Categories
Black Hills coyotes nature nature therapy Uncategorized wildlife

Running with Sticks, a Big Dog & a Stone

Sticks I carried with me for “just in case”.

Please note: I wrote this article in the spirit of “respect your environment” & not as a story to justify getting rid of any/all potential hazards that you might encounter while adventuring in the wilds.

At 5:34 am in the morning, our 94-pound German Shepherd mix named Timmy woke me up. He rested his massive paws on a shelf situated below an open window and whined, staring intently at something outside. Seconds later, I heard a pffff sound and the pounding of hooves as an alarmed deer bounded past, white tail flashing.

The deer wasn’t alone.

One of the many whitetails that inhabit the Black Hills.

Seconds later, a coyote sauntered by, beelining for the deer. The canid was about 35 meters behind. Both disappeared down the hill. For a minute or two, I waited and watched at the window, but didn’t see or hear any more drama.

Little did I suspect that this event was a foreshadowing of things to come…

Timmy…best fitness trainer ever.

Fast forward four hours. It was seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit and nine-thirty, and the dog (Timmy) still needed his daily outing. Timmy is my trainer: he motivates me to get out and exercise nearly every single day.

No excuses.

I don’t usually run this late in the day in the summer, but had a morning event to attend to, so wasn’t able to leave as early as I’d liked.

Western wood peewees called a burry kee-eer! as we headed up the hill, and I admired the wildflowers as I followed a Forest Service road through the woods. It’s been a relatively normal year for rainfall, so the grass was still green and lush. Every now and then, I’d turn back and make sure Timmy was still following. At seven years old, he still has a lot of energy, but likes to stop and smell everything a bit more than he did as a pup.

Monarda in full bloom.

After about nine-tenths of a mile of dirt, we merged onto a gravel county road and travelled south. The sun was intense, the air white with smoke drifting in from western wildfires. After another half mile, Timmy and I turned west from the county road onto another Forest Service road. About five minutes later, our relaxing, routine run turned into anything but.

Timmy was running right beside me, when suddenly, he dashed ahead and disappeared over a slight hill. A moment later, I heard yips and yaps, thinking maybe he’d sighted a rabbit and was calling excitedly about that.

Wrong.

I ran to the top of the rise. By then, Timmy was sprinting back toward me, a coyote in hot pursuit. I hollered at it to go away, but it ignored me and just kept coming.

O-kay…(not okay)

Timmy turned back and started chasing the coyote. I don’t usually let him chase wildlife, but I wanted to encourage this critter to leave. The coyote stayed just far enough ahead that Timmy didn’t catch it (I had my finger on a vibrate setting of his training collar so that he wouldn’t actually get quite that close). When I thought he’d chased it off far enough, I called Timmy to come back. He came racing back toward me.

Immediately the coyote did too.

And that’s when it became clear that things were about to get complicated. I stopped and yelled in my meanest voice, but it didn’t matter: the coyote kept coming.

Timmy and I started jogging again. Again, the coyote followed. Timmy was behind me about 5 meters. When he thought the coyote was too close, he’d turn around and chase it for about 100 meters, then catch back up to me, sides heaving, breathing hard. We were progressing around the loop, but not fast enough; right then, the one thing I wanted most was to get the heck outta there.

This predator might weigh only thirty-forty pounds and only be as high as my knees, but thoughts of rabies kept resurfacing. The intensity of the creature’s doggedness in following us was (very) unnerving.

A mile to go before the county road: it seemed like ten.

Timmy’s tongue was hanging out, and he was wanting to slow down. His pants were coming loud and fast. But Coyote kept chasing and barking at us.

Sweat was drenching my shirt, and the heat was growing more intense. We turned the corner and merged onto another dirt track, one that lead east, toward the county road (where for once I was hoping there would be traffic). By now Timmy had dashed off to chase the coyote away over five times. His efforts were to no avail: each time Timmy stopped his chase, immediately, the coyote stopped retreating and became the pursuer. Whenever it changed roles, it would bark at us in a fierce high voice.

We’d only jogged about a hundred meters onto the new dirt road. A ridgeline of rock parallels this new change in direction, running east-west. And that’s when things got worse.

Not only did the coyote behind us start barking fiercely. Apparently, it’s barking was also a battle cry.

Immediately, that one coyote voice transformed into many voices.Yipping and barking reined like arrows from above, along the ridge.

Ambushed.

That’s when I really thought we were in trouble. In my mind, I saw a pack of coyotes materializing from the hills and descending on Timmy. It was a real possibility.

One aggressive coyote was already giving us plenty of hassle. Against an entire pack?

Timmy wouldn’t stand a chance. I don’t think I’d fare so well, either.

As we hurried along in the scratchy heat, I scrambled to pick up whatever sticks I could find. Anything. The first pieces of wood I picked up were rather decayed, so as I ran, I traded them out for stronger, longer, sturdier pieces of wood. Finally, I settled on two different sticks, both three-and-a-half feet long plus a white rock that weighed about five pounds. I didn’t care if they slowed me down. If any coyotes got close enough, I was going to use them.

The yipping and hollering on the ridge above us continued.

Poor Timmy—he was starting to lag, but Coyote was still chasing us, so he kept running.

Every few seconds, I turned around to survey the ridge and Coyote behind Timmy. The ridge-yippers still kept barking fiercely, but they hadn’t come down. Yet. Hopefully they would stay put, although I wasn’t very hopeful.

I passed a Forest Service road fork; on any normal day we’d usually veer left. This fork travelled north along another wooded ridgeline, keeping one inside the wilds for awhile longer. Instead, we kept going straight, beelining toward the more well-travelled county road (sorry, Mr. Robert Frost—sometimes it’s better to take the road most travelled).

Every now and then, I stopped to yell at Coyote, but of course when I did so there weren’t any small-ish rocks around me, else I would’ve thrown those at it (I didn’t want to waste my big rock unless it came really close).

