Occupation of Independence

 It doesn't feel natural or desirable to start off on a walk by going downhill, but that was what we had to get used to, at our current campsite in eastern Oregon.  But I stopped dead in my tracks when I heard some loud and strange animal noises. Some You Tube videos clarified things: I was hearing the plaintive mating calls of rutting elks.  They sounded so close!  And every 30 seconds!  I have never heard so many 'bugles' by elks in my life.  The bugling is so high-pitched, it is hard to believe it comes from an 800 pound beast! There were so many bugles going off in my neighborhood that it was almost funny.  If an elk cow can't find a willing bull in this area, she just isn't trying very hard.

 No more embarrassment and no more apologies for becoming completely satisfied and content when I get certain things.  The other day I experienced a strange kind of chiaroscuro, of violently contrasting bright blue sky and lush, liquid green.  Eastern Oregon was being good at what it does.  If you live in a part of the world that has real trees and grass and soil, you just can't appreciate this: Yes, I can still remember mowing green grass when I was young.  It was wet and smelly sometimes.  I am so fortunate to be able to flutter my eyelashes over trees that actually have leaves.  This is a pin oak, perhaps?: As if these things are not miraculous enough, the city park also had a spirited river running through it: I laughed when I saw these thistles: There was a time in life when these would have seemed fierce to me.  Nowadays, I could chop 'em up, put 'em in a salad, and throw on a little salad dressing.  These softies in the Northwest don't...

Eastern Oregon: I love horses, as so many people do.  But they are not a big part of life, even in the western states.  So it was a real pleasure to stumble onto this, on today's bike ride:  (After popping the arrow twice, the viewer might want to click the rectangle on the black footer bar of the video to enlarge into  "theater mode.")  The immense 'sagebrush sea' (that starts down in southern Nevada) ends here.  The cowboy was only a mile from where the still-visible Oregon Trail exited the sagebrush sea.  Recall Nevada, a month or so ago:  A morning rain shower was dissipating, so the sky was opening up into puffy cumulus clouds: Meanwhile still photography is up to its old tricks -- that is, looking for soft hills and shadows: There is nothing more classic-western than Indian Paintbrush, and there are plenty of them around, in eastern Oregon:

Freakish weather has the effect of making you observant.  And what could be more freakish than two consecutive days of rain in a western state?  That happened recently.  The next morning large pendulous drops were hanging on plants in a way that didn't seem real. The photo, bad as it is, still gets the idea across that drops of water held onto plants like Christmas tree ornaments.  This kind of thing happens so infrequently I cannot predict it. But it makes me nostalgic for returning to a real camera instead of a smartphone.   For years I used a compact zoom.  It really was more fun taking photos back then.  And the moisture/water/fog photos turned out rather well: The photo above was taken near Moab on a chilly, autumn morning.  Our bike ride had taken us downhill, into a frost pocket.  It was shockingly cold in that hole. One winter morning, after some generous rain in southern Arizona: Sometimes even fog is photogenic: Even spider we...