My first week of outdoor school for the season has come and gone. Jen's birthday, likewise, is now in the past for another year. We planned to go out and celebrate it today, but plans fell through. Perhaps this weekend...
Yesterday was a Coyote day. According to various Native American legends, Coyote is a trickster, not to be trusted, so if I was superstitious I could read all sorts of stuff into this. They aren't often seen (by me, anyway) during the day, so it was really surprising to see two. I spotted the first one on my way to work while turning onto the little road leading up to camp. It vanished into the undergrowth before I got much more than a glimpse. The second one was just hanging out at the reservoir. The reservoir is at the top of a .6 mile hill, and as usual I solo-hiked the campers up this stretch (to avoid having to listen to them complain about how steep the trail is). This means that I got to the top about five minutes in advance of the first kid. I got a chance to look at the Coyote through binoculars and take some bad pictures of it while it eyed the waterfowl just out of reach floating out in the reservoir. The first two kids to finish their solo hike got to see it too, but it left before the rest made it up the hill. Later, when we walked along the reservoir, we found a deer leg with the thighbone split so some predator could get at the marrow. We saw a Great Blue Heron too, and soon after came upon the remains of a less fortunate Great Blue Heron. I'm not sure if this was the work of a Coyote or Mountain Lion. There have been reports of a Mountain Lion in the area. One of the other instructors found some Lion pawprints much closer to camp this week too.
The trails are all very dusty right now. Walking down them with twenty fifth-graders makes it look like we're caught in a dust storm. Rain seems to have left the forecast for next week as well. At least all this dust makes it easy to see animal tracks. Judging from the tracks I've seen, there must be hundreds of Raccoons living nearby.
On a completely unrelated note, if you like gloomy literature, check out this site. I've only read one of Laszlo Krasznahorkai's books, but will read more as they are translated from Hungarian.
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