07/05 — Friday of the weekend of the 4th was designated as our Hiking Day, and regardless of cloud cover heavy with the portent of thunder, we were determined to at least try to get in a hike up in the beautiful White Mountains we have come to love so well. If it rained, we would have to re-evaluate, but there was a general consensus that even with rain, we’d rather try hiking than not.
Here we are, on our crack-of-dawn drive from the ranch up to Springerville:
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We were splashed some along our drive, and discovered when we arrived that there had been significant precipitation in the mountains earlier in the morning. Upon our arrival, the clouds, hanging low above the pine tops, were “prominous” as I like to say, but not enough to dampen our enthusiasm.
As soon as we hit the trail, there was a spurt of appreciative activity by the camera crew zooming in to capture the macro magnificence of shimmeringly delicate water droplets upon greenery along the pathway, after which I spent a good while falling behind the hikers while being drawn into one wondrous woodland vignette after another, both large and small. I was struck by the differences in photographing under somber clouds rather than dodging sunbeams and shadows as I have on more clement outings.
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Finally I managed to catch up with a few of my crew, and was holding steady for a while, trudging along with Jacob and Sissy, then falling behind again whenever I spotted a stand of trees or a minute flower that demanded my camera’s attention; until up ahead I noticed Paul and Megan, standing rather oddly to one side of the path… looking suspiciously innocent.
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Geneva and Jacob were there too, mugging for my camera in the middle of the path, and of course I had to oblige their silliness, but my eye kept being drawn back to the pair off to my right… I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what they were up to… well it turned out they were doing a rather shoddy job of deflecting my attention from a particularly eye-catching red flower, over which they hoped like everything I wouldn’t spend another half hour obsessively taking 40 photos from every possible angle and distance. All in jest… they mock me, but they love me and wouldn’t have wanted me to miss it! And see how well I did? I managed to keep it to just four! 😀
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