Oh Sheep

I ended last week’s post with a ewe and cry about The Sheep Detectives movie opening. We did go see the very enjoyable film. And that inspired foraging up some other Scottish sheep images.

A short bus ride from Edinburgh, Blackness Castle, shaped like a ship, juts into the bay. If you’ve watched Saoirse Ronan’s Mary, Queen of Scots, or Outlander, or Mel Gibson’s Hamlet, the very rocky interior of this 15th century castle is unmistakable. Taking a stroll along Blackness Bay outside the castle, you might run into some of these black-faced creatures.

Much farther out in the Atlantic on Garry Beach on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides was another of these black faced ovines enjoying the sea-sprayed flavored grass near the shore.

Farther south and closer to the mainland lie the Inner Hebrides. A few years ago, I posted of a place I hope to return—the tranquil Isle of Iona. To get to the ferry to that island, you first need to get across the much larger Isle of Mull. Of the many beautiful sites there, is another 15th century castle called Moy which you get to by a lovely stroll along Loch Buie. You’ll share the route with some grazers.

Moy Castle on Loch Buie

The road map indicated an ancient stone circle not far away, so I found a place to park and walked through some boggy farm fields. There, I had two memorable animal encounters—one enchanting and one very uncomfortable. Because much of the land is so boggy, you need to stay on the narrow path near a farm fence most of the way. Several cattle were in the field but fortunately a distance away. You finally get through yet another farm gate, and in the distance are the Lochbuie standing stones—and some sheep.

Lochbuie Stone Circle, Isle of Mull

One of the sheep seemed to take a liking to me and followed as I walked among the Neolithic structures, and continued as I headed back to the gate. We chatted and I told him he’d need to stay. He seemed disappointed that I was leaving.

The walk got more interesting. While I was enjoying the standing stones, the Highland cattle had moved from the field to along the path. One young fellow was being a bit frisky with the ladies. As I slowly walked through the cattle, he approached from behind and gave a few gentle but firm headbutts. I’d grown up next to cattle in Florida, so I knew a little of their language, even if the accents were different here. I had a few words with him and walking backwards with my eyes on him, assured him I had no interest in the ladies in the field. And he let me pass.

This fella seemed to find some humor.

And on a final note, so ewe don’t forget.

"Ocean" by Mary Oliver

As I’ve written before, Mary Oliver’s poems and the Scottish coast seem to fit so well. Of course, she lived on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean. From the coast of the Isle of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides, it’s water all the way to Cape Cod where Oliver lived. Here are some sunset images from the Stac a Phris arch, so probably around mid-day across the pond on the Cape.

I am in love with Ocean
lifting her thousands of white hats
in the chop of the storm,
or lying smooth and blue, the
loveliest bed in the world.

In the personal life, there is

always grief more than enough,
a heart-load for each of us
on the dusty road. I suppose
there is a reason for this, . . .

. . . so I will be
patient, acquiescent. But I will live
nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting
equally in all the blast and welcome
of her sorrowless, salt self.

Mary Oliver, Ocean in Red Bird (2009)

If you look carefully at the images above, you can see I stayed on the same cliff to watch the waves crash, sun set, and the clouds play and I just changed lenses to zoom in on the distant isles.

Now a bonus for any of you who might go see Sheep Detectives this weekend. Scotland has a terrific law nicknamed “the Right to Roam.” Meaning you can walk through lands if you respect the owners’ rights and not disturb the land and animals. The trailless hike to Stac a Phris arch is several miles through farmland, bogs, moor, and along rocky coast cliffs. You get to climb some stiles or squeeze through gates. But you also sometimes get accompanied by (or ignored by) the sheep grazing. Here’s one fellow from a little earlier that day.

I am the eagle

After several prior visits to Zion National Park in Utah, we explored a lesser visited area. Right off I-15 on the west side of the park sits the Kolob Canyons area, while most of the 5 million annual visitors concentrate in Zion Canyon in the center of the park along the Virgin River. Snaking north-south between those two areas is Kolob Canyons Road. Travelling and stopping for hikes along that road mid-week in January, we saw very few other visitors while enjoying the quiet beauty of Zion.

We did see lots of bald eagles.

A couple adults in their bold black and white were soon joined by several juveniles who displayed a range of colors and feather patterns.

Let’s just enjoy them soaring, playing with the Ravens and resting on rocks.

Along with some lyrics from John Denver.

I am the eagle, I live in high country
In rocky cathedrals that reach to the sky

And all those who see me and all who believe in me
Share in the freedom I feel when I fly

Come dance with the west wind and touch on the mountaintops

Sail o’er the canyons and up to the stars

And reach for the heavens and hope for the future

And all that we can be and not what we are

The John Denver Show, The Eagle and the Hawk, 1974

Of Mere Being by Wallace Stevens

Reading a beautiful examination of a poem by Wallace Stevens this week, I wanted to share it with you. A.O. Scott used to be a movie critic for the New York Times and then switched assignments to be a literature critic and often explores poetry. The staff at the paper create beautiful graphics to accompany his writing and Aliza Aufrichtig did a beautiful job with this poem. I hope this link works for you. If not, searching for the article should get you a working link, though it might be behind a paywall.

The palm at the end of the mind, 

Beyond the last thought, rises 

In the bronze decor, 

A gold-feathered bird,

without human meaning, 

Without human feeling, a foreign song. 

You know then that it is not the reason 

That makes us happy or unhappy. 

The bird sings. Its feathers shine. 

The palm stands on the edge of space. 

The wind moves slowly in the branches. 

The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Of Mere Being by Wallace Stevens, 1955. As A.O. Scott notes this poem was published after his death and may have been the last poem he wrote.

The images are from close to where I grew up in Florida all during visits to my mother. The last one was taken the morning after Mom died.

Midwinter spring is its own season

Last week’s images of looking at what’s by your feet continues. I’m still sorting some older images from Scotland. Instead of rocks on a Scottish beach, today on the first day of spring it’s ice on a highland lochan.

In windless cold that is the heart’s heat

I previously posted images of the grand scenes on Rannoch Moor in the western highlands and the incredible midwinter fog that covered Loch Ba and surrounding mountains on the morning we visited. The hoarfrost on the plants and the ice patterns on the surface of the lochan (the little lochs) captured me as well. As pictured in the earlier post, there was a moonbow when the sun first came up with the fog. But as the sun began to clear the fog, it seemed to light afire the fog and one of the few trees in the bog.

The short day is brightest, with frost and fire

And the color was reflected in the ice that the sun would likely soon melt. You need to watch where you step. Much of the ground is sodden, and would get more so as the day warms. The day and the seasons can change quickly. And some things stay constant.

As well as the end of winter and first day of spring, Ramadan ends and the feast of Eid al-Fitr begins. And our self-proclaimed Christian nation along with the Jewish state, both led by autocratic minded leaders, bomb a Muslim state led by an autocrat. And children die.

Reflecting in a watery mirror

A practice for me this Lent is to meditate on T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. He wrote the last of the four poems, Little Gidding, as Germany was bombing London and Eliot was a fire warden in the city. It begins:

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart's heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing
The soul's sap quivers.

The soul’s sap quivers

As any good poet, Eliot begins with concrete images that provide layers of metaphor. He often has many allusions to Dante’s Divine Comedy. As quoted above, Eliot frequently refers to frost and fire. In The Inferno, the many of the levels of hell have fire, but ninth, the deepest level, is ice in which Lucifer is frozen.

With frost and fire

And perhaps he refers to our own seasons of life.

There is no earth smell
Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time
But not in time's covenant. . . .
Where is the summer, the unimaginable
Zero summer?

This is the spring time

Yesterday on the last day of winter in my backyard with snow on the ground, the air was warm in the sun. Frogs sang in the pond nearby and Sandhill Cranes sounded somewhere in the distance as they begin their trip south. May ICE melt everywhere.

Where is the summer, the unimaginable Zero summer?

