Back in the mountains, I took my favorite walk along the river this morning. The forest showed no signs of Covid-19. New life was everywhere.

It took a while to find the wild sweet peas that I remembered from this time last year. They were few and far between on the forest floor, which made them all the more delightful when I spotted a few.

Above, enormous ravens and almost as large crows swooped from tree to tree. As I walked down the path, they called to their cousins up ahead: Beware of the human! They had an uncanny knack of avoiding the camera. I finally managed a fuzzy silhouette from a distance.

Honestly, I mean no harm.

As I retraced my steps, there was fresh scat next to the path, along with the faint scent of bear (similar to skunk, but not as obnoxious). The scat wasn’t there when I passed that way 10 minutes earlier. It was time to get my head out of the clouds and pay attention to my surroundings.