Waterways Wednesday

Flickr was in a bad mood yesterday so I couldn't upload Waterways Wednesday until Thursday. These are some of my favorite waterways, starting with an anonymous river on the Leelanau Peninsula, Michigan; the mighty Snake River below the Jackson Lake Dam, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming; the confluence of Hellroaring Creek and the Yellowstone River, Yellowstone National Park, Woming; the St. Lawrence River (Riviere Saint Laurent) from Quebec City, Quebec; the Mississippi River at the Quad Cities, looking from Iowa across to Illinois; the Chicago River, Chicago, Illinois; and La Mina River (Rio de la Mina), El Yunque, Puerto Rico.

Waterways Wednesday

Just a few - and definitely not all - of my favorite rivers.

Since we don't eat turkey on Thanksgiving day, I don't mind sharing this photo. I took it within a week of getting my digital camera, in April of 2004, Zion National Park, Utah. I was inordinately proud of it at the time; I'm happy to say, I've mastered the technique better of late. But the message works, does it not?

Another one of those days...

This is another one of those stretches of time when I have a lot I want to blog about and not enough time to compose my thoughts. This afternoon I'm going to Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of Handel's Julius Caesar, about which I will doubtless intend to post afterwards. I also have a lot of thoughts to share on the matter of widowhood: within the last six months, three friends of my generation lost their husbands, suddenly, to the kinds of things that take husbands suddenly at our age. And I still plan to eulogize the great Elizabeth Wacondo, who passed away this last July. In spite of all the losses, a co-worker and his wife were expecting the arrival of their first child this weekend. The continuity is well worth ruminating about.
And, as always, I want to comment on the changing seasons and wolfdom in Yellowstone, and on a DVD made by the Thermal Biology Institute at Montana State University...

Finally, something really useful

I came across this today: http://www.urbandictionary.com/browse.php?character=A while looking for a definition of snarge.
In a way, I wish I hadn't found it. It might have been nicer to go through life without knowing what it meant.

Amrchair Leaf-Peeping

Great shot of Electric Peak (within Yellowstone National Park) from the Web cam at Corwin Springs (a few miles north of the Park) this morning. It's absolutely wonderful to see abundant snow on its heights relatively early in the season. The thermometer on the Web page from which this was taken says it's 35^o F this morning. Compare this photo to these I collected last summer during the height of fire season. Any wonder I'm thrilled?
The 4-legged beast in the distance is a cow or horse, not, alas, wildlife.

Leaf-Peeping in Door County

Yeah, so OK I've not posted in a while. Part of my excuse is that we spent a long weekend in Door County, Wisconsin. The idea was to combine a little fresh air and exercise (it has several notably nice state parks for quality walking and scenery, though no wildlife other than some darned fine Midwestern birds) with a little retail therapy and some good eating. We achieved the latter two ambitions, but as to healthier outdoor activities, that was a bust. The reasons were the fact that the nation's midsection was bathed in humidity and unseasonal warmth on the very weekend we were seeking autumnal crispness. And we just felt like being fat, lazy and indulgent, especially given how much mileage we put in in Yellowstone and the Tetons last month. One exciting excursion was a most pleasant 45-minute ferry ride from Northport, at the peninsula's tippy-top, to the land-dot beyond known as Washington Island. Washington Island is the perfect place for doing nothing in beautiful countryside. Well, it's good for bicycling around, fishing, and probably for bird-watching on Rock Island, the next micro-land-dot in the archipelago reachable by an occasional passenger ferry. Washington Island is also the home of the modestly interesting and very productive Sievers School of Fiber Arts, which has the good sense not to spell itself fibre. If I had any talent what-so-ever in the sewing, weaving, knitting, or crocheting department, I might think it would be a lot of fun to take a course there - the setting is wonderful.
Otherwise it's not much of a happening place. But at Nelsen's we had a pretty good burger, yet more transfat-cooked French fries, and an interesting neighbor in the parking lot. The woody was in exquisite condition, and the Bernese mountain dog in the back seat as sweet and pretty as he (she?) could be.
I might add, the trees were at their absolute peak of fall color, and against the blue sky just made the heart sing.

A photo, just to keep things moving along...

This is a cultivated variety of Colorado columbine in the "wild flower" garden of Rock Creek Resort, Red Lodge, MT, taken in early September of this year.

Icebergradio, for those who don't yet know about it

I hope IcebergRadio won't mind if I lift and share with you their self-description, since it's straightforward enough to make it unproductive to try to re-word:

"IcebergRadio.com is owned and operated by Standard Interactive, a division of Standard Radio Inc., the largest privately owned broadcast company in Canada.