"On the Beach" with and by Mary Oliver

Somehow my images from Scotland and Mary Oliver’s poetry seem to fit. If you search Mary Oliver and “ocean poem” or “the sea” or something similar, my dinky blog pops up high in the search with pictures from Scotland.

Marram Grass, Bosta Beach, Isle of Lewis and Harris

The wonderful island of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides has massive, dramatic seascapes. But I was just as enchanted by the forms, textures, colors at my feet. And these sights will be gone when the wind blows or the tide changes.

Bosta Beach

Mary Oliver lived for over half a century across the Atlantic in Provincetown on Cape Cod. Undoubtably, she was looking at her feet for some inspiration, too.

On the beach, at dawn:

four small stones clearly

hugging each other.

How many kinds of love

might there be in the world,

Tolsta Beach, Lewis and Harris

and how many formations might they make

and who am I ever

to imagine I could know

such a marvelous business?

When the sun broke

it poured willingly its light

Garry Beach, Lewis and Harris

over the stones

that did not move, not at all

Tolsta Beach, Lewis and Harris

just as, to its always generous term,

it shed its light on me,

my own body that loves

equally to hug another body.

Mary Oliver, On the Beach from A Thousand Mornings, 2012

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

I recently posted some images from Curecanti National Recreation Area on the Gunnison River in western Colorado. Curecanti is immediately down river from Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. I realized I’d never posted images of an earlier visit to that park.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Colorado

The canyon is not nearly as deep as the mile depth of the Grand Canyon or Hells Canyon in Idaho, but the canyon is narrow and dramatically steep, and 2,200 feet at the deepest.

At this view the canyon is over 1,800 feet deep and only 1,100 feet across. The park is on the eastern edge of the Colorado Plateau. The uplift was also topped with volcanic debris and sandstone. Only 2 million years ago the river started quickly cutting through those softer upper layers and then down into the ancient rocks eventually reveling some of the oldest rock in the world. Look down.

The day we visited in April a few years ago was very snowy.

I previously posted about the story of how the river got named after Captain John Gunnison who was surveying the area for a route for a transcontinental railroad. When he saw this canyon, he appropriately determined this would not be a good route. The post also explores the mystery of who soon killed Captain Gunnison—the Mormons or the Utes, both of whom did not want a railroad in the area.

You can see how the walls of the canyon are “painted” by the igneous rock which is the cooled and hardened magma that flowed through the older gneiss and schist. The image below helps give a perspective of the size of the formations with the trees on top.

That’s all, time to glow.

Turn around

This past Wednesday was the beginning of Ramadan and Lent, both seasons of fasting, prayer and reflection.

Shiba Park, Tokyo . . . Joel 2:12

One ancient practice of prayer is called Lectio Divina, Latin for divine reading, which begins with slow, repeated reading of a short passage. Another practice is called Visio Divina, for divine seeing, which begins with a slow, immersive gaze at an image or object.

Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado . . . Matthew 4:1

The texts inserted in these images are from Ash Wednesday and the five Sundays of Lent. For Ramadan, one common practice is to read the entire Qur’an over the 30 days.

White Sands National Park, New Mexico . . . Matthew 17:2

Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar living in New Mexico, describes one form of prayer as "wide-eyed seeing", or the simple act of being present and aware of the current moment.

Curecanti National Recreation Area, Colorado . . . John 4:10

Eight hundred years ago in 1225, Francis of Assisi, as he approached his death wrote what is considered one of the first poems written in vernacular Italian. In Canticle of the Creatures he writes of

Sister Water,
so very useful and humble,
precious and chaste.

Monarch Cave, Bears Ears National Monument, Utah . . . John 9:11

At about the same time Francis wrote those words, Ancestral Puebloans were putting their hand prints and other divine images on the walls where they lived.

