Stone Mountain Park, North Carolina.

Lately I haven't had a lot of time to go hiking. I've been helping my son a lot, plus the responsibility of having to be around the homestead to care for my wife's elderly mother. In late March the pressure should slacken and I can go back to hiking and camping when I choose.

That said, I was able to get away for most of last weekend. One of those three days I spent hiking in Stone Mountain State Park. I like that park because it has a lot of exposed rock, decent forest cover, a number of impressive waterfalls, and an excellent network of hiking trails, a few of which I still haven't hiked.

So on Saturday I got a very early start and drove up. Another plus for me is that it's a genuinely mountainous area and only a little over an hour from the house. If traffic is light I can get there in under an hour.

I ended up getting there just a tad later than I like to, which meant that I missed seeing the roving deer out browsing for breakfast, and the wild turkey that seem to like to accompany them in the early light. But that was tempered by the fact that I got to hit the trails before all but a few of my fellow humans. I spent the main part of the day hiking a six-mile loop that took me from the parking area, over the summit of Stone Mountain, down the other side, along the base of the peak to the upper Stone Mountain Falls and then a return to the ridge line and back to Andy's car (which I borrowed because my truck uses a lot more gas than his Santa Fe).

Here, then, are some images and video of my main hike from last Saturday.

On the summit. Said to be the most photographed tree in North Carolina.

The stairs alongside upper Stone Mountain Falls.

A rock climber on the face of Stone Mountain.

A stitched panorama of the face of Stone Mountain.

Stalking the Cooperative Vulture.

I've been enjoying a lot of outdoor activities lately. My son and I head to the high country often to go hiking. My wife and I have been doing a good deal of kayaking locally. And of course when no one else has the leisure time to go with me, I go off by myself. I take advantage of most of those days to go hiking, generally within a drive of anywhere from half an hour to as much as three hours.

Today I fell back on the old standby activity, hiking at Crowders Mountain State Park. My main purpose was to hike to the summit of Crowders to see if I would have the opportunity to photograph Turkey vultures. They're one of the most common large birds around, and they use the cliffs and thermals around the summit to launch themselves into the sky to scan for the scent of carrion.On a sunny day it's hard to miss them at either of the two peaks in the park, Crowders and Kings Pinnacle.

I have to say, it was a hot day for hiking. I arrived at the trailhead at about 10:00 am. The lot was about 2/3 full, and it's a vast parking area. There is very good reason that local hikers refer to it as "Crowded Mountain". On some days you can encounter as many as 100 people arriving at the summit every hour or so. Today wasn't quite that busy, but nearly so.

After reaching the top and toweling all of the sweat off of me, I staked out a shady spot at the edge of a cliff and began to take landscape photos and to scan the area for signs of vultures. One of my friends, writer/photographer Michael Hodges had suggested a lens to me: a Canon 24mm pancake lens. He told me that photographs taken with it would "pop", and he wasn't kidding. It captures crisp, colorful, brilliant images. This was the first time I'd used it other than to take a couple of test photos. Michael was spot on.

I stayed on the summit for about three hours taking photos, drinking lots of water, and enjoying the views. The people arrived and left at a steady pace. Sometimes it got quite noisy, then the voices and music would subside as the numbers of people dwindled. (I never have figured out why anyone would bring music with them on a hike. I find the idea pathetic.)

Over the course of my time there I took well over 200 photographs of the crew of Turkey vultures who passed in front of and above my patch of rocky cliffside. I think I'll salvage about a dozen images good enough for me to add to my online portfolio of photos that I sell through some online purveyors of stock photos.  Every month I make a little more than I did the month before. It has become my part-time job. A job, for once, that's fun (aside from writing).

Say what you will, they're actually quite the majestic bird in flight.

I don't know if this bird is just old, in the midst of molting, or the victim of a tussle. It seems healthy and flew and cruised the thermals as well as the others. But it looked rough.

Aside from the Great blue heron, the Turkey vulture is my favorite bird to photograph.

