Aug 15, 2009
Aug 14, 2009
"Watership Down"
It's a cool morning and I'm woken up by a woodpecker stabbing his beak into the tree above us; I can see him through the mesh of our tent poking away. Alex is awake too, I roll over to him and smile: "Good morning, Crumpet" I say. He smiles "Morning Treacle" and he gets up to make some coffee while I try to get my bones and muscles working again.
I pull on my boots and walk outside and Alex asks, Coffee??? Yes please! I stay standing, coffee steaming in hand and as I drink I look around the campsite. It is a meadow surrounded by blackberry bushes, there is a little break in the bushes that drops down into a dried creek bed. I remember last night and I look at the bushes trying to find where the deer chomped away the berries.
About an hour before the sun went down three deer ate their way through the meadow. The doe came first, she was very pretty with golden brown hair. Next came a little fawn with white spots on its sides and shortly after was a young stag. He didn't like the look of us so we backed away from him. After they passed we heard something else in the bush. It totally freaked me out and Alex and I backed into the creek bed to get away from it. After a half hour or so of standing on edge in the creek bed with no action we figured it was getting dark we should go back to make a fire. We made a good fire from wood that we found in the area. After it had been burning for a while we heard more noises in the meadow and Alex lit up the meadow with his flashlight and there along the edge, munching on berries were 6 does, they couldn't have been more than 30 feet from us.
"Dude, come over here!" Alex pulls me out of last nights events and waves me toward him, I creep over the meadow grass slowly and there, in the meadow path is a momma quail and her 6 little babies. I whisper "Oh my god they're so cute!" as they scatter into the long grass.
Then we hear some rustling in the blackberry bushes, something smaller than a deer, so we turn around to see what's there. We can't see anything but there's still noise so we walk around to the back of the bushes and just barely glimpse a hare jumping back into them. "How cool!!!!"
We walk back to the tent and sit on the brown table next to it, "This is such an awesome campsite!" I say.
"Definitely!" Alex agrees.
"We've got deer, quail, rabbits, a woodpecker, oh and did you hear the owl this morning?"
"No, but there were blue jays and there are mice over by the creek bed."
"Really?"
"Yeah, come have a look."
So we walk between the blackberry bushes to the creek bed and Alex points to a log that is covered in meadow grass, "They keep running in and out of there"
On closer inspection I see little holes in the meadow grass and as we are walking back to the tent to pack everything up a little black mouse, not much bigger than a golf ball leaps out of one of the little holes and scurries off into the bushes.
I turn to Alex, "You could write a whole book about all the animals in this meadow! Like the books you read when you're young, you know?"
He smiles, "Oh yes! Like Watership Down!"
"Yeah! Like Watership Down!"
(Day 2 campsite: Humbolt State Redwoods: Hamilton Environmental Campsite #5)
I pull on my boots and walk outside and Alex asks, Coffee??? Yes please! I stay standing, coffee steaming in hand and as I drink I look around the campsite. It is a meadow surrounded by blackberry bushes, there is a little break in the bushes that drops down into a dried creek bed. I remember last night and I look at the bushes trying to find where the deer chomped away the berries.
About an hour before the sun went down three deer ate their way through the meadow. The doe came first, she was very pretty with golden brown hair. Next came a little fawn with white spots on its sides and shortly after was a young stag. He didn't like the look of us so we backed away from him. After they passed we heard something else in the bush. It totally freaked me out and Alex and I backed into the creek bed to get away from it. After a half hour or so of standing on edge in the creek bed with no action we figured it was getting dark we should go back to make a fire. We made a good fire from wood that we found in the area. After it had been burning for a while we heard more noises in the meadow and Alex lit up the meadow with his flashlight and there along the edge, munching on berries were 6 does, they couldn't have been more than 30 feet from us.
"Dude, come over here!" Alex pulls me out of last nights events and waves me toward him, I creep over the meadow grass slowly and there, in the meadow path is a momma quail and her 6 little babies. I whisper "Oh my god they're so cute!" as they scatter into the long grass.
Then we hear some rustling in the blackberry bushes, something smaller than a deer, so we turn around to see what's there. We can't see anything but there's still noise so we walk around to the back of the bushes and just barely glimpse a hare jumping back into them. "How cool!!!!"
We walk back to the tent and sit on the brown table next to it, "This is such an awesome campsite!" I say.
"Definitely!" Alex agrees.
"We've got deer, quail, rabbits, a woodpecker, oh and did you hear the owl this morning?"
"No, but there were blue jays and there are mice over by the creek bed."
"Really?"
"Yeah, come have a look."
So we walk between the blackberry bushes to the creek bed and Alex points to a log that is covered in meadow grass, "They keep running in and out of there"
On closer inspection I see little holes in the meadow grass and as we are walking back to the tent to pack everything up a little black mouse, not much bigger than a golf ball leaps out of one of the little holes and scurries off into the bushes.
I turn to Alex, "You could write a whole book about all the animals in this meadow! Like the books you read when you're young, you know?"
He smiles, "Oh yes! Like Watership Down!"
"Yeah! Like Watership Down!"
(Day 2 campsite: Humbolt State Redwoods: Hamilton Environmental Campsite #5)
Aug 13, 2009
Aug 12, 2009
"Alex"dote: Candice-ism
In the 93 degree heat, leaving Gilroy and the wafts of garlic on the breeze behind us, Candice turned to me and grinned, "There are goats!!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
