And It Sould be in Good Taste

First, let me introduce us.

I'm Lew; and I'm a recovering academic.

The other one is my companion, Koah. 

He is also sort of a "personal trainer" who gets me out to the boonies daily, even in weather most foul.

White Dog in Whiteout

Before I linked up with Koah, it would never have occurred to me to take my daily exercise slogging through a wheat field in a whiteout.  First is the fact that whiteouts are quite boring -- not a lot to see, hear smell or do -- but perhaps more to the point is that I grew up in Texas. 

We had only one word for "cold.  Actually, there was COLD and

"Colder than a .... (you know, some earthy reference to threatened body parts) ....!"

The Tejano language of my youth had no nuance for low temperatures -- there was no inclement, bracing, crisp, chilly, cool, frigid, numbing, brisk, nippy, raw, stinging nor arctic.

There was just COLD, and it was to be avoided. Hanging out in it suggested a certain lack of judgement (as in "not having the sense to come in out of it").

Koah differs from me in this.  His Pyranees half thinks that cold is exhilarating, delicious even, and his Golden Retriever half will go along for any run. 

Happy White Dog in Whiteout

Further, he finds much to see and smell -- and munch.

White Dog Munching Fieldmice from under Snowdrift

Koah dislikes hot weather and his constitution requires daily vigorous exercise, lest he gets bored.  A bored Pyranees is a squirrelly thing.

So, Jeanne and I took him in knowing this, and each day I go out with him for his run, and my walk

(or slog in this case). 

And I learned an astonishing thing -- cold can be invigorating -- and entertainment can be found, even in a whiteout, especially if you know about the tunnels just under the snow made by rodents who have been forced above the frozen surface of the fields. 

(I do not know how he knows these and other things, but he does..)

 

We like to roam the Snake River Canyons. I get the exercise, fresh air, and other pleasures of outside. Koah herds cows and sheep; chases deer, geese and rabbits. He drives any coyote he sees completely out of the canyon; they are simply not allowed.

So now I get outside exercise daily -- no matter the weather.

Koah does his thing I indulge my hobby of opportunistic amateur photography.  While this blog will on occasion contain fiction and at other times political musing, it will consist mostly of pictures of things encountered in the canyons of the Snake River. 

Usually I will allow the pictures to speak for themselves with minimal explanation.  If viewers have any questions or comments about an individual photo, I will address these by expanding the explanation.

Finally, let me say that I have never "blogged" before.  I must confess that the whole activity seems rather self obsessed and narcissistic; posting it on the web is intrinsically exhibitionistic.  And yet, I'd like to keep both pictures and musing within the bounds of good taste. 

The dilemma then is how to be a "tasteful" narcissistic exhibitionist.

All biography is fiction;
all photography is a similarly filtered, framed and edited

 version of reality. 
Enjoy.

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