Carlsbad Cavern National Park, New Mexico . . . John 11:35

October 3 of this year marks the 800th year of the death of St. Francis. Murray Bodo, a Franciscan Friar born in Gallup, New Mexico surrounded by the Navajo Reservation, and decedents of the Ancestral Puebloans, wrote:

“Then when Father Francis came to die, he sang the final stanzas of his Canticle, knowing full well the words would give him hope and courage to make the passage into the kingdom that already dwelled within him, a mirror of the kingdom he was about to return to.

Praised be you, my Lord, through our Sister

Bodily Death from whom

no one living can escape.”

Hoodoo you think you're foolin'?

Last week I posted about a hike through Wire Pass. Later that day we took another, easier nearby hike to the Toadstool Hoodoos in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.

This image is from the first time I visited the area in November 2016. The sunny day lit up the colorful white, red and yellow Entrada sandstone. You can also see the harder caprock Dakota sandstone in the center atop one toadstool and a collection on the top cliff. The softer Entrada erodes away while the caprock becomes balanced above creating the toadstools or hoodoos.

This trail is just off U.S. 89 between Kanab, Utah and Paige, Arizona. Last week, I mentioned the lottery for the Wave hike. In January 2020, we sat in the BLM ranger office in Kanab where they used to do the lottery like picking Bingo number balls out of roller bin. (Today, it’s all on-line and electronic.) After losing (again) we drove that very cold morning to the Toadstools. As we got closer, with clear blue sky above, a thick cloud lay low on the horizon. We drove into the heavy fog shortly before the trailhead. Eerie hoarfrost covered the few desert plants.

And lay tight on the ground.

This January, storm clouds gathered that would result in a big snowfall the next day which diverted our planned travel, but made for dramatic skies on this visit.

I’d not noticed the toadstools pictured above on my prior visits; they are a couple hundred feet above the ones you hike to. I spotted them further back on the hike and got this image using a long lens. Some millennium in the future this may be eroded down after the others disappear. These were above the rock layer you see in the image below.

As I was working on this post, an apt Paul Simon song played. It seemed he sang it a bit differently:

“I’d say now, hoodoo, hoodoo you think you’re fooling? . . .

My mama loves me, she loves me

She get down on her knees and hug me

Like she love me like a rock.”

Was this creature singing that song?

Or maybe I was.

Wire Pass to Buckskin Gulch

In south-central Utah, right on the Arizona border, sits Coyote Buttes North a/k/a “The Wave” that only a few hikers a day can get a permit to enter. I’ve entered the lottery many times over the years and never got drawn. Fortunately, the area is filled with other amazing hikes, and this year we tried a new one that starts on the same trail as The Wave.

The Navajo Sandstone began in the Jurassic Era, and the wind from that time is petrified into rock and sculpted again by wind and water. Soon the trail heads into a slot canyon called Wire Pass.

After climbing over and under huge tree that had been swept into the canyon during the flash floods that carve and smooth the walls, the gorge opens briefly into a wonderland of twisted, curling rocks before heading back into the slot canyon.

Wire Pass eventually enters into Buckskin Gulch, which at 17 miles is the longest slot canyon in the world. At the junction of the canyons, a thousand years or so ago, the Ancestral Puebloans carved petroglyphs into the wall.

The opening where the canyons intersect allows you to see how deep the canyon is since you usually can’t see the top while hiking in the narrow gorge.

Buckskin Gulch goes for miles in each direction.

And look in the other direction.

Despite the long dry period, some water still flows at your feet reminding you how the gorge was carved over eons. It also creates lots of mud as the canyon narrows, and discouraged us from hiking further up the canyon.

After a snack to sit and revel in the view, it was time to head back up Wire Pass.

And enjoy the open space of twisted rocks before heading back into the slot.

The slot canyon ends with chances to enjoy more expansive views while walking past the trail to The Wave and hoping to win the lottery some day and hike again in this magical place.

Fluttering Friends

I had a couple fun close encounters with some birds this year. In Estes Park, Colorado this August, we were surprised to see many hummingbirds that were getting ready to migrate south.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird

Rufous Hummingbird

One patient lady sat in the grass holding a flower, and a hummingbird enjoyed feeding from it.

