Again, I need that book.  Calling these daisies and blue/purple flowers seems a bit weak.  There were yellow flowers, too.  Wow, I pretty much know the Latin names!  There were green things, too.

I had a much easier trip and I credit that to the weather.  I took more photos, and had a pretty relaxing time of it. I am anxious to see the rest of the photos, and am hopeful that the lab does a bit better job of it.  I am looking forward to developing the black and white film that I shot.  I will be developing this in a bathroom--I haven't done that for 30 years.  The more things change...

It may seem that all I do is walk around and take photos, but I do work.  Some have asked what exactly I do at my new job.  It is still being determined, but I am gaining a better idea.  Here is what I know for sure.  I go to meetings.  I deal with the same things that I have seen at four different colleges.  It is more a matter of scale, I think, but the topics under discussion area the same.  They include distance ed and on-line classes, staffing of classes, funding, budgets, enrollment and on and on.  People here do seem to be pretty friendly about it all, which helps.  Most of the people who are my direct reports have met with me, and told me what I should do and need to do and shouldn't do--they haven't had a new person to do that with for a while, so that it is to be expected.  My bosses have been great--I think that we both have more questions of each other than any real answers, but so far it has worked out well and I have enjoyed getting to know them.  One boss and I share a program assistant, and she is wonderful--that is more important than most people realize, and I feel lucky for the accident of staffing.

I think that I travel next week for a few days to someplace exotic, like Everett.  I am sure that it will get busier and busier as the start of school approaches.  It is very different preparing for a start date of September 22!  I have heard that the enrollment numbers are pretty good for the fall, and I think we will have a full house.  It is nice to see more and more people on campus.

No ideas as to what what I will be doing for the long weekend.  It is odd.  For most of the last 5 or more years, I have been so much busier than I am right now.  I have no doubt that it will get busier, but right now, for the first for a long time, I have a what I think you would call an "8 to 5" job.  That is great, but different.  Now, I have to get a life of sorts outside of work.  I don't know how to do this.  Does Costco have them?  Do I look on the internet?  I think it might involve getting a hobby, or something like that.  That might be theme these next few weeks, and I am sure it might be worth a post or two.

I think that I need to buy a book on alpine wild flowers--calling these daisies seems somewhat inadequate.  These are smaller, with spikier petals, and they grow in far more inhospitable space.  I suspect that I broke at least one or two federal laws even leaning on the alpine meadow habitat, and it is easy to recognize how fragile the meadows are.  

Table Top from a different angle, a more imposing view that you can see on the way up.  The hike up is on the other side.  The trip up this week was very different.  The light was different, as mentioned, but the weather was different as well.  Last week it was in the high 80s, but yesterday it was but 45 when I started hiking.  

What a difference a day/week makes.  Light changes dramatically, of course, but the weather was very different as well.  I had the mountain to myself for more than an hour, an amazing feeling, and almost intimidating.  Clouds were coming in, and by the time I left, Baker and Shuksan were both increasingly shrouded by clouds.  It made for dramatic photos with very different moods than then photos I took last week.

I did bring a 4X5 on this trip up Table Top.  A small one, but it was fun.  I found this little alpine "puddle" filled with snow melt and found it worth a photo.

While there are many big trees, it is sometimes difficult to remember that most of the trees that you see are not "old growth" forest but really trees that are about 100 years old.  At the end of one road near a trailhead, the remains of several of the old trees were visible.  These were almost the size of my car, as the stumps were easily five to six feet across.

More photos...

As I mentioned, I did take a regular film camera, a significant medium format camera that weighed 10 lbs. and that has incredible resolution and lenses.  My new lab, however, had some challenges.  It processed my color negative film as color slide film.  Ooops!  It altered the color dramatically and in some cases to the detriment of the photos.  Some "artists" do this on purpose.  I am far too much the realist to ever do this with a photo.  Still,  you should be able to begin to see the quality of the photographs, even from these scans of the corrupted originals.  Some are kind of cool!  The top photo is of Picture Lake and Shuksan, one of the most famous photos of the region.  I am very interested in taking more wild flower photos.  I see real potential in these photos.

So, Saturday, weather permitting, I am going to do this again.  I promise not to, as one of my audience said, "whine like an old lady" and do this with a bit less drama.  I am still not sure if I can become a vegan, which was their other suggestion!  I might not take as many digital photos but I will bring my medium format and a 4X5 camera.  More photos soon!!!

People who know me know that I don't take many sunset photos, but it was a wonderful night last night, and I took two, very different sunset photos.  One was inside and was outside, and I like them both, though one is a tad bit more dramatic.

I took this one--I shoved the camera onto a little rock shelf, and used that handy self-timer thing.  I would like to say that I am red because I was sunburned, and I was/am, but I suspect it is more because I was overheated and overworked.  Still, it shows the neighborhood I was in, and shows how close the mountain seemed.  It is actually more than 6 miles away.

I found a better photo of Shuksan from Table Top.  Shuksan looks like a mountain should look in the Northern Cascades.  Its all craggy, imposing, and almost foreboding.  Baker, on the other hand, looks like the mountains that we as eight year olds drew in art class.  They were formed entirely differently, too.  Baker is an active or live volcano, and Shuksan is a geologic formation--much of it at one time was under a sea.  Shuksan has been widely photographed, far more than Baker, and it graces cups and key chains, mouse pads and posters.  

Below is his royal old pudgy-ness.  I might add that this was taken by about a 65 year old woman who passed me going up.  I am smiling at a family that had just made it up, with all of them, including the 8 and 10 year olds who apparently skipped up.  I guess I was the only one who thought the climb tough.