Yellowstone

As mentioned in my previous posting, tonight was the first of three episodes of a natural history documentary about Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. Yes I am aware that I moved the park to another state, I have had two emails already. Well what can I say I am not smarter than your average bear!

However, what I was trying to say was simply that I miss watching the incredible podcasts that the various state Fish, Wildlife and Parks services produce. As a way of providing information it is a wonderful medium, not only that I bet that I am not the only person that is developing a yearning to visit many of these wonderful places. The only difficulty is that it would be a long walk for me and a touch damp too.

The first programme was a stunning visual delight. However it was one of the sequences in the first minutes of the programme that caught my attention. On the radio a few weeks ago was a series of essays by one of the best Wildlife Camera people, John Atchesson. (I don’t think I have the spelling right) But in one of these essays John was talking about filming in minus 40 in Yellowstone, and the pictures his words painted evoked the scenes that were now playing out on the screen. The man is a true artist and his films are things of beauty.

When I was a boy I was enthralled by the wildlife films particularly on Survival. While my contemporaries were making footballers or pop stars their idols mine were the filmmakers like John Root. I never said that I was normal. I genuinely wanted to get a job filming wildlife, I even told the school careers advisor this and was told to grow up! Well I still have not grown up!

Speaking of this, one of my viewers of my junk on You Tube said that I was like the gentleman naturalists of the Victorian era, I really like that. The only problem is that I feel that old too, personally I blame the cold weather and sitting about in damp conditions. Fortunately not minus forty though, so perhaps I will leave the real wildlife filming to the professionals.

Although I will just do a bit of ego inflating, as when I went to see the comments, I discovered that there have been over ten thousand views of my amateur films. That’s a lot of folks that I have bored! Joking aside, there is one in particular that is doing well. This is of bullfinches that were feeding on the ground. As this is a rare site, to have filmed them on the ground was almost unique. However, what has pleased me most is that even though my films are not of drunk people doing stupid things, that people are still watching them.

I just wish I had the email address of the career advisor and show him that I have still not grown up.