singing in the rain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmCpOKtN8ME

I woke up and it was not raining. I made some coffee, and it still wasn`t raining. I started to pack up and splosh! everything soaked in 10 seconds.. So I decided to stay where we were, even though I was not entirely sure where that was. What I do know is that it was beautiful and peaceful.

So I decided to go for a walk to find all the bear footprints, and to see what other wild life was using the paths. When it`s wet the survival theory is that when you are going to be moving about you get yourself wet and keep your clothes dry, so when you have to keep still you don`t freeze. Any person unlucky enough to encounter me under wet circumstances will therefore find me NOT wearing my shoes and socks, but wearing plastic sandals. No trousers, natch. I will be wearing a mac( see kit paramo) for details, but I won`t be wearing much under it. I will have my binoculars (leica and will never let wet in and get mould) with me, and I will have my camera, but under my jacket, so it doesn`t get wet, but can easily be deployed for photo taking.

Very odd, and I would feel a bit selfconscious should a hunter or woodsman hove into view. They seldom do, because they don`t like rain.

This morning I made sure George was in a good grazing situation and went back along the way we had come the previous evening. I intended to photograph Mummy bear, Baby bear, Teenage bear and Daddy bear`s footprints. plus any others. Almost at once I found tracks of wildboar (shhh don`t tell George) interesting ones too. It was Mummy boar and 5 or 6 baby boars teeny weeny footprints.. these must have been out on almost their first walk..each little hoof print was less than an inch long. But I couldn`t get decent photos of them, so you`ll have to make do with words for them.

I found that bears had been active in the night, there were more prints than I had noticed the previous evening.

It had been warm then, so every puddle had been full of little frogs and toads and newts. Now because it was cloudy and cold I didn`t see any. Even the flowers seemed under the weather.But I did see some great botany.. the green thing is an orchid called a Twayblade.

The odd shaped thing that looks a bit like a dead leaf is lichen that had dropped off the trees. The brown flower is a birdsnest orchid. They are called birdsnest orchids, because their roots form something that looks like a birds nest. They work together with fungi and steal nutrients from other plants roots, or maybe they are saphrophitic, and get nutrients from dead vegetable matter. whatever, they don`t need to be green because they are too lazy to photosynthesize.

I walked and I walked and I walked. I thought that I would get to the giant bear print. But I never did. I underestimated how fast George had been travelling, and how slowly I was bumbling along looking at stuff. There wasn`t any point in not walking as it was still raining, and what would I do if I stopped? get cold, that`s what.

But when the rain stopped I had a look at my watch, thinking I`d get back, giving the tent time to dry by the time I got back. It then that I found I had been gone for 4 hours. Enjoying myself a lot. Singing actually (not loudly enough to scare nature away, but definately Singing in the Rain. ) I didn`t get as far as the big bear, and I gave up that plan. It was stupid plan anyway. Male bears and female bears live separately, and since male bears aren`t to be trusted with baby bears (though I am told that there is no record of a male bear killing a baby bear in Greece, it doesn`t mean it doesn`t happen. This species does this in other places. Male bears don`t want other male bear`s offspring growing up. What they want is to pass on THEIR genes.)I should have realised that the overlap of the territories was going to be a long way away from what was obviously the main part of the mother bear`s territory. Pity I didn`t think of that BEFORE I decided to walk back all that way...
I tied George quite near my tent for the night, so I could call out soothing words if roedeer came. No need.Even though a roedeer did come.

Something woke me. A kind of swishing sound. An elegant little buck roedeer moving through the soaking tall grass. He stopped. and sniffed." Yeah," he obviously thought, "there`s a human here, somewhere. " But he didn`t make his alarm bark and bounce off into the woods. He started to make a badtempered growling grumbling kind of sound while walking around my tent . He couldn`t quite locate me, though he was right beside my tent (I saw where he`d been when I got up in the morning) He continued with the stroppy sound for a while. I was holding my breath thinking about what George was going to do. George did nothing.

The bambi wandered off still growling. What a grumpy little animal.