Sunrise ~ Elwood, Utah ~ December 11, 2010

Click on photo to enlarge © 2010 jim otterstrom

Clouds pour off the Wasatch Front while the sun peaks over the mountains this morning as Dallas and I took our walk. The view is to the southeast and my mother's house is in the far lower left of the photo, just beneath the sun flare. You can see smoke rising from our neighbor's chimney on the horizon to the right of the sun flare, the temperature was about 32 degrees.

Good Morning from Big Bear...

Four Photos From This Morning's Walk

Click on photos to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

The pictures speak for themselves, a sunrise walk to remember, bathed in gorgeous light.

Just Another Day...

5:49 A.M.

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

7:24 A.M.

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

March Marsh Majesty

Bald Eagle 3-7-09 Click on photo to enlarge -© 2009 jim otterstrom

Peggy and I encountered this gorgeous bird perched at the east end of Stanfield Marsh last Saturday at the beginning of our 10 mile walk. I moved in as close as I dared for a decent full-zoom shot (560mm) and then backed away when the eagle gave me 'the look', not wanting to further disturb its morning fishing expedition. The bird was still perched there when we came back through several hours later.

Walkin' Down The Road...

Big Bear Boulevard. 7:30 A.M.

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

The snow is a bit deep & slushy on the footbridges and down by the lake so we walked along the boulevard this morning, which is OK when there's no traffic, but that's rarely the case anymore. There was plenty of stinky noisy traffic today but I managed to sneak in a peaceful looking photo between groups of the speeding junk-heaps.

We were heading west here under a sky mostly open and blue, but we knew rain was on the way. A half hour later, eastbound, on the return trip, the sky had turned a dark gray and it started raining just about here. We made it home without getting too wet, as we only live about 3/4 of a mile east of this spot.

Makin' Tracks...

~Monday Morning~

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2009 jim otterstrom

During our brisk morning walk yesterday, Peggy, Dallas, and I left these fresh tracks in the 4 inches of new snow that fell Sunday night. Today is sunny and colder, 0° F when we woke up at 5:30, and only 28° at half past noon.

A nice day to be at home.

Today's Sunrise Walk - A Short Photo Essay

Stanfield Marsh - 6:22 A.M.

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

Five Minutes Later Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

And The Morning Glided Along...Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

...To Reveal Nature Be-Jeweled

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

And Dog's Running Free...

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom


Life Is Good!!!
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

All this fun, on foot, and we were home by nine o'clock.

We Made The Front Page!

Click on article to enlarge - © 2008 Big Bear Grizzly & Kathy Portie

Our local newspaper, the Big Bear Grizzly, has been doing some recent stories on the high cost of gasoline and how people might cut back on their fuel expenses.

The paper got word of our car-free lifestyle and called us over the weekend to arrange an interview about our experiences.

So we knew this was coming out today but were surprised to see our mugs on the front page.

Peggy and I think the article is nicely written, simple and to the point, and we feel honored to be featured in our local paper.

There is one slight error in the story that I will correct here. It says that we retired from the Postal Service in 1997, but I retired in 2001, and Peggy retired in 2004.

Winter Sunrise Walk...

TODAY, at 6:45 A.M.

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

6:50 A.M.
Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

7:12 A.M.

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2008 jim otterstrom

Three views along our sunrise walk this morning as Peggy, Dallas, and I happily trudged a few miles through nearly a foot of snow that fell Sunday night.

We came across two coyotes right after the second picture was taken and Dallas took off after them, having a ball and getting more than his share of the morning workout.

We saw the coyotes again on the way home, a few blocks from our house, after Dallas was back on the leash. One of them sat there just 25 feet away posing for us, but my camera batteries picked that particular moment to go dead. Dang It!

But what a brisk and exhilarating way to start the day!!!

Just'a Walkin' The Dog

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2007 jim otterstrom

Dallas and I out for a walk at 8:23 in the morning.

One For The Madcap...

Click on photo to enlarge - © 2006 jim otterstrom

Madcap Mum,

Yesterday morning this very friendly female Mallard was following Dallas and I along the shore, and everytime we'd stop somewhere she'd waddle out of the water and approach us.

