Twoyaking: The act of paddling with one regular sized person and one smaller person (preferably the larger persons child) in a one person boat.

It is not exactly the easiest thing to do; taking photos from the kayak – made harder still with the addition of a 10 year old to the small boat. The missed shots mean nothing though, when compared to the time we’ve been having paddling about together. If you have the chance to cruise around in a kayak with your kid, I strongly recommend it especially if there’s the possible inclusion of beavers.

This was our second adventure of this type, each has been exceptional. I’m having a hard time thinking of a better way to spend time with my 10 year old daughter. Our trips about in the van are fun but the van is large and often the sights to see along the road fail to be more interesting than the iPhone or the tablet she carries. She will engage for a while and she especially likes to help me steer the car or hop in my lap and drive for a bit. We dont have the challenges with the boat, there simply isn’t room for anything else in there and our close proximity to each other lends itself well to the necessity of whispering and quiet to see the critters.
Last nights adventure found us in the marshy inlet waters of Jenny Gulch. I love it back there and paddle back that way often but this time the water was high enough that we could actually get back into shallow waters that are bursting with new life right now. We saw nearly a dozen blue herons all perched atop various pine trees, a couple beavers, a family of merganser and lots more.

Forgive me; this is going to get a little sentimental. Today we attended my daughter’s 5th grade graduation celebration. She’s closing the chapter on her elementary years and moving onto middle school. With most of life’s milestones, I am able to roll over them without much friction, but this one is hitting a little harder than the “first tooth” and the “no training wheels bike ride”. She’s growing up and she is doing a fine job. She is a wonderfully delightful young lady. As a mother I am constantly second guessing my parenting but I have no choice but to trudge onward and continue doing the best I can. She’s taken huge steps towards the independent direction but there are obvious moments when I am reminded that she is still a kid. (Her recent purchase of $27 worth of candy at the convenience store is a prime example.) Her new-found maturity is deceptively prevalent. And I constantly find myself having to step back to remember that, despite her appearance, she is only 10 (going on 25).

After a delightful ceremony at Wilson Elementary School (where she has spent all of her K-5 years) Anna and I loaded up in the minivan, freshly outfitted with new brakes and a water pump, and hit the road. It has been dark, gloomy and rainy for days and I could see a patch of blue sky way off on the horizon to the north. I figured that potential sunlight was as good of a target as any and we set off.

Now, I’m sure the roads north of town make sense to someone, and perhaps if I were to actually look at a map I could figure it out, but that’s simply not my style. I prefer aimless meandering over destination travel any day. Sometimes however, this gets you into places you don’t really want to be. After a mistaken loop south, I was able to find a road that pointed north that was guarded by a sign that said “gravel road next 20 miles.” Twenty Miles was enough miles for me and signified that road lead to more than a dead end. It was quickly revealed that we were chasing a sunset and Bear Butte.

It’s getting so green and beautiful out there, it was hard not to find a good shot. We drove and stopped and shot and drove a little further and stopped and shot and drove and so on. My favorite moment of the drive was when I spotted a mystery bird on a fence. He was shy and would always fly away each time I approached and land on the fence down the road. I wanted desperately to get a shot of him in flight because the setting sun behind him was lighting up his wings in the most delightful fashion   I couldn’t shoot, drive and chase the bird at the same time so I told Anna to grab the wheel and steer. She was thrilled to take up the task and we laughed each time the bird would land and fly again. Eventually the bird wised up, flew in another direction and we drove on.

We ended up on HYW 34 and circled around Bear Butte right as the sun was sinking below the horizon. I had one last whim to visit the lake at the base of the butte. We pulled into the lake just in time for me to run out and catch some shots of the beautiful tranquility of the still lake and the painted sky. A single fishing boat quietly floated around the lake as the swallows chased their evening snacks across the top of the perfectly glass-like surface of the water.

A blue heron flew across the lake and landed in the reeds on the south side. Anna stayed in the car while I trudged around in the sticky clay mud and as I packed my gear up to return to her, I noticed she had ventured out to join me. I asked her if she had seen the heron and she was sad that she had missed it. I was explaining to her how it had flown just above the water line across the lake when we looked just in time to watch it fly back again one last time this time with a fish in his mouth. It was a beautiful sight to witness and the perfect way to say goodbye to the light of the day as it followed the sun behind the horizon

We swung through Sturgis for one last snack before we drove back home. As the darkness of night claimed the sky I got to thinking about how hard it is to appropriately express the joy I feel when I take these mini trips with Anna. They are simply my favorite thing to do. As I told her last night, I know they seem weird and annoying to her right now, but I hope that, at some point in her future, she looks back at these memories fondly.

