Seedhouse, Routt National Forest, CO "The forest is a beautiful and magical place in the daytime, and it remains that way at night." For some reason I always felt a little nervous about getting out of my tent at night. As if there were monsters out there, or the animals became vicious and rabid after the sun went down. I don't know exactly, but reading the quoted sentence in a guide book actually helped a lot. It's a way I'd never thought about it, but it was a good argument: the words helped my love of wilderness to overcome my fear of....I'm not even sure what. And with my fears dissipated, I was able to get out and take one of the first real star pictures I've ever taken. I don't really have the know-how or programs to make this quite as spectacular as some of the other star/milky way photos out there, but it's meaningful to me. I bet I'll repost a 2.0 of this someday, but here's this for now.
An unsuccessful attempt to track sandhill cranes at sunrise turned into a pleasant morning of examining wildflowers outside of Steamboat Springs, CO. It's so fascinating to look for the hidden orders in the arrangements of the petals, the circles and spirals that subtly shape the beauty we find so readily in these plants' sweet-smelling reproductive organs. Even nettles, perhaps some of the least pleasant plants out there, have a stunningly complex bloom, despite their suboptimal 'rose-thorn' ratio.
