Thankful

The Thanksgiving meal is in the oven and our guests will be here in about an hour.  The house is warm and cozy. It feels like a holiday.

I got up early this morning and drove to Bainbridge Island where I ran in a 5k Turkey Trot. I know how fortunate I am to have good health, and that, most every day, I’m able to get out and go for a run or head to the mountains for a hike. I am appreciative of the life I have.

What I’m really thankful for, however, is what you see in the photographs I made recently and have posted here: The Three Girls in my life. Leah, my mom, and Paxie.

A photographer sometimes needs a muse, and I am thankful that I have three.

Smitten

After all the trips we’ve done together,  my hiking friends can now probably just about predict when they’ll hear me say it.

The trail we’re on crests a rise and we get our first, full-on view of an amazing string of peaks; or, in late fall or early winter we enter a chilly high country basin already filled with snow, and the winds have blown the frosty white stuff into incredible sculpted patterns.

And for the umteen-billionth time I say what I always say, week after week, hiking season after hiking season when we’re in some take-your-breath-away wild outdoor place:

“Man I LOVE where I live!”

And, really, can you blame me? I’ve lived in Washington state for 35 years now,  and its mountains, green forests, desert country, and ocean beaches are so varied and offer such sweet eye candy to feed my photographic soul, I can’t help but gush.

I am smitten by this place.

Horse Treats

The woman who for years has pastured her horse Rusty just down the lane from our place told me about a month ago that she was going to move him to a farm several miles from here, and last week a big pickup truck and horse trailer showed up and took my horse friend away.

Nearly every day it’s been part of my routine to put horse treats or an apple in my pocket and our dog Pax and I would walk down to visit Rusty.

Rusty’s owner knows what buds her horse and I are, and she kindly told me I could go visit him whenever I want.  I’ll do that, of course, but for now I really miss having Rusty close by.

Fall Color, Act Two

One of the spectacular things about living in the Pacific Northwest is that Mother Nature stages several acts of her autumnal performance art -- what most of us simply refer to as “fall Color.”

Out here, Fall begins up in the Cascade Mountain high country about the second week of October, and the cool weather then slowly makes its way down into the lowlands where most of us live.

It was back on October 9th that I shot fall color pictures (link HERE) on a two-night backpack trip up in the North Cascades. And this week I photographed Fall’s arrival in the Seattle area.

Kind of amazing if you ask me.