At last: the county road!

We reached it and started north, toward home.

Surely, this wide roadway would dissuade Coyote. Surely a car would come and scare it off. Surely I could drop my stick and stone and get back to “normal” running.

Surely not.

You guessed it: the dang thing kept chasing us, yipping and yapping. Instead of a narrow two-track, we had a wide gravel road to run on. Nothing else had changed, except the ridge-runners had stopped yammering. I was hoping they had given up on following us and weren’t cutting corners and about to pop out somewhere close. Poor Timmy didn’t have the energy to try and run off the coyote that was harrassing him. I kept running and looking back periodically, just hoping the coyote didn’t rush him.

One more time I stopped and stood to holler at the coyote.

Yeah, right, it said, giving me the eye and still moving closer. You’re not the boss of me. (I knew it was saying that because it kept chasing us despite the arduous terrain).

Timmy was now about twenty meters behind me. I simultaneously called encouragingly to him and yelled at coyote. Turning around, I jogged slowly up the hill, still clutching my sticks and stone. Eying the rocky bluffs alongside the road, I wondered if it would be wise to try and make a dash to the top of one of those and then try to fend off Coyote from there.

I turned around again…

Coyoted had vanished. Timmy was still jogging behind me, tongue lolling, eyes on me, telling me he’d catch up when he could.

Thank God.

About ten minutes later, a camper passed us on the county road (not soon enough!) and I was still running with those sticks and that rock—I’m sure they thought I was crazy.

But that’s ok. We arrived home safe. Timmy had one small scratch on his leg (probably from dashing all over the hillsides), but other than that, we were unscathed.

Timmy slept the rest of the day.

Some explanations for the coyote’s bold behavior (only speculation of course): The dog’s presence probably provoked the coyote; if Timmy hadn’t been with me during my run, I’m guessing the coyote probably wouldn’t have followed…the pack my have had young ones they were trying to defend…or possibly a kill they were protecting. In any case, this wasn’t your typical coyote behavior (at least not in the Black Hills or any other place I’ve travelled); oftentimes, when coyotes see people, they’ll hightail it outta there.

Never approach a coyote…they are indeed wild.

Got a different coyote story? I’d love to hear it!

Categories
birds Black Hills nature nature therapy Uncategorized

Winter Scenes of Spring


A snowy day was forecast. A snowy day arrived, indeed. Over a foot of snow, blowing, blustering. Smothering thoughts of anything bright green.

After hours of shovelling

…what else was there to do but ski?

As usual, Timmy (above) was anxious to escape the house. But once outside, he did seem to question the wisdom of such an endeavor.

We weren’t the only ones venturing. Intrepid white-tailed deer crowded around the backyard compost bin; they’ve learned how to knock off its lid and mine it for goodies, like a pineapple crown (upper right), apple cores, and the insides of grapefruit rinds.

A dark-eyed junco braved the weather for a pick-me-up at the bird feeder.

Welcome to track season!

Categories
birds Black Hills hope nature nature therapy wildlife

Constellation of Hope

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com

It may be early November, but something happened this past summer that I’d like to share with you. This July, as I jogged along the Forest Service road behind our house, my eyes scanned the colors blurring past my feet: brown, grays, and greens.

But every now and then, a new color flashed before my eyes. Pastel, yet neon in a clarion call for attention.

Blue.

Shards of color lay, fragmented and still, on the ground before me. Upon closer inspection, the irregular pieces revealed themselves: the broken pieces of a robin’s egg.

An intact robin’s nest

Even though I didn’t stop to pick up bits from that particular eggshell, knowing that if I did it would dissolve into smithereens in my pocket, I carried the image with me on my run and ever since. Later, I found more robin’s egg fragments and took their photo.

A robin’s eggshell fragments.

Looking at fragments of eggshells, a sense of loss upwells and spreads inside me: a tightness in the chest, an undefined sadness. The feeling that something’s shattered. Broken. Like the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme, there’s a sense of irreversibility. Nothing is going to put those pieces back together again.

It’s similar to the heartsick feeling I get when I think about this country and the rest of the world. How the losses are multiplying, every moment our daily lives and way of doing things broken. This virus has tested our humanity and mocked our struggles to stay connected in a time when being connected in conventional ways can be hazardous to your health.

Broken eggshell fragments can mean that the chick inside was lost, his/her potential disappeared. Never to be realized, winged flight just a dream.

As a wildlife technician in New Mexico, my job was to monitor nests around a birder’s paradise called Rattlesnake Springs. Sometimes, hatchlings in nests would make it to the age to fly (called the fledgling stage). Many times they wouldn’t.

There was something distinctive that stood out while observing nests: for the nests that failed, the predator (the main cause of failure) didn’t leave any trace of their dastardly deed behind (I know, I know…a snake or rat or coyote, etc., has to eat too). In other words, there weren’t any fragments as leftover evidence of the nest attack that had occurred. Just the opposite: for nests whose contents were observable (nests less than about twelve feet in the air that I could use a mirror mounted on a telescope to see what was inside), what I most commonly found was…

Emptiness.

Instead of devastation, shards of brokenness can mean that a nest has hope. In many bird nests, after a chick hatches, the parent will take the eggshell fragments and drop them somewhere away from the nest (like many songbirds do with their nestling’s poop) so as not to attract predators and to keep the nest clean.

This behavior is a kind of defense mechanism.

In this time of covid, within our own lives, by distancing, we have grown more physically apart, become little fragments scattered over the landscape so as not to implicate our “nest”. But fortunately, there is still hope for wholeness. All is not lost.

The eggshell fragments scattered on the path were blue-sky blue.

Blue…as in the color of UP.

The sky’s the limit.

And together, we can go there…

May you and yours…and a collective “all of ours” be blessed.

