luis Valley, CO – Photo by Tim Giller

Great Sand Dunes National Park – Photo by Tim Giller

Badlands National Park, SD – Photo by Tim Giller

Think Twice Before Following a Bison Trail

June 5, 2015 / rachaelb / 1 Comment

There are images in the American psyche that are as iconic as apple pie and baseball. The image of a plains indian in the throws of a bison hunt and the image of the Great Plains homesteader squinting their eyes in a sunny hundred mile stare bracing themselves against the unfettered prairie winds. These images are as gone as the prairie itself. As to why things are the way they are here in central United States is as complex as the history is deep. Our short visit to and through the landscapes of the grasslands that remain could not do it justice in this format. I will say that in the face of all that is ecologically and politically wrong magical moments can still happen. I want to share two such moments.
In Sheyenne National Grasslands in the south east corner of North Dakota on an eight mile loop trail around the oak savannah of Hankinson Hills the sight of about ten white pelicans in their typical v formation caught our attention. Being the large and strong winged birds they are we could hear the movement of the air as they went overhead. Just about the time the squadron passed us they began to break formation and swirl and dance up through the air. “What are they doing?”, I whispered. While it’s common for pelicans to ride the thermals I had never seen this before and something about the beauty of these large birds gliding above made me gulp back tears.

After Sheyenne we headed to Badlands National Park in South Dakota. There is the iconic badlands to drive and hike through but there is also the wilderness area to the west and two other units that are within the Pine Ridge reservation to the south. Surrounding much of the park otherwise is the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. I’ve wanted to visit Badlands ever since I saw a picture of the colorful sandstone hills that give them their name. The beauty of the colors in the rocks did not disappoint but what I really fell in love with was found west of that rugged terrain in the Sage Creek Wilderness area of the park. Life’s a bit more green over there this time of year. Within the park one is free to wander about as they wish (just bring in all your own water). After a stormy afternoon and morning watching the male Bison roam about the campground area munching grass the sky calmed and we set out on a walkabout to see what we could see. We set out in an “as the crow flies” fashion for some hills in the distance that looked to have some promising views. We quickly learned that this land belies not just it’s true topography but it’s filled with life. As we walked crickets jumped away from our feet the way water moves in a stream as you cross it, a grasshopper trying to avoid us managed to jump right into Tim with loud thwap, while avoiding bison chips we also did our best to avoid crushing all the wildflowers. When we found ourselves looking 20 feet down to the stream below we decided to try going up the hill this time since downhill last time had us crossing a few streams. As we walked up to the bend in the creek we saw a porcupine that seemed to also be out enjoying the finally shining sun resting on a fallen tree trunk up above the stream. In his very porcupine fashion he moved himself up into the protection of the cottonwood leaves, even though this technically brought him closer to where we stood.

Moving on we saw both a kingfisher and a red headed woodpecker bouncing from tree to tree along another stream. As we walked closer to our destination we thought perhaps we might fair better by following in the bison trails instead of forging our own path. After all they’ve know this landscape for thousands of years, it’s in their DNA. This took us up and over the first hill and brought us down by a group of bachelor bison and one, very large, loner. We did our best to walk between without disturbing them as we headed towards yet another stream. There we looked across the stream to see a pair of pronghorn. At first startled to see us they quickly went about their business of eating and scratching their heads on the shrubs. Very near our desired destination we went up and over the next hill. As we came up though we found ourselves looking at a few more bison, only these were ladies that were part of the maternal herd. Even though we were a good distance away they rose in alarm. This alarmed the mama on the other side of them who looked at us over hill she was on. Up her tail went. We backed up a bit but the motions we accidentally set into to play could not be stopped. With all the ladies nearby on alert a calf wondering what the fuss was about looked over the hill at us too. We briefly saw the light brown face before mama and crew decided it was time to move on. This movement set off all the ladies and calves below them and they took off in trot to higher land. Like dominoes all the females and calves not waiting to see where the danger was took off as well. We watched and heard the ground rumble as somewhere around a couple hundred females and calves tromped their way to higher ground and away from us. On the one hand I felt guilty for having disturbed their peace, on the other this sight and everything that came with it was something of a miracle. Fifty years ago there were no bison in Badlands National Park and over a hundred years before that Americans had slaughtered an estimated 30 million bison down to just a few hundred. This incredible beast would have been gone completely from the world had it not been for a few people who thought to save them from extinction and a few that kept themselves hidden in the wilds of Yellowstone.

What was once the Great Plains are now fractured, stressed, abused and incomplete grasslands spread out across the states, yet there is still life there and if you open yourself to the place it might just surprise you. Just be careful if you follow a bison trail, they’ve got big hooves to follow and you might end up seeing more than you bargained.

