Wild!

July 15, 2015 / rachaelb / 5 Comments

As most things do it started with coyote. He came into the village and stole a sack of grain. When the villagers chased him he ran into the sky spilling the grain all over the night and created the stars. Sitting in Yellowstone National Park looking at the magnificent milky way I reflect on coyote. Earlier in the day we saw some bighorn sheep walking along a steep hillside looking very content on their precipice of protection. All the animals are wild here. The bison cross the street and give cars looks of annoyance or daring. Calling in their belch like manor out to each other their calves still yanking at their moms teats the moment they catch back up with her. The males posturing with grunts and striking their hooves on the dirt. Other bachelors are removed from the fray by choice or by loss and sit for long minutes in their wallows. Foxes sneak by and under the watchful sight of tourists who are trained on the grizzly bear in the field busy munching. For us lucky enough to see them they might look back with their sly smiles before dipping out of view and down the hillside. The elk graze casually with one eye on where they left their baby and one looking for wolves who made their way back into the park some twenty years ago. Tourists sit vigil by their spotting scopes for a lucky sighting of the wolves while ranchers outside the park pray they stay here or else they’ll get their rifles. The pronghorn pay no nevermind to any of it, the wildest of them all.

Small birds flit and fly and scrap for seeds while large birds dive for fish. Small mammals scurrying in the brush, across the road, they bark at you from trees telling you to git from their food stores. Wild thunderstorms produce wild flowers growing in fields and at the base of new trees. New trees growing in the shadows of their elders still standing grey and weathered from long ago but not forgotten wild fires. Fires that burned hot and scorched the earth, vacuuming up the too thick under brush making room for new fresh life.

The ground under our feet constantly shifting, sliding, pushing and bubbling bubbling bubbling up sometimes shooting into the sky in a dramatic release of pressure. Steam constantly rising into the sky. The caldera pushing up, the rushing rivers cutting down, carving, breaking apart millions of years of deposition. In Yellowstone this too is coyote’s fault for many years ago there was no river. Coyote knocked over the old woman’s large basket full of water and fish. This created the rivers. Coyote trying to make amends tried to make rock dams but the water knocked them over and this created the large waterfalls found in Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon. Coyote is wild. The rivers are wild. The crowds rushing and pushing and climbing over each other for a waterfall selfie or a glimpse of what ever made people pull their cars over are wild. All in an effort to somehow absorb some of this place. Absorbing the steam into their skin, the smell of the rain on the sagebrush into their nostrils, the sound of the bison or the howl of a wolf for the kind of souvenir that only the soul can cherish.

Wild!

July 15, 2015July 15, 2015 / rachaelb / 5 Comments

Porcelain Basin Yellowstone

As most things do it started with coyote. He came into the village and stole a sack of grain. When the villagers chased him he ran into the sky spilling the grain all over the night and created the stars. Sitting in Yellowstone National Park looking at the magnificent milky way I reflect on coyote. Earlier in the day we saw some bighorn sheep walking along a steep hillside looking very content on their precipice of protection. All the animals are wild here. The bison cross the street and gives cars looks of annoyance or daring. Calling in their belch like manor out to each other their calves still yanking at their moms teats the moment they catch back up with her. The males posturing with grunts and striking their hooves on the dirt. Other bachelors are removed from the fray by choice or by loss and sit for long minutes in their wallows. Foxes sneak by and under the watchful sight of tourists who are trained on the grizzly bear in the field busy munching. For us lucky enough to see them they might look back with their sly smiles before dipping out of view and down the hillside. The elk graze casually with one eye on where they left their baby and one looking for wolves who made their way back into the park some twenty years ago. Tourists sit vigil by their spotting scopes for a lucky sighting of the wolves while ranchers outside the park pray they stay here or else they’ll get their rifles. The pronghorn pay no nevermind to any of it, the wildest of them all.

