Random Pictures - Part 1

Where has the summer gone?

In truth, I have absolutely no idea where the summer has gone and yet here we are almost into the middle of September.

Life has been very busy for weeks now.  Too busy in fact.

Far too busy.

Needful people in town have begun to become increasingly needful and it has been wearing on both LC and I recently.

They are quickly becoming one huge energy suck, and my Mountain Boy and I find ourselves beginning to say no to some requests.  Enough is enough.

My new business has kept me (and us) very busy as we work hard to try and get it off the ground.

And for all the work that we are doing, we have zero idea whether or not we can make this work this far removed from civilization.  

Time will tell I suppose, but in the meantime I keep forging ahead hopeful that I can do this.

 Between home projects, work projects, needful and needy people, wild fires, and vehicle mechanics who could do good and honorable work but don't, Labor Day weekend hit and I finally realized that summer is really over.

Weather (as it usually is this time of year) is all over the map.  

For a few days it was very cool and night time temperatures were right at freezing.  For a few more days it has been endlessly sunny and exceedingly warm and I look forward to a time soon when it will simply be sunny and 60.

With us not traveling anywhere exciting or doing anything exciting, the next few blog posts will be cleanup blogs.

I have endless and random pictures that were taken over the summer.

Pictures that were lost among tens and hundreds of other pictures in random files, some of which I will post over the next few posts and then happily delete..

The picture above was taken in our yard.

The deer were in town the first spring that we lived at this house, and after a long and cold winter our ravenous four legged residents contentedly ate everything green in our yard just as soon as it began to grow.

 All last spring and summer we had wanna-be bushes that never really had a chance to develop.

THIS spring the deer were nowhere to be found and as days began to get longer and warmer, we were pleased and surprised to learn that we actually had flowering bushes.

We had lilac bushes.  We had................whatever the heck the bush in the picture above is.

We also quickly learned that we had some kind of flowers in the front corner of the yard.

Pink and beautiful flowers.

And very surprisingly, we even had the new signs that rose bush roots had survived over the past few years.

And so we have the beginning of new growth all over the yard.

Actual land scaping.

New growth that will take a few years to really turn into something, but when we moved here we had only dead and dry and brown grass, so all is good................

We have a herd of horses on the side of our shed...............

I missed the town deer all last winter, quietly grieving over their disappearance as I wandered through the silent streets of town for months in search of them.

They were gone for about six months, and with the silence of the BLM coyotes we wondered if the rumors of a wolf in the desert was actually true.

A couple of months ago I was walking with my pup, turned a corner and was startled to see big eyes staring back at me.

The deer had come home.

Tonight Kory and I saw a small herd of six all wandering together in town, and I have hope that they will stay through the winter.

We had three huge bucks in our backyard a few nights ago.

Now that summer is over (and now that they have eaten my bushes down to nothing) I hope to see them often...............

The wild fires that surrounded us for months (and that hid the mountains completely from view) either have or are getting under control, and the mountains and unobscured blue sky has returned.

I walked with Kory one day a few weeks ago and snapped these random pictures.

Of dramatic cloud formations that lay against the impossibly blue sky of late summer.

Even though it is still very warm town is already and almost imperceptibly becoming just a little quieter every day.

The Fish and Game folks (who were in town for the summer to study sage grouse out on BLM) are gone.

The BLM fire fighters are still here but will be gone within the next few weeks.

The tourists (who blow through town curious to see what a place with a name like Atomic City actually looks like) are mostly gone.

We'll get the hunters. 

And then we'll have nobody, and that is my favorite time of year..................

A couple of months ago we stopped at a mans home in Arco.

We were in town for some reason which I cannot remember now, and LC wanted to stop and say hello.

He is a nice elderly man.  Intelligent.  With an easy smile and a friendly demeanor.  And he has been very sick with cancer.

After brief hellos, I left the guys to visit with each other while I wandered on the mans large property with my dog.

He lives just on the outskirts of Arco on a beautiful piece of property that is surrounded by hills.

Behind his land there is a dry river bed that snakes its way through his property and beyond.

When he bought this land the river ran hard and fast and deep and the man had told us at one time that he used to walk back there and fish every day.

Now it is only a dry river bed - a consequence of unchecked well digging and unchecked irrigation further into the valley.

The Big Lost River is really lost.  

If I had purchased property that contained a free flowing river and it dried up I...............would not be pleased...............

These pictures were taken a couple of months ago, but when I look at them now I realize just how beautiful and green this area is through the summer.

It is all beginning to fade now.  As it always does in the west................

The top of Big Butte, 30 miles away.................

The mans land can be split into three distinctive parts.  

