each day an adventure in alaska: i have become bear papparazzi!!

how could you not...she's lovely. so cool to have this bear denned up so close to my house and so close to the road. the other papparazzi with much better camera gear than i filled me in on more. the tree is huge and hollow, a cotton wood. she has at least one cub in there, i think two, last years cubs. i stayed over an hour easy but got no sightings of the kids. apparently a bear seems to den up in this year every year for the past several years at least. this is within a few miles from my place so i have cruised past on the way to/from walks and even on the way home from work a few times...just to see.

got lucky today and saw this black blog at the top of the tree. she seemed pretty happy and i had the dogs to walk so i took off with blossom and rio to do a loop of rovers run. hell, the local bear was known to be up a tree so i felt pretty safe. took my spray just in case though. it is that time of year.

she is looking down into the hold in the tree trunk. maybe looking at the cubs. not sure. the other papparazzi were very nice and chatted. the one older guy thought it funny that i just plopped down on the snow and settled in with my camera. they all seemed surprised that i wasn't freezing my arse off. i figured when my arse got too cold it would be time for me to leave. some of those photographers have been out there all day...i'm talking 7-9 hours. i have always been proud to admit that i am a lazy photographer. i got pictures and watched the bear.

funny going through the pictures i kept yawning. it's tiring looking at pictures of a sleepy bear. she would wake, yawn, stretch maybe, reposition and then drop off back to sleep. camera's would all start popping every time she moved. since there were so many other photogs out there i went to where they were and got a better view of the bear. still only a 200 zoom. my knees were my tripod. a few photographers left bummed that they would miss seeing me get up from that spot. they must have thought i would struggle. i popped up and as i left i told the other photographers to make sure and let them know that i had not had any trouble getting off the ground.

she looks quite regal up there in her tree. she didn't seem concerned about all the spectators below. i guess a police officer came through earlier to yell at the photographers to not harass the bear...fish and game was called and they weren't the least bit concerned about the photographers being where they were...they could see the bear wasn't concerned. fish and game trumped police on this one and that was that.

been a busy week. as i worked last night we were getting news of a gun battle in boston and that one of the suspected bombers from mondays marathon had been shot down. the other suspect, his brother, ran over his injured brothers body and escaped. an all day manhunt shut down the city of boston while this 19 year old was hunted down. sadly an officer was killed, i think it was a university police. eventually, the 19 year old hunkered down in a boat sitting in someones yard. a neighbor noticed the blood on the boat and the bloody person hiding in there and called 911. they seemed to be closing in on the guy before i headed off to walk the dogs. i knew it was a matter of time. happy to say he is now captured and i'm sure many will rest feeling more secure tonight.

not sure how many more people such as these two are amongst us all. waiting for their day to set off a bomb and disrupt and destroy lives. my heart goes out to the families of those lost and to the many who have been injured. may they recover and live full lives. a special prayer to all those who are caregivers to these patients and a special prayer for the ones who have been tasked with the care of the bomber himself. would be tough to be that nurse. everyone deserves a kindness, but knowing that this man extended no kindness to others and caused such pain with his selfish and cowardly act would make it tough to be kind and put all that aside.
i took care of a man who had just murdered someone once. cop in the room at all times. it was pretty freaky. you just have to do your job and let the jury and lawyers do theirs.

those paws are huge.

only had to work 2 nights, both in the peds icu this week. got wednesday off as an on call day. was totally shocked by that one. my patients kept me fairly busy, but both were enjoyable nights. hard to sleep knowing i was on call for the entire hospital. never dreampt i'd make it through the night without being called in , but i did.

my brother jeff, lives on the outskirts of boston, but not an area that was directly effected today. last i heard they were all safe and well. must have been a strange, eerie day for all in the vicinity though. with the rodney king riots in los angeles they pretty much shut down town at nights. i'd drive home from work to empty streets for the most part. at times you'd see those national guard truck going down the street.

hard to prune down all my bear pictures today and i know i took about a thousand less than the people around me. she sure seemed to be enjoying the sunshine.

loved when she did this stretch for me. so sleepy. guess it takes them several weeks to really wake up and get that metabolism kicking in. she does look quite healthy. perhaps spending the winter in a tree is good on a bear. i will be looking at all those huge cottonwoods a bit different from now on.

got to video chat with my friend in north carolina...:-) that is fun. makes phone calls more fun i must say. i should do that more often.

