Wind Songs: Joyous Dog Doing Joyous Things

While roaming around picture files the other day I realized that I may not have shown a picture of the truck that LC finally bought a few months ago.

A good, sturdy beast of a truck that rumbles when it starts up, is better on gas that we had hoped for or expected, is in better condition cosmetically and mechanically than our previous truck and one that we got for under $2000.

For an occasional vehicle (for those times we need occasional power) the weeks of non-stop searching were worth it......................

Pictures taken a couple of months ago (yes.............still catching up with all the pictures I took this past winter).

By this time in winter there was so much snow on the ground that we could no longer power our way through it on trails in the Suburban, and I could no longer walk easily with my sweet pup out on BLM land.

By this time I was walking on roads with her.

Heading down empty roads that travel for miles out of town in the directions of both Arco and Blackfoot.

On this particular day LC, Kory and I drove out of town for only a mile, before turning right onto Big Butte Rd.

A mile down the snow covered gravel road and LC pulled the Suburban as far over to the side of the road as he could, and parked.

Eagerly we all clamored out of the truck, and wandered down the middle of the empty road as though the road belonged entirely to us.

On that particular day (and many other days this past winter) Big Butte Rd DID belong only to us...................

Stretching to reach her nose deep into the snow in search of elusive bunnies.

Look at that beautiful, lithe, athletic body.

She is a beautiful dog......................

We took a bumpy back road the last five miles back to town one day, in search of the elk.

They had been out on BLM land a few miles from town, all winter.

We saw the elk every time we drove that way (they did not wander far) and each time we slowly drove that bumpy, snow covered gravel road, I hoped that the elk would have moved closer so that I could take some decent pictures of them.

They never did.

My little digital camera could never compensate for the distance and so the elk pictures I took all winter simply looked like sage bushes in the snow-covered desert.

Regardless, I took nice pictures of a huge butte in the desert completely buried in snow...................

Part of the back yard as the sun was beginning to set..............

I love this picture...........................

This weird little town is filled with things that are never............

This tiny building has never been occupied or even entered into as long as we have lived in Atomic City (which is 2 1/2 years now).

This old-school tractor (that sits outside the mobile-home-city-hall-building) has never moved in all the time we have lived here.

Everywhere I walk in town (all 2 miles of roads if I walk every road) there are trucks that never move, buildings that never open, hoses that sit in the same place season after season after year).

If my name was Stephen King I could easily write about this town in whispered tones replete with nuclear-scarred-zombies and hastily abandoned homes (with half eaten sandwiches still laying on plates on the kitchen tables) and tumble weeds that become tangled webs in trees and the haunting bark of coyotes that wander through town after dark but always remain hidden in the frozen mist................

I have no idea what Kory was so interested in, but each time we wandered down this road she would go to the same hole that she had dug, and make the hole a little bigger and a little deeper.

Every time we walked this way.

I half expected Jimmy Hoffa to be buried in this spot, but no.

No Hoffa, once the snow had melted.
I watch her day in and day out, joyously doing all the things that joyous dogs do, and the sight of her greatly pleases me....................