Poor Dallas was licking his chops and twitching, but he's a well behaved dog and I told him gently, "no, you leave her alone", so he just sat by my side quivering a bit.

A lot of people come here and feed the ducks bread, so many of them have become rather tame, which is dangerous when other people walk their dogs in the same area.

I remember that you really liked the last Mallard picture I posted, and when I saw how nice this one came out, I immediately thought of you. So I'm calling this one Madcap's Mallard.

The soft early morning light was just right, and yet you can see the first glimmer of sunshine that was peaking through the trees---from the ridge above the south shore---reflected in her wet feathers at the waterline.

This is the kind of photo that makes me really appreciate my camera.

Taken in auto-mode, it was simply a point & shoot moment.

Have a great day Mum, and I hope you're feeling better...

The Beauty And The Ice...

Click on the photos to enlarge - © 2006 jim otterstrom

Lakeside Decembers

December tilts toward the longest night

as ice and wind transform fluid surfaces

into fancy heaps of shattered crystal

where, upon the shore

slumbering 'neath the frozen bones of summer's garden

seminal marrow lies, dreaming

in rhythms slowed by time and place

of warmth, and song

of birds and bees

and butterflies

© 2006 - jim otterstrom

This morning, Peggy, Dallas, and I, were out walking by the marsh where we were treated to this very cool (indeed) early winter ice display.

The temperatures have been up and down for several days causing the lake to freeze and thaw.

What you see in the first three pictures is the result of a thin layer of ice being windblown to the eastern shores of the marsh where it piled up and re-froze.

The bottom one was taken in a sheltered area, out of the wind.

There's snow forecast here for tonight, tomorrow morning, and next weekend too, so I'm off to clean out the raingutters again and put some things away.

addendum (a), December 13th, 2006

The above poem has been edited at least 20 times since I posted it and it's probably not finished yet.

I may just delete it.

I'm never happy with my poetry but I keep trying to write it anyway.

There's something about writing poetry that I simply don't get.

It seems to me that it's not what you put in a poem, but what you leave out, that gives it wings.

Mine usually fly like like lead balloons.

I was hoping for some comments, tips, or criticism on this one, but all eleven commentors politely avoided the poem.

addendum (b) January 1st, 2007

Crystal-

Thank you for your thoughts and observations and I have edited one more time to smooth the flow of words, and to try and clarify meaning. By the way, it's not minnows dreaming, but seminal, as in seed, and marrow, as in bone. I assume the minnows are still swimming and eating in their cold liquid depths.

;~?

Along This Mornings' Five Mile Walk

Click on photos to enlarge

A kind of soft gray November morning defined our walk today except for a few brief moments when the sun peaked through the clouds to light up that stately old Western Juniper along the lakeshore for me.

Dallas had a great time playing in the water and shaking the evidence all over me and the camera. But his patience only goes so far as you can see in the photo where he gets between me and the tree I was photographing with his 'it's time to move along look'. He was right, of course, because around the bend the lovely female mallard was waiting to pose for us and a little bit further came the big surprise of the morning. A Great Egret (Great White Heron?) stood fishing for breakfast right before our eyes and I managed to get a couple of hasty shots before Dallas scared it off with his meanderings.

I've seen Snowy Egrets here before but can't remember ever seeing a Great Egret on the lake, what a gorgeous bird!

Addendum 12-02-06

After a question from jules on the comments page, I did a little research and have determined the large white bird is a Great Egret (Casmerodius albus), not a white morph of the Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodius). They're very similar looking but the egret has dark legs & feet, and the Great White Heron is typically found only in the Southeast U.S.

The bird was standing too deep in the water for me to get a look at the legs but I got a quick shot of it flying away and the feet are very dark.

Stanfield Marsh, August 19th, 7:32 A.M.

Click on photo to enlarge

Clouds reflecting on the waters of Stanfield Marsh as Peggy, Dallas, and I, walk along the east end of the eastermost boardwalk this Saturday morning.

Another day begins to once more leave me in awe of the beauty in nature.