Michael was right. That lens makes the image really stand out.

Here's an old digital photo I took from way back. November 30, 2008. I shot it with my first digital camera. I think it was 4 megapixel Canon. I recall it had a pretty good installed lens and was built like a tank. It was heavy, made of metal. I dropped that little camera off of boulders half a dozen times. It got some dents but kept taking photos. If you dropped a modern Canon ten feet off of a boulder onto another boulder it would shatter. Not that one. It eventually gave up the ghost, or else I'd still be using it for casual shots.

This one was taken on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Rocky Knob in Virginia. We had gotten onto the Blue Ridge Parkway on the way home from the Peaks of Otter and a sudden ice storm had struck the high ridges. If we hadn't had four-wheel drive we'd have been stuck, but good. As it was I paused to take some photographs and then edged my way down to lower elevations and the heck off of the Parkway to safety.

 

 

Rocky Knob, Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia.

 

The Little Creatures.

Sometimes when I go hiking I don't find the wildlife that I hope to see and photograph. I've noticed that even the birds I used to depend upon as subjects are fewer in number. These are things that I have noted, so it's not a huge surprise to me to have recently learned that the base populations of birds have died off in North America over the last thirty years, to the tune of three billion less. I used to be able to go to various places to see birds that have vanished; and this has been over just the last ten years.

Mother Nature is dying. There is no doubt of that.

At any rate, I love photographing wildlife. And so what I find I sometimes have to do is look down at my feet or at the vegetation around me to search for insects, arachnids, terrestrial molluscs, and other such little critters if I want to get any photographs of animals at all.

And, once again, I am reminded that I really do need a couple of new lenses for my camera. I can do okay with the lenses I have, but they don't have the qualities I need to record the finer details as I labor to grab some memorable shots. To that end I will be purchasing (I hope) two more lenses next month. We'll see.

In the meantime, I've been reading journals warning that even the planet's insect populations are plummeting.

Yellowjacket, taken on Roan Mountain, Tennessee.

Butterly, Rock Creek Recreation Area. Erwin, TN.

Butterfly. Cataloochee Valley, North Carolina.

Extra Caudill Cabin Video

Somehow I missed some video that I shot of the Caudill Cabin. It had been my intention to include the images on the previous video that I created but somehow I skipped them. I think that I was concentrating so much on editing the GoPro video that I'd made that I forgot about the extra stuff I did with my Canon camera. Sometimes it's best not to carry extra photography gear, and this was just such a case. I probably should have just relied on my SLR for both photos and video on that trip. In the future I'll be more careful about how much equipment I haul with me on these hikes.

Anyway, here's an extra YouTube video that I created from the skipped images.

The Caudill Cabin just before I shut and latched the door and took my leave.

The extra footage that I missed when I was assembling the previous video.

Miscellaneous Photos

Since I have begun selling my photographs professionally, I figured I'd post various images that I've been sending out that are forming the base of a body of work that is starting to earn me royalties. I tend to work on the portfolio every day and I get out and about to visit areas where I can add to my growing bank of photographic images. Being essentially retired now with reliable income to fuel jaunts for my ample leisure time I have found that I can--within reason--do pretty much whatever the Hell I want to do. And that is to ride around capturing digital images of things that I see.

Hell...as I get older, I think Laura Riding may have been right all along.

I'll be up at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning to travel to a National Park site to plunge into the wilderness and find my way to an isolated historic site. I'll let you know what I find.

Great Blue Heron, Mountain Island Lake, two miles from my front door where I go kayaking often.

Broadwinged Hawk, Hillsborough River, Florida.

Osprey with Speckled Sea Trout prey. Fort DeSoto Park, Florida.

Alligator on the Hillsborough River, Florida.

Abandoned farm building. Stone Mountain State Park, North Carolina.

Stone Mountain, Stone Mountain State Park, North Carolina.

It ain't a livin'. But it doesn't need to be. Gas money and lodging to my next journey--that's what it amounts to, so far. I'll take it.