Mary Livingston (http://maryalivingston.com) told me that today is Squirrel Appreciation Day, so go forth and love a squirrel today! I would not recommend trying to hug one, however….

What! Didn’t you hear it’s Squirrel Appreciation Day, January 21st. Our blogger friend Linda Martin Anderson alerted me to this important day in her blog at A Writer’s Playground. Check it out. A kid friendly blog with every special day of the month to discover.

Giving the look!

While winding down a steep mountain road two hunting seasons ago, this little scamp was gathering nuts. I surprised him and he ran up a large black oak tree. Just a short way up the tree he turned and gave me “the look.” He was sure I was coveting his nuts! Then he berated me as best he could with an acorn in his mouth. So I shot him. Sorry, I meant to say, I shot his picture with my Nikon. You can see it here, Forestry Friday … It’s The Time Of The Season For Squirrels.

The print of this…

A Spring black tail buck with horns still in velvet in pen and ink.

This is always busy time of year around here, which is the reason I haven’t posted for awhile. When Fall comes, we disappear into the mountains. It’s our time to put some miles under our boots, over the mountains and through the woods.  This is when we go out to procure some fresh organic protein to get us through the year.

I photographed this buck last Spring.  He was feeding under a blue oak tree. His antlers were still growing and in velvet.

A wildfire broke out west of town Friday afternoon.

Last Friday I posted Storm Clouds Brewing and talked about lightning and wildfire. Then Friday afternoon an aggressive wildfire broke out west of town. However, this fire wasn’t caused by lightning, it was caused because of an illegal marijuana grow.

It formed a huge column and began building it’s own thunder cloud.

The fire crews were scrambled and the air-tankers took to the air.

The thing is, Mary and I were planning a weekend away camping in our trailer at our favorite spot. The problem was, the fire was less then five miles from our camp where we had already staged our trailer. We made the decision to retrieve our trail while the fire was relatively small, only 300 acres.

As we approached camp the sky became angrier.

After reaching camp, we packed everything, hooked up the trailer and pulled out. The…