The first is his main living area - large gravel parking lot, home, landscaped yard filled with flowers, trees and a long row of lilac bushes.

The second is a large field.  He had irrigation equipment in the field but it was unmoving and it did not appear that the man was actively growing crops when we visited.

But he has been very sick, so that was not surprising.

The third section is a mostly forgotten section of land adjacent to the river bed.

I love the place.

 It is a beautiful piece of property - close to town but also feeling far removed from town.

An old log cabin used to store yard equipment................

Number Hill.

Visible from the house.

Visible from everywhere in the town of Arco..............

The river.

The No-River....................

On the way home from Arco we turned off the highway early, picked up a gravel road, and slowly cruised this bumpy back way into town.

It wasn't that I was surprised to see the antelope.

It was that they were so close to the road that surprised me.

This year we have greatly enjoyed seeing many antelope out on BLM land.

 But distances are so vast, and with so much of BLM land being bone dry and brown, it has been very difficult to take pictures of them.

These were still a good distance from us, but I was pleased to snap these two pictures.................

I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.........Marilyn Monroe

Your Moon And My Darkness

And I was your moon because I shined brighter than any other star in your universe and you were my darkness. Without you I could not see the depth of my light and with you I could set the night a glow. So we needed one another—the dark and the light. Your fear. My courage. Connected, but separated. Different, but the same. A synergy that made no sense, but every bit of sense. We were neither a beginning, nor an end. We were somewhere in between our madness at sunset and the reality we awakened to with each sunrise. We were the ghosts of timing and fate. We were neither fantasy, nor reality--- we were a purpose somewhere in between............Shannon L. Alder

Simple Life In Dogs World

 A few days ago early in the evening, when the smoke from seemingly endless western wild fires had dissipated, I walked with my dog on BLM land.

We didn't travel far.

Rather, we stayed close to town.

Wandering down first one gravel road, we turned right onto a second gravel road, walked a couple of blocks and turned onto a short dirt trail that led out onto BLM land.

If we had headed out onto the trail we could have either circled our way all around the entire length of town at one fork, or continued walking out into the desert at a second.

For miles.

We did not do either one of those things.

Instead, I crossed into a huge field.  That leads to one more field.

That contains bales of old hay that Kory loves to run around, jump on, run across, scare rabbits from.

That leads eventually to four old potato silos that long ago fell into abandoned disrepair.................

 The Twin Buttes and BLM fire station, each covered by a light, smoky haze.................

 As I slowly and absently wandered through the fields I alternated watching for rattle snakes and looking out over the buttes.

Even though the buttes were visible, the mountains to the north and west were still completely hidden by the smoke.

It has been close to two weeks since we had last seen them.

Kory - as always - ran her joyful run and I watched my goofy mutt, enjoying the sight of her and envious of how simple her life seems to her.

She is fed, watered, exercised, loved.

There are vols to kill, and bunnies to chase, and life is good.

Life is so simple in a dogs' world....................

 The silos are one of only few outstanding features in this tiny town and I continue to love the silent geometry of them.

I was in no rush to walk hard and fast, and no hurry to head home, and so I continued to absently wander. Enjoying the silence,  Enjoying the emptiness.  Enjoying the aloneness of walking only with my dog and seeing only my dog.

I need a lot of alone time these days.................

She jumped around and on the silos and chased rabbits.

I walked.

She climbed onto hay bales and then chased rabbits.

I walked.

She ran through the tall grass and chased rabbits.

She deeply joyful at being embedded in the wonderful world of climbing, jumping, chasing and running.

Me walking but feeling..............what?

I'm not even sure anymore................

By the time I had circled around to the front of the potato silos I looked around me, scanning the area in search of my dog.

Normally I watch her closely as I make my way across a silent world.

Always wary of what she will get into - voles and moles and owls (oh my), deer, rattlesnakes or simply wandering mindlessly in the opposite direction to our direction of travel (always with head high in the air and I know that she has caught the scent of something intriguing).

On this day I had been lost in thought and had no idea where she was.

Calling her name, I already knew that if she was too far away she would not be able to hear me, and that if she was on the trail of something she would choose to ignore me.

I walked back the way I had come - away from the silos and headed towards the huge hills of long-abandoned hay and that is when I saw her.

Jumping around on the ground and hay bales, her excited, jerky movements telling me that some little unsuspecting critter was having a hard time of it..................

Rather than being annoyed with her I decided to patiently wait for her, and I watched my girl in mild and quiet bemusement as she continued to follow her nose.

Eventually I called her name again, and I watched some more as Kory sprinted in my direction..................

He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the midafternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad..........Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated............