Here’s a Christmas scene at our house with some early morning shadows coming through the front window.
And a Little Library on a trail. In addition to books, it contains a geocache. I was the first person to find it which makes me a legend in my own mind. I actually didn’t find it, I had been looking for it for 20 minutes and the cache owner walked and handed it to me. It got approved so fast that she hadn’t hidden it yet. So I hid it. A couple guys came by six minutes later so they were second and third to find.
And a shadow selfie cast across a trail sign asking people not to use muddy trails.
So these are my last shadows of 2022!! I wish everybody a Happy and Healthy New Year!!
I see this sculpture ever year end. I always pay my real estate taxes at the last of the year and this sits right outside the Tulsa County Courthouse.
A week or two later I went hiking on Turkey Mountain. My outside time had been limited by a medical procedure on my face (I’m fine, really) where I had to stay out of the sun for a week, bad weather, my wife caught the flu, we got a new puppy, and my brother got covid. So things are looking up and I went outside in some sunny but nippy weather.
The trail builders on Turkey Mountain are putting in a long staircase from the top of the mountain down to the lower parking lot (don’t be too impressed, that’s about 335 feet, but still a big deal in Tulsa. I had to wibble wobble my route. The powers that be ask us not to walk on muddy trails, especially new trails, to keep them getting eroded so I kind of had to improvise a route.
On my route was this trail from the lower parking lot to the top of the mountain. It is bidirectional for people on foot and uphill only for mountain bikers. It looks like a hard go for them but hey they are tough.
And then here is a recently opened downhill only trail for intermediate level mountain bikers. No hikers allowed either way. The bikers fly down the hill and it is wise to keep people on foot out is what I think.
Here is the signage warning people of what they are getting into going down the trail. My modest biking skills and my bike with no suspension will not be on this trail or any other trail on Turkey Mountain. Gravity is not my friend!
And I found a cedar tree somebody decorated for Christmas. They are kind of fun especially if they take the decorations down soon after the holidays. Most people do, some don’t and these ornaments do not age well over time. They are not really “Leave No Trace” compatible.
Just a tad shy of 3 miles. A nice little outing after having been inside for weeks.
And guess, what I saw some flagging from the contractor building the trails. They are going to build more trails. More, more, more is my motto. When it comes to trails.
I am taking more skywatch photos from my front porch. Here is a recent one.
And here is another one.
And here is one of our house from the street. Yes I used a filter. I was trying to emphasize the lights.
Another front porch skywatch photo. I went artsy here by crouching behind our shrubs with some Christmas lights on them. As old as I am crouching down of any kind might be termed as “suffering for my art.”
Kodi the Pom puppy is who I blame for not getting out and taking more pictures. Having a new puppy is kind of like having a kid. They demand constant attention! If we don’t give him positive attention by playing with him, then he gets negative attention by chewing on electrical cords. We’re exhausted!
Another front porch skywatch shot!
My wife bought Kodi a couple of Christmas outfits. He is not a fan but we thought he rocked this elf outfit.
This time I stood on my front porch and pointed the phone to the southeast instead of the southwest like the previous two photos.
I was able to head out to the Arkansas River trails and check on construction of the new pedestrian bridge. It’s looking good but it won’t be done until well into 2023.
And I checked on the PSO power plant across the river. I love stuff like this.
To those who celebrate Christmas I wish you a Merry Christmas, Oklahoma style. To everyone else, I send you greetings and well wishes.
A fellow lover of all things Northern New Mexico, Terry Clark, told me about this book, a memoir of life and adventures in the Pecos Wilderness by Elliott S. Barker. Barker grew up in northern New Mexico and visited the Pecos high country first as a ten year old boy in 1896, Beatty’s Cabin is more of an area of the Pecos rather than a particular place. Barker spent the rest of his life in the area. He was a rancher and a Forest Ranger and later a game ranger and in fact led the New Mexico State Game Department for years.
In this book he recounts personal history of his own adventures in the high mountains, hunting, fishing, and camping and tells of other’s adventures hunting grizzly bears, elk, and deer. The period of time covered is from the late 1800’s until the early 1950’s.
Part of my interest in the book is my father was a Forest Ranger at the Pecos Ranger Station of the Santa Fe National Forest back in the 1950s.
Here is a photo of my Dad pointing out a feature to me (with the Smokey Bear) and my brother. as you can see I wasn’t good at following directions. Dad told me that the Forest Service hired a photographer to come out and do a shoot and dad was told to cooperate.
