I remember as a kid, in the city in LA, there were so many more butterflies than I see nowadays.
Spruce tips.
This robin led me along the trail, presumably away from the nest. It kept look back to see if I was following.
The nasty thorns of the devil's club shining in the sun, the leaves just opening.
The Arctic Terns are back at Potter Marsh and on high alert when a gull strays into their territory.
And the swans are passing through.
And while geese are all around in town, I don't get good opportunities to catch them flying.
Meanwhile. . .
I did check the Supreme Court docket. There are two new filings today. Scott Kendall informs the Board he's representing minority Board Members Nicole Borromeo and Melanie Bahnke. He also asks if the Court won't allow them in as Board members, then they'd like to be Amicus Curiae.
Yesterday, Nicole Borromeo file a notice to the Court that the Board's motion asking for a stay and the brief explaining why was illegitimate because the Board never voted to approve it as was their procedure. She included the vote to have the Board as a whole needed to approve such actions.
This is starting to seem like the plot of new Netflix drama.
You can listen to this song as you read. It should make sense by the end.
The sun kept a steady beam shining through the clouds as I biked over to Taku Lake today. I reached my 745 km goal (a vicarious bike ride from Chiangmai to Bangkok) on September 13. There's a tension between the benefits of riding the bike outdoors regularly and how my knees feel. It's obvious that three or four days without being on a bike makes my knees feel much better. I can live with a little pain if I know that the damage done is temporary. (It doesn't hurt while I ride, just later on.)
But there was still good biking weather and so I made a new goal. 800 kilometers. I reached that goal October 4. So what next? A quick and dirty calculation of .6 * 800km got me to 480 miles, so I needed 20 more miles to get to 500 miles. That would be about 32 more kilometers. It's not all that important and I didn't set out to go that far today. But the weather was good, everything was beautiful and a changing seasons way, and I got to Taku Lake feeling good.
At the south end of the lake were four swans (and a number of smaller and darker water birds) taking a rest on their way south.
Then back home with a stop on one of the many bridges that cross over the meandering creek to get a picture of the sun's reflection (maybe glare is a more apt term) on the creek. Although the sky was mostly grey, the sun made its presence known most of the way.
It ended up being 13+ kms. All but about three kilometers were on dedicated bike trail in the greenbelt that buffers the creek from residential and commercial streets. There's only one non-residential street that I have to cross. So I now had 816.5 kms for the summer. Time to check precisely how much more before I hit 500. So I googled 500 miles = x kms. Turns out the simple .6 rounds off more than I thought. 804km = 500 miles.
I was already there when I started. So know I'll just ride until it's icy on the trails. Winter biking, will be on the bike with studded tires and only for short distances if there's what used to be a normal snow covering - without ice.
Meanwhile, I'm working on a post on how the different redistricting plans move me from one district to another. Enjoy your Sunday. Find something wonderful - whether it's the bark on a tree or an old picture of people you love.
Went for a walk at McHugh Creek Sunday. This was our greeting at the beginning of the trail (to Potter Marsh). That's when I realized that the bear spray was at home. I figured it was better off in the house than in the car during the winter. [Of course, when I say something like that, I have to look it up. There are forums where people talk about bear spray, but not very authoritatively. But from Mace.com:
" Do not store unit in a cold environment under 32 degrees F (0 degrees C). This may cause depressurization and the loss of effective range."]
Never mind, we aren't likely to see a bear.
It's still that in-between-time, not white and not green yet. But lots of light from very early to later and later each night. But it was a gray - not rainy - day and my phone camera was having trouble getting the colors right.
We took the trail going up to the homestead, but by the third long stretch of very muddy trail. Actually, water is using the trail to get down the hill. We decided to go back down and just stay on the trail that goes to Potter Marsh.
If you look closely, there are spots of green where plants are pushing their way up out of the earth.
A surprise was the vibrant green and apparent health of the spruce trees. Lots of trees have been killed by spruce bark beetle in South Central Alaska. But there were good sized young trees that were doing just fine. Or so it seemed. Notice the healthy spruce in some of the other pictures too.
