Maybe this is one of those had to be there moments but I can’t resist sharing this short video with you all. The past two weeks of cabin-sitting a friend’s place off the grid in the remote Rogue River Canyon of southwestern Oregon was mostly a quiet affair, a vacation away from cell phones, