Thanks for thinking of me, olddude, but my mountaineering days are done.

Thanks for the wonderful account, gnu. I wish I could hear silence, but feedback has damaged my ears so much that when it's silent, all I hear is the ringing in my hears.

Never mind that. Don't you love the silence that comes when snow blankets the world? You wake up and see that soft, white light coming through the window, then you notice the silence of the world.

Back to wildlife observations - once on a beach in Fort Lauderdale, I got a wonderful close-up shot of a wading bird feeding in the foaming waves. I was able to get it because I crawled over the sand on my knees, inching up, then holding still when it looked at me. The kneeling kept the bird from seeing my two-legged humanness.

I kinda freaked out a couple of gay guys on a blanket nearby, but they figured it all out after a while. The shot is one of my favorite photographs - that fragile bird confronting the vast blue ocean.