Kids catching little crabs at the beach (video)

This is a video from earlier this summer.  We were in Snohomish, Washington, visiting my aunt, brother, sister-in-law, and cousin and took a detour with my aunt to hang out the beach.

When I was a kid, my grandmother would take us to Salt Water Park and we would gather little crabs like this for hours and hours.  The other adutlts took us, too....it was just often my grandma that said yes when we begged to go and often let us bring a few home.

It was a lot of fun to watch my kids help fill other kids buckets.  Christopher was very taken with rocks that day, and every day since.  He keeps finding heart shaped rocks for me, but they've all been in Glacier, so I couldn't keep them.

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Girl Scouts Glacier Campout

An amazing weekend of girlscouting!  Columbia Falls has a spectacular group of leaders.  They get the girls outside....really outside.  They take their own troops amazing places, and the take the time to share with each others troops as well.  They've been doing this together for years, and they operate like a well oiled machine, with the oldest girls fully aware of what's needed and what help their mom's need to get it going.

I can hardle type this without getting choked up.  Our girls (now 7th graders) stopped bing part of "the younger girls" by last year, and this year they are starting to be part of "the older girls".  I'm so proud of them. 

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"If I were the wind" (Leopold on geese)

"Out of the clouds I hear a faint bark, as of a faraway dog. It is strange how the world cocks its ear to that sound, wondering. Soon it is louder: the honk of geese, invisible, but coming on.

The flock emerges from the low clouds, a tattered banner of birds, dipping and rising, blown up and blown down, blown together and blown apart, but advancing, the wind wrestling lovingly with each winnowing wing. When the flock is a blur in the far sky I hear the last honk, sounding taps for summer.

It is warm behind the driftwood now, for the wind has gone with the geese. So would I--if I were the wind."
— Aldo Leopold

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Short endangered honu video (Honua~peace)

My turtle stuff is all on my other blog Turtle Medicine: Stories of a Rocky Mountain CFIDS Mom, but this clip from youtube fits here.

waikiki last week

I've posted oodles about turtles already this week, but I need a little more turtle in this gray Montana day.  It'll help me pack for our Glacier girlscout trip this weeken.

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Little chickens, big victories (videos)

Our yard is a wonderful place to be.  We've been keeping ducks and chickens for a couple of years.  Our numbers are low at the moment, but we'll be bringing in more of each by spring.  These are chicks we hatched for our friend Heidi, becuase we had a broody hen and she didn't (one of the babies she gave us last year....the only one of five that wasn't a rooster).

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Bowman Lake, Glacier National Park (last campground night of the season)

We couldn't camp Friday night because I didn't make it back from Hawaii until the latest flight (see Turtle Medicine blog posts for pictures from that trip.....lots of sea turtles).  So we headed up after Christopher's football practice Saturday. 

We were using my backpacking gear for car camping for way too many years, so we used to be able to fit ourselves and our stuff in our car to camp.  But with four of us plus dog plus a reasonable amount of car camping gear (plus a moderate amount of my just-in-case stuff like photo gear and binoculars and such) we really can't fit all of what we need.  So this trip we were light on firewood.  And time.

The ranger came around to let us know there was a red fox without a lot of fear coming around to campsites.  She told us to haze it a little if we were comfortable (she didn't use those words, but that was the general point) and to watch out because it has been taking shoes.  It didn't come to our site until after everyone but me went to bed.  It came right up to me, but I tend to not use my headlamp, so I don't know that he was aware at first that I was so close.  I could hear him but not see him, so I spotlighted him with my headlamp.  He was startled but didn't really car until I chased him.  Even then I had to throw a couple of small rocks to really get him to want to leave.  Other campsites chased him off, too, which was good to see.

I love a lot of sites outside of Glacier on the Forest Service side (Flathead National Forest) but I like the feel of Bowman a lot.  Not a single group, even with a close to full campground, thought they should share their music with the other campers and not a single group buzzed around on anything motorized.  It was really, really great.

It was our only camping trip this summer, but at least we got one night in.  I like driving in on the little Bowman Lake road in summer, having so many winter time cross country skiing memories along that road (from an annual ski trip I used to with other moms from around the valley).

I haven't downloaded the good camera yet.  There are a couple of vidoes below, after the photos.

Our morning fire.

A peak at the lake....better pictures on my fancy camera but I haven't downladed them yet.

Packing up the car, shedding layers as the sun came up.

Polebridge Merc, Greg's first time.  I don't know how that's possible.

Polebridge Merc outhouse and view.

Behind the Merc

Apgar on the way home.

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Middle Fork Boreal Toadlets Aug 2008 (lots of pictures)

A few summers ago I got a phone call from a land owner along the Middle Fork of the Flathead River.  She wanted to know for sure what species the tadpoles were in their pond.  Each day at 2pm they would emerge from the tall grasses and sedges where a small creek feeds the pond.  Thousands of tadpoles would appear and form a stripe of black, traveling adjacent to shore for quite some distance and around a big bend in the pond until they reached their sunning spot.

I've used these photos in a few educational activities and presentations and kids and teachers would LOVE to go there and see for themselves, which I would LOVE to orchestrate in the future.  Timing would be a bugger with a school group, but at the very least I would like to take my girl scout troop there some time.  The Flathead also does an annual Herp Day with the public...it would be nice to somehow incorporate the site.  Makes a great picture for training for something like that, as we usually verbally describe the way the toadlets bunch up and that they can raise the temperature of the water there are so many of them.

By 3 o'clock there wasn't a single toadlet left in the pond.  I will never get bored with the little stuff.  Toads are so much fun.

The toadlets closest to shore kicked up mud and darted away when startled.



The barbed wire above the log is where Forest Service land begins. 
Where some of the toadlets continued on and crossed onto FS land,
they made a visible u-turn rather quickly and headed back.
 There was a fat garter snake sitting near the log eating toadlets.



Near the fence in the photo is where a stream feeds the pond



Across the highway from the toads was a forest fire (Triangle Fire, I think?)



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