Mark Sheely’s Photoblog

You can see more photos of Porter at this page.

I like the stuff that was out-of-focus almost as much, for example:

More from my hike last Thursday on the Pine River Trail:

The first couple of miles of the trail follow the boundary of the Granite Peaks Ranch:

Old growth forests are simple in a way that a child can understand. The forests create their own healthy stable world, and maintain it. The thick bark of the oldest trees, and the way they shed their branches – almost tempting little grass fires to catch in those brush-tangles and limb-tangles, helps to keep the forest cool and clean and nutrient-rich, below.

All those old lichens hanging down from the oldest trees, hard-earned, are not for show: if floating sparks land in them, the lichens flare up like a torch and then extinguish themselves, having used up all the surrounding available oxygen in that quick flash – leaving the tree almost totally unscathed.

-Rick Bass, The Book of Yaak

More tomorrow….