Categories
birds Black Hills hiking nature Uncategorized wildlife

The Angels of Hell Canyon

Greetings!

Today started out like one of those days when one may be a bit irritated with the challenges of living a mile high in a northern clime. The promises of spring are here, yes, but on any given day they may be snatched away by winter’s firm grip.

Thirty-nine degress Fahrenheit with snowflakes flitting down. As you might guess, their appearance beneath the looming clouds was most unwelcome:

Like a swarm of mosquitoes. Toilet-water raining down from an airplane.

…Or a stranger breaking the distance barrier at the grocery.

Since this quarantine-thing has started, our family has persisted in making sure we get out each and every weekend for some sort of hike. Today was my turn to pick, and so I chose my local favorite: Hell Canyon.

When he heard about my choice, knowing how many birds we’d see along the way, Panther—our two year old cat affectionately known as Fuzzy, or Nid—didn’t want us to leave him behind.

Panther wearing my backpack in anticipation of what surely would be the ultimate bird-stalking adventure.

Although it was 11:00 am, the high had already been reached, and there was nowhere for temps to go but down. After packing a simple lunch consisting of cheese-and-crackers or crackers-and-peanut butter, we loaded up in our car and set out for a short ride to the Hell Canyon trailhead, about ten miles from the house.

Seriously, you gotta take me.

We are fortunate to live near one of the gems of the Black Hills. Half of the trail is situated along the bottom of a canyon, where thickets of shrubbery grow in abundance: chokecherry, serviceberry, red osier dogwood. Trees of birch, aspen, and box elder are prolific, and a small intermittent stream weaves through part of the canyon.

Starting out on the Hell Canyon Trail traveling counter-clockwise.

Hell Canyon is a nirvana of shrubbery, a haven for birds such as spotted towhees, warblers, and chickadees. In much of the Black Hills, the deer populations have mauled the native shrubs (the whitetails and mule deer are browsers, which mean they enjoy getting their daily dose of fiber from twigs of shrubs and trees). Hell Canyon is a beautiful anamoly and is one of the all-too-few places in the southern hills where shrub habitat remains intact.

It didn’t disappoint.

Near the start of the trail, along the creek, an orange-crowned warbler was flitting erratically amongst the dogwood bushes. I was barely able to glass it before it flitted away, down the creek. These small birds are transients in the Black Hills, loading up on insects as they continue their flight further west or to Alaska or Canada.

Orange-crowned warbler
Credit: USFWS, D. Menke

Hiking with family is a catch-as-catch-can birding experience; one doesn’t have the luxury to stop and gape at the bushes for five minutes, in search of an LBJ (little brown jobbie)—or, in this case an LYJ (little yellow jobbie). There isn’t enough group-patience for that, so I try to limit my hey, come look at this!‘s to a few times a trip and a more cooperative subject.

Fortunately, birds each have a distinctive call: if you can recognize what it is you’re looking for, it is much easier to know where to find it. As we were hiking, three different wrens (feisty little LBJs) called from somewhere in the canyon: canyon wrens, rock wrens, and a house wren.

Canyon Wren
Credit: Public Domain/D. Faulkner
A subtle arch along the Hell Canyon Trail; if you blink, you might miss it!

Also along the way, a gallery of floral beauties presented themselves:

(Clockwise from upper left: star lilies, phlox, violets, and pasque flowers)

These are just a sample of the amazing flowers blooming along the trail, yet they don’t measure up to one thing that happened on the hike. On the way into the canyon, my husband turned around to say something to me, but then he looked up at the sky and pointed.

Rainbow-amped sky

Of course this photo doesn’t do it justice. Not even close. It looked like a rainbow had been doused with sugar, transforming it into celestial sherbet. I was tempted to Photoshop the image to coax out the colors as we experienced it, but I didn’t want to make it look artificial.

Seraphims were flitting and floating and singing, Gabriel trumpeting his horn, the air euphorically thrumming holy holy holy…(ok, not quite, but it wouldn’t have been totally unexpected). It was that kind of moment, when you’ve swallowed a lungful of Helium (don’t try this at home) and any moment now your feet are going to leave the earth.

Wishing you a day with that kind of experience. Filled with faith that God is indeed good. And His love endures forever.

No matter what.

Categories
Black Hills humorous nature wildlife

Free Toilet Paper: An Unexpected (yet shocking) Perk of Living in a Cold Climate:)

Hello,

I hope this finds you and yours healthy…or at least on the road to recovery.

So this is a rather silly post, but I was on a shopping mission at our hometown grocery store…had plotted to get there early to avoid other peeps. I was successful in that regard.

One of the store clerks saw me pausing in front of the empty toilet paper shelves, gaping at the cavernous space like it was one of the seven wonders of the world. He informed me, “there’s a shipment coming in at 10:30 am.” I thanked him and moved on.

Little did the grocery clerk know that he would be the inspiration for this post…

Yesterday, we received eleven inches of fresh, powdery snow, and last night the temps dipped down to -17 Fahrenheit (-27 Celsius). During the snowstorm, I took the kids to the local hill to sled for an hour or so (with us, there was a total of six people there, and we maintained our distance). It was a wonderful experience to be out amongst the community of falling flakes and the fresh air.

Today, I rescued my husband from his desk sentence, and together we took a short cross-country ski behind our house. Everything outside was fresh and new and spotless. The red crossbills were foraging in a group in the pine trees, their chattering voices drowning out the sounds of the chickadees, nuthatches, and juncos nearby.

Skiing on crystalline snow

Today and yesterday…

All around us snow.

  • Ponderosa pine trees flocked with spring snow.

Sparkling, glittering;

Falling from the trees, their flocking like

Manna from heaven.

Enchanting.

…And then enlightening.

I just had to make this poster:

Snow…the ultimate biodegradable environmentally friendly TP.