The nasty spines on the devil's club are even more apparent than normal when the plants are still naked.
And during this still leafless period, the odd shaped trees along this trail are apparent.
And there were lots of broken trees leaning in odd angles and piles of broken branch debris. It was about this time that I remembered that our 2021 State parks parking permit was in my wallet and not on the dashboard of the car.
Unlike the first trail, this one has boardwalks when the water gets to be too much.
The picture below is my favorite from yesterday. The lower resolution on here doesn't help. But I just like the texture of the tree covered hill and the various subtle shades of orange to budding green with trunks and branches here and there.
We are almost back to the parking lot.
My windshield was free of notices and I quickly transferred new parking pass from my wallet to the windshield. The view of Turnagain Arm never disappoints, no matter the weather.
Right near McHugh Creek,windsurfers were out.
When we pulled over at Potter Marsh, the photographers were out.
Soon all the straw colored grasses will be bight green.
There was even a pair of swans guarding a nest. I'm still battling my camera when it comes to focusing on distant birds. Eventually I hope to have a truce.
My birder friend Dianne agreed to take my daughter, nieta, and me birding today. We hit some Anchorage spots, then went onto the military base. Here are a few highlights - though I increasingly frustrated with my inability to take consistently clear pictures with my camera of distant birds.
A common loon with her big chick
This is an osprey that flew to the top of the tree with a good sized fish. It's dangling pointed toward 5 o'clock from the birds talons.
And salmon were spawning.
By mid day I realized how smoky it was. The paper this morning had said that we had a big fire (spread by yesterday's strong winds) to the South and another to the north. By midday it became really obvious.
Best I can tell, this is an F-22. One of four or five that flew over.
This is a white winged cross beak. The colors are hard to see silhouetted against the smoky sky.
And this is the smoke shrouded sun later in the day.
The Jacob's Ladder was already blooming on the south facing slopes.
Looking across the inlet, there was something fuzzy in that avalanche chute - blowing snow? Or water falling already?
Several posts in draft but needing more attention. Lakshmi Sign was the keynote speaker at the Alaska Press Club conference yesterday and Brett Wilkison's presentation on lessons learned from the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat's Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the Santa Rosa fire and its aftermath had a lot of interesting bits. Stay tuned.
Like these two swans at Potter Marsh yesterday, I'm keeping my head low, getting ready to head south. With a long to do list here, don't have time to blog on things important (it takes too long). Yesterday, I escaped to Potter Marsh to sit and read My Name Is Red for my book club that meets tomorrow night. REALLY good book and I'm sure I'll do some posts on it later, but now I just have to finish it and other loose ends before we go back to take another stab at cleaning out my mom's house and then getting some grandpa time in Seattle on the way home.
All this post death stuff has been affecting my stress level. I'd decided to check on my blood pressure again and my home monitor was giving high readings. Went to the doctor today and was reassured on two levels: 1. my home monitor gave higher readings than their office monitor and 2. blood pressure levels for over 65 tend to be higher. (Looking this up just now - something I was hoping to avoid in this post) showed less about the target blood pressure range and more about lack of good data and a range of opinions from the doctors. I'm just not going to worry. They said I was healthy otherwise. But not so healthy that I got away without a flu shot and a pneumonia shot.
So yesterday I sat in the car at a Potter Marsh pullout, watched swans and read my book as the wind now and then buffeted the van. The swans were clearly loading up for their flight south - with their head below water much more than not.
And I walked the empty boardwalk.
Hanging out in the van with the book and the swans and a little walk on the boardwalk as it started to rain was what I needed. Got well into this incredible tale that takes place in late 16th Century Istanbul and is loosely based on real a real workshop of court miniaturists. Lots to think about that's relevant to the theme of this blog - how do you know what you know - as they examine the difference between reality and how that reality is represented on the page, and as they tread a fine line between honoring Allah with their work and slipping into creating forbidden idols. And there's a murder to be solved and a love story as well. And the author Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
