The Elf King

Welcome

This is my general-purpose website. (About me. The king of the elves is what my name means in Welsh.) At the moment I am not posting regularly here, but I will revamp this page as needed and add new content from time to time. Click here to subscribe to this blog's feed.

I have two other active sites, one about food (go here) and the other about running (here). I may well create additional pages as the need arises, so check whichever ones interest you.

If you are new to this website, here are a few places you might explore. Go here for a trip through Mexico, here for Costa Rica, here for the Pacific Northwest, here for Copenhagen, and here for several trips in Colorado. Click here for the occasional movie review. Click here to read about misused words. And click here for fine teas.

Thank you for visting!

Nesting

We hiked around a bald eagle sanctuary over the weekend. We may have spied one overhead (it could glide across the sky without moving its wings) unless it was an ordinary hawk. The woods were sleepy and punctuated by holly trees.

Tundra swans were sleeping on the marsh.

Wall of Silence

The east side of Rocky Mountain park, on a typically windy day. Some of the pictures were taken from a moving car, but I think I still like them. See the photos here.

Grand Entrances

We toured the New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, and the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. See my photos here.

Happy New Year

I returned from a lovely wedding and trip to Colorado for Christmas and New Years. I will post pictures in a few seconds.

Also, you should follow my new website at foodyear.tumblr.com.

A Brief Note

The Arizona shooting hit close to home in the Washington area. Best wishes to Rep. Giffords's staff and everyone involved.

 

Openings

I went on a Christmas tour of the White House (East Wing). Here are the photos:

 

Urban Series

Playground in Philadelphia.

Steps.

View from the Rocky stairs. All in all, a great place to run 26 miles.

Old prison.

Earth and Sky Series

With the probable exception of a couple winter heatwaves, the warm part of the year is over.

Running Log

I suppose I'll find those extra six miles somewhere.

Distance: 20 miles

Weather: Nordic skiing

Flora: Autumn is here, but you have to get a few miles out of D.C. to find it. Heat island?

Fauna: Migrating starlings, in the trees

Face of the Day

And I'll miss you most of all, Scarecrow.

Running Log

I really never thought I would make it this far. I should be a motivational speaker.

Distance: 20 miles

Weather: Autumnal light, green leaves

Fauna: Cardinals

People: L.L. Bean catalog models

Cold Animals

I would like to recommend the BBC documentary Yellowstone: Battle for Life. While I enjoyed the Earth series, it seemed like more of a show-off piece than a coherent presentation; they moved from one animal to the next based on loose themes like "caves" or "deep oceans" without linking together the properties of any location or ecosystem. Yellowstone uses the same filming techniques as Earth to tell the complete story of a particular place. Its organizing principle is simple enough: Part one, "winter," shows us the animals of Yellowstone frozen in the elements, in a tableau that looks like it hasn't changed in thousands of years. We see wolves hunting caribou, bison on a migration, white rabbits running across the snow. We are not told until much later that the timelessness is deceptive, as wolves were only reintroduced into Yellowstone about a decade ago. Nor do we see evidence of any human presence: We are presented with the ideal of Yellowstone untouched.

In part 2, "summer," we cycle through the mating rituals and life cycles of all the important animals that live in Yellowstone. We even learn about some of the plants, such as the pine trees that disperse their seeds using a particular bird that hides thousands every year and remembers 75 percent of them. Part 3, "autumn," begins with the elk mating ceremonies, and then opens up the setting so that we finally see the human landscape outside of the wilderness. These are the farms where the elk wander in the winter, and the prairies where ranchers face down the wolves. We are introduced to the fragility of a place that the beginning of the series implied we could take for granted. This message, while not original to nature shows, is delivered organically and with a minimal amount of didacticism. It is well-written, well-filmed, and above all, well-edited.

Running Log

Distance: 16 miles

Weather: Straw-colored sun

Flora: Some purple trees

 

A Very Hot Day

Along the Potomac this weekend, a canal boat museum piece.

A beach for the hikers.

An inland lake.

A babbling brook.

From the Maryland side.

Running Log

Everyone was training for the Marine Corps Marathon.

Distance: 19 miles

Weather: In the woods, a perpetual twilight

People: High-speed skateboarder with dog

 

Bike Tour of Montreal: The End

Here we return to the beginning of the bike trail at Atwater Market.

The vast covered marketplaces, found throughout the city, provide vegetables along with lobster, duck, pastries, cheese. I read that in Quebec, fresh tomatoes are not available until August. Cooking in the far north is not for the faint of heart.

The historic diversity of the immigrants leads to many kinds of fine dining, especially from European countries. But the continental ambiance of a restaurant is betrayed when you begin ordering food and realize you are still deep inside North America. The clue is in the portions, which can be enormous -- fit only for someplace with relentless winters where you need food to get warm. There is a lot of game, and notably deer. You can find deer tartar with berries.

At a Portuguese "tapas" restaurant, I once made the mistake of ordering an Alberta bison rib. (Braised in a maple syrup sauce.) Though listed and priced as a tapa, it was more than enough to be a meal of its own. A few days later, we found another restaurant with tapas. For the second time I ordered a bison rib, but only after being assured that it was a "small" portion. Once again, it was enough for a feast. They seem not to value their beef very much, or else they find it healthy to eat a lot of it.

Also there are beans and carrots in many colors.

Bike Tour of Montreal (6)

Return downhill and you reach downtown Montreal, where the office buildings transition seamlessly into a network of underground shops. Subterranean Montreal is one of the biggest underground cities anywhere.

Typical urban Canada.

On the McGill University campus, you enter an oasis where everyone speaks English. It was student orientation, and the volunteers were telling jokes using the self-deprecating humor of the northern latitudes. Then I left, back to the cosmopolitan Francophone world.

Running Log

No time to run last week because of jury duty, or something.

Distance: 12 miles

Weather: Cold

Flora: Acorns

Bike Tour of Montreal (5)

Mont Royal was landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted, but the hillside looks undisturbed, without the sculpted feel of Central Park or the National Zoo.

You climb up through a thick forest.

Near the top.

A view of the Oratoire St.-Joseph, a place of pilgrimage.