Notes To My Mother

Here I Come! I have photographed a lot of coyotes.  Some look really healthy, some look bedraggled, in ill health with matted fur and generally appear in poor health.  For some of those who look sickly I am told they may suffer from mange.  At Point Reyes I have seen the whole gamut from really nice looking healthy creatures to scraggly, just barely getting by in locations not all that far apart from each other. The coyote featured in this post was found at a park in southern Sonoma County in November of last year (2022). This fella is among the healthiest coyotes I have seen.  To me he seems almost wolf-like in his beauty.  As I was taking pictures of him he kept coming closer and closer, seemingly undisturbed by my presence. Seeing him up close like this never fails to give me a thrill.  What a beautiful animal indeed. Having him look up at the sky while directly in front of me supports my sense that I was not a bother to him.  This pose is, in my experience, unusual as coyotes seem

As you may have gathered from previous posts, the Eastern Sierras is one of my favorite places to spend time.  Here are a few of the spots that I particularly like.  Highway 168 out of Bishop, CA, will take you into a beautiful area of the Sierras following Bishop Creek to the west and into the mountains. The scene above is Bishop Creek on the way to South Lake. Not far away is North Lake a very pretty lake in late September and early October. It is the place to be early in the morning just before the sun hits the mountain peaks. You will know you are in the right place by the crowd of photographers. A picture of this lake was the screensaver image on iMacs a few years ago. Whenever I am in the Sierras in early October I head for this lake to catch a beautiful sunrise. What I really want is an image of this location during Autumn color with snow on the peaks. Just missed it a  couple of years ago. The next best thing is North Lake with mirror-like reflections, autumn color, and clouds

If you are looking for wildflowers and would like to avoid the crowds I would like to share with you a location my good friend, Will Bakx, and I found in 2016. Like 2023, 2016 was anticipated to be a good year for a super bloom. We didn't want the crowds at the more popular places so we headed for the foothills east of Fresno, California. Not having a particular destination in mind for our photography expedition, we just wandered for awhile, finding patches of blooms here and there but nothing like a super bloom. In a moment of inspiration we approached the mailman on his rural delivery. He know just the place and gave us directions. Pine Flat Lake was our new destination and what a delight it turned out to be. We were on a road that traverses the north side of the lake. With the first scene of flowers our jaws dropped with excitement. Then we would turn the corner and another even more beautiful scene would unfold. We stayed that night in Clovis and were up early the next