When I think back to my childhood, the moments spent with my mom and my grandpa out in nature are the ones I credit for shaping me and making me who I am today.  I learned everything from what they shared with me. I grew up following them wherever they wanted to take me and absorbed their wisdom like a sponge. I am thrilled that it is my turn to give that gift to my child. For me, there is nothing on earth that makes me happier than these times with Anna. I know the clock is ticking and my ability to haul her around is fleeting. Soon, her world will be in her own hands and her own social life will matter much more. But right now, I’ve got her and I am going to selfishly indulge in these moments… not only because I know they are fleeting, but also because I think, in the end, they will matter to her someday too.

I’m not sure it’s possible to have a better weekend. Aside from it being Mother’s Day weekend, and having a delightfully wonderful daughter and pretty much the best mom on the planet, I also was able to sneak in a hike and wrapped up the weekend with something so unexpectedly amazing I sincerely questioned whether or not I was awake or dreaming.

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Anna (my daughter) and I kicked off the weekend with another evening drive out east of town. It was a pretty typical drive, but it did afford us a shower in a decent rain storm and a glimpse of some new-to-this-earth animals who were as fresh as they were cute.

It’s been a challenge to get Anna to engage in these outings. She is not only 10 going on 11 but she has recently bought a new tablet which she is constantly burying her nose in. I’ve started coming up with games and challenges to try to engage her with the real world around her. I think she is starting to enjoy the time and and has even spotted a few critters before I have. She especially likes the fact that I have started bribing her with ice cream in exchange for her company.

One of the best moments on our Friday evening excursion was a stop alongside the road to observe a fairly young colt. Anna requested the chance to get out and pet it, which I granted. The colt was a little shy and darted back behind the comfort of its more mature field-mates, but the other horses welcomed Anna’s touch and it lit me up inside to watch the interaction. We chased a few hawks and caught a lovely sunset before heading back to town for the ice cream.

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Saturday found me and a pack of my nearest and dearest friends wandering some freshly logged and very obstacle-laden terrain in the Cathedral Spires. They have been clearing the beetle kill but haven’t quite gotten around to cleaning up after themselves yet. We clumsily climbed up a valley between two giant walls of granite until we could not climb any higher (without ropes). As we sat and enjoyed the view I started to notice a rather high quantity of animal scat. I determined that it belonged to Mountain Goats and, considering the volume, we decided we were hanging out in an area where the goats liked to hang out too. We didn’t see any, but I am fairly sure I heard one as it ran off trying its best to hide from our pack of dogs.

Aside from noticing the scat from our resting point I also caught a glimpse of a rock climber across the valley on a neighboring spire. That area is a hot spot for climbers so I really didn’t think much of the fella until I noticed him again on the way back down the mountain. I looked up just in time to see that they weren’t just climbing but that they had run a slack-line between two spires and were JUST about to tight-rope walk across it. I was able to get the camera cued up and did a passing job of recording the event. It was truly a sight to behold.

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“goats”

Sunday, of course, was Mother’s Day. The day started with a side journey with just me and my wonderful mom out to an area I have been frequently exploring for photo adventures. There were a few sites out there I wanted to share. I especially wanted to show her a grouping of very large nests my friend Eric and I had spied on a previous adventure. They were perched at the very top of some giant cottonwood trees about a half a mile off the side of the road. Eric started to refer to them as “goats” (Eric has a special sense of humor… I appreciate it very much). Of course, they aren’t really goats, they are nests, but I liked the idea of them being called “goats” so I kept the name.

My mom had a pretty great pair of binoculars in her truck so I was able to make out the faintest shape of a very large bird perched on the top of the nest. “I think those are blue herons!” I exclaimed. My statement was met with hesitant disbelief and since I was unable to make an absolute identification we headed on and I continued to point at things and say “and this is where I took that one picture…” and “when we were here Anna did this… “

The last thing I wanted to show her before we fetched up the rest of the family for our official Mother’s Day outing was a fresh batch of tiny baby sheep Anna and I had happened across a few days earlier. We had a blast watching the little fluff balls play in the field and laughed as one seemed to be as allergic to the air as we are and proceeded to sneeze in a most familiar way.

