Wednesday, January 25, 2012

I'd Rather Be Hiking. Also, #91!

I just got word from Dino that he saw two Rough-legged Hawks (Buteo lagopus) today, making that the 91st species for Dryad Ranch!

We got some nice rain over the weekend and Monday (finally).  At one point as I was standing at the kitchen window looking out, Dino came flying down the driveway on the tractor: dodging hail. That was it for the tractor work for the day.

I still ended up taking a couple of walks in the on/off drizzle. Although I feared I would be disappointed, as we'd only just gotten the rain, I was rewarded by spotting a few cap and stem mushrooms already popping up, and these turkey tails. The bonus was two types of slime mold, a sub-interest, which is very hard to photograph until such a time as I finally spend the bucks and throw some hardware at the problem.  Oh, look at this two millimeter red dot on a log! Anyway, turkey tails are usually orangy brown, but these new ones were green. Neat.
















It was so amazingly beautiful walking; I swear I could smell the rain sinking into everything and hear all the trees and critters and living things breathing a big sigh of relief. As I got to the top of Deer Ridge, I found myself experiencing that sort of in the moment joy where you are just a human fully in the world, you could just as well be the wind or a pine cone and there's no silly mind chatter, just clean air in the lungs and wide open spaces. (Like this:)





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