Think Twice Before Following a Bison Trail

June 5, 2015June 5, 2015 / rachaelb / 1 Comment

In Sheyenne National Grasslands in the south east corner of North Dakota on an eight mile loop trail around the oak savannah of Hankinson Hills the sight of about ten white pelicans in their typical v formation caught our attention. Being the large and strong winged birds they are we could hear the movement of the air as they went overhead. Just about the time the squadron passed us they began to break formation and swirl and dance up through the air. “What are they doing?”, I whispered. While it’s common for pelicans to ride the thermals I had never seen this before and something about the beauty of these large birds gliding above made me gulp back tears.

Natural History of Lil’ Squatch (Part 1)

June 1, 2015 / nicetim / 4 Comments

Tent Caterpillars, Delmarva Peninsula - Photo by Tim Giller — Tent Caterpillars, Delmarva Peninsula – Photo by Tim Giller

Lil’ Squatch frightens the birds. At least that’s what Rachael likes to say. I’d like to think that his charisma extends to the animal kingdom but I have to admit that she seems to be right. Countless times we’ve slowed down or pulled over to get a better look at some unknown animal near the road only to have it scamper away at the sight of our strange contraption. Roadside wildlife is often indifferent to the vehicles rolling by, but we’ve seen deer, squirrels and all types of birds do a double take when we round the corner. A staid and well hidden Barred Owl taking flight when we meandered by, Pronghorn dashing off when we break the horizon. I’ve learned that trying to be a naturalist at 50 mph is not very fruitful. Holding binoculars in a moving vehicle can be nausea inducing especially if you are behind the wheel. However, when you’re laying down a lot of backroad highway miles you’ll inevitably see plants and animals that demand a closer look.

We drove over a 1000 miles in the south before we finally got a close look at a tree with red draping from it in late winter, realizing that it wasn’t old leaves but the flowers and seeds of the Red Maple. Lately it has been the American Larch, a strange deciduous conifer that is unfamiliar in my part of the west. It seems to favor a boggy soil that infrequently lined the road and we breezed out of its range in Minnesota without finding a spot to pull over for one. Earlier this spring a mysterious gauzy web was catching our eyes, wedged in the crotch of certain trees and glowing in the sunlight. A little effort revealed that it was the silk of the Eastern tent caterpillar, an unusual species that gathers by the hundreds for warmth and increased metabolism before going off separately to metamorphose into moths.

Nine-banded armadillo, Mississippi - Photo by Tim Giller — Nine-banded armadillo, Mississippi – Photo by Tim Giller

Not all the creatures we hit the brakes for are elusive or easily frightened. Back in Mississippi, in the neatly landscaped roadside of the Natchez Trace we spotted armadillos foraging inches from the road. As we pulled up and put Squatch into neutral one little guy couldn’t be bothered to pull his nose out of the soil in his search of earthworms or whatnot. More recently, while traversing Michigan’s Upper Peninsula an anomalous stately white bird caused Rachael enough excitement that I was compelled to make a u-turn.

Snowy Owl, Michigan - Photo by Tim Giller — Snowy Owl, Michigan – Photo by Tim Giller

I quickly stepped out to the guardrail leaving our little home in idle and the beautiful Snowy Owl could barely be bothered to briefly rotate his head in my direction before calmly returning to his meditative pose.

When we get Little Squatch parked and calmed down for a bit he actually makes a passable wildlife viewing blind. Any number of skittish little birds have wandered up below our large rear window. When the day fades if we leave the interior lights dimmed we can watch and hear the beginnings of the evening prowl heralded by the chorus of coyote. Back in New Mexico we voyeuristically observed the courting and mating of a pair of Great Horned Owls in the grove of cottonwoods we had chosen to camp among. As I write this on a blustery spring morning down a lonely backroad in a remote section of Badlands National Park, a lumbering wooly beast, with an entourage of tag-a-long black birds, has browsed his way over giving our white and orange vessel only the slightest wary glance from its dark eyes.

Bison, South Dakota - Photo by Tim Giller — Bison, South Dakota – Photo by Tim Giller

The stoic and hefty American Bison have seen their share of hardship. They adapted to all the extremes of North America from dry deserts to the bitter winters of the High Plains. They survived Paleo-hunters when many large mammals like mammoths and short-faced bear could not, even with the technique of coercing them to stampede by the hundreds off of cliffs. Slated to wholesale slaughter for the sake of “opening up” the west, they are still here thanks to conservation efforts and their own hardy stature. Calmly wandering across this open landscape, oblivious to the alarm chirps as they saunter across a Prairie Dog town, they animate the landscape with their 10,000-year gait. Massive heads and shoulders somehow graceful on slender legs when at a gallop. After all that maybe our little relic of the late 1970’s seems quaint to them too.