And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Sunday, January 29, 2023
Gotta smile at this, especially at the one in the middle just flattening himself out on the food
Up on the Mokulumne River, there's an old hunting camp, long abandoned, with nothing left but a couple of rock chimneys and an old horribly overgrown apple orchard. In my youth, we'd walk up to it from our camp a few miles downriver, and in the fall harvest as many apples as we thought we'd like to carry back. Timed right, the ground was littered like that with apples, and almost as frequent were the piles of bear scat. The place must have been thick with happy bears putting on fat for the winter as soon as the sun went down. We made sure to be away before dark.
Back in the '70s and '80s we'd frequently do small logging jobs on properties that must have been old homesteads. They'd have small orchards of varying fruit trees and would always make you wonder about their history. Since then the Sierra is so developed you just don't come across stuff like that anymore.
Perhaps this photo was taken by a camera set up to photograph wildlife with no human presence necessary. I can't imagine (1) being physically present among a dozen or so bears, and (2) photographing them as they feasted.
No doubt. I'd bet the person who dumped the apples also set up the game camera to get a shot of the critters that came to eat. He had to have been blown away to get a shot of twelve bears.
I was on the Appalachian Trail in October hiking up Blood Mountain and came upon seven black bears and a handful of wild pigs together gorging on acorns. They all ran off when they saw me. The pigs are not an indigenous species to the area and that is likely why the bears did not eat them. Of course, the bears may also have been Jewish…
There are entire forests of apple trees where bears drove the evolution of good tasting fruit - https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-last-wild-apple-forests-almaty-kazakhstan
In the left background is the loner plotting his revenge.
ReplyDeleteBears like a nice alcohol buzz just as much as we do.
ReplyDeleteThat is one healthy looking bunch of bears. I wonder what that pile of apples will look like after they get done with it.
ReplyDeleteUp on the Mokulumne River, there's an old hunting camp, long abandoned, with nothing left but a couple of rock chimneys and an old horribly overgrown apple orchard. In my youth, we'd walk up to it from our camp a few miles downriver, and in the fall harvest as many apples as we thought we'd like to carry back. Timed right, the ground was littered like that with apples, and almost as frequent were the piles of bear scat. The place must have been thick with happy bears putting on fat for the winter as soon as the sun went down. We made sure to be away before dark.
DeleteBack in the '70s and '80s we'd frequently do small logging jobs on properties that must have been old homesteads. They'd have small orchards of varying fruit trees and would always make you wonder about their history. Since then the Sierra is so developed you just don't come across stuff like that anymore.
DeletePerhaps this photo was taken by a camera set up to photograph wildlife with no human presence necessary. I can't imagine (1) being physically present among a dozen or so bears, and (2) photographing them as they feasted.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt. I'd bet the person who dumped the apples also set up the game camera to get a shot of the critters that came to eat. He had to have been blown away to get a shot of twelve bears.
DeleteI was on the Appalachian Trail in October hiking up Blood Mountain and came upon seven black bears and a handful of wild pigs together gorging on acorns. They all ran off when they saw me. The pigs are not an indigenous species to the area and that is likely why the bears did not eat them. Of course, the bears may also have been Jewish…
DeleteThere are entire forests of apple trees where bears drove the evolution of good tasting fruit - https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-last-wild-apple-forests-almaty-kazakhstan
ReplyDeleteI've read that bears that have eaten mostly fruit and honey is quite tasty.
ReplyDelete"Are quite tasty".
Delete