August 25, 2016
So my intrepid friend Scott made it up to Baptiste on Tuesday afternoon ... I don't think he even broke a sweat on the hike. Both Charlie and I were happy to see him again, and there was an evening of good conversation and mountain-watching. (Scott was actually able to see the mountains this time, which was a nice improvement from his visit last year.)
He took off down the trail on Wednesday morning, and it's been a couple of quiet days since ... cool temperatures, lots of wind, and a lovely, ever-changing mix of sun and clouds. It's been very Zen, and just what I need ... and the sort of time that I think would enrich almost anyone's life, if they cared to open up to it.
Charlie insists that we go down from the tower every couple hours or so, which is also just what I need. I walk out to the picnic table along the ridge, or down to the outhouse, or a little ways along the trail, and he runs ecstatically through the grasses, with an unabashed joy that I've seen in him a million times, but that still makes me happy.
This trip, Charlie's developed a real knack for finding long-discarded animal bones on remote corners of the ridgetop ... giant ones, mostly. (I'd almost swear he found a mastodon femur a few days ago.) He carts them around happily but precisely, before carefully finding new hiding places to deposit them. I'm guessing that he's mostly finding the hidden bone caches of the summer's other lookout dogs, and those dogs will come back next summer and wonder who's been messing with their stashes.
I haven't seen any animals up here this trip, but Charlie's spent a fair amount of time out on the lookout catwalk looking intently off to the northeast, near where the trail makes the final climb up the mountain. It's the look he has when he knows there's something out there worth looking at. This evening Charlie and I walked down that trail a ways, him in the lead as always ... and about a quarter-mile from the lookout he suddenly stopped, looking intently downhill, until I caught up with him. I told him it was his choice -- we could either keep going down the trail or we could head back to the lookout. He turned around and headed back for the lookout.
Hmm.
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Anyhow, here are a couple more Prisma-altered photos ... I promise to go back to normal ones next time. The first one is an evening-esque shot of the lookout.
And here's a late-afternoon view looking down through the trees towards the lake. I've gotten so that I really love shooting directly into the sun.
