A Miscellany

It's been a long time since I've posted! I got along just fine without blogging for years, and now I seem a little addicted...I have so much I want to talk about, but most of it will have to wait. I'll try not to let this get too long. First, some corrections: I've lived here for more than three years now; I'm entering my fourth year in this valley. I swear, I was always good at math! Since I left school, though, the years really seem to just run together. It's a little embarrassing. I still haven't gotten used to my new age. I'll blame that. ; D

So, this week's crossword (see this post for an explanation of why I do the Sunday New York Times Crossword on Wednesdays). Well, the whole thing was lost on me. I have always been a terrible speller (I'm sure it's because I don't read enough). I tried rewriting all the words several ways, and I couldn't even always tell what was the correct way to spell the word. I knew that "supercede" was wrong because I'd just used it in a blog post! So I guess doing this is useful after all, and I still often think the puzzle is exceedingly stupid. This one was very quick, though.

I spent the last four (was it only four?) days out of town and busy with houseguests and then slowly recovering. I've been trying to rearrange my schedule so I can get everything done I want to do each day in a timely manner. So far it has not been working, though this week should be much less busy than last week. I have not written today yet (though I absolutely will, darn it! It's very bad of me, I know...), and yesterday I was so tired and uninspired I only wrote 600 words, and those were not even directly related to my Current Project. I'm a bit superstitious about my work. I told our friends a little about the story, and they thought it sounded very intriguing and wanted to hear more...and I haven't written a word since I told them about it. Gaah! I will force myself back into writing this evening though (it's already after 3!), and next week should be more normal. (Ha! As if my life is ever normal!)

On a related note (what I've been up to), I got up at 4:45 a.m. on Saturday to go to the sage grouse lek. It had snowed several inches overnight making for a pleasant walk out into the sage (no roots to trip over--the snow was still unbelievably, unusually deep), but the temperature was around 9 degrees F and only about fifteen male grouse were out dancing. One female flew in late (nearly 7:00 a.m.), but didn't stay long. Then we say two females by the side of the road near the airport. It was a great wildlife day in all, with 25 moose, many deer, some elk and bison, as well as a snipe and a Northern shrike and many ducks, including what I thought might be a female red-breasted merganser. In the afternoon I napped for more than two hours (a very rare occurance for me--I've almost never been able to nap since I was three years old), then I had to rush to make some bread (a really delicious white yeast bread made with orange juice and zest and eaten with a mixture of butter and orange marmalade) before heading out to dinner. I had to finish the bread after dinner, actually (I let it go through its final rise in the refrigerator while we were out, which worked beautifully), then got up early again (7:00 a.m. this time) because:

The West entrance to Yellowstone National Park (at West Yellowstone, Montana) opened last week, I believe, but our convenient South entrance isn't scheduled to open until May 9 (assuming all the snow is gone!). So, we drove over Teton Pass into Idaho and up to West Yellowstone. On the way, we saw a pair of white-faced ibises (yea!), many snipes, yellow-headed blackbirds and more and arrived at the Park for lunch. We spent one night in Gardiner, MT and two half-days driving along the Northern tier road in the Madison, Gardner (not misspelled), Yellowstone, and Lamar River valleys. We saw only one grizzly bear on the first afternoon (eating an elk carcass). She had a radio collar and two ear tags, often a sign of past run-ins with human beings, unfortunately. We saw several coyotes, scattered elk, but depressingly few bison (don't get me started on that again. Sigh.), no wolves and no black bears. There was still a huge amount of snow in the Lamar Valley. Two years ago at this time, it was filled with animals, including a number of pronghorns. I was actually disappointed by the trip on the whole, animal-wise, though we saw some wonderful things, including the bear, which was the closest I've ever been to a grizzly in the Park.

Exciting birds included red-breasted mergansers in the Madison River. Actually, that's about it. We saw one distant immature golden eagle, some bald eagles singing and a willet at Blacktail Ponds, buffleheads (a sure sign of spring perhaps?), two species of goldeneyes (common and Barrow's), a pair of blue-winged teals, ospreys...The Uinta ground-squirrels are also awake at last and chirruping, and we saw a white-tailed deer on the banks of the Yellowstone River. I'd never seen one in the Park before, though they've been around for decades. Also numerous baby bison, which I'll talk about another day--two sad and long stories about that, actually.

Yesterday was altogether more satisfying bird-wise (and that's an understatement!). I've heard the kingfishers on our local backyard pond, but haven't seen them yet, the wood ducks are back, and on our pond have been four pelicans, a loon (!), a horned grebe (! And a first for me), a lone male canvasback, a pair or three individual red-breasted mergansers (I guess I didn't have to drive so far to see them after all...). Someone else has seen other grebes and cormorants, but I haven't yet. The loon was gorgeous. They are some of my very favorite birds and rarely seen out here, though I did worry that this one might be lonely all by herself. Maybe she (he?) has a mate waiting somewhere. I just love their tortoiseshell patterned black and white backs and their saber-like bills and their pearl necklaces. : )

Also, cinnamon teals are back on Flat Creek, and many green-winged teals and gadwalls. No blue-winged teals down here yet for me, but I did see a lone (no kidding!) solitary sandpiper in the mud by the side of the highway. They are common migrants or vagrants I believe. I've seen them a few times in the region only, and my birdbook is marked with two exclamation points next to the picture (I have a very elaborate series of symbols I use to mark species I've seen in my birdbook...Very cryptic...) ; ) and it was familiar enough to recognize almost immediately upon viewing it, without looking it up. (I checked the book later, of course, but they're pretty unmistakeable in the region)

Whew! And then, yesterday I listened to PotterCast, as I do every week and Melissa especially, but also John and Sue, brought up something that I've been thinking about a lot. It relates to my last post, and gets at something I've been trying to say. I know my posts are long and thoughtful and sometimes meloncholy, but I'm actually doing it on purpose. Part of my deciding to talk about the things I talk about has to do with my disgust for the current short attention spans of modern humans these days. My loathing of Newsweek (see the first link on this post) is directly related to this, and I never read popular magazines, if such they can be called. What can a thoughtful, intelligent, discerning adult read these days? Good luck trying to get a balanced and accurate account of the news today! I stopped watching the "news" on TV when I was a child, or perhaps young teen because I was already disgusted by it. And don't get me started on purveyors (That took a while to find! Dictionaries are only useful when you know the first four or five letters of a word for sure...) of so-called popular science. The culture of "infotainment" is pervasive and (I believe) destructive. I have seen first hand how influenced subconsciously I am by what I read, so reading things that are simply wrong, misinformed, or incomplete can indeed have a detrimental effect on one's understanding of a situation and the world in general.

So, that is why I write long, thoughtful posts on varied subjects. I have wide interests already, but everything is more interesting when it can be studied in depth. Not watching television and spending as much time as I can observing nature has lengthened my attention span considerably. I can sit and watch a flock of juncos for an hour, and in so doing, learn so much about the world I live in, and through that understanding, come to better understand myself. And shouldn't that be the goal? (I've also learned that linking between your posts can increase visitors to your blog, journal, or website. Can you tell?) : )

So much more to talk about: art, language, fortune cookies...but they will just all have to wait for another day. It's good to be home and blogging again!

-Susie