Yes, in desperate times, people have been compelled to use this, ahem, so-called frozen bidet. This au natural substance is an effective solution to those of us who live in climates filled with chill and desperation.

Hope this helps you out, with either a chuckle or…well I don’t need to say any more; you know what you gotta do.

Have a great one!

Categories
birds nature Uncategorized

Close Encounters of the Bird Kind

Hello!

I hope this finds you perservering during what most of us are are finding a challenging time. Please keep saying those prayers and being supportive: to those in the healthcare field, those who are ill, immuno-suppressed, and/or elderly. If you are one of those people…may God bless you!

Despite that, please, please have faith that magic is yet afoot in this world.

…or should I say a-winged?

It’s been too long since I’ve updated this page, but something happened over the winter that just makes my soul sing “amazing grace how sweet the sound”. I could almost fly after feeling the special awesomeness of the moment, and it is one thing that I shall cherish in my heart for a long time. It was so cool, I’d like to share that moment with you, and maybe get the chance to hear from you—of your own magical moments.

We were X-country skiing with family in the Sawtooth mountains of Idaho when it happened. My son Bryce was right in front of me and stopped suddenly. He pointed his ski pole into the woods nearby. A small grayish-black bird with bright red eyebrows (a structure known as a comb) was walking toward him. About the size of a small chicken, the bird came out from the forest, stepped onto the groomed snow trail, and approached my son who was quietly watching. When he reached Bryce, who was standing still, the bird calmly and speculatively gaze up the trunklike features of my son’s black snow pants. After a moment of eyeing this curiosity of a human boy, the grouse decided to hop at Bryce’s pant legs, pecking gently at the black fabric of the snow pants.

Spruce grouse are hardy birds, and their main diet in the winter is composed of needles (including those from spruce, pine and fir) from evergreen trees. As a result of consuming all of this roughage, the birds’ gizzards grow by about 75% and their intestines lengthen by about 40%.

Given its diet, I wasn’t worried that the little pecker was about to sample this smallish human for lunch. And it wasn’t nesting season, so there wasn’t much in the way of territorial behavior. I had heard spruce grouse were supposed to be relatively tame—one of their nicknames is fool’s hen—but reading about it and experiencing it are two different things.

The rest of the ski group stopped to watch this amusing spectacle, and the bird kept hopping up and delivering short pecks to my son’s pants. Eventually, it moved on to do similar hop-pecking motions at my daughter, who was watching nearby. And then, after a few minutes, the bird just kind of wandered amongst the tall pillars of humans surrounding it.

Occasionally, it would pause and make a guttural clicking sort of noise sound; at the same time, it’s tail feathers would fan out then contract.

And then I knelt in the snow and held out my hand toward the bird, my index finger extended. I didn’t know what to expect; didn’t really expect anything to happen. But then to my surprise, the bird boldly walked up to my hand and studied it for a moment. With a flutter of wings, it flew onto my extended finger. Its feathery feet tickled my fingers as it just perched there and eyed me curiously.

And then, as if nothing special had just happened, it calmly flew back down and resumed its wandering amongst us.

But the magic.

It was sparking and glittering all around us, transforming the moment into one that will be forever etched inside the cupboard labelled with “special family moments.”

There is something incredible about interacting with nature, with the feeling that you are part of something bigger…something awesome.

Amazing!

All too soon, it was time to continue up the trail. Spruce grouse followed us as we swished forward on our skies. As we were too fast for his little legs to run, he soon fell behind. We thought that was the end of it, and giggled as he dropped from sight.

But no!

Moments later, we heard a fluttering sound behind us as the creature took to the skies to keep up. He landed just behind us and started running, his neck outstretched in pursuit. Eventually, though, he tired and said his goodbye. No longer could we count the little, chickenlike bird as a physical member of our group. But our hearts will always be filled with just a touch more whimsy because of our paths crossing in the middle of the forest that day.

Wishing you days that are touched with magic, no matter how big or small. They are great, after all.

If you have a moment, share your own magical encounter.

References

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Spruce_Grouse/lifehistory

Categories
birds Black Hills Uncategorized wildlife Wind Cave National Park

Free Nature Therapy (aka The Christmas Bird Count)

Yesterday I participated in the Christmas Bird Count located at Wind Cave National Park, SD. It had just snowed about a half inch overnight, sprinkling a dose of magic to the already enchanting landscape. Following are a few pictures to document my adventure.

The Christmas Bird Count is a citizen-science annual event hosted by the National Audubon Society and takes place in the U.S., Canada, and many countries in the Western Hemisphere. This year marks Audubon’s 120th Christmas bird count, and—depending on your local count schedule— takes place sometime between Saturday, December 14, 2019, and Sunday, January 5, 2020. On one day within this date range, volunteer birdwatchers of all types and abilities come together to count all the birds seen/heard within designated 15-mile circlar areas. If you are interested in participating, you can find out more: https://www.audubon.org/conservation/join-christmas-bird-count

For questions about the value of this project, the Audubon Society has an answer: “The data collected by CBC participants over the past century and more have become one of only two large pools of information informing ornithologists and conservation biologists how the birds of the Americas are faring over time.”

In other words, through your participation, you are making a (positive) difference! It’s also a great excuse to spend a day in nature therapy.

An American robin was singing very quietly from atop a sunny perch.
Box elder seeds donning crystals of ice.
Snow icing on rocky orange cliffs.
A northern flicker “becomes one” with the snag he’s perched on.
By afternoon, most of the snow along all but the northern aspects had melted.

Even if you can’t be part of the Christmas Bird Count, it is always amazing to find a patch of nature and to listen and watch. She’s a good teacher.

What amazing things have you seen lately?

Have a great one!

