Life In My Backyard: Backyard Bliss

This post is just a spattering of some of what my camera has captured of my backyard. They are from times I have enjoyed this year and left me breathless at times. I hope you enjoy them!

I am choosing to open this post with a quote from Disturbing the Peace by Vaclav Havel: A Conversation with Karel Hvizdala about hope. My friend Sue Inge shared it with me over email today in grieving over Havel's passing and it seems so appropriate. I hope it moves you as it moved me to read it just this morning. I dabbled in this book some years ago, but never had the time to sink into it. Guess I'll check out the Kennewick library! They have a real nice Library here and a good book is what I need.

Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it has a chance to succeed. The more unpropitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. In short, I think the deepest and most important form of hope, the only one that can keep us above water and urge us to do good works, and the only true source of the breathtaking dimension of the human spirit and its efforts, is something we get, as it were, from "elsewhere." It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things, even in conditions that seem hopeless as ours do, here and now.

These were taken in late summer while camping the east side of the sierras over Sonora Pass along the Little Walker River.

My shadow across the river

Indian Paints & Soda Creek (?)

Bumble!

Volcanic hills along the hike

Below are a couple from a hike above May Lake

Swirly reflection

Rick, Cindy & Carl checking out the view. WOW!

My camping trip mid October to the East Side just a ways outside Bridgeport was an incredible experience topped off by my first hot springs soak!

Fall colors looking towards Burts canyon

Friends I met who guided me to Emma Lake
and gave great pointers!

Wagon wheel on the trail

Lake Emma

Burts Canyon

Somewhere in the mix this summer I treked beyond Dewy Point via McGurk Meadow and had a great nap on a rock at the top and another day to Ostrander Lake, again with the nap thing!

Dewy Point

Ostrander trail chipmunk

Backlit Snowplant Ostrander trail

Other highlights included 10 Lakes (why, oh why didn't I have my camera?!), Yosemite falls, Spillway lake, and several trips to Mirror lake all which were awesome. The people along as well as nature in its glory made for memorable experiences.

Whitney made it to the top of yosemite falls in her Momma's pack without so much as a whimper!

Suzanne, Naoko, Fhilip (Suzannes Son), Kim and Whitney in Kim's pack.

Naoko, always with a song and a smile led our hike.

Yosemite Falls with fallbow. Clark Range in the back.

On the edge with railings works for me! 12 year old Fhilip kept saying "are you nervous yet? now are you nervous?" anytime I would get near the edge of something after telling him I didn't do well with heights.