As a very young boy, I remember visiting a lady’s house near the beach who left her front door open, and Florida Scrub-Jays would fly in to get the food she left out. That Jay is endemic to Florida and is on the Endangered Species list as its habitat shrinks. It has recovered somewhat.

We were visited by its cousin the California Scrub-Jay while hiking in Utah this month.

California Scrub-Jay

We were having PB&Js while soaking up the sun on the Petrified Sand Dunes in Snow Canyon State Park. That interested the Jays. While they wouldn’t eat out of my hand, they would come close by to find some bread.

In the Fog . . . with Hermann Hesse

A couple months ago I posted about a visit to a beautiful geographic feature in Nebraska that I camped next to and hoped to explore more the next morning, but the rain from a tropical depression coming up from California chased me away. I continued on to my next planned stop of Badlands National Park in South Dakota. The whole drive was through rain and fog, and when I first got to the park, there was little to see beyond a few hundred feet. Eventually, the fog lightened a little.

I’ve mentioned in a couple posts of a time I backpacked in North Carolina and awoke to a flooding Pigeon River that I camped beside. Another post about that hike I used a favorite poem from Anishinaabe poet Gordon Henry, Jr. Sleeping in the Rain. That night in the rain-soaked tent I was reading Sidhartha by Hermann Hesse. He was also a poet.

In the Fog, by Hermann Hesse

Strange, to wander in the fog.
Each bush and stone stands alone,

No tree sees the next one,
Each is alone.

My world was full of friends
When my life was filled with light,

Now as the fog descends
None is still to be seen.

Truly there is no wise man
Who does not know the dark
Which quietly and inescapably
Separates him from everything else.

Strange, to wander in the fog,
To live is to be alone.

No man knows the next man,
Each is alone.

Blessingway . . . Colorado

While Navajo reservation land is currently in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah, and the Ute have tribal land in southwest Colorado, and the Paiute assert rights to land in the area, the Navajo Blessingway graces all land. The Way of Harmony seeks to bless those on a journey. And mountains are a particular holy place for the Dineh. These are in southwest Colorado.

“Now I was surrounded by Sun’s surroundings,

when with the aid of a beautiful one I walked about,

Now I am long life, now happiness . . .

Behind me blessing is extended to mountains

Before me blessing is extended to the mountains

Below me blessing is extended to the earth

Above me blessing is extended to the sky

At dawn I walk.

Behind me it is blessed where I walk, before me it is blessed where I walk,

I walk, at dawn I walk.”

Text Blessing Way: With Three Versions of the Myth Recorded and Translated From the Navajo, Fr. Berard Haile, O.F.M., 1970

Mesa Creek, Curecanti National Recreation Area

A few years ago, we visited Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado. The narrow canyon is over 2,700 feet deep. Apparently, I never posted images from that visit. Two years ago, I hiked Curecanti National Recreation Area which is just downstream of the National Park. (The link gives some of the history of the area.) This fall we went back to Curecanti to enjoy the incredible autumn colors.

The easy hike begins by crossing the Gunnison River.

There were a few folks fishing for salmon that were just beginning to run up the river. We heard several loud splashes during the hike when fish leapt out of the water.

Upstream in the National Park, it is a challenging hike to get to the bottom of the deep canyon. Here, while the canyon is not as deep, you get a get taste of the Gunnison River’s work.

It’s hard to imagine a better time to hike along the river then when the fall colors are glowing and the light is reflecting in the water.

Cheers to the Gunnison River and Curecanti!

Toadstool Geologic Park, Nebraska

A hidden gem in northwest Nebraska in the Oglala National Grasslands is Toadstool Geologic Park. A view north from the campground looks like much of western Nebraska.

But a view to the west makes you think you might be at Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

Never having visited, knowing I’d be driving remote roads, and wanting to get some images before camping, I hurried and arrived about an hour before sunset. Got quite a show.