Reference: https://www.audubon.org/conservation/science/christmas-bird-count

Categories
Black Hills fall fiction humorous nature Uncategorized

Twas the Month Before Christmas

(or Hard Knocks from Not-Santa)

you can blame this little red squirrel (aka Not-Santa) who lives in the Black Hills for what follows— an inane taste of rhymey-ness. Apparently, he thinks it’s WAckY Wednesday…

Something’s clattering there, up on the roof shingle. November: no snowman, no Kristopher Kringle.

No child’s wishful gazing through frost on the pane. And jingles aren’t jangling to merry the game.

Boots of black or reindeer can’t account for this loud chatter. Curiosity beckons me to see what’s the matter.

Another loud noise as I open the door, step onto the deck. There’s no one around, only the sound peek! and the sound of a peck.

A pecker of wood hops up the side of a tree. Cocks its head sideways, stops and peers shyly at me.

I look to the sky. And, behold…what do I see? Industrious movement near the top of the tree.

A figure in red, not a shade fire engine-tinged; But the red of the rust on a pail or a hinge.

Instead of laughter behind a snowy white beard; There’s white on his face yes, but concealing a leer.

The creature’s tail is orange-red and jitters around. As he searches the treetops where treasure abounds.

Eyes gleam like the belt around Santa’s coat. Downy gray fur at the base of his throat.

The chuckling begins, not a bowl full of jelly. Revealing ill humor inside that round belly.

Tis not the season of giving or thanking, says he. No…it’s time for stashing and stowing frantically.

Human, get yourself gone, get out of the way.I needs enough cones to fill more than a sleigh.

Go rake some leaves, pull out thistles untidy. But leave me alone with this project…Alrighty?

One second more do I linger and wonder: When will he finish and stop this roof-thunder?

For two-thousand words I’m attempting to write. Today, not tomorrow I’ll finish this fight.

I linger and watch as he returns back to work. Scolding, tail twitching, to say “What a jerk!”

In contrast to him, my task isn’t survival. And honestly, Writing Muse needs a revival.

So I whistle to Timmy and up the hill we both trot; Uptightness untightening, mind no longer knotted in knots.

Mountain bluebirds flit, ringing sad-noted calls. Saying goodbye, goodbye, goodbye to you all.

And hello. Hello. Hello to mid-fall.

Thanks for reading. If you have a sec, I’d love to hear:

Are your squirrels (or other critters) acting squirrelly too?

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Uncategorized

Advice from a Sequoia Tree: Top Ten Roots of Wisdom

Yes our planet is off-kilter…we’ve known it for years. 23.5 degrees, to be precise.

And with today’s proliferation of wars, global warming, chemicals, habitat destruction, etc., that surround us…it is obvious that living in such an unbalanced, frenzied manner is catching up to us.

As I visited Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks located in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, the trees spoke to me.

They said to have peace on this God-given planet, there are some things you must do:

10. Together you can stand strong. Be supportive of family, friends, and neighbors, including those who live across the globe from you.

9. Create your own habitat. Shelter your neighbors and friends with strong boughs of friendship.

Sequoia bark grows around eighteen inches thick and protects them from many wildfires.

8. Develop a thick skin. Prepare for the fires, droughts, sicknesses, and diseases attacking you way by eating well and taking good care of your body. Keep the big picture in mind by reading the Bible and attending worship; don’t waste your time responding to belittling attacks from others.

7. Stand for what you believe. You are planted where you are, so take root and grow strong.

6. Honor the sacredness of Mother Earth. She gives and gives and so should you.

5. Steward the earth with wise actions. Don’t throw away the things that are irreplaceable.

What’s left of a giant sequoia tree logged sometime around the end of the 19th century.

In the 1880’s through 1920’s, loggers cut the down the Sequoias thinking the trees would provide a goldmine of lumber. Instead, when these thousands of year old massifs fell, their brittle heavy wood would shatter. After harvest, much of the lumber obtained from them was suitable for such unremarkable items as house shingles, fence posts, and matchsticks.

4. Be generous and remember to care for those who are with us and those who will inherit the earth.

Sequoia cones retain their seeds for decades until a wildfire dries out the cone and it opens. Seeds need full sun and bare mineral soil to germinate and for seedlings to thrive.

3. Even though you haven’t seen it with your own eyes doesn’t mean the fantastic doesn’t exist.

Walking and wondering amongst the giants.

The Centennial sequoia tree was a 24-foot diameter tree that was cut down. Sixteen feet of its outer shell was transported and reassembled at an exhibit in Philadelphia. When visitors on the east coast saw this display, many thought it was a fake and called it a “California hoax”. On the positive side, this piece of wood inspired believers into trying to protect these giant trees, whose native range is found only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada.

Lupines grow amidst the towering sequoias.

2. You are wonderfully made.

1. (#6 revisited) Nature gives selflessly to us, and let us do the same for her. Let your voice be hers. Join conservation groups who act on behalf of nature. Support leaders and treat this planet like the forever home it is…for the sake of nature, your children and friends, and…you.

If you are a private landowner, take a look and enrich your property to benefit the native ecology of your area. Green lawns might look neat and tidy, but they are ecological deserts; think about making them smaller and plant native perennials, trees, and shrubs in their place.

Have a great one!

Credit: https://www.nps.gov/seki/learn/nature/bigtrees.htm

Categories
Black Hills deer humorous nature summer wildlife

In the Blink of a Summer

Hello!

Looking back it’s been since April (gasp) that I’ve visited this site. Yes, before this summer started, I had suffered from delusions of using a few hours a day to finish editing my latest novel and I realized at the time that this feat would require dropping other writing projects if I wanted to get that done. No excuses, but since school’s out, time has been in hyper-speed mode and I’m just trying to hang on. If you’ve got school-aged kids, you probably know what I mean.

Don’t blink: July is almost over.

Summer vacation started out strangely…my kids had a snow day on the day before school let out (instead of using the day before, if my husband were writing this, he’d use the word “penultimate”—he loves that word). The day before! As I drove to the school to pick up my children on their last day of school, the neighborhood’s lawns were covered in snow.

