There are advantages to having a dog make you get up at 6:45 am.

A very early walk brings delights that compensate for leaving a warm bed.

Two pair of parenting Canada geese herding their brood of goslings into the water and away from Santiago and me. The baby geese do not have the gravitas or gravity of the grown geese and they pop along the top of the water like fluffy corks.

The nose of a creature creating a wake across a small tributary of the river just beyond the geese. Not the flat head of a beaver so perhaps a muskrat...only a nose and too far away to identify.

The only traffic is bird flight. A Belted Kingfisher - with its punk crown and its indescriable blue-gray colour. Ravens that croak so loudly they create echoes. A flycatcher or phoebe with a mini mohawked head. pine siskins, warblers, white throated sparrows...too many little birds that flit and dissapear before I can begin to figure out what they are. But the figuring out doesn't matter all that much. The songs are the gift and the flight paths across our path.

An elk with a  set of antlers with that covering that looks like velcro that he will shed as summer comes on.

That is snow you see on the mountains. Several mornins lately we have had snow but also lots of sun and then some rain. Mountain weather is like the Maritimes...very changeable.

Now home again with a warm cup of coffee and a sleeping dog. I think I will wake her up.