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Week Forty-one, December 24-31
Monday, December 31, 2001
Natalie and I drove down to Dickman Mill Park to look at the high tide and check out the birds on this dark and rainy last day of 2001. I snapped this shot of the snowy Cascade Mountains in the distance and the pilings that sit offshore of the ever-steepening beach at Dickman Mill Park as my last photo of 2001.
In this year, Natalie and I took 3,314 photos with our Nikon CoolPix 950 digital camera, and we took dozens of others with our standard SLR film cameras. If someone would have told me at the beginning of the year that I would take this many photos in 12 months, I wouldn't have believed them. And while this total is pretty low for someone who works as a professional photographer full-time, for a writer and Internet worker like me, I am impressed with the numbers.
Here's to a bigger and better 2002!
Sunday, December 30, 2001
I tried to get a photo this evening of the moon rise over Commencement Bay, but persistent fog made capturing that image impossible. Instead, I capture a glimpse of one of those fairy tale images in the making. Fog horns sounded in this southern part of Puget Sound all day today, and when I glanced down across Mason Gulch to the bay below it was obvious why. Fog hugged the shore and hovered over the Tacoma tideflats areas, and as the sun set behind me the fog was developing in fingers reaching the rest of the way across the bay to the west.
My photo today looks once again at the madrona tree on the eastern rim of Mason Gulch, and it is hard to make out in this small version of the photo but in the background the tops of the huge cranes in the tideflats rise through the fog, poking up into the last bits of light on this short winter day.
Saturday, December 29, 2001
Not even sunshine could get me outside long enough to snap a good photo today, but I did spend some time outdoors mixed in with the time spent getting ready to have a group of friends over for a holiday dinner tonight. But there was one point when I wished I had my camera with me. This evening just before we launched into cooking soup and the rest of dinner, I ventured to the store for some last-minute supplies and on my drive to the store as I pulled up to turn north along Mason Gulch I saw someone looking out over Commencement Bay to the east where she was watching the full moon rise over the Cascade Mountains. It would have made a great photo, but this one will have to stay locked in my mind...
Friday, December 28, 2001
This afternoon marked a small first for me. As I ate a late lunch while sitting in the sun on the front porch, the bushes along the northern edge of our front yard were alive with birds. I listened and watched for a while, then decided to try pishing the birds out of the bushes so that I could get a better look at them. "Pishing" is something that birders do, immitating a bird call to draw the birds curiousity and help pull them out to the edge of the tree or bush so that the birder can get a closer look. And today was the first time that I could say without a doubt that pishing worked for me.
Most of the birds around our yard right now, hitting the feeders at the neighbor's house and here, are pine siskins, finches, oregon juncos, chickadees and of course starlings. I snapped today's photo of a trio of pine siskins sitting at the top of a lilac bush.
Thursday, December 27, 2001
It was a minor adventure getting my photo for today. I went over to help M and W doing some of their final steps in completing the move into their new house, and on my way home I noticed how great the Olympic Mountains looked behind the Narrows Bridge as I passed above Highway 16 on an overpass. So, I pulled off on the road that goes down along the eastern side of the Narrows Bridge, in search of a place to park so that I could walk onto the overpass and take a photo of the mountains with the bridge in the foreground. Of course, there is no parking along the road. I ended up having to go down and double back (I couldn't just turn around and come back up the road because it is blocked after the West Coast bridge terror scare) and then parking in the entrance to a gated property that is for sale. Then I hoofed it up a hill and to the opposite end of the overpass to get the photo above.
It's funny...a few weeks ago I wouldn't have been able to park my car and walk out to take this photo. At that time the road was closed and no one was allowed to loiter in any way near the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, for fear that they were terrorists bound to send the current bridge to the same fate as the first Narrows Bridge - Galloping Gertie - that now rests at the bottom of the Tacoma Narrows, where it serves as a reef for marine life in the swift waters that flow like a river in the varying Puget Sound tides.
Later in the day, the high clouds that helped to make the Olympic Mountains stand out in the distance and made them seem much closer than normal, those clouds lowered and brought the first rain in a week to our part of the world. It is winter, after all. And in this land of wetness, seven days without rain just feels wrong.
Wednesday, December 26, 2001
I am not a fan of shopping. In fact, most of the time I pretty much loathe it. But today, on one of the busiest shopping days of the year, Natalie and I went to the mall for the first time this Christmas season in order to grab a couple of last-minute gifts for friends and to show Natalie a store with some international products down by the mall. But on the way to the shopping I pulled over along the road to venture into the cool afternoon air along Mason Gulch and snap a couple of photos - one of Mt. Rainier as it was being overtaken by a line of clouds, and the other that I am using for my photo today, looking north over Commencement Bay to the snow-capped North Cascades in the distance.
This was a good day of unwinding at home...a much-needed break before returning to the rush of work, projects, socializiing...life.
Tuesday, December 25, 2001
I spent the drive back home from Longview to Tacoma this afternoon keeping a rough count of the hawks I could see driving north on Interstate 5. There were at least 11 red-tailed hawks, including one that I saw briefly eating its prey on a grassy knoll along the freeway near Chehalis, and in addition I saw at least one Cooper's hawk sitting in a tree near the Cowlitz River.
This was the fourth day of fairly clear weather in a row, which is an unusual run for this time of year. Temperatures have been cold though. In fact, it has been colder here at home than 100 miles south in Longview, because on the drive home there were shaded areas along the highway and along Ruston Way down the bluff from home where heavy white frost made it look like there was a skiff of snow on the ground. The low temperature dipped to 23 degrees while we were away. Can a real snow storm be far behind?
I took today's photo tonight, while sitting at the computer. Our newest dog, Abe, was being insistent and inquisitive, so he gets his moment in the spotlight today.
Monday, December 24, 2001
Let it snow...or at least frost really hard. The frost was thick on the rhody bushes outside Natalie's parents' home in Longview this morning, which drew me to take a close up photo of the snow.
This day is too full of holiday activities to have much else to write about. I sure hope everyone is having a happy holiday, whatever you choose to celebrate!
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