Survivors...

The Green River valley used to be full of truck farms and dairy farms, and an untamed river that wound its way from side to side. When I was a girl, the bends of the river curved around green pastures full of black and white dairy cows, horse breeding farms, and a beautiful racetrack called Longacres. That untamed river also flooded on a regular basis, filling the valley with rich topsoil. That was before the river was tamed with a flood control dam. And then the valley became prized for office parks and light industry, and today the agriculture is nearly gone.



But there are still pockets of beauty, ponds full of cattails and waterfowl, huge tracts of open space now owned and protected by the cities that reside there. And if you look closely, you'll see the creatures that once lived there in great numbers, now living quietly among warehouses and office buildings.

It was raining hard and the sky was dark as we went after a geocache today, and spotted this Great Blue Heron watching for his next meal.