The kids spent their first day of “summer break” building immense snowballs and watching as they rolled down the hill and smashed into smithereens.

Crazy.

Nature keeps a treasure chest whose delights appear in the most unexpected places and times.

I’ve lived in the Black Hills of South Dakota for eleven years now and I would tell you that, nope, we don’t have fireflies here. Maybe if you travel east, yes, but not here.

And then our family goes camping at a lake in Custer State Park.

This particular lake is located about eighteen miles from our house. A couple of years ago at this same campground, I’d thought I’d seen a yellow flash from a lightning bug as I took a stroll in the dark, but discounted it as my overactive imagination, as that particular insect only lit up once. No, on that particular long-ago night, I wasn’t able to satisfy my hunger and catch a second glimpse of the firefly smoldering like the emerging petals of a buttercup. By doing so would bring me back to summer days when we visited my grandparents’ house in Indiana,where we spent hours chasing after these small flying lanterns lighting up the humid dark sky.

And then, just last week, we visited that same campground.

Lo and behold—wouldn’t you know it?— the little buggers flashed us as we sat by the campfire roasting marshmallows. Their erratic, bright yellow beacons added even more cheer to an already glowing campfire and were a cogent reminder of how little I know about life, the universe, and everything (thank you, Douglas Adams). And my little part of the world.

Look at this: these birds aren’t native, but it was still quite astounding to see: I was preparing a cup of tea and noticed a pair of female peacocks as they wandered behind our house then continued up the hill as if they had important business to conduct.

The deer around our place may rival the number of people in China (a slight exaggeration), but, even with my cold, hard, gardener’s heart, seeing a fawn pant after his mother is still worth a few awwws.

I hope you are finding your own taste of nature to be incredible.

Thanks for reading, and have a good one.

(Blink blink!)

Categories
birds California condor hiking humorous nature wildlife Zion National Park

You don’t have to be an angel to read this post (but it helps to have wings)

View of Angel’s Landing from the West Rim trail

Do you like to live dangerously: sky dive after sunset, swim in a river with piranhas, or…

eat jarred pickles one year after the expiration date?

Do you think of yourself as a balanced individual?

If so, you are the perfect candidate to experience the premier hike in Zion National Park: Angel’s Landing.

My family and I went up there recently, and I can vouch that it is an apt name for that particular hike. Only angels would be comfortable fluttering to a perch on that fin of rock so high…so narrow.

Angels—or condors.

Picture of soaring California condor; these birds have a wingspan around 109 inches, or just over 9 feet)

On the brink of extinction in the 1980’s when only about twenty-two birds survived, intensive recovery efforts of condors have led to a global population that is around 400 (about half of these are in the wild vs. captivity). Nearly 70 condors call wild parts of Utah and Arizona (including Zion National Park) their home. Currently, the biggest threat to their recovery is the use of lead shot by hunters (condors are scavengers, and suffer from lead poisoning after eating animals killed by lead shot).

Apparently, these enormous, magnificent birds like to soar near this prominent massif. Although we didn’t see the condors near Angel’s Landing, we did have turkey vultures circling above us; either it was the sound of the wind fluttering through their wings, or they were chanting something that sounded a lot like:

fall, fall, fall.

Yes, fresh from the hike, I have a few phrases to describe it:

An intense cliff-hanger.

A southwestern desert lover’s utopia.

Heart-pounding…or, if you have a fear of heights, heart palpitating (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase)…I kept my eyes open the entire time…let me tell you about the sights: I had a great view of the tan and blush-colored sandstone, my daughter’s blue sneakers, and the silver chain nearly the entire way up. Also, when I looked back, I saw some guy behind us who was wearing a funky totem pole bird-head like figure on his white t-shirt.

Exhilarating.

Shushh…the sound of the Virgin River’s lullaby from wayyy down below.

Other thoughts also come to mind:

Spooky (especially as a parent).

Crowded.

Alarming.

Many opportunities to commiserate with other people who had the same (healthy) fear of heights.

(did I already say spooky?)

View from the top of Angel’s Landing

An adrenaline rush upon arriving at the top, yet the knowledge that one would soon be going back through the lines of people near the edge of steep dropoffs loomed like a great shadow. But I found that dread to be unfounded. Maybe knowing we made it up installed the confidence that indeed, we could descend in similar fashion. The view of the valley below was amazing!

Although the hike was wonderful in a twisted sort of way, it’s not an experience I want to repeat any time soon because of the sheer volume of people that undertake the climb. (No offence, people, but South Dakotans tend to get a bit nervous in crowds…where we’re from, there’s lots of space).

An early start to the Angel’s Landing Trail

Although we started the hike around 8:15 am and there was plenty of spacing between upward-bound hikers, once we reached Angel’s Landing, we were amidst throngs and throngs of people going up and going down. There’s only one chain, and the width of the cliffs vary from one person can safely pass to a width of I-guess-I-can-let-go-of-the- chain-for-a-little-bit-and-hope-I-don’t-have-a-buffoon-moment-and- trip, or that no one is tumbling down the mountain above me and going to take out myself or my family.

That’s not to say it’s not worth doing. If I were to go again, I’d want to be one of the early birds and go up at 6 am just for the safety factor of being around so many people while we’re tiptoeing along the edges of cliffs.

Hang on!

We went with a ten-year-old and thirteen-year-old, sandwiching parents between each. I had to threaten my supremely confident ten year old mountain goat that his non-bovid mom would have a heart attack right then and there if he did not hold onto the chain.

Seriously.

Fortunately, my thirteen year old had no issue with that edict.

Oh yes, from a mom’s perspective, I had thought a different trail, the Observation Point trail sounded much more attractive and reasonable for our family to undertake, since that one isn’t fraught with quite so much excitement and offers similarly spectacular views. Unfortunately, my plans were thwarted as many of the trails in Zion National Park were closed due to rockfall, excess water volume (the Narrows), and or road construction (without undertaking a two hour and change car ride), so there we were.

