lifes contradictions, surrounded by nature with bin laden's death on my brain....

guess that is actually fitting as i was out in nature on sept 11, 2001. i was moving between ketchikan and anchorage. had taken the ferry with my friend carla, who was originally from new york. we were in skagway getting ready to drive to whitehorse, yukon territory. that is when we heard the news. after getting the initial news we drove out of skagway. we had no radio coverage until we got to whitehorse. strange to be surrounded by beauty and wondering if a nuclear war had started. at the border crossing we heard a possible hijacked plane was headed to whitehorse and they had no idea what was happening there. we drove on in silence.
some have put a quote on facebook from martin luther king about not rejoicing in death, hate promotes hate...obviously, that is not the exact quote. i don't find it offensive, but it's just hard for me to judge those who immediately went down to ground zero as it's called and waved flags and chanted U.S.A. and were jubilant upon hearing of bin ladens death. i wasn't there, i was removed. i didn't watch the towers come down and breathe in the dust that was laced with the evaporated remains of my fellow citizens, i didn't lose any family or friends in this nor have i lost any in the wars that have followed.
besides, osama was a coward in my mind. he was offered the chance to come out alive and he chose to fight. he never gave that option to those he killed and in the end he grabbed one of his wives and used her as a sheild to protect himself. selfish and cowardly to the end. i'm not dancing in the streets, but i'm not sad at this. i understand those who are jubilant and i do not judge them thier actions.
as you can see above is one of those bear sightings signs that show up at the trailheads this time of year. after a morning of indecisiveness i finally decided to go out to campbell airstrip and do a loop out there and brave a bear sighting. it's really a matter of getting used to hiking in bear country again. this happens every summer for me, re-training. summer hiking is not as relaxing for me as winter hiking just because of the bear element. you really do have to stay on gaurd at all times. it is best to hike with a group. suppose i figure hiking with 2 dogs is a group of sorts. if i suddenly stop blogging perhaps i have met with an unfriendly bear, but i hope that never happens. my hike was happily uneventful.

blossom and rio have no such fears while out hiking. sometimes blossom will look off into the woods as if she sees or hears something and that gets my heart beating. rio is good to have along though as despite her blindness she is the most likely to spot wildlife.

love wispy clouds like these. just another beautiful day in alaska. the grey clouds moved in a bit by the evening.

watched some news coverage through the day. we supposedly did this take out without pakistans knowledge. one has to wonder if that really means without the leadership of pakistans knowledge. bin laden was holed up right by a military installation. one wonders how we slipped into thier country unnoticed like we did. there is much we will never know and undoubtably it's best for pakistan to pretend they knew nothing even if they did and make us out to be the bad guys who killed osama.

it does bum me out that he was living in comfort. it was so much nicer to see sadam hussein pulled out of that hole in the ground.

another topic of conversation is the burial. before they dropped his body in the ocean they tried to follow muslim customs concerning death. some have felt this was too respectful. for me, this is just a way to show we are sensitive and humane, even to one who showed none of this for others. i really can't argue that.

aren't these trees just beautiful? spent some time out in the garden again today. may seems to be prep month. get most of my gardening done in may/early june. i did a mini car wash to get a layer off, repotted the beloved tomato plant and hosed the driveway, though i always feel so california when i do that. that is such a california thing to do, hose instead of sweep. perhaps that's changed...it shoud have considering california is always in the middle of a water shortage crisis it seems.

this is the bridge across campbell creek. rio likes it as the wood rail is the perfect height for her to rub on.

after our walk i went down to potter marsh to see what birds were out there. thought i'd just stop by every so often. not that i'm a birder, but it is kinda fun to see all the varieties that pass through town.not sure what sort of sandpiper these guys are, but they sure made a racket.

then i heard the sandhill cranes. there were 4 or 5 of them out there that i could see. they were pretty far off, but always fun to get a sighting.

so these are pretty crappy pictures of them. i have many other better pictures in other posts on this blog site, but these are todays.

may be an artic tern or some other gull. i'm good, eh?

looked pretty though.

was just wearing a t-shirt and fleece vest. it gets a bit windy out there. some lady commented that i must be freezing, which i really wasn't. probably just that i'm a local. many tourists stop by potters marsh.

believe this duck is a green winged teal.

picture of blue skies, clouds and the walkway. heard the car horn honking a few times, care of rio catalina.

blossom loves to help me with the leaves. she had dropped her tennis ball for me to toss, i hadn't noticed and had raked it into the pile of leaves. blossom is looking for it. successfully i must say.

in the evening i decided to take a nice stroll in the bog. blossom was hesitant once we got out on the street. she loves walks, but dogs are funny about thier routine sometimes. summers we will often go out for a neighborhood walk later in the evening, but not winters so this threw her off.

in the end i think she enjoyed herself.

lots of canadian geese out there tonight. haven't seen the sandhill cranes in there this year yet, still may happen. i've never seen a swan out there,but i suppose that could happen as well.

the lighting was nice on the trees.

this gull was sitting there minding his own business and a few other smaller gulls of a different sort kept swooping down on him. lots of territorial battles going on these days.

seems like i've only snacked today. kinda hungry but too lazy to make a full meal.

the geese are always so cool looking.

magpie, standard bog bird. they are quite fussy and i saw many working on thier nest building. babies will start showing up everywhere soon.

this young guy probably got the boot from his moose mom in prep for her new arrival in spring.

still putting off spending my money though it needs to happen. i think i have chosen colours for these two rooms. thought i would use the same accent wall brown in both rooms and then alter the other, main color. will probably run it by a few friends to see what they think before i make the final decision. the lighter natural bamboo flooring sample is looking better with these though so will probably go for that. someone mentioned that scratches will not be so obvious with this either. though considering these aren't high traffic areas i think i'll be fine.

nice evening, nice walk. great to end the day not listening to the news media drone on and on about nothing. they can really suck the interest out of any topic by overcovering it. i always find it hard to believe that they can't find other global news and instead just say the same crap over and over and over. so far it hasn't sounded too them against us though i saw a facebook post that suggested president obama was taking all this credit for this action, like he was gloating.

i don't think any decent human would gloat over a thing like this. despite bin laden being a terrorist it can't be easy to be in power and say go get him, dead or alive. i think he made the right decision, but i doubt it was something he just flippantly decided on. i suspect if this option had come up on bush's watch, he too would have felt some stress over a decision to condem a man to death. i doubt either would be thinking, " how will this impact my poll ratings". at least i hope that isn't the deciding factor in these cases.

most people haven't reacted with a democrat/republican agenda, but i'd guess that will start to show up in the next 24 hours when they have nothing else to talk of, especially on fox news. come to think of it i did start to hear a little of that on fox when i scrolled through the various news coverage. i turned the channel.

a few years ago they put this little lookout ramp out on the bog. it's pretty "boggy" and muddy below this ramp so nice to get out closer to the waters edge and check out the bird activity out there. love my little bog, it's a great place.