12 October 2008

What A Difference A Week Makes


In case anyone was wondering when winter started... it was yesterday. Wyoming got hammered over the weekend with some nice, heavy, wet snow. A foot or more in places, six inches or so in my neck of the woods. Heavy enough to break limbs off my poor trees. Compare this to last Sunday, when I went hiking at a friend's place near Devils Tower.



Blue skies, temp about in the mid-sixties, a nice breeze blowing...



Well, blowing is an understatement. The breeze came howling down the canyon with enough force to make my sitting-on-top-of-the-canyon-wall meditation a bit nerve-wracking. There were enough downed and precariously perched trees from a fire a few years back that the creaking grew rather ominous. I retreated to the relative safety of a spot further up the canyon, out of the direct line of the wind.



See that tree leaning to the left in the left half of the picture? That was my perch until the wind threatened to rip my ears off my head. Lots of little birds flitting about, bluebirds, a chickadee that serenaded me with a three note rendition of "Stupid Human Tricks". So I gave up on the meditation, and went exploring. I found live deer, a fawn skull and bones, and more evidence of things passed -


Apparently a coyote snacked on a turkey, and left only the bones, feet and feathers. I picked up a few feathers, but declined bringing home gnarly turkey feet for posterity.



I also passed on the snake skeleton. Not sure what it was, bullsnake or rattler, but no rattles I could find, and no head. Better a dead snake than a live one. (And there was a live rattlesnake sighting about an hour before I got there.) The wind picked up yet again, and this time, it was pushing a thunderstorm before it. Rain, a welcome change from the dry. So here we are, a week later, and I have all the anti-dry I could wish for.


Some of us don't seem to mind, however...



10 comments:

Anonymous said...

From today's morning paper;

"It will seem like summer in October today, as highs reach nearly 80 under partly sunny skies, according to the National Weather Service at Greater Binghamton Airport. Overnight lows will be in the lower 50s."

Constance Brewer said...

Ah, but Anon, I'm just giving you a preview. Get ready, it's a comin' your way. *g*

Gabriele Campbell said...

I love the last pic. :)

But wow, you do get rapid weather changes over there.

Constance Brewer said...

Wyoming - If you don't like the weather, wait a minute... We can have sunny and 70, and 30 and snow all in the same day. :)

Carla said...

They say the same in the Lake District - if you don't like the weather wait a minute and it will change. I'm always tempted to mentally add "to something worse" :-)

Constance Brewer said...

Carla, yep, that's the unspoken caveat to weather. It's always worse. :)

kc heath said...

that last pic is adorable!

I miss the mountains.... Thanks for sharing your private moments :)

Constance Brewer said...

Merlin is very cute. and photogenic. Too bad he suffers from CHY.

"Can't Hear You"

kc heath said...

I figured that was Merlin. Your other dog [forgot his name, sorry] is larger, isn't he? And doesn't smile as pretty either :)

Okay, I'm dumb--what is CHY?

Yeah, I know. I NEED TO BE IN THE MOUNTAINS! We're talking about a family trip to southern Colorado sometime next year...maybe. Depends on, oh guess what? yeah, money. blah.

Constance Brewer said...

Max is the tri-color.

CHY = "Can't Hear You!" A common Corgi affliction when they don't want to come in.