Category Archives: color

by

Who is there?

This is not a brilliant photograph, but it is interesting. This is taken from North Beach in 2022 with my cell phone. It was a very grey day and wet and we heard roaring. I imitate both animals and birds, so I roared back and tried to match the call. This is the response. These are sea lions and they can be enormous. The elders and biggest ones stopped and stuck their heads out, wanting to know who is there? Thankfully they did not come ashore, because the males can be 2.4 meters long (7.8 feet) and 390 kg (859 pounds). We did stop roaring, a bit intimidated. We had roared back at them other times. The sea lions are moving north, more information here.

I am trying to find time and energy to keep removing lots of old blogs and photographs to make room for the new. I could pay for more space, but then I have to keep paying for it, so I don’t want to. I have gone back and read my 2009 posts, no pictures, from the Mad As Hell Doctors trip and from writing elsewhere. I write more often with the Ragtag Daily Prompt, but the longer medical posts are intermittent.

Work has been interesting and I feel a bit off balance, because the plan is in flux and morphing. Right now I am in the same clinic Monday through Thursday, but at two different desks. I won’t be in this clinic for the rest of the assignment unless something changes. I don’t know where I will go next. Primary care has lost two providers in the six months I’ve been here, but I don’t know if that is an ongoing rate nor how many there are total.

My first job out of residency had a terrible turnover. I was fifth senior doctor out of fifteen in two years. That is a really really bad sign. By the end of the second year I was fairly sure that I would not be staying and that I could not change the culture. The three women doctors that I had joined had been trying for two years and one had already left! I was gone by the end of the third year.

And back to roaring with the sea lions. Here is Walt Kelly’s take on roaring, his poem Northern Lights.

Oh, roar a roar for Nora, for Nora in the night,
For she has seen aurora borealis burning bright.

A furore for our Nora! And applaud Aurora seen!
Where, throughout the Summer, has our borealis been?

_____________________

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: grey.

by

Air up high

Sunday I drove up to Grand Mesa, over 10,000 feet. Wow. The aspens gold and the evergreens green and the perfume of the clear air. The high temperature was much lower then in Grand Valley. A sign says that Grand Mesa is the world’s largest flat top mountain and there are hundreds of lakes on top.

And you can immerse yourself in gold.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: perfume.

No, I just couldn’t put up a John Denver song.

by

Slick

Careful, careful! That seaweed can be slick as snot and hiding a squelching tide pool. Not so deep that you fall in, but you may fall down and ouch! The rocks and barnacles are not soft.

Along North Beach, on the Olympic Peninsula.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: squelch.

Early morning light on the water.

by

Many stripes

Yesterday I hiked Echo Canyon in the Colorado National Monument. The first part is a shared hike, with the Devil’s Kitchen Trail, No Thoroughfare Canyon Trail and Old Gordon Trail. Old Gordon and Echo split off and then they split.

I did not start hiking until ten yesterday and it was already heating up. Echo Canyon is partly shady, once I am in the canyon. The rocks are gorgeous and there is a plethora of stripes. How beautiful!

At the head of the canyon and all through it, you can see where water carves. It would be amazing to see this waterfall, but since there are flood bits in the tops of trees, it is probably way too dangerous.

There is a pool at the base now and there was a small stream above ground in part of the canyon and a swampy bit.

And am I seeing faces?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: plethora.