He took a lot of ribbing from the people he knew. He said the photographer called him Mr. Cowboy and gave him explicit directions on where to stand or sit, what to point at and all the details. I would really like to talk about this book. I am sure he knew some of the people talked about in the book. Who knows?
Me, I have no memories of the Pecos Ranger station but I got these and other photos from the shoot the Forest Service made of my dad.
Anyway, I loved the book. Barker is a great writer.
We brought Kodi, our new Pomeranian puppy, home on Thursday. He made himself right at home.
He’s very affectionate and cuddly. He knows his name. As soon as we picked the name the breeder started using it with him.
He’s just two pounds and the best way to interact with him to get down on the floor with him. He loves to play with his toys.
We think he and our Lizzie cat might become friends. They lay next to each other and Lizzie lets Kodi clean her ears until she gets overloaded and hisses and runs off.
We took him to the vet today for his initial exam and puppy shots. He was a hit. He got passed around to everyone and he was totally fine with it. He got his shots and he is a little sore this afternoon.
I call this week’s Skywatch post “Inside Edition” because that is mainly where I have been lately. After some great outings that all came to a halt through a combination of my wife catching the flu and cold rainy weather.
Camaera+ App
So it was like I went to my backyard and took some sky photos because I didn’t have any recent ones and it was a nice sunny day finally. And of course I used one of my iphone camera apps and edited the photos. I do that a lot. I hope it doesn’t bother you.
Distressed FX app
And the other thing I do is I am constantly tagging photos. I’ve got 85,642 photos in my flickr account and about 3,000 are untagged starting in November 2015 and going backward. I delete about half of my untagged photos in a given session. I found this one this morning during a tagging session. It’s kind of over the top on editing but hey, I kind of like it. I think I used my distressedfx app.
I also found this untagged photo from November 2015. It is from a run I did along the Arkansas Rivier at night. You know starting in 1992 until 2020 when I retired I ran by myself every Wednesday night after work pretty much regardless of the weather. During the non-Daylight Savings Time months I ran on the river because they had lights. Now I am thinking what was going through my little cotton picking head. Of course the answer is that I worked during the day and I was running longer races back then so I had to run longer in training. I’m retired and now, and don’t run, but I walk and ride my bike a lot. All during daylight hours.
Earlier this week it was Heather’s birthday. She recovered from the flu and we had a great time going out for breakfast, going to a movie (Spirited, see my previous post, a wonderful movie) opening gifts, going out for dinner, and then birthday cake!!
Son Logan joined us. We all had a great time.
And we are all decorated for Christmas.
Jigsaw puzzle
I completed another jigsaw puzzle. This one of an old barn. This one about killed me. All that wood was hard to piece together. I’m doing one now of the Grand Canyon. It’s hard also. That’s okay. I love ipad jigsaw puzzles.
That’s about it for this week. Check back soon. After losing all three of our dogs in about a year’s time to illness we are picking up our new pomeranian Kodi. I’ll have a few photos of him to post. Here is a preview from several weeks ago.
Our family loved the Spirited, a new movie based on the the Dickens classic novella, A Christmas Carol, I am not going to give anything away as we all know the basic plot, right?! I will say that this movie takes the tale and turns it back on itself, then inside out, upside down, and whirls it all around. It’s a musical adaption, the songs are great, there is even dancing. I think it is destined to be a Christmas classic. Ferrel and Reynolds do a great job. Here’s the trailer.
“Finding Abbey” is partially a book about Edward Abbey, author of Desert Solitaire, and one of the founders of the wilderness preservation movement in the United States and partially a book about where Edward Abbey was buried, and partially a book about the author Sean Prentiss and his search for meaning and direction in his life as he searches for Abbey’s grave.
Abbey was a cantankerous guy who had passion for wilderness, especially the desert wilderness. He railed on against mining, oil and gas production, and what he called “industrial tourism.” He was not very woke, so to speak but he was outspoken. He died young in Tucson, AZ in 1987 and wished that his friends would bury him somewhere in the desert. They did that at a secret location and vowed they would never tell anyone the location of the grave.
Prentiss, a college professor, and a lifelong fan of Abbey decides to go searching for the grave. The book is not a linear telling of the story. Prentiss weaves his own story in with Abbey’s as he visits Abbey’s friends and interviews them about Abbey. He goes back and forth between his search, his own life, and the stories of Abbey’s devoted friends and in the process travels all over the desert southwest. So the story goes forward and backwards and all around. Fortunately Prentiss is a talented writer and pulls it off.
Did he find the grave? Does he reveal the location? Hey read the book and find out. It’s a hard book to find. Tulsa’s library system got my copy on loan from the Central Arkansas Library System. I give the book five stars out of five.