Elk basking at Mammoth Hot Springs

Mountain Mysteries

July 8, 2015 / nicetim / 4 Comments

Amethyst Basin, High Uinta Wilderness - Photo by Tim Giller — Amethyst Basin, High Uinta Wilderness – Photo by Tim Giller

The Toiyabes, the Virginia Range, the Ruby Mountains. I learned from my 7th grade Nevada history teacher, Mr Gandolfo, that the state has the most distinct mountain ranges in the U.S. The Pah Rah Range, the Jarbridge Mountains, the Clan Alpine. Basin and Range. Broad valleys of sagebrush flats, a fragrant plant community of subtle color covering vast fans of alluvial outwash thousands of feet deep riding downward on enormous slabs of the Earth’s crust. The valley edges contour almost imperceptibly up to meet the abrupt escarpments of fault block ranges pushing upward. These are deep and wide valleys alternating with steep and rugged mountains are where I first encountered islands-in-the-sky. Mountain ecosystems once connected in cooler and wetter times are now separated by inhospitably dry lowlands. Trees and mammals and reptiles, evolving separately become just different enough to earn new names. Maybe someday the climate may cool again and these cousins will mix, sharing what new traits they’ve acquired.

Amethyst Lake, High Uinta Wilderness - Photo by Tim GIller — Amethyst Lake, High Uinta Wilderness – Photo by Tim GIller

The Brooks Range, the Atlas Mountains, Annapurna Sanctuary. Throughout my travels, or while scanning over maps I can’t help looking at the different ranges of the world and wonder what secrets they might have, what hidden treasures are concealed in their folds and crevices. Mountains have complex topography that can only be hinted at when viewed from the flatlands below. Each acre of the Rockies has double the landmass of its prairie neighbor. Hiding behind all those ridges and inside the creases are pocket meadows, beaver ponds, rippling cascades and grotto waterfalls. The only way to know this is by going in and up. Standing knee high in the sagebrush below on a hot afternoon you might never imagine the cool aspen glades above in some hanging valley surrounded by cliffs and lying just out of your vision.

The Bighorn Mountains, the Absaroka Range, the Gros Ventre. When I imagined the Uinta Mountains of eastern Utah I pictured a broad hunchback of open country with low vegetation to match the rocky deserts to the south. What Rachael and I found was a cool and heavily forested extension of the greater Rockies with layered and pyramidal peaks. We spend three days hiking into the high country and it was a welcome respite from the summer heat. That heat below did generate some dramatic thunderstorms and we once again found ourselves in the midst of a hailstorm, this time with only the shelter of our nylon tent. It passed quickly though and the sun returned just in time to dry our gear.

Wind River Range, Wyoming - Photo by Tim Giller — Wind River Range, Wyoming – Photo by Tim Giller

The Sawtooth Range, the Calico Mountains, the Sangre de Cristos. A couple of days later while walking into the Wind River Range of Wyoming our discoveries were wildflowers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an abundance of flowers. They lined the trail often if a full variety of color or hillsides would be covered in an unbroken field of yellow or lavender.

Bridger Wilderness, Wind River Range - Photo by Tim Giller — Bridger Wilderness, Wind River Range – Photo by Tim Giller

The mixing palette included fragrance that shifted around each bend as different flowers predominated. Climbing higher into the deep canyon it was hard to resist the compulsion to see what the next bend might reveal but we had to turn back as the day was getting late. Fortunately we should have plenty of opportunities to see more mountains during the next couple of months as our path follows the Rockies into Canada and up to Alaska. There should be no shortage of surprises amidst those peaks.

Tetons, Wyoming - Photo by Tim Giller — Tetons, Wyoming – Photo by Tim Giller

Mountain Mysteries

July 8, 2015 / nicetim / 3 Comments

Amethyst Basin, High Uinta Wilderness – Photo by Tim Giller

The Toiyabes, the Virginia Range, the Ruby Mountains. I learned from my 7^th grade Nevada history teacher, Mr Gandolfo, that the state has the most distinct mountain ranges in the U.S. The Pah Rah Range, the Jarbridge Mountains, the Clan Alpine. Basin and Range. Broad valleys of sagebrush flats, a fragrant plant community of subtle color covering vast fans of alluvial outwash thousands of feet deep riding downward on enormous slabs of the Earth’s crust. The valley edges contour almost imperceptibly up to meet the abrupt escarpments of fault block ranges pushing upward. These are deep and wide valleys alternating with steep and rugged mountains are where I first encountered islands-in-the-sky. Mountain ecosystems once connected in cooler and wetter times are now separated by inhospitably dry lowlands. Trees and mammals and reptiles, evolving separately become just different enough to earn new names. Maybe someday the climate may cool again and these cousins will mix, sharing what new traits they’ve acquired.

Amethyst Lake, High Uinta Wilderness – Photo by Tim GIller

Wind River Range, Wyoming – Photo by Tim Giller

Bridger Wilderness, Wind River Range – Photo by Tim Giller

Tetons, Wyoming – Photo by Tim Giller

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.