{"id":2878,"date":"2007-06-06T22:39:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-07T03:39:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-03-27T21:29:57","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T02:29:57","slug":"seeing-stumps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/2007\/06\/06\/seeing-stumps\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Stumps"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We’ve been in Yellowstone for more that a week now, and before that, we were in Rocky Mountain National Park. This means that a large portion of the day we’re constantly scanning the horizon for wildlife. After a while, you get trained to see colors, sizes and shapes that have a high chance of being something interesting. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there are a lot of false positives as well. Driving up through Hayden Valley from Fishing Bridge to Canyon, there’s an old tree stump that looks a lot, from a distance, like a coyote in the meadow. We’ve driven past it dozens of times, and every single one of those times, my eyes latch on to it, with my brain taking a few additional seconds to remind me that it’s just a stump.<\/p>\n

Another peril in Yellowstone comes from the 1988 fire, nearly twenty years ago. There are still great numbers of hillsides covered with dead trees, some with a new crop of pine growing up in place, some without. But as those trees fall over, their blackened root system upends and appears roughly the size and shape of a black bear. Lots more false positives to work through. <\/p>\n

But in spite of it all, the real wildlife is out there, and bringing us new experiences daily. The highlight this morning was a Great Gray Owl, an impressive, massive bird. More photos will eventually come, but we’re having internet connection issues and it’s hard to get them uploaded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’ve been in Yellowstone for more that a week now, and before that, we were in Rocky Mountain National Park. This means that a large portion of the day we’re constantly scanning the horizon for wildlife. After a while, you get trained to see colors, sizes and shapes that have a high chance of being… Continue reading Seeing Stumps<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[279,90],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4t90x-Kq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2879,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2878\/revisions\/2879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrymelton.net\/2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}