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Basalt

It was a mink! I had to look it up. Black tip on the tail, I thought it might be a black-footed ferret, but it turns out they haven’t been seen in Colorado since 1946. It was a mink scampering to safety on the other side of the trail. The Rio Grande trail, named for the railroad, not for the river, runs the length of the Valley, between Aspen and Glenwood. Every day I get to walk a different section. Today I got to go from the pedestrian bridge outside Basalt to Snowmass Creek, at the road to Old Snowmass. We see birds every day, but we recognize them all. We haven’t seen a new bird since the pigeon guillemot in August. We need a new bird. Time to change habitats. A glorious sunset in Botswana this morning. Now it’s the middle of the night there, and elephants and lions are wandering around in the dark.
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Basalt

The paved bicycle trail runs from Carbondale to Basalt. It follows the old railroad grade along the Roaring Fork River. Sometimes it runs next to roads. We found the roadless section, only recently completed. They’re still working on the shoulders. One person loops around in the car, the other person gets a one hour walk if they stop to look at birds a few times along the way. Roadless river, a mountainside. Some houses and hammocks on the other side. Trees, bushes, blue sky. A flyfisherman. Chickadees, kinglets, finches, magpies, ravens, kingfishers, juncos. Today, a mink….. or a ferret…. a small weasel? Long and slim, loping across the trail. Soft brown and white with black on the tip of its tail. Deer on the trail as I round a corner watch me intently, then bolt and disappear. Yesterday, there was a breeze and it was too cold. Today, it was forty, calm, and sunny; just right.
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FW: morning light

I love this time of year. The days get shorter. I still get up at the same time every day, but now it’s dark when I wake up. I raise the curtains and go to work in the front room in the cool gray light of dawn. I get to see the sunrise. I’m not a morning person. It’s not that I don’t like mornings. I love being awake and about before dawn, I just don’t like anything about the process that gets me from being asleep in a warm cozy bed to being awake and about. In a few weeks, we’ll lose daylight savings time. The days will still get shorter, but they won’t get back to me being up before the sun. Will I set my alarm for six instead of seven?….. I don’t think so.