Into the Wild

I haven’t seen a bear all summer, except for the frozen variety, processed and wrapped in my freezer. I can’t bring myself to ever eat it. I have no problem with elk or deer, but bears are fuzzy and I rarely see them, so I feel like there aren’t enough of them out there for me to be eating one. This morning the Fish and Game officer stopped by the office to see if I wanted to come see a trapped bear. It’s the third bear they’ve trapped at the same ranch in the last week. They’ve relocated all three, as they haven’t become habituated to humans or human food yet. I wrote about another bear that broke into a Victor home a couple weeks ago. After we took the bear by the elementary school for the kids to take a look at and get a short lesson on bears and bear safety, we released the cutie back into the wild. Hopefully he won’t find trouble again.

A girl peers through the cage to get a glimpse of a black bear.

Am I free?

Wooohooo!

 

chilled

After just a few weeks of summer, the warmer temps are on the way out. We’ll have a few glorious, warm  September days that teeter back and forth between summer and fall, but today it’s chilly and wet and a reminder that winter is on the way. Which is fine by me.

This was in June, summer was just getting started.

This was last night, summer on it's way out.

We did one more round of huckleberry picking on Sunday. It was chilly and a lot of the berries were shrunken. I’m afraid we didn’t do as well as the past few days. That’s okay, though. We had guns. You know, just in case we ran into bears. So when the pickings got slim we did some target practice.

Not shooting at a bear, just a stump.

 

It’s Huckleberry Season!

refreshing

It’s huckleberry season! I’ve been slightly obsessed with picking as many of these little, purple, plump gifts of nature this summer. We have about a gallon in the freezer to enjoy with cocktails all winter, but it just doesn’t seem like enough. Yesterday Andy took us to the mecca zone and we rigged up a picking harness so we’d be able to pick with two hands and increase our productivity. Recipes to follow as I test them out.

On our way to the last Music on Main of the summer, Shannon made me get out and pose because the light was so nice. He was rather close, so I was afraid I had some huckleberries stuck in my teeth from eating and drinking so many.