Wanted to share a few pix of a recent obsession of mine while hiking. And as a disclaimer, I want to attest to the fact I’ve not been sampling wild mushrooms picked off-trail.
As a preface, I remember growing up in Texas and in the summer seeing all kinds of animal shapes in the clouds overhead (as did many other kids.) I even naively thought about taking photos and publishing a book about them. Never did.
This new, but related obsession started a few years ago. I usually make these sightings near the end of a long day of hiking, when I start to see shapes in the plants and trees on the forest trails. And with a digital camera, I’ve found I’ve now got enough gigabytes to waste a few frames to record some of them.
This first one was spotted back in ’04 when we did the Berg Lake hike up at Mt. Robson (north of Banff). We’d taken some novices backpacking and were on a long 12-mile hike from the lake back to the car when I spotted what looked like a bear made of moss and a rock. Gary, the one with the bear spray, agreed to pose next to the "creature" (and actually said he took a lichen to it):
In ’06, I found this weathered-wood lizard transformed from an old snag on the Wonderland Trail around Rainier:
And we just got back from the Little Beaver/Big Beaver loop at North Cascades NP where I spotted two more of these fantasy mammals. The first is not a silverback, but a greenback gorilla sprawled over a rock near the end of Day 1:
The second, from Day 2, is something of a hybrid: a unicorn crossed with a Clydesdale with a front hoof up like a Lipizzaner stallion. Someone else might see something else (like a dog -- a horned rottweiler trying to "shake hands"):
Anyone else have this weird obsession? Is it attributable to the endorphins produced from a long day of backpacking? Should I seek help? <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />
I don't see the first one at all, the second I do sorta see the lizard, the third looks like a giant cat draped over the rock to me, and the fourth really looks like a dog.
These are fun! Keep it up <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
I've had a similar experience..but slightly different. I was dayhiking by myself at Pt. Reyes one foggy day and thought I saw a guy up ahead with both arms raised in the air. Odd, I thought. I got a little closer and thought "no, you ninny, it's a dead tree with a couple of branches sticking up". Wrong again - it was a big old tule elk with a huge rack of antlers, the frontrunner in a group of about 20 who slowly passed by me in the mist. It was a truly ethereal experience.
We used to play a game like this when I was a kid hiking in Switzerland. There, you are not so much in true wilderness, rather more like countryside - farms and villages. We would spot "creatures" in the formations of trees in the fields or across the valley. I remember one of the best ones was a giant lizard with his tail nestled up against a church.
I saw this one -- It had one indention that made an eye and of course the mouth was there, but previous traveler made the other eye and the brows. It got a chuckle out of me.
A few pix of creatures from the Colorado River Trail up to Little Yellowstone Canyon in RMNP last month.
Horned snake.
Sad turtle(head).
Scotty dog goblin in sheet. (okay, that's stretchin' it.)
Natural "wood" wheelbarrow. (I thought it was a wheelbarrow off the trail, but it was just three strategically placed snag limbs holding in a load of avalanche debris.)
Great pix. There's got to be a Sasquatch connection with that footprint, though. Looks like there's a bunch of us that are having Sasquatch visiting our campsite with what Jimshaw calls "Bigfoot's Best," <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> or its the endorphines.<img src="/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
Registered: 05/28/08
Posts: 278
Loc: Texas Hill Country
Snapping Turtle
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Just because you don't take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.... Pericles (430 B.C)
Chipmunk about to be eaten by a giant, one-toothed catfish. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />
(Hendy Woods State Park, Anderson Valley, CA, 10/22/08)
Ah, Hendy Woods - one of my favorite picnic spots as a kid (I grew up in Cloverdale)! I loved wandering into the grove by myself...it seemed so big then!
Ah, Hendy Woods - one of my favorite picnic spots as a kid (I grew up in Cloverdale)! I loved wandering into the grove by myself...it seemed so big then!
What a spot to grow up in! Anderson Valley (& Cloverdale) is an incredible, isolated place. A local told us the first paved road came into Anderson Valley in the '50s -- now they've got a WI-FI hot spot at the Hendy Woods Visitor's Center -- oh, well, it's still a somewhat-isolated spot in today's world.
dk, did you ever visit the Hermit's Huts at Hendy? Now here is a guy who did some ultralight living from the '50s to the early '80s, hiding as a hermit in wood huts in the redwoods (Hendy Woods) up behind the tiny town of Philo.
We had heard about the hermit while hiking in Hendy (enough of the alliterations) from a retired schoolteacher from Sea Ranch, who said the hermit had fled from the KGB, although I'm not sure that's completely accurate.
In the 2nd hut of Petrov the Hendy Hermit.
The huts -- or maintained reproductions -- are a short hike from the road and have a small informative plaque nearby. The hermit was Petrov Zailenkov, born in about 1924 and died in August of 1981. He is believed to have jumped a Russian trawler in the 1950s, finally ending up in the redwoods for almost 2 decades in the isolated Anderson Valley, where he lived until he died of cancer (in a hospital in Ukiah).
Board about Petrov near his first hermit hut.
Petrov avoided people, always afraid of being sent back to Russia. He did befriend a few hikers and campers, and stories about him appeared in area and San Francisco papers when he died. What a beautiful place to have been a hermit.
No, I heard about the hermit from a newspaper article my parents saved for me after the guy died. What an interesting character he must have been...
Cloverdale when I grew up was less isolated - Highway 101 ran right up the main drag in town. Years after I left, they rerouted the freeway; better for travelers and quality of life, worse for the local businesses that thrived on the tourist traffic. I remember having a hard time getting uptown on holiday weekends, especially summertime, when there was a huge backup of cars in one direction or another (the one stoplight in town slowed them all down!).
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