Self Portrait Tuesday - Week Three

This month's theme is April's Fool. What could be more perfect but to be The Fool. I might not be young, or inexperienced, but I try to keep myself open enough to experience and possibilities so that I am ready for the fool's journey again and again.

With this weekly self portrait project, William is regularly called to act as my personal photographer and I think he is fast becoming a very competent one. He studied the card and worked to get the angle just right, plus trying to keep Rosie from straying out of the image. I think he did a great job! He took a bunch of photos. Alas, unfortunately we didn't discover until we came back home that there was, once again, a smudge on the lens. I think I'll have to make a point of always checking a close up of my images before I shoot an afternoon of pictures. Some of the better shots he took were too blurred to use and this is the second time this month I've been thwarted by THE EVIL SMUDGE MONSTER!



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Since we had to go up in the mountains to take the fool photos, we decided to make a day of it and drive around Lake Almanor and have lunch. This is the second day, finally, of spring temperatures and so we wanted to be out in the warm weather. The snow is disappearing fast.
We stopped in the park at Clear Creek to play and walk out over the water.

"Mom, come play with me."





Clear Creek originates in a natural spring, which wells up and makes a beautiful and crystal clear pond before burbling off to join Lake Almanor just a half mile or so down the slope. The community itself is one of those "blink and you miss it" sized villages, and because it was so small, a few years ago state representatives down in southern California decided it was only fair to pipe up this wonderful source of clean water and send it down to them. Since there was so many more of them (southern Californians) then of us (northern Calfornians). Uhm, yeah, I don't think so!!! Why don't they get a clue and, DUH, stop building in an area that can't support that large of a population! And no, it's not just sitting around up here unused. Along with a few hundred human people who live on or near this spring, there's also a whole slew of ducks, birds, fish, geese, pelicans, otters, beavers, deer, fish, frogs, turtles, dragonflies....... and hundreds of other type of animal peoples depending on this water source.

Here's William using the opportunity to do something "dangerous". The only real risk is that he would have had to go to lunch sopping wet.


There's only one bird in this photo (can you find it?), but it was a birder's paradise. There were a half dozen mating pairs of some very odd duck I've never seen up here before - the males was black and white, like they were dressed up for a fancy summer luncheon at the golf club, the females were a more practical camouflage brown. There were several very noisy pairs of Canadian geese. Dozens of smaller birds fluttering in and out of the water hugging bushes, singing and flitting from branch to branch. Best of all was the pelican that kept flying overhead with long strands of dried plant material, landing in the top of a tall fir where she was building a nest. Bird love was definitely in the air.