Dogs are famous (or perhaps infamous) for those huge, soulful eyes of theirs, but Sienna's are hardly ever bigger or browner than they are when there is a tennis ball involved. She's totally obsessed by those little green orbs, and occasionally she'll take a break from the manic look and try on the sweet, begging eyes of a doggie who is so neglected that her owner only throws the ball for her three thousand times a day, instead of thirty thousand.
And even though I know she's got everything a doggie could ever want, I still get suckered in by those big brown eyes. Wouldn't you be?
This is my last summer in Alaska. I'm not dealing with that bit of information very well. Summer arrived oh, about a week ago, and I've been feeling the urge to spend every glorious, green, sunny, and amazing Alaska minute outside. As soon as I got off work today I took Sienna to our favorite haunt, University Lake, with my trusty camera in tow. It was a sparkling day and I snapped, oh, about three billion pictures of Sienna. So I'll be posting those for a while... The photo that I didn't get was of the moose I ran into. It scared the bujeezus outta me because it's time for the calves to be dropping, and I've already talked about how I don't like encountering moose with Sienna around, especially when baby moose may be involved. Luckily there was a lack of mooselet, so the critter I ran across today was probably still pregnant. I didn't really stick around long enough to tell. But I digress. So to mark my return to the photoblogosphere, I submit photographic evidence that Alaska really is the best place ever to have a furry four-legged friend.
Contrary to what quantum physics tells us, when late summer rolls around, time seems to move at an accelerated rate at higher elevation. Even if you just go into the Chugach Mountains outside of Anchorage in late August, you'll find the foliage changed by the ravages of fall: the fireweed is past when it goes to seed, the flower-bearing stem is completely gone, and the leaves appear, fittingly, to be ablaze. When I saw this on my lone Flattop expedition this year, I was upset - how could fall be here already?
Fortunately, I came back down to sea level and found that life was as it should be, and some fireweed still had blossoms that hadn't reached the pinnacle of the stem. These were the last fireweed that I photographed for the season, and though we're in the best part of winter with lots of fresh snow and temps in the mid-20s (perfect!) seeing them makes me nostalgic for summer.
