Nature Photography

Another scene from the log.



LoneSlugCam

The trail I followed tonight (all 12.02 miles of it) looks like this:



MapCam

The starting point is that green circle to the right. I went from right to left. The trail the diverges into the sticks is the trail that forks to the right (toward the top). I stopped right at Lost Creek. The trail that then forks to the left might go to some houses that you can just see to the left. The fork to the right could go anywhere, but I suspect it goes all the way to wildcat lake to the north.

Here’s a panorama I shot today on a hike in some very mossy woods.



MossyCam

The funny thing about that is, it’s difficult to capture the entirety of what you’re eyes are seeing. In theory, a wide-angle lens does this. But the “wide angle” part of it distorts it (generally pushing the middle foreground away to the back a little).

You could certainly take a high resolution photo and crop it narrow to get a panorama type of look. But the thing is, without a wide-angle lens (because of the thick brush and trees right behind me), there’s nowhere to “take a step back” so that you can get that entire vista into the viewfinder.

So I’m having some fun and some decent results doing panoramas. I wish you could have been at the very spot, because the photo is sort of what you see. But I took a single shot of it and that single frame didn’t convey what I was seeing at all. So I thought perhaps I’d try the panorama and see if that would capture it. I actually wasn’t optimistic at the time. Shooting the panorama was somewhat of an afterthought just before we moved on from this spot.

And that kind of view is pretty much what you see in the Hoh Rain Forest further west on the western slopes of the Olympic Mountains. To me, “rain forest” doesn’t seem like the right description. When I think of “rain forest’ I think of the Amazon, Borneo, the Congo, etc.

But then I suppose those are tropical rain forests and the Hoh is a temperate rain forest. One definition I found was “a dense forest with a minimum annual rainfall of approximately 71 inches). The annual rainfall in Bremerton is 56.37 inches. That’s not far off. And that patch could be in a zone next to the foothills that perhaps gets dumped on a little bit more than average.

We're basically not in the rain shadow of the mountains that do indeed tend to draw most of the precipitation.

Sequim is in the rain shadow and they receive an inordinate number of sunny days.

Weather here is mild even compared to those who think they have mild weather. But being near the Mountains, Puget Sound, and the Pacific Ocean, the weather is very variable. But then, where isn't it? The stories I hear from Mr. Flu about Texas makes me realize how non-extreme (although variable) our weather is. But it tends to var from partly cloudy to drizzly and back again. As they say, if you don't like the weather here, wait five minutes.

Many places are notorious for very changeable weather.  It's said of Ohio valley weather, "If you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes."  Rumor has it that many places have similar sayings.

I think the first place in which I ever encountered "blue norther" was a short book on the Texas War of Indepdence.  There were a couple as the Texans in the Alamo awaited Santa Anna which reached far enough south to hit the latter's troops on their march north.  I don't think we ever encountered one when we lived in Galveston (1957-9).  The term is also used in a song by Judy Collins.

There was a beautiful mist hanging below the moutons and above Hood Canal last night at about 7:30 pm.



MistCam

I thought that was a bit of grit on the lens just right of center. But I zoomed in and you can easily tell that it’s a dragonfly.