It Took Me Fifty Years...But I Finally Saw One

 My family moved to Farmington, Utah in 1970.

I was Four.

There's been only a few years when I did not live on this street or on this mountain. Living on a mountain means you get to interact--occasionally--with wildlife. And of all the wild creatures prancing, swimming, crawling, flying, and buzzing on this mountain, there's one thing that slithers that I hadn't seen...

A rattlesnake.

Until last week.

I know rattlers live in the mountains. You just have to be careful when hiking--from what I understand, they don't like people so they'd be happy if people just left them alone. Fine with me. I did a lot more hiking on the mountain as a kid, but in all the time I've lived here, I never saw one.

Last week there was a commotion in our backyard. My daughter came in from work and said they caught a rattlesnake next door. I had to see it. A Farmington City police officer already had the situation cleared. The snake was caged. I took out my phone and started taking pictures.

"You want a better picture?" the officer asked.

"Really?" I said.

"Yeah...I can take the top off."

"No thanks," I said.

Today, my friend posted a picture of him and his wife that he took while the two of them were hiking on the mountain. He said they saw some rattlers. Maybe, if I had been more fortunate (or unfortunate some might say...) I would have seen this beautiful animal sooner. Then again, a half a century is okay by me.

As long as it's caged.

Looking Out The Bedroom Window...

The other night my wife spotted sunlight filtering through the pine trees outside our bedroom window. I grabbed my phone and snapped a few pictures. Like most pictures, the finished product pales in comparison. It was one of those moments where you see nature and it becomes part of you.

Looking out the bedroom window.

The trees...pine trees grown from starts that are decades old. The pine trees have lived on the Taylor land almost as long as I have. When my parents bought the ten or so acres on the hill above old Farmington, they planted two rows of pines. I have no idea what species. They grew as we did, their roots digging deep because they weren't watered much in those early decades.

Then, we developed the land and built a house right next to the mature trees. A few were sacrificed to accommodate the road--sad, but it had to be done. The surviving trees remain north and east of our little house.

Tall trees where we live have a natural enemy--wind. Many tall pines have blown over in our not-so-little town. Each year, a big wind will bring down a few more. I wonder if ours will ever fall. Now that we've lived near them and watered them properly for almost twenty years, they've grown taller still. Plus, they grow together--there's strength in that.

When we built our home, we wanted to build a log cabin. That didn't work out, so we built a house with a cabin floor plan. When we look outside that particular window, pines fill the space. It's as if we live miles inside a forest.

It's a beautiful thing...

Especially when the evening sun filters through the needles of the pines.

See Those Two Little Dots? They're People Either Very Dedicated...Or Insane...Or Both

I know it's hard to see, two small dots completely engulfed in black. Thus is the limitations of my iPhone camera. But, truth be known, I don't know of any camera that could have done much better. There wasn't a lot of light out at 6:20am, a week ago this morning. 

The two dots are from two flashlights--most likely headlamps from the way they moved. I left my house to go to work and those two dots caught my attention. The people with the dots were a couple of hundred feet up the side of the mountain on which we live. From time to time, we can see lights from people on the mountain at night--especially, since it gets dark earlier and earlier now. But, seeing lights so early in the morning, that's what we call, rare.

I guess there's some advantages to hiking several hundred feet up the hill in December. I doubt they'll run into many rattlesnakes this time of year. There have been, however, a number of reported cougar sightings in these mountains. I guess it's never truly safe on the mountain, or anywhere, for that matter.

The people with the flashlights must be go-getters. They must find some rush in getting up hours before the general population to risk death by hiking up the side of a mountain in December. And, to some degree, I applaud them for that. It's not something I'll be doing anytime soon, but they have my respect.

I noticed the lights because they're never there. I wonder if I'll see them again.

Going On A Hike...With A Cat

Living on the side of a mountain and at the head of a very popular hiking trail, I see hikers trek up and down the mountain all the time.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone take their cat along...

But last week, I did.

It was me.

It was after work and I wanted to see if I could get any pictures of the colors before storms erased it all. I loaded up my nice camera and I began my hike.

Teewinot, our cat, started following me.

It's not unusual for him to do this. If I'm out and I decided to walk to the end of our street or around my yard, many times he'll follow me. When I started out on my hike, I didn't know how far I'd go or how long I'd be gone, so when he started following me, I thought it was cute. I didn't expect he'd stay with me the entire time.

I hiked about a half a mile up the hill. There's a road we call the Fire Break Road that far away. I wasn't sure I'd end up there, but it was such a beautiful afternoon, that became my goal. Teewinot kept up with me the entire time.

Our cat's been with us for years. I'm sure he's been up and down that mountain and where we went was nothing new to him. Still, it was fun to watch an aging cat make the hike. He was much quicker going down--aren't we all? 

It's getting colder--it even snowed last weekend, not enough to stick around, but it will, eventually. I don't do a lot of hikes anyway so I'm probably not going to be up the hill again much any time soon. But, last week, on a nice Utah autumn afternoon, me and the cat had a good time.

The View At The End Of The Day...

I take a lot of pictures of sunsets. I take a lot of pictures around my house. If you check out this blog with any regularity, or if you follow me on social media, I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

I grew up across the street from where I now live. My father designed that house, a structure he never got to see finished. But he was a man ahead of his time when it came to creating a home for his wife and three kids. One thing he did which was unusual in the early 1970s was he designed the main room of the house with floor-to-ceiling windows. I never talked to him about why, but I would imagine one of the main reasons for having those big-for-their-day windows was to enjoy the view. I mean, why else live on the side of a mountain?

Unfortunately, window technology in the early 1970s was extremely inadequate when it came to insulation. That room was almost uninhabitable during the summer months. The home faces due west and, though not the warmest place to live, Utah along the Wasatch Front can get hot. We never really had the resources to upgrade those windows while my mom was alive. Basically, we just avoided the room altogether. Winters weren't much better, but you could use blankets or a space heater to help.

My family moved into our house thirteen years ago this month--almost to the day. It's very modern compared to my parent's home we lived in all those years. The windows in our new(ish) house were the most advanced at the time. I'm sure they make better ones now. But as the sun sets over our inland sea, I still look out a window to check out the evening sky. Tonight, one might argue that there wasn't much up there. But as it's wont to do in summer, the smoke from fires distant and near filter the dying rays of the sun so that even when there's not the spectacular oranges and reds, pinks and purples, it's still beautiful.

And because of that, I'll take another picture.