Beside the Stream

A visiting elk

Published by Alice on March 3, 2010 in elk herd. 7 Comments

The snow is receding and people are feeling more hopeful about spring, but the deer and elk are entering their hardest time: their fat is gone, the graze is gone and there’s no new food to browse on. There have been two hungry elk hanging around this week, and this morning one of them was grazing out back. My flower bed starts at the snow line. This is a giant beast.

I took these pictures through a window, and the elk didn’t know I was there.

I got a beauty shot,

and a cutie shot, but when I went outside all I got

was a faraway shot of a ribby elk running away.

Another visit from the snow fairy

Published by Alice on February 23, 2010 in snow storm. 10 Comments

We’ve had about a foot and a half of snow in the last few days, and no one was very excited about it… not the people, not the deer, not the ducks. In Durango, the official tally is approaching 100 inches of snow, and we’ve had more in the county.

In celebration of the additional snowpack, Bob dug a path to the fire pit. It’s the first time in months that we’ve been in the garden, and we sat and watched the fire from its bold start to quiet embers.

As the fire burned down, the walls of the pit revealed, layer upon layer, the history of our winter storms,

and the fire-lit snow looked molten.

(The next morning, that incandescent orange could have been a dream.)

P.S. Here’s a map of the magpie’s range:

Snow and trees

Published by Alice on February 17, 2010 in snow storm. 7 Comments

Purgatory opened new terrain this year that is truly breathtaking. It comes with it’s own set of suggestions.

Bob doesn’t like it. His initial stance was that I not do it alone; we agreed instead that he knows where to look if I don’t come back from skiing (already covered by Suggestion #2, Ski with a friend and Suggestion #4, If you are injured in this area, rescue times might be greatly increased.)

It’s addictive. The trick is not to look at the trees, but at the spaces between them.

In real life, you can choose a path by avoiding obstacles. But in steep snow and trees you have to let the opportunities determine your path, not the obstacles. You have to rely on your choices, not your fears.

You see the space when you’re skiing, and the trees when you stop…

at 10,000 feet, where the boughs are decked with mermaid hair,

too beautiful to be believed.

Awaiting a puppy

Published by Alice on February 10, 2010 in dogs. 12 Comments

At a party in mid-December, a neighbor whose dog died this fall told me that he wasn’t getting another one; he’d rather not break his heart again. As soon as I got home, I searched online for kennels within 300 miles of Durango that bred mid- to large size rough-coated Berners. I called High Country Kennels next morning, and reserved a little girl.

Cookie was bred to Tank, and three weeks ago she had 7 puppies; one of them is mine.

From the photos, I’d choose Miss Cuteness #3… but that’s just on looks.

The kennel is an hour north of Denver, so Sam will drive up to pick out the puppy at five weeks, when their personalities become evident. Bob wants the alpha female, so Sam will be choosing our dog with the breeder’s help. And we’ll take her home on March 17, at eight weeks old.

Let the games begin!

Deep snow

Published by Alice on February 5, 2010 in deer. 8 Comments

It snowed all week, with three storms in a row dropping foot after foot of powder. A few hours of rain between storms left a heavy blanket behind, and digging out was a major task. There was too much snow to be measured in inches. The piles in town were eight and ten feet tall, and a few neighbors on our county road have their windows blocked by snow that slid off the roof.

It wasn’t just people who were snowed in; the deer were immobilized too, and spent days sleeping in the tree wells.

Eight deer spent the day in a fairy circle around this pine,

and then I started seeing deer under more and more trees.

I couldn’t count how many deer were lying down here, so I called out

and all four stood up.

There were four under this tree,

and my favorite mom with two yearlings spent all day dozing under a tree near my office.

Dear little deer.

A deer lies down, and more snow

Published by Alice on January 20, 2010 in deer. 6 Comments

Here’s the moment between standing and lying down: the deer kneels first

and then settles.

I took those photos Sunday, and it started snowing Monday. It has been snowing ever since, and is forecast to continue through Friday.

Bob manages the driveway, and Sam used to do the shovelling. Without a teenager in the house, I have to clear my own path to the barn.

Day by day the storm drops more snow, and each day that path gets narrower. I miss Sam, it’s true, but at times like this I miss teen labor even more.