was lazy today so didn't get the start to homer that i was debating. i'm thinking tomorrow i will try for seward. homer could be a long drive after my leg procedure. best to start a bit smaller and work my way up. still want to see that polar bear baby at the zoo and it's almost time to make the drive to denali national park to cruise the road before tourist season shuts it down for car traffic. always fun. gotta take advantage of this lovely time of year.

sometimes this bears life looks quite appealing though. sitting in a tree, napping for a few weeks. like to get back on track with my exercise program. swimming...hope i haven't forgotten how.

watched a few good ted talks that i enjoyed. my friend, anita, did say i may become addicted.

one was by a guy, ben saunders. he did a solo trek to the north pole. he ski'd. i thought his story was engaging and funny. some people just can tell a story. of course, there are comments and there are always those people who seem to get their only power by making rude comments over the internet. those that can, explore, those that don't rant on every chance they get.
life is better lived. one person commented that it wasn't that big a deal to do the solo trip as opposed to doing it with a group.

everything is harder alone, especially when it comes to exploration and adventure. who's to rescue you, who's to go get help. a group is safer, how anyone could say otherwise, i do not know. hell, most people i know are scared to even go to a restaurant alone. people go nuts being alone with just their thoughts.

others commented that his speech was arrogant. i really didn't get that vibe from it, but then as i walked the other day i decided that all adventurers must have a bit of an oversized ego and perhaps some arrogance....how else could you stand on the ice pack with your gear and your ski's and watch a helicoptor fly off. i think perhaps arrogance gets a bad rap. without it who would have explored the world. the adventerous spirit is probably a highly confident spirit as well. you gotta be a bit cocky to make it to the north pole on ski's.
it was kinda funny that the speech was given years ago and saunders still shows up from time to time to comment on the comments. i commend him for that. most of the time it's best to ignore the commentors...many are just idiots who live small lives and the only time they feel better is when they are bashing others by commenting on the internet.

another interesting talk was by joshua prayer. 20 years ago he'd been in a car wreck where he'd ended up with a broken neck. he was just 19 at the time. he was in israel i think. he was left a hemiplegic...he walked out with a cane and had diminished use of one side of his body. there were others injured and one killed in the wreck. the man who was at fault had a long list of traffic violations.
joshua went back to find the man who was responsible to talk to him 20 years later. he wanted to hear the man say he was sorry for how he had caused this life to change forever. he wanted to see the remorse in the mans eyes. he got neither.

some people never will admit to themselves, let alone anyone else, that something could be their fault or responsibility. this man had come to believe that there was another bus that had swerved and caused him to go into this van. this bus was never mentioned in his trial. yet, he'd come to believe it was anothers fault and saw only how this accident had impacted him. he'd lost teeth and wasn't ever as handsome as he'd once been.

sometimes it seems such a small thing, hearing another say they are sorry. there are those like this man though who will never utter such words. it's frustrating. i've often been frustrated by this very thing in my life and really over trivial things, small infractions and times when i've been on the recieving end of unkindness. how much it would have meant to just hear that person say "i'm sorry" and this guy had gone through a great deal of pain and rehab and had his entire life's course altered in a moment. he never heard those words...

i think on that same day there was a quote on facebook about saying "i'm sorry". it was something like saying you are sorry doesn't always mean you are wrong, it just means you care about the relationship. okay i totally didn't remember that right, but i think we often will just apolize even if we don't feel we are in the wrong because in the big picture what does it matter.

sadly, in any relationship in life if one person is the apologizer all the time and the other is always in the right, dysharmony and a lack of balance will eventually tip the scales to the point they fall over.

cute foot i thought.

my last glimpses of the bear were probably some of my best photo's. she had turned around on the tree so i decided that was my cue to leave. took this one as i was walking under her tree.

ric elias was on the plane that crashed into the hudson. his advice was don't postpone things, don't waste time on things that don't matter with people who do matter, and that it wasn't scary to die, but it was scary to miss out on all the important things. cherish those.

rabbit tracks above. these were from a bog loop the other day.

dogs get their walks, cats get their play time. this is a new favorite of pogi's. his feet look so huge in these pictures.

blossom should be tired today. i think she enjoyed her game of tennis ball today.

these are out north bivouac. one open area...icicles. there was a huge, thick icicle hanging off my roof the other day. it was hanging over my neighbors deck. wasn't sure if i should try to nail it with something and shatter it across a large area. i decided to ponder it as i walked...when i got home, it was no longer there. i didn't see any damage to said deck though. they can be very dangerous.