Took a nice mile hike in before it got dark, and looked forward to a longer hike in the morning. Like Badlands NP and Agate Fossil Beds National Monument a bit south of here, the rocks are filled with fossil bones and animal tracks from about 30 million years ago. (I posted some images from Agate Fossil Beds a couple years ago. Also, the Field Museum in Chicago has a terrific new exhibit called Life After the Dinosaurs which has some fossils and models of the animals that lived here.) Here’s an image of the only animal I saw.

With the clear skies, I was looking forward to getting up during the night and getting some images of rock features with the stars.

Unfortunately, when I awoke at midnight, clouds covered above so I went back to sleep.

Several hours later, I heard rain on the roof, I realized further hiking would not be possible, and that I better head out before the dirt roads get worse.

I hope I can get back to this remote spot someday. It is well worth more exploration. For now, the memories and photos from an hour’s stop will do.

Million Dollar Road Stop Conspiracy

Due to some national park site closures due to the government shutdown and to changes because of rain and flash flood warnings, we were ahead of “schedule” on our drive in Colorado. We altered plans to take a different route — the Million Dollar Highway. The two lane U.S. Route 550 travels north from New Mexico through Colorado. Various stories attribute the naming of the old road through the many mining towns, but the section between Silverton and Ouary lives up to its moniker.

We had sunny skies, clouds sweep by, and a snow storm. Quite a drive. I spotted something that made me pull over into a convenient spot where some ATVs were parked that were going to climb the side roads. It wasn’t this that made me stop.

Or even the colors of the aspens and evergreens.

Or even the patterns in the aspens.

Or even the stream that ran along the road.

These fellows made me stop.

A group of ravens has many names: A Conspiracy, an Unkindness, a Treachery. Around the Tower of London, they’re called a Constable. We had a snack and watched them fly among the aspen.

The Conspiracy would frequently reorganize.

Not until I was home and worked on the images, did I see a spy among the Conspiracy — a Black-billed Magpie. Spot it?

Cheyenne Bottoms, Cheyenne Anthem

Last week, I posted images from Capulin Volcano in New Mexico. The day before, I stopped for some birds in Kansas and Oklahoma. The first was Cheyenne Bottoms Preserve which is owned by the Nature Conservancy and is adjacent to lands managed by the Kansas Department of Wildlife & Ducks and the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge. The preserve was filled with shorebirds on their way down to Texas, perhaps visiting spots I saw last winter.

A favorite band in college was Kansas. From their song Cheyenne Anthem:

From the mountains to the sun, life has only just begun

We wed this land and pledge our souls to meet its end

Life has only just begun

Here my people roam the earth in the kingdom of our birth

Egrets and Herons, Cheyenne Bottoms Preserve, Kansas

. . . .

You have come to move me, take me from my ancient home

Land of my fathers, I can’t leave you now

We will share it with you, no man owns this earth we’re on

. . .

Lord, let me stay under the endless sky and the earth below.

Kansas, Cheyenne Anthem (When our oldest went to college, for a while I had his ringtone play another song from that album: Wayward Son.)

After stopping for some more birdwatching at Cimmaron National Wildlife Refuge also in Kansas, I headed into Oklahoma to camp at Black Kettle National Grasslands.

Say’s Phoebe

This little fellow would fly down into the grass to catch insects and return to his perch, but was too fast to get a picture of while eating. He was next to where I camped outside the small (pop. 77) town of Felt, Oklahoma near where OK, TX and NM meet. The National Grassland is named after Southern Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle.

On earlier on a trip to this area, I visited two national monuments connected with Chief Black Kettle. In November 1864, Black Kettle’s peaceful village at Sand Creek in Colorado was attacked by the 3rd Colorado Volunteer Cavalry and over 150 Cheyenne men, women and children were murdered. Black Kettle rescued his wife Medicine Woman Later who had been shot nine times. Inspired by my visit to Sand Creek National Historic Site, I posted some images with a poem by Cheyenne writer Suzan Shown Harjo.

Another sobering spot is Washita Battlefield National Historic Site a bit further east in Oklahoma. In 1868 Black Kettle returned to his village after an unsuccessful petition of peace to an Army post commander. The next day, another massacre killed both Black Kettle and Medicine Woman Later. Their spirits still fly there. I previously posted a bird singing at that site.

