This was my view this morning. It rained and rained and rained down here in the valley last night, which means more snow at the higher elevations this time of year. We've been getting quite a bit of rain here in the Bitterroot Valley lately, so we have had snow up on the mountain tops for a bit now, but as fall progresses towards winter, the snowline keeps creeping down more and more. Winter is definitely headed this way!
The little hillside of land you see just below the barn and down to where the ground levels out (in the above photo) is where our neighbor spotted a mountain lion around his mules earlier last month. We've since gotten a report of one spotted on some neighboring land from there. And some people further up the road had one on their front porch just the other night. We've seen bears and coyotes come through here (and hear the coyotes quite regularly at times), but haven't seen mountain lions on the property yet. Could be they are around some of the time and we just aren't aware of them. Certain times of the year, we are on higher alert just going out our door.
The lower treeline in this photo is a fabulous area to walk along the backroads, with pasture and hay land, cattle ranches, and horses along the way. We often see wildlife on our walks, including deer, turkeys, herons, eagles, cranes, raccoons, marmots, and more. The girls can't resist gathering things on some of our walks, depending on the time of year: cattails, special rocks, colorful leaves, and apples and such. This year the girls were delighted to fill their buckets with chokecherries again and again on our walks, and we now have bags of them sitting in the freezer. We sometimes make chokecherry jelly or chokecherry-apple jelly, but they also like to eat them fresh, and most of all frozen.
Some of our camping areas are up there in the snow. I love the look of the mountains when they get dusted with the early fresh snows... they always look to me like God sprinkled them with powdered sugar.
What's it like where you live this time of year? Summer, fall, winter? Rain, snow, sun? Warm, hot, cold? Do share in the comments below. :)
--Nikki / myMountainStudio