These desert beauties, Indian paintbrushes, are in full bloom.

And there I was. Praying. You can do that as you walk, you know? I don’t think God cares whether you’re kneeling our standing, as long as you’re reverential.

Waiting for the free park shuttle from Zion National Park Visitor Center

Zion National Park has become one of the U.S.’s Disneyland Parks, meaning that if you want to experience the most popular trails, you can expect to wait in line. And if you want to do some of the most popular off-trail hikes (like the Subway) you need to apply something like three months in advance to do so (we entered a last-minute lottery for any leftover permits remaining, but weren’t selected).

Fortunately, my prayer was answered and our family survived to hike another day (much to the chagrin of my son; he thinks mountain biking is a far superior activity). Maybe, someday if/when we return…we’ll be one of the lucky ones and see the condors.

After all, with its vertical cliff faces and prominent hoodoo at the top, Angel’s landing is perfect for them.

But not for me…I’m no angel.

Have a good one and thanks for reading!

Sources:

https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/nature/condors.htm

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/California_Condor/

Categories
birds humorous nature wildlife

The Sky is Falling!

Credit: Koerner, Tom, USFWS
Male mountain bluebird

It’s spring in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and, as of today, April 3, the mountain bluebirds have been here for about three weeks. Their winter home is in the southernmost west states of the U.S. (California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas) plus northern Mexico. But if you didn’t know where they were coming from, you would think pieces of the sky were indeed falling, for these birds are colored the most brilliant blue imaginable.

Mountain bluebirds (along with gardeners and farmers) are the ultimate optimists. The day after I saw the first pair for the year, a blizzard struck the plains about an hour to the east of us.

No, in the Dakotas, winter doesn’t give up easily. Today, we awoke to an inch-and-a-half of the white stuff on the ground (a bit more is on the way). With a diet comprised mainly of insects and spiders, mountain bluebirds have their work cut out for them. What self-respecting spider, wasp, beetle, grasshopper, or caterpillar is going to be doing loop-the-loops in the air or taking an upside-down stroll on the underside of a leaf? (especially since the leaves here have yet to emerge).

Not one.

Yet, as you might imagine, there are still insects and spiders outside, but they aren’t nearly as accessible or in as large numbers observed in summertime.

Fortunately, mountain bluebirds have other places to look for six- and eight-legged prey. Currently, mountain bluebirds along our road spend a lot of time foraging in a large unmowed field where the dried stalks of grass and thatch provide shelter to over-wintering insects. Other places the birds may search include: tree cavities, under the eaves of buildings, in the leaf litter, or in galls. Other insects, like ants and termites (not really mountain bluebird food anyway), aren’t accessible, for they winter in the soil below the frost line; nor are the larvae of dragonflies and damselflies, who grow and thrive under winter’s blanket of frozen water.

A Hackberry tree (Celtis occidentalis) makes a great tree for songbirds and hummingbirds.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. When spiders and insects are scarce, mountain bluebirds will resort to hackberries, grapes, currants, dogwoods, elderberries, and dried fruits of other plants for food. I can attest to the value of hackberry trees to songbirds in early spring: just last week in Pierre, SD, the neighborhood’s hackberry trees were dripping with robins and cedar waxwings as they devoured the trees’ berries (When I spent time in west Texas, I observed a goshawk nesting atop a hackberry’s main trunk, while in the vicinity, a pair of Bell’s vireos and several hummingbirds built their nests in some other hackberry trees’ branchtips).

Warmer weather in South Dakota will eventually prevail. And with it will come other birds, adorned in the spectacular palettes only nature can conjure. I look forward to the day when I see the first western tanager of the season. Black and bright yellow feathers color the wings and breast of this bird, while the fire of a sunset blazes atop their throats and crowns.

When that highly anticipated moment finally arrives and I hear the tanager’s characteristic upward tik-tik-tik declaration in the canopy of a pine tree, I’ll be the first to say:

Male western tanager

The sun is falling!

Have a great one.

Credits:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Mountain_Bluebird/lifehistory

https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/mountain-bluebird

https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/winter

Categories
bison Harry Potter humorous nature wildlife Wind Cave National Park

The Car with the Harry Potter Scar

…It happened at Wind Cave National Park

Springtime along the Lookout Point Trail in Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota (photo taken in March 2009, and not reflective of current snowpack conditions).

When my husband Dan returned from his awesome cardio workout—a cross country ski through Cold Brook Canyon in Wind Cave National Park—he was dismayed to find our family’s efficient little Impreza disfigured by a hit and run. He frowned (and said a few choice words) as he studied the new four-inch long scratch and three-eighths of an inch deep crease in the car’s metal.

Bummer.

When your car gets marred and messed-with by someone else, you expect them to do what’s honest and right…

Right?

But alas, there was no note on the dash. No address, no name, no…nothing. But despite this lack of forthrightness, he found plenty of clues as to the perpetrator’s identity.

Cold Brook Canyon is a treasure-loaded trail situated in Wind Cave National Park. Following an old roadcut, in the summer it is a place for viewing such gems as lazuli buntings, rock and canyon wrens, numerous woodpeckers, Clark’s nutcrackers, swallows, eastern phoebes, and many other birds. The various seeps in the canyon provide habitat for reptiles and amphibians in the park, and, on one hiking occasion, we discovered an elk rack laying in a nearby drainage.

Skiing on Forest Service land in the Black Hills.

