Retreat - Part III

(more autumny music for your listening pleasure...)

There is always a plethora of wildlife up at the cabin-

From the wild - (can you pick out the pileated woodpecker perched on the trunk of the tree here? There was a mated pair flying about all weekend) - the owls we could hear, the small brown bats at dusk, the tiny red-bellied Douglas squirrels, the deer and elk prints on the trails... (we won't discuss the mouse that spent the first night in my room both under and ON my bed!...)

Oh - and the Fattest-Groundsquirrel-Evar - that lives under the front porch and is apparently seriously bulking up for his winter hibernation...

There was our yearly Great Dane 'mascot' -

(look at the size of those paws) - who we adore, and sadly are afraid this is his last year with us...

One of the 'locals' stopped by with a truck-load of elk antlers that he 'harvests' from the forest floors every spring as they shed them. Aren't these gorgeous?....

(Our hostess acquired a number of pairs - soon to be included in some very interesting works of art...)

(

And there were the elk bones! I came home with a very lovely vertebrae which is now living in my studio and will be the subject of sketching sometime soon I'm sure...

Utah Mountains - Flora and Fauna...

There was a surprisingly accessible amount of wildflowers and wild life...

There were a couple of feeders hung outside the lodge that were frequented by clusters of fierce and territorial hummingbirds - chasing each other off quite vocally (I didn't realize they had such loud voices!). And so many varieties! Ruby throated. Green backed. Brown bodied... Fire-y little, warrior birds!

The roadways were lined with dozens of varieties of wild flowers, on which lit nearly as many varieties of bees and butterflies. It was gratifying to see so many butterflies in one place, since their populations are so depleted in many areas.

Wild yarrow - one of my favorite wild medicinal herbs.... (All the yarrow in my garden is yellow. I wonder if I need wild growing here as well...? hmmmm....)

Briers, bracken, and thistles.... It all provides a lovely understory for larger animals -

- some of the funnest to observe being a trio of moose that frequented the grounds. This afternoon it was the baby, rather than the yearling accompanying the mother moose. He hung about the shore -

-while the mama grazed in the pond. (They eat algae or something, don't they?)

And in the parking lot below our cabins we stumbled upon a fairly tame, still beautifully spotted, mule-deer fawn.

Who was quickly joined by its twin. And then their mother. They were quite unfazed by my trailing after them, snapping pictures. In fact, I tired before they did, and I left them to their grazing.

It was lovely and renewing to be around so many living, growing things (well, maybe not all the millipedes on the floors of the cabins when you'd wake up in the morning)....