A robin bobbin’ in winter

Published by Alice on January 12, 2010 in birds. 7 Comments

A flock of robins is wintering in an orchard down the road.

A few of them regularly drop by to forage on a steep, south-facing slope near my office. I thought it was a sign of global warning that they didn’t fly south, but instead

robins live here year round. I had no idea!

Here’s a photo of a bobbing robin, with both feet off the ground.

Here’s a picture of a stotting mule deer, all four feet off the ground. (This is my edit of a photo from the biology department of the University of Regina in Canada).

Bobbing is a gerund of bob, and like many old words ’bob’ has many meanings. In the robin’s case, it’s

bob –verb (used with object)

2. to move quickly down and up: to bob the head

Origin:
1400–50; late Middle English bobben. )

The mule deer’s stot is from the same root as stutter.

stot –noun

1. a springing gait of certain bovids, as gazelles and antelopes, used esp. when running in alarm from a predator

verb used without object

2. to run with such a gait

Origin:
special use of Scots, N England dial. stot bound, go by leaps, bounce; perh. akin to ME stuten to stutter

It takes a special word to leap straight up in the air.

Gravity and grave behavior keep us moored to earth, while all around us creatures are stotting and bobbing. There’s a lesson about joy here, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Things my father taught me

Published by Alice on January 5, 2010 in water. 7 Comments

The first is a structural conundrum: you don’t worry have to worry about thin ice.

A two-inch skin of ice can support a tank (that is, a WW2 British tank). Thin ice is very strong, but on a pond or lake the thickness varies. It’s not the ice that’ll get you, but the holes in it.

The second thing I learned at my father’s knee is that water has three phases, shown below:

ice, water, and vapor/solid, liquid and gas/

and each of us are composed of these three parts.

The moral of this story is, you can never predict which lessons your children will take to heart.

The birdfeeder didn’t last long

Published by Alice on December 22, 2009 in deer. 9 Comments

I thought it was pretty cute when the broke-leg deer came to investigate the birdfeeder.

He is the deer who is the least afraid of me (I thought he’d be the only garden visitor)

and I like his calm contemplation of me and my camera. We are both aware that he’s much stronger than I am, and he likes that.

He can’t figure out how to get seed out of the feeder,

but he just loves the big things left on top of the snow for the magpies and jays.

He loves the birdfood, I’m fond of him…

we definitely had a moment there.

But it wasn’t a private moment. There was an old buck looking on, trying to figure out how he was going to get some of that stuff for himself, and the next day

the doe brought by one of her kids. You just trim the aspen while I work on the feeder, she said.

Sometimes it’s hard to get it started, she explained,

but once the seed gets flowing it’s the best.

And that was the end of the birdfeeder in the garden.

Life without a Dog

Published by Alice on December 16, 2009 in birds. 5 Comments

It can be hard to maintain a birdfeeder here, because the deer will empty it any night you forget to bring it in. We haven’t had one up in a while, but after Jessie died it seemed like no trouble at all to start feeding the birds again.

The littlest birds take the seed neatly from the feeder. Bigger birds like this flicker hang on the bottom of the feeder and spill seed on the snow where the magpies (too big for the feeder) can get it. I started giving the birds table scraps, and trimmings that would go to the compost pile in the summer. They were eating the two-day-old salad in the fridge that isn’t quite ready to toss. Everything was fine until the ducks heard about it.

The entire flock of ducks marched in a single line from their hiding place on the ditch to a clearing in the forest. I enlarged this photo, and counted forty (!!) wild mallards assembling for an assault on the birdfeeder. They marched from the forest to the feeder in two groups: one approached from the left, and the other hooked around and came at the feeder from the right.

It wasn’t a successful visit. The smaller birds don’t mind sharing, but there are too many ducks for the birdfeeder. And there were other problems as well. The feeder is too exposed for mallards. Although Jessie is gone, they remember her without affection. From the duck’s point of view, there wasn’t enough food to warrant the risk, and they haven’t returned.

Except for this girl, who waddles over to dabble at seeds on the snow almost every day.

(The birds don’t tolerate me at all, so these photos are taken through a glass door.)