Mill Creek Crossing

Click on photo to enlarge

This photo was taken while crossing Mill Creek last Thursday evening at 7:41 P.M. on our way to a Spotted Owl territory.

Mill Creek is a tributary of the Santa Ana River and is part of the Mount San Gorgonio watershed. At 11,502 feet above sea level Mount San Gorgonio (Ol' Greyback) is the highest peak in Southern California.

The picture was taken to the east just outside of the tiny mountain enclave of Forest Falls, about 35 miles from our house (by road), in these same San Bernardino Mountains.

Bridge Over Icy Waters...

Click on photos to enlarge

Out playing with the camera again this morning, I thought I'd take some more pictures of the ice.

The ice always seems to crack outward from the pilings of the boardwalk, which sways slightly in the wind, or when groups of people are walking on it. The pilings are made out of some sort of plastic and aren't quite as rigid as wood.

Some of these cracks extend for hundreds of feet into the marsh, possibly even all the way across. The sound of the ice sheet resonating as a crack moves across the surface is fascinating, and to me rather hauntingly beautiful, but quite terrifying if you happen to be out on the stuff.

I was vacationing, at about age 12, with my aunt & uncle who owned a cabin up here, when my cousin David and I went tobogganing toward the lake down a slope from their place. We picked up too much speed and went way farther than we expected, ending up several hundred feet out on the ice which began cracking all around us.

I had never heard that sound before but it scared the hell out me when I realized what was happening. We knew we were in trouble but had enough sense to stay on the toboggan which evenly distributed our weight. By pushing our way backwards toward the shore, with very gentle hand-paddling motions against the ice, our mittens giving us some traction, we somehow made it.

We're very lucky we weren't any bigger, heavier, or riding on sharp-edged sleds, or I might not be writing this.

No one saw us out there, and we were afraid to tell anyone what we'd done when we got back.

But we never did it again!

Dirt Road Dogs...

Click on photo to enlarge

All bundled up in our warmest coats, Dallas and I walk toward the water at 8:14 this morning in one of the last best places on the south shore of Big Bear Lake. It's way below freezing and an icy wind blows strong out of the northeast. A very beautiful morning if you're dressed for it, and we are.

Dallas and I aren't big on roads, but if we have to travel one, this is the kind we like, two ruts in the dirt, minus the clunkers that it was made for.

I don't know why Dallas likes them so much, maybe because they're full of life, because they smell better than asphalt or concrete, or because he never has to be on a leash in a place like this.

I like them because they're quiet, slow, meandering, compelling, picturesque, interesting, pliant (as opposed to rigid), impermanent, and not the slightest bit oppressive, unless some drooling yay-hoo in a belching groaning 4X4 comes barrelling through, which hasn't happened to us here yet, knock on wood!

But most of all, for me I guess, it's nostalgia.

These are the kinds of roads I lived on when I was a kid, and I wish all kids could grow up someplace like this, running with their dogs, off the leash, dodging tumbleweeds & chasing dragonflies in the summer.

Tampa Avenue in Reseda, California was like this in 1952, except there was no lake. But the rutted little road did run right down through the Los Angeles River, just a cowpath through a meandering creek in those days.

Today, fifty-four years later, the kids on Tampa---now a six lane ribbon of hardened petroleum goop & gravel slathered through the midst of the 1,700,000 lost souls of The Greater San Fernando Valley---sit on their fat diabetes-prone asses in front of TVs, killing things in video games. Good practice for when they must go outside and dodge real bullets in the alleys behind their apartment slums, or in the prison yards they call schools, or in the future wars they're going to fight defending Halliburton & The Carlyle Group's freedom.

Progress? Sure, tell that to the family & friends of the suicidal 8th grader the cops shot to death as he wielded a pellet gun at his school in Longwood, Florida on Friday.

Right here, in our County of San Bernardino, kids are killing each other every week and the community solution is to hire more police, create a stronger Police State, and enforce the law!

"WE'LL TEACH THEM TO RESPECT THE LAW!", our newspaper headline screams.

Yeah, the law of private property, the law of growth, the law of profit, the law of Capitalism, the law of selfishness and greed, the law of the Military-Industrial State, the law of the rich & powerful, the law of the thief and gangster. The law of servitude & slavery, The law of No Trespassing, No Skateboarding, No Swimming, No Fishing, No Boating, No Loitering, the laws of self-annihilation.

In my 60 years I've seen enough of what we call progress, and its laws, thank you!

But, in my early childhood, I learned from the laws of Nature, the laws of beauty, magic and mystery that draw us into the world, not push us away and alienate us from it.

Generous inviting laws which point the way to our skills and nurture our interests, the laws of natural instinct that teach caution, self-preservation and wisdom.

We humans can make all the laws & rules we want, but as long as they're incompatible with the laws of Nature, as long as we think we're separate from, and above Nature, as long as we treat this planet like it's ours to do with as we please, we'll continue toward our own destruction, and the demise of what we claim to hold sacred.

I personally, am way fed up with the patriarchal tyranny of the
Corporate State, the leadership of the almighty dollar, and I've also heard enough about an even more patriarchal GOD that says we're too helpless to change ourselves, that only HE can save us from the eternal misery of sin, for Christ's sake!

The GOD of the same religion that has ordained the barbaric murder & torture of millions of indigenous people around the world as their land was stolen and colonized. The same religion that still defends Capitalism and Imperialism everywhere, as we today, continue robbing people of their land and livelihoods, to satisfy our bottomless gluttony, with GOD on our side.

This isn't the Dark Ages, it's the 21st Century, and we're educated enough to know how we got here, what we're doing, and exactly why we're doing it.

Just pick up the paper, it's all there in black & white, although you'll need to read some non-Western press to get the whole picture.

So let's get real friends, the future of life as we know it is very likely in the hands of those of us living today, and it's our decisions that will determine where we go from here.

Civilizations, their myths, superstitions and religions come & go, just as species do, and our civilization, and species, though young in historical & geological terms respectively, are teetering on the brink of extinction.

But we now have the information to understand our predicament, and maybe even the tools to do something about it!

We no longer have to sacrifice victims to the Volcano God, The Earthquake God, The Tsunami God, The Hurricane God, The Automobile God, or even the Almighty Dollar God! We know where & why things happen, where & how we should, and shouldn't be living, it's our choice now, not blind fate.

Los Angeles is forever doomed to destruction, as is San Francisco or New Orleans, and any other location where we choose to live out of context, or scale, with the Nature of the place.

We can't escape disasters, tragedy, or death in our lives, but we certainly don't need to be this incredibly stupid anymore, by now we should know better.

And, there's certainly no desirable future for humanity in the Orwellian nightmare that civilization is becoming before our very eyes.

For the sake of our kids, of their future, of our species, of all species, everything we do & say now is important.

But to pretend there's hope in this system isn't optimism, it's either ignorance, foolishness or fraudulence. It's time to speak not of progress and growth, but of change, personal change, spiritual change and societal change, of paradigm shift in the true sense of the phrase.

I believe most people instinctively know this, but nobody knows what to do.

How do we change, where do we go, what do we do?

Well it's obvious that we can't stay here, we can't go back, and we can't continue on the course we're on.

I, for one, am going to try and be more thoughtful each day on how to discuss what change is (not compromise), so...

More police isn't change, it's more of the same!

More military isn't change, it's more of the same!

More corporate imperialism isn't change.

More paving, more freeways, more housing developments, more unsustainable livelihoods, more materialism, more celebrity worship, more corporate sports, more brand recognition, more slums, more bling-bling, more gangs, more people, more wars, is just more of the same.

And voting for any so-called leader who has enough corporate contributions to get elected isn't voting for change, it's voting for more of the same.

Less greed, fewer possessions, less cars, smaller families, smaller homes, less people, less private property, more community, less racism, less imperialism, less laws, less pollution, less extinctions, more commons, more wildness, more diversity, More Nature! That would be a change...

A welcome change, in my book.

As it is now, we are rapaciously changing the living planet into dead objects of our own creation.

So, if we don't change, where are we going?

You tell me, and please don't say, "To Heaven", or to "To Hell", lest I vomit.

If we don't all change radically, and soon, where are we going as a civilization, as a species, as part of this beautiful living planet?

So you tell me.

Then, go tell your kids...

...but don't lie, or tell them fairytales, most of them aren't buying it anymore either, or haven't you noticed?

There, you've heard my Martin Luther King Day rant!

And there's no apology for it.

So maybe we could turn off the fuckin' TVs, get out of the cars, and start talking with each other?

This Morning In The Marsh

Click on photo to enlarge

A beautiful clear morning walk through Stanfield Marsh marked a nice beginning for the fifth day of 2006.

Happy New Year!

Click on photo to enlarge

Peggy and I spent New Years Eve by a warm fire listening to 40 some years worth of Bob Dylan songs and sipping Margaritas made with Patron Anejo Tequila while Jimmy went out with some of his friends.

About 11:30 P.M. we walked over to the Stanfield Marsh, and as 2006 arrived, we, and the wild things around us, wondered at the beautiful mystery of the blazing sky above.

Our city of 25,000 humans is swelled to maybe 150,000 for the holiday weekend but Peggy, Dallas, me, and the wildlife had a quiet peaceful marsh all to ourselves as the noisier revelers hooted, hollered and honked faintly from the distance.

Just after sunrise this morning we took our walk along the north shore of the lake while Dallas ran free, frolicking in the water, and this Bob Dylan song played over in my head.

If dogs run free, why not we
Across this swooping plain
My ears hear a symphony
Two mules, trains and rain
The best is always yet to come
That's what they explain to me
Just do your thing
You'll be king
If dogs run free.

If dogs run free, why not me
Across the swamp of time
My mind weaves a symphony
A tapestry of rhyme
Oh winds which rush my tale to thee
So it may flow, and be
To each his own
It's all unknown
If dogs run free.

If dogs run free, then what must be
Must be, and that is all
True love can make a blade of grass
Stand up straight and tall
In harmony with the cosmic sea
True love needs no company
It can cure the soul
It can make it whole
If dogs run free.


It rained lightly here on New Years Eve Day but we may be getting some real snow tonight, possibly a lot of it, we'll see.

Happy New Year...

Places Lost...

There are places I don't go anymore, places that were special to me once but have now become different kinds of places.

One of those places is where I grew up, the West San Fernando Valley on the outskirts of Los Angeles.

When we moved there from Santa Monica in 1949, I was four, and the West Valley was a rural agricultural area, sheep pasture, row crops and orchards as far as the eye could see, broken only by dirt roads, small farmettes & chicken ranches. Old barns and tractor sheds dotted the landscape and the Los Angeles River, running through the middle of it all, was a meandering creek teeming with wildlife. My dad had a small backyard chicken ranch and an egg route he delivered out of the trunk of his '41 Chevy.

That's all gone now, replaced with a sickening smoggy sprawl of freeways, parking lots, apartment houses, strip malls and big box discount stores, the rich living earth buried beneath concrete, asphalt & crapboard slums, while the magic river of my childhood, home of dragonflies, pollywogs, frogs, butterflies, snakes and birdsong is now a cement box flood control channel.

I try not to go there anymore.

Long ago I moved to the mountains, first the Santa Monica's, until the 1970s Yuppie boom priced me out, then on to Big Bear in the San Bernardino's, which I then called "The place that time forgot".

But somewhere during the past 25 years time caught up with Big Bear which, now of course, is just another ski resort boomtown well into its own ruination.

This is still a very special place though, in that we're surrounded by hundreds of square miles of National Forest, where the beautiful solitude of nature is only a short walk in any direction.

Yet there are places here that I don't go to anymore either, places like Crystal Mountain.

Crystal Mountain is no more than a knob of shattered, decomposing quartz debris overlooking the Mojave Desert from a 7,000 foot vantage point.

A few yards off the Pacific Crest Trail, at the east end of Bear Valley, Crystal Mountain languished for decades in close proximity to a ramshackle little paradise once called Shadow Ranch.

I don't know what they call the place now and don't care.

Shadow Ranch consisted of what looked to be an old bunkhouse, situated all by itself on several acres, at the end of a dirt road in a small secluded valley. There was a dog that barked from the porch whenever someone hiked past on the trail, and a chicken coop that housed a few hens & a rooster.

Behind the house & chicken coop was a large outcropping of granite, covered in bright shades of yellow, orange, green and purplish lichen, and atop this pile of painted rock, facing the desert, sat a rickety aluminum lawnchair with a beer can holder.

I never saw anyone sitting in it.

I dreamed of owning Shadow Ranch, of living there and taking in tired hikers on their way from Mexico to Canada or vice-versa...
...and of kicking back in that lawnchair drinking craft beer & losing myself to the immense vista of the Mojave and the mountains beyond.

But all that's gone now, replaced by a 5,000+ square foot McMansion, a paved road, mercury vapor lights and a stable of SUVs.

I haven't seen it because I won't go there, but my fiddle-playing wildlife biologist friend MaryAnne described it all to me in excruciatingly painful detail.

Eleven years ago, when I still owned four wheels with an infernal combustion engine, I drove to the PCT trailhead at Highway 18 and took my last hike to Crystal Mountain.

I wrote more in those days, and what's written below is my journal entry from that morning.

I don't know why I'm sharing this today, except that it's another Fall and I was thinking about the place.

Crystal Mountain Sunrise

Has it been half an hour since I parked the truck in fading darkness and wandered onto the gainly curves of the Pacific Crest Trail?

The minutes have been lost between here and the highway, evaporated into a perfume of damp sage and pinyon.

Nonetheless, I remain involved in the friction back where distant radials slap steel belts to asphalt, broadcasting their hyperactive drone through the stillness of dawn to this crag where I wait for the sun.

An airbus churns a curdling howl from the atmosphere above, its vapor trail narrowing to a needle of cold aluminum splashed in a bath of golden firelight. People sit up there in the morning glow, peering from microscopic windows into a wild blue haystack, as I look down to the brass sun-pendant strung by rawhide from my neck. Cast by the hands of my stepfather the pendants pointed rays frame the finely carved features of a womans face, and I’m drawn into the blank stare of her ball bearing eyes transfixed eastward in metallic meditation.

With equal contempt for all that is sacred, the racket of man’s machinery intensifies its assault, blaring from the west, from Bear Valley’s roadways, runways and subdivisions, through horse-trail, footpath and beyond to find each secret quiet place where man has never been. The roar rises, then fades, leaving only the breath of the wind raking toward the desert, ever cleansing our smoky stench from the air.

Sipping hot coffee amidst the quartz debris known as Crystal Mountain I contemplate the crumbling rubble.

Slowly the disintegration continues, glittering in endless shades of white, pink and beige until rock again becomes fine particles of soil for nurturing lacey webs of textured flora.

In this shallow crystalline graveyard of impossible hues, a closer look reveals tiny fungal lives clinging to stone, clothed in fuzzy earthy ochres, olives, grays and rusts and harmonizing perfectly their combined energy to create a living aura of great complexity.

Joshua Trees and Pinyon stand from their beds of stone defiant of the coming winter as if they were statues eternally bronzed in the shock of sunlight now squeezing through low cracks in a horizon of fleeting clouds.

A light rain fell here yesterday and the musty fragrance still flows around all who care to notice.

Sailing dark and proud the remnants of the storm hang about bending rainbow light through myriad spectral prisms, and closely huddled, they seem to mull the option of one last shower as the second day of September is born.

The droning, the friction, and the wind accompany me to a precipice.

From my seven thousand foot perch I gaze to the northeast, across the Mojave, where a pastel haze softly mixes desert with mountain and moving sky to paint a terrestrial landscape of planetary dimension. In the east, the sun finding another hole, sends a fan of luminous rays to kiss the rock good morning while a clump of drying sage tries for resurrection and chartreuse splotches of lichen look on hopefully.

A gentle breeze moves through it all, smoothing the edges of dead wood, of stone and the hard noise of man.

And now, a dog barks to the crowing rooster over at Shadow Ranch.

September 2, 1994