Wintertime in the Southern Black Hills oftentimes provides sporadic opportunities for cross country skiing. This year, we have been blessed with more white stuff than usual, so on this particular day, my husband decided to take advantage of this fact to get his heart pumping. He likes to brag that he’s put in around 50 ski days this winter so far (with a minimum of 30 minutes of actual ski time each episode). I like to brag right back that I’m at least at 75 ski days; there is a lot of Forest Service land in the Black Hills, and most are crisscrossed with logging roads—perfect for cross-country skiing (after you make your own tracks).

Because of their concern for damaging the park’s outstanding underground resources (Wind Cave), the park doesn’t salt their roads (they are worried about the chemicals seeping down and compromising cave resources). Consequently, any cars driving into the park function basically like salt blocks on wheels. Whenever a vehicle is parked for any length of time, bison and/or deer gravitate toward it and start licking the door panels, bumper, fenders—anywhere that might be splashed with salt.

Tongue-lick marks on the sides of the car.

Tasty.

And when several bison crowd around a single car, they tend to get a bit feisty to maintain their territory. Horns and head butts/swipes are common tactics used to tell competitors to back off.

And that’s what my husband speculates happened: a bison, crowded and annoyed by his buddies, tossed his head and, in the process scraped and dented our vehicle.

(Here’s the other part I didn’t tell you: when Dan returned to his car, there was a large male bison licking the car’s passenger side door. Bison are unpredictable; they can decide to lollygag in one place for hours on end. Dan didn’t have that kind of time, so he snuck over to the driver’s side, quickly opened the door, jumped in, put the car in reverse, and made a quick getaway. By then, people had driven into the parking lot and saw this entire ridiculous episode. They were laughing. I would be too, assuming everything went as planned).

Dan is 99% sure that our car’s damage was made by a bison.

But I know better. That lightning-shaped scar gives it away.

The real culprit was:

Voldemort (and I’m guessing he doesn’t carry car insurance)

Categories
birds Cracker Jack nature wildlife

Of Cracker Jack and Flying Prizes

As a child, every once in a great while, my parents would treat us kids with a box of Cracker Jack. For those of you not in the know, Cracker Jack is a type of caramel/molasses-coated popcorn, into which is added peanuts coated with a sweet glaze. Now, I must admit, I just remember the Surprise Inside…Guess What’s Inside? label in blue and white on the outside of the Cracker Jack box. I can’t really recall any of the prizes. But at the time, the best part was the moment when I discovered the prize amidst the mass of caramel corn crowding my fingers: a little red-and-white-striped package about the size of a postage stamp.

Having a bird feeder is a bit like indulging in that box of sweetness; when you look out the window on a dreary gray day and see an entire flock of goldfinches lighting up the entire tube, your eyes savor and absorb the wondrous sight. And, in the Black Hills, the other “caramel corn” commonly visiting the bird feeder include white and red-breasted nuthatches, pine siskins, chickadees, and dark-eyed juncos. You enjoy watching the “peanuts”: the occasional blue jay, gray jay, hairy or downy woodpeckers stopping by, causing the feeder to swing from side to side as they wolf down one sunflower seed after the next.

And then that moment of excitement when you find the prize…

This strikingly-colored junco (above)—a bird like no other

  • White-winged variety of dark-eyed junco: in the Black Hills, juncos with this coloration are common.

Most dark-eyed juncos in the Black Hills are soot-colored birds that look like their bellies are dipped in snow, their wings lightly sprinkled with snowflakes. The bird in the top photo, however, is a zebra of different stripes.

According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, there are fifteen described races of dark-eyed juncos. These birds come in many different variations of color, but the following five are some of the more distinguishable ones: slate-colored, white-winged, Oregon, pink-sided, and gray-headed. The Oregon subspecies of dark-eyed junco is the most common one with a truly black head (vs. dark gray or light gray), but its wings tend toward brown than gray (unlike the bird in the photo, which has gray feathers). Perhaps the bird in the photo is a hybrid between Oregon and another subspecies, and touched with leucism?

The online Merriam Webster Dictionary defines leucism as an abnormal condition of reduced pigmentation affecting various animals (such as birds, mammals, and reptiles) that is marked by overall pale color or patches of reduced coloring and is caused by a genetic mutation which inhibits melanin and other pigments from being deposited in feathers, hair, or skin.

If a bird is affected by leucism, it will usually have paler or white feathers than other birds of the same species. This bird in the photo has a variety of things going on…there are patches of white where the feathers should be gray, or possibly black, which would support the leucism idea, but the bird in the top photo has pure black feathers on its crown plus gray feathers on its sides (the widespread gray is uncharacteristic of the Oregon subspecies), which suggests a possibly a hybrid amongst one or more of the junco subspecies…?

No matter what its genetic makeup, this dark-eyed junco is certainly a beautiful creature, a prize well beyond what I could hope to find in any box of snacks.

Wishing you joy as you go through your day, that you may find a delightful Surprise Inside.

…Who knows what it will be?

References

Dunn, J.L., and Alderfer, J., 2011. National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America. National Geographic Society

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Dark-eyed_Junco/id

Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/leucism

Categories
bison cool places near Denver, CO nature wildlife

Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge: A Getaway for the Urban-Challenged

The holidays brought us to the Denver area, where we visited family and took time each day to escape going to the wilder parts of the city. One amazing place is the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, a nearly 16,000 acre oasis in the midst of suburbia, where you can mine the quiet places in your mind and be still.

View from floating boardwalk on Lake Mary, where abnormally warm December temps have kept the ice thin. Chunks of ice atop the glassy surface are attributable to recreational ice breaking (a fun activity for kids and those who are kids-at-heart).

Geriatric black-footed ferrets (previously used in a captive-breeding program) are on display near the refuge’s visitor center. Wild versions of these members of the weasel-family love feasting on black-tailed prairie dogs and reside in the tunnels and homes of their prey.

Bison behind glass.

An eleven-mile loop around the refuge allows you to get up close and personal (from the safety of your car) to a small herd of bison that call the refuge home. These powerful animals can run up to 35 miles an hour.