Northern Harrier

A larger bird that would also fly down into the grass for prey by the campsite was the magnificent Northern Harrier.

You have come to move me, take me from my ancient home

Land of my fathers, I can’t leave you now

We will share it with you, no man owns this earth we’re on

. . .

Lord, let me stay under the endless sky and the earth below.

Shut Down, Hike Up

The government shutdown started the day before my trip to the Southwest. I had campsite reservations on federal lands and planned to visit many National Park sites. What might I be able to get to? Gates were locked at a hoped for visit to Ft. Larned National Historic Site in Kansas, but that extra time resulted in a visit to the terrific nearby Sante Fe Trail Center museum. That night, the parking lot was open at the small picnic area in Rita Blanca National Grasslands in tiny Felt, Oklahoma. I got a little birding in before more folks came to the lot to camp. A nice couple from Springfield, Illinois and their dog set up next to me, and we shared some drinks and talked about our travels. They planned to visit Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico the next day. I had visited a couple years before and it was a little out of the way of my planned route, but when I woke very early, I decided to head that way.

Dawn at Capulin Volcano with Venus

I arrived just as a little light was coming into the sky. The volcano had a bright light on top that I soon realized was Venus. I drove on to the road to climb up the cone, but as expected, it was gated. The sign read that hikers and bikers were allowed when it was daylight, and I figured that the light switch had been turned on.

Dawn on the volcanic field

Dogs are not allowed on trails in the park, so Chance sat in the car during our visit two years earlier. This time we’d not be taking any trail, but walking the two mile paved road, so Chance came along. The road corkscrews up the cone and the dawn light was creating a nice show of all the cones in the distance. As the road curled to the east, the sun was just coming up.

The new light played on the grassland below. Capulin sits in the transition zone between the prairie grasslands and the Rocky Mountains. But it felt more like being in an Impressionist painting.

Or maybe one of Georgia O’Keefe’s who worked not far away

Or farther afield, maybe John Constable’s Romantic landscape.

We made it to the top and got to look down on another nearby cone before heading down.

The hike had been quiet, but the birds were out and singing for the walk downhill.

Canyon Towhee

I hadn’t even planned to come to Capulin Volcano the evening before, but thanks to a conversation, plans changed. The government shutdown closed the road to cars, but allowed Chance and I to hike the full round trip without encountering anyone else and enjoy the light show to begin the day. And then getting near the bottom, a giant Golden Eagle exploded out of a tree just overhead. I couldn’t get the camera focused quickly enough for the surprise, but fortunately it swung back a little later for a shot.

Chance and I made it back to the car for breakfast and to chat with some other people to encourage them to hike up the road. Before we left, the couple from Springfield came and I got to thank them for inspiring me to enjoy an inspiring morning.

Golden Eagle

Oh, Deer

We were lucky to see quite a few animals in Rocky Mountain National Park. By far the most common were elk from the far distance to eating along the roadside.

There was a competition for the cutest. I’d vote for the marmot on the alpine tundra.

Prime competition came from the Least Chipmunk, but when there’s “least” in your name, it’s hard to compete.

From smallest to biggest, we move on to the moose.

Mama moose and her young one were in Sheep Meadow. We had hoped to see some Big Horned Sheep here, but had to settle for this pair.

Going back to the car from looking at the moose, we were surrounded by some mule deer.

The end

A to Z: Alpine tundra Zoom

Fall River Pass in Rocky Mountain National Park is at nearly 12,000 feet. The one-way, dirt Fall River Road leads up the mountains to meet the paved Trail Ridge Road and offers a wonderful view of the Pass.

The tree line at Rocky Mountain NP ends at just over 11,000 feet. Above that is the alpine tundra.

From a distance the alpine tundra looks barren and nearly lifeless. However, taking a trail on the tundra reveals a bounty of life in the tough environment.

Flowers bloom and seed throughout the very short growing season.

Next week perhaps some of the birds that fly around here.