Well, sort of winter; technically it is winter even though it doesn’t look like it. This pond was made by some beavers who put together a dam across the mouth of a little stream just before it enters the river. It has been cold enough to create some fairly substantial ice on the spillway from the dam (but not substantial enough to keep my boot from breaking through it when I walked across on it). Brrrr!
For most of the past month our weather here has been rather dismal, the beauty of the autumn colors having passed and the bright snow of winter not yet in residence. It is a good time to visit the photo archives and reminisce about past journeys and scenes from along the summer trails. This photo is from the USFS trail 460 to Cube Iron Mountain in the Cube Iron – Silcox Roadless area. It was not included in a series that I posted about that trip in August of 2010.
I believe that trails like this are treasures of the American West and I fervently hope that they will always be respected and preserved. The land through which they wind is part of our National Forests and therefore they belong to all of the citizens of our country no matter where they reside and all are welcome to use and enjoy them.
Thinking today about the winter conditions in our mountains, how the trees can tolerate the elements, and the tracks in the snow on Buttercup Ridge, I remembered I had not posted this photo from last February of another species capable of surviving in severe weather, the Big Horn Sheep. (On many winter days I wouldn’t mind having a jacket like the one he’s wearing!)
There are both frost particles and snow on this fir branch. In the deep canyon where this tree lives it will not feel the direct rays of the sun again until May. Even existing in these conditions, this Douglas Fir may be still standing for up to a thousand years after our brief lives are over, yet our species in the one that is arrogant.
