Gary's Outdoor Wanderings2: EARLY MORNING ENTRY

Actually, this entry should follow the one I posted last night. I wasn't going to enter the following material but I was up early this morning and couldn't get my thoughts straight. Seems someone changed all my clocks ahead an hour without conferring with me. I visited Beech Creek yesterday with the Gheenoe but was on Muddy Creek at Douglas Lake the day before. Imagine that for a name of a creek - Muddy Creek, and its on Douglas Lake, my favorite mud hole. Birds of a feather I guess :)

I guess another reason I'm up this early is because a lot of things occurred recently this week and I'm not used to dealing with a lot of "stuff" anymore. I'm not domestic but I've had to buy this property that I never wanted and now must deal with the added expenses that I never wanted. Oh - what I've sacrificed to get this job!!
So, the neighbor, whose property is elevated slightly above mine and to the right has decided to cut away all the undergrowth in the wood lot that separates our property. Where I had seclusion before - I now can look up the grade through the trees and see his yard filled with children's toys and those huge multicolored, plastic slides and swing sets. The dogs can now see any movement up there and go nuts barking and charging into the thicket at the appearance of the guys 5 noisy kids. The undergrowth absorbed all that racket before. I'm trying desperately to find some plants or fast growing trees to create a barrier to all that domestic noise. Why do people have to cut everything down? I live in a very rural place and this family moved to the country from the city and it is evident they want to create a park like atmosphere around their house. Why didn't they just stay in the city? Oh well.

The red tail hawks are out and about today in great numbers. I've documented six sightings in a single morning.

As I said in the following entry, I've made a decision to give up canoeing as there just isn't any water that offers the ambiance I require. Canoeing isn't just getting from point A to point B for me. It isn't sharing a ride on the water with a friend. Canoeing is a solitary event that I've always used to shed the tense things in life. A quiet paddle around Calderwood Lake works wonders for the soul when things take a curve downward in life and a canoe camp on Slick-rock Creek is an amazing experience. Paddling a quality canoe on Douglas Lake admiring the mud shoreline doesn't equate to much of an experience. Cherokee Lake offers less actually with her boulder and gravel shorelines just waiting to tear a canoe apart if one lands on shore. I'll miss paddling through the flood plains at Rankin though. I'll have to see if I can let canoeing go altogether. If not, maybe a touring kayak made of some plastic impervious to rocks is out there. We'll see how this pans out.

Stumbled onto a bald eagle, above.

Strange rock textures. The rock shoreline at Douglas Lake.

Then, last night I had to deal with Shade's injury. I have an idea she received it while charging up the hill toward my now exposed neighbor, and ran into some old barbed wire fence half way up the hill that separates our properties. This would never have happened had the guy just left the woods alone and kept the isolation between us. City people! I hastily bought the medication recommended by the lady at Tractor Supply along with gauze pads and that special roll of bandage that adheres to itself and is made to wrap around animal bodies. I got everything tied up last night and Shade actually left it alone all night. The gauze pad is still held in place this morning thank heaven. It's a very deep gash and I will blast over to the vet first thing in the morning. Seems these animal crisis's always happen on weekends.

I sure hope that company repairs my 500 mm lens correctly as I miss that lens a lot. The 400 mm is OK but that extra 100 mm is a lot when photographing smaller birds.

Then I got the lawn mower out to change oil and sharpen the blades. I thought maybe I'd even change a spark plug along with the air filter. It fired up on the third pull of the rope and promptly stopped with a loud clunk. Ah Oh! I'm afraid it's toast. Off to the lawn mower store with the mower to get an appraisal to fix it, which is an effort in futility because I already know what the problem is. That little mower powered over a lot of country in the past 9 years and I know it is a lost cause. So, that means I have to buy a new mower to mow the property I never wanted. More domestic expense.

It is now 6:44 AM and I'm actually waiting for the sun to rise enough to allow me to see while I hook up the big boat to the truck. Should have done it last night but I'm in no rush to get to Douglas Lake this morning.

Bonaparte Gulls, above

Above: Fishermen fishing for Crappie. Below: A lone traveler.

Above: Loons Below: Bonaparte Gull

Below: Bonaparte Gull

Another red tail blasts through the trees.

The bridge in the above shot crosses Douglas Lake and is a narrow one. I think Sherman marched his troops across it single file when rolled through here on his way to the sea during the Civil War. I despise this narrow bridge and the only reason it hasn't been replaced is because of the charm it provides the ancient town of Dandridge at the expense of public safety! Its all about money. Humans are all about money - period!