After the sheep we swooped up my daughter and brother and we set out to aimlessly wander the Black Hills. Our quest consisted mostly of trying to find a place to eat lunch but circumstance after circumstance pushed the event back to about 3:00pm when we finally landed at Legion Lake. We shared a meal of BBQ and I chased around some beautiful swallows with my camera. Anna was able to dip her toes in the water before we loaded back up and hit the king of all Black Hills Roads, Iron Mountain, and headed home. The weather was perfect and I can’t think of a more lovely way to spend a day than celebrating our mom-ness with our kid-people in the Black Hills.

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The family affair was over but my hunger for adventure wasn’t yet satiated. I could tell by the thin clouds and the lazy sun that the sunset was going to be a good one, so I thought I would wonder out one last time in search of one more thing to focus my camera on… I had no idea I was about to discover the thrill of a lifetime.

I had already visited my usual location earlier with mom so I decided to take another direction out of town. I headed North instead of East and was surprised at how quickly I was gifted the final gift of my Mother’s Day.

I crested a hill just outside of town when I noticed a very familiar site. I instantly recognized another patch of “goats” in some trees. Only this time instead of a handful there were dozens and instead of the nests being too far away for me to see they were in the tops of trees right next to a side road. I pulled off without hesitation and lost my breath as I noticed 50 or so very large nests each inhabited by its own blue heron tending to the eggs.  I sat and watched as their partners came and went, returning with fresh twigs and sticks to fortify their homes.

It was without a doubt one of the most breathtaking sites I had ever seen. I had no idea that they nested in colonies like that. Its hard to find the words to describe the feelings I had as I watched them come and go. I shot hundreds of photos and couldn’t bring myself to start the car and leave even after I had filled every gig of memory space I had, but as the sun went down I did find the will-power to turn the key and drive away.

As I drove back to town a single heron flew above me following the same road. I laughed at how, had I not just spent all that time with so many birds, I would have freaked out at the site of that single bird flying above me. I didn’t appreciate the solitary bird any less but I did look at it in a totally different way.

All in all, it was a weekend to remember punctuated with a gift from mother nature herself. There were several occasions when things were so perfect or awe-inspiring that I felt the only explanation was that it was all a dream. But I think thats how we know you’re doing it right, when your reality feels as good as your wildest dreams. I am a truly lucky girl. I have the best mom, best daughter, best family a girl could ask for – and I live in God’s country where miracles happen daily, as long as you’re willing to find them.

I really didn’t wake up this morning thinking I would be out taking pictures of bluebirds… but to be honest, even if wasn’t a snow day, I would have likely found a way to wriggle out of work and go shooting. It was simply breath taking outside.

They called a winter weather warning last night, which I instantly shrugged off. I was certain that because I was so sick of snow, it was just going to… not snow. But apparently my desire for the contrary wasn’t enough and the snow gods decided to give us one more dose of the white stuff. It dumped nearly 9 inches while we slept and when we woke up we were gifted yet another snow day. Now, could we have gotten to work, yes, but you see, today was also my moms birthday and I believe she had a secret desire to spend the day at home too.

I did have to run to work for a bit to take care of some client needs and took that opportunity to grab my camera – I was delighted to pull up to the office to see the squirrel who must have taken the wrong turn at Albuquerque. Instead of heading back up to the house, I took a quick lap down Skyline Drive and found a very photogenic blue bird who was kind enough to make sure I got a shot of every side of him, even his good side.

On the way back down the hill I saw the robins again… I mean, how can you NOT see the robins. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE! I spent a little time with them again and am still baffled by their numbers. I’m hoping to get an understanding of their numbers soon, but for now I’ll just take delight in the anomaly. I did read last night though, that the high niumbers of robins may correspond directly to a low number of ceder wax wings – which would be a very sad reality if it is indeed true. I assume we will know soon enough.

For now, I’m back up at moms, I cant really think of a better way to spend earth day than celebrate the birth of one of the best, most amazing people on the planet; my mom with my brother, my daughter, the pups and seinor snowman.

… We walked through the isles of the grocery store this morning as Anna gathered her supplies for her first day of business outside of Asio Studio – She got her lemonade, her cups and some ribbon. The ribbon is to wrap around her stories. That’s right, she’s selling lemonade AND stories. I believe her first one is about a Jelly Fish who runs for president. Come on by sometime in the future and get yourself a glass of cool lemonade for $0.50 or pick up an original story by Anna for $5.00.
She’s awesome!