Sunday, June 19, 2011

Photo of the Week 6/19/11

Cattle Grazing Near Goodrich Road
Adams County, Idaho
Friday 6/17/11

7 comments:

  1. Nice landscape shot. We have more than a few of those critters around here, too.

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  2. I can look at cows for hours. This is a great photo, John!

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  3. Hi Roy & Kat

    Roy: Thanks! Angus cattle are not exactly exotic creatures! Glad you liked the shot.

    Kat: Wow, thanks so much. I actually was a bit disappointed in this one as "pic of the week"--didn't seem as interesting to me as some--so I'm really pleased to know you liked it so well!

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  4. Gorgeous shot. I haven't been out that way for many years, but this seems to really capture the Northwest as I remember it.

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  5. Hi Banjo52: Glad you liked it! That's pretty representative of Idaho & Oregon east of the Cascades--of course, this is the most green it gets. Soon that will all be brown & yellow.

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  6. As I've said before I like these everyday photos of your environs and I'm often struck by the similarity to the landscape here. No distant snow capped mountains, I'm afraid, but lots of green hills.

    In this one, though, I was struck by how "unmanaged" the hill looks. In the Dales, here, the woods would be tamed and there would be a patchwork of drystone walls to divide up the land. The cows look very much the same, though.

    It's often said in the UK that even landscapes that look "wild" look the way they are due to human land (mis)management at sometime or another. I suspect in the US that there's so much land that this is not the case.

    Haven't been blogging/commenting a lot recently due to pressure of work (teaching, gigging, report writing...etc). Just looking at Facebook photos - the Churchmouse venture looks fun!

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  7. Hi Dominic: Interesting observation! Some things to note about the landscape in the western US: a lot of the tracts of land are large, as they are used for grazing fairly large cattle herds. The land itself in many areas--& this definitely includes much of southwestern Idaho--is not esp. fertile--this is a semi-arid region that gets less than 20" of rain/year. Land management in the west is a huge topic, however. While the land may be "untouched by human hands," the widespread grazing of cattle on what is actually quite a fragile ecosystem is definitely an issue.

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