Iceberg Radio is Canada's biggest and best online radio portal, featuring over 100 channels across a variety of music genres, bringing you the widest and most dynamic music selection online, all the time.

Whether your passion is rock, pop, alternative, electronic, jazz or classical, Iceberg Radio plays your kind of music, live, 24/7.

Unlike other online music portals, Iceberg Radio isn't a repetitive jukebox: It's music that's programmed by people who live and breathe new sounds, who don't just work off the charts, and who tailor their programming to what the audience wants to hear."

For those who listen to music through their computers, I can recommend this site above all others I have ever used. The variety and quality of the music, organized into "genres" with an additional selection of sub-genres, is unparalleled on the Web. My tastes vary widely and everything I've delved into from their menus has been more than satisfying. There are no replays, the stream is reliable, "Now Playing" is accurate and full of useful information (though on my system it has to be manually refreshed). And although there is occasional voice-over identification, and of course paid advertising on the site, it is in no way obtrusive. Try it for a treat!

Moose-O-Rama

Saw a total of 12 moose, an animal that was clearly designed by a committee, on this trip. Many were so close that I couldn't focus the camera decently; they're often really hard to photograph because they like to hang out in brush that on sunny days results in variegated lighting conditions.

Monday on the bus

Monday, in the middle of the morning, I took the number 6 Jackson Express from my home on the south side of Chicago to the Loop (down town). Standing at my bus stop was a woman, about my age, of evident South Asian heritage. I imagine she was originally from India or possibly Pakistan. We made friendly chat, and sat together at the front of the bus, where the seats parallel the windows and face the passengers across the aisle. As our casual conversation ran its course and we returned to our own thoughts, I glanced across the way and noticed the three passengers directly opposite. One was a middle-aged, pleasantly plump African American woman; next to her, in the middle, was a man of Mexican, Central, or South American heritage, with a good dose of American native in his blood. To his right sat a man with a strongly East Asian body build and facial features.

When I was a child, in a small Midwestern university town, with one exception from grade school, I knew no one of any extraction other than Christian- Caucasian-European. By the time I was in junior high school, I had several friends who were Jewish, which though distinctly non-mainstream, was not discriminated against, and a couple of others who spoke with accents, but from European, not New World Hispanic or Asian countries. In high school I knew three or four black kids. In the late 1960s-early 1970s, college, in the same neighborhood I live in now, was only modestly more diverse. How the globe has shrunk since then. It's only chance that I even happened to notice the world representation on the bus. Most of us no longer even think about those things.

The safe return

We've been back in Chicago for five full days, and we're relishing the many highlights from our quick Yellowstone-Tetons trip. With KLK along there was ample hiking, as evidenced yesterday when I took off my beat up old nail polish to reveal a great toe under the nail on my left foot that was a very pretty shade of light blue-green - that's what happens when you jam it on rocks and roots over and over again. It was worth it. Saw good friends, watched wolves and bears, lost our breath over scenery, dodged wildfire smoke - successfully on many days, obvious in this shot of the bright three-quarter moon. Now to go spray a little (well, OK, a lot) of Febreeze on my pack in the hope that it won't be tooooo obnoxious when I pull it out of its home in an old pillowcase next time.

God, and the Friendly Skies, willing...

Tomorrow we leave for a short, intense trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons. Our first night will be in Chico Hot Springs Resort and Spa, in the highly irrigated Paradise Valley due north of Yellowstone's North Entrance. It's most certainly one of the prettiest spots on the face of the earth (and Chico's is consistently one of the best restaurants I've ever eaten in, by the way). Compare the photo of the irrigated greensward along the approach to the resort with the photo taken exactly two years ago of the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone. The lump to the left of the road is Soda Butte Cone, an active thermal feature out there all by itself, relatively far away from any other thermal activity.
Note, of course, the color of the brush, mostly sage and forbs, (only a little actually qualifies as grass.) This is what Nature looks like at the end of a long, hot, dry summer. The fires creating the choking ash and smoke of the Web cam captures, below, have been quenched, and primarily through soaking rains rather than fire-fighting efforts, though some are still smoldering in places, and some small new ones have started. In spite of what some pundits claim, that the fires are due to chronic "mismanagement" of the forests, in truth their occurrence cannot be 100% managed. They are, and always have been, part and parcel of Mother Nature. We only hope they contain themselves to uninhabited areas and don't endanger lives or property.

Trip report to follow in a couple of weeks!!

Don't breathe too deeply

Looking over the Yellowstone River (just north of Yellowstone National Park) towards Electric Peak (within the park boundary)
August 13, 14, 15, 16, 2007

I feel like a butterfly

How about a Pink-Edged Sulfur? Colias interior, taken in Wisconsin, summer, 2004.