Pikes Peak – mountainbreakfast

This late in the season (September 2) many animals have lived their lives and have left offspring to hibernate through the winter. In terms of insects, little is flying now compared with mid-July. But here are a mating pair of Mountain Blues (Agriades rustica) and a third, an onlooker. They should have gotten a room. Yarrow blossoms are pretty exposed.

And the late-blooming Rudbeckia plays host to quite a few butterflies and even a wasp. I’ll put some determinations on these when I get them. The butterflies are, clockwise from top, the zephyr anglewing (Polygonia zephyrus), Milbert’s tortoiseshell (Nymphalis milberti), and again, the mountain blue (Agriades rustica). Tiger beetles are having a great time of it on the damp sand above Glen Cove.

This, I think, is a Sphecid:

Cicindela punctulata:

And in the rockslides I found four marmots, looking a lot like rocks, sunning themselves and barking at me.

Why Mountain Breakfast?

Well, many years ago, before computers and the internet, I wrote a short story about a man who carried an enormous length of garden hose up a mountain with the goal of starting a siphon to run water from a lake to his cabin below. His only friend, a water attorney (?!?!), warned him that stealing water could get him in a lot of trouble. But, undeterred by this cautionary advice, he proceeded to climb to the lake and start the siphon. Meanwhile, his friend cooked breakfast in the cabin below. By the time the hose was hooked up, his friend had set fire to the kitchen and lost control of his wits. Just when it looked like the cabin would be burned to ashes, the hose began blasting water, and he was able to save the house. This was the first of several short-short stories in a series that I called Mountain Breakfast, in which each tale involved cooking or eating breakfast in the wild. It was all about humans, all about nature, and all about human nature. I’m still at it, still hiking and thinking and writing tales, although they’re longer now, and not about eating breakfast.