 Nature equally welcomes all creatures without judgment. I love how it's the most inclusive place on earth. When you walk into a forest there are no borders, no class distinctions. Forests don't tell you you're not welcome because of silly things like the color of your skin, or because of who you love or where you come from. You don't have to believe in gods, or one specific god or even any god, to be welcome.
Forests feel magical to me. They remind me of an art museum without walls or borders and without "do not touch" signs, where the best artifacts exist and the most creative art forms are displayed. There's aging wood, long since alive, that has delicious textures and comes with bends, knots, scars and twists that match the best of human sculptors. I believe trees communicate with each other and maybe that's, in part, where I feel the magic. There's a deep sense of working together, of cooperation and even symbiosis out there. Forests are home to so many life forms. It's an incredibly inclusive and welcoming place to be. I've always done my best thinking on walks and hikes. Nature has a way of cleansing the gunk that builds up in my head. It's the perfect "delete and reset" button out there. Taking time to listen to the silence in a forest is a powerful experience. We tend to power walk through nature and when we do, we miss the real power that comes from being part of this beautiful and inclusive community.  The smoke filled skies are gone! What a relief. The storm brought rain to the Lillooet valley and a dusting of snow to the high peaks. Fall is in the rearview mirror. It's nice to have the moisture wash away the thick smoke. I could feel it in every breath any time I was outside. It stung the eyes and hovered over everything like a grey veil had been dropped from the highest peaks to the riverbeds and hung over the whole town. This is the first time I've seen the peaks that surround the town!  The glacier fed Seton Lake is a surreal turquoise.   Earlier in the day, I watched a raven and prairie dog have some sort of encounter. The raven eventually flew off and the prairie dog stood up in his hole and then fell over and didn't move again. Toward evening, I was photographing this fox and I caught the moment when she spotted the prairie dog. She pounced so fast and had the little guy in her mouth before I could click a photo. I caught her running off with him. She dropped him at one point right before having to crawl under a fence and took a few seconds break before picking him back up and continuing on.         The sockeye salmon run on the Adams River in British Columbia is one of the largest in the world. It's a spectacular live nature show that you don't have to pay to see. There's no entry fee into the park and no guided tours you have to take. Even dogs on leashes are allowed. If you have the heart of an artist or simply a deep love of all that is outdoors, you will be captivated by the colors, the reflections, the movement, and the sheer determination of these magificent creatures. Every second is in motion, so the scene is constantly shifting. Sometimes it was a kaleidescope sensation of colors; opalesce in other moments. The red salmon and army green head shimmers beneath the current and the light changes the colors all the time. For an instant, sometimes you can see the eyes or mouth or fins or tail. There'll be white water from the fish jumping. Other times it's a beautiful abstract painting of reds, yellows, oranges, blues and greens.  
  https://fishbio.com/chinook-alevin/ Salmon are born in fresh water and swim to the ocean. At the end of their life, they swim back upstream against the current to the river and spot where they were born. The salmon stop eating when they reach the fresh water. "This means that adults can go six months without food while transferring body fats into their gametes for reproduction." The female lays her eggs in the gravel beneath the water in several spots and the males will fight to fertilize it. After they spawn, the salmon die. Marine rich nutrients from life in the ocean are released into the river and ecosystem. The eggs that don't get washed away, will remain where the mother salmon laid them through the winter where they grow into an embryo. When it's time in the spring, the tiny salmon wiggle free from their soft shell while retaining the yolk sac for nutrients. At this stage they are called an alevin. Once their yolk sac is absorbed they are considered fry. They have the nickname of "buttoned up fry" because there's a visible seam underneath their belly. The roundtrip distance for these salmon from the fresh water rivers to the ocean is about 4000 km (2285 miles). Most salmon live four to five years. Varying numbers of survival say one to two percent of hatched salmon make into adulthood to reproduce.                On the Sea Wolf ferry from Port Hardy to Bella Coola.       I'm posting most of my new photos on my website www.ForAllTheAnimals.com. Click on the image to go to the latest photos. This grizzly was photographed from a float trip down the Atnarko River in Bella Coola, BC.  The sun had just set as I watched this young moose eating and jumping up and down similar to the way baby goats hop.      Captured this photo of mom and baby moose this evening.  I spotted this mom and baby moose just before 7 a.m. on July 26th. I shot through some thick fog. It's been a wet summer so far.     These flowers came with our house.                           Trees holding onto each other! I love this capture. Taken during the March 6th Snowstorm on Decatur Island   The bird above and below are the same one.     The bird above and below are the same one.  AFTER THE STORM (BELOW)      The number of wingbeats per second has been recorded between 52–62.  Remember that during hot weather, sugar water ferments rapidly to produce toxic alcohol.  For its body size, the Rufous Hummingbird makes one of the longest migratory journeys of any bird in the world. Traveling from Mexico to Alaska they travel around 3,900 miles.         Below is from an earlier shoot, before the Rufous hummingbirds arrived.
Forests are magical places. It feels like an art museum without borders where the best artifacts exist and the most creative art forms are displayed. There's aging wood, long since alive that has delicious textures and comes with bends, knots, scars and twists that match the best of human sculptors. I believe trees communicate with each other and maybe that's, in part, where I feel the magic. There's a deep sense of working together, of cooperation and even symbiosis out there. Forests are home to so many life forms. It's an incredible, inclusive place. I love that. Forests don't tell you you're not welcome because of silly things like the color of your skin, or because of who you love or where you come from. You don't have to believe in gods, or one specific god or even any god, to be welcome. Nature equally welcomes all creatures without judgement.                For more photography of all things wood see Beach Wood.
I've always done my best thinking on walks and hikes. Nature has a way of cleansing the gunk that builds up in my head. It's the perfect "delete and reset" button out there.    "For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree." ~ Herman Hesse    “Trees are metaphorical. Their magic is that they bring beauty, comfort, and peace to the land. They celebrate life itself.” ~ Brent M. Jones     No one was on the walking trail today. Maybe it was because you had to wade through a stream get to it. I had wool boots on that dry out while I hike without feeling cold.      Spot the sunglasses for size perspective.  Almost at the trailhead.   I saw a mommy bear and three cubs near my cabin this evening. My dog alerted me to the 3rd cub in the forest who was separated from mom and the other two cubs after they all had crossed the dirt road and headed toward the little creek. We were in my Jeep when I was able to get this photo. This little one was calling out to his mom. It was my first time to see baby bears in the wild! The cub looks larger in the photo than in real life. Typically cubs are born in January. Based on that, it would make these cubs about 6 months old. At one year, they will be the size of a Golden Retriever. These little ones were about the size of a fluffy, medium sized dog.  |
Betsy Seeton
Photographer/Writer/
Private Investigator
The company I use for this website is Weebly and for some unknown reason random photos of mine appear throughout my postings unrelated to what I uploaded. If a fox appears on a blog about a moose or some other animal or photo unrelated to the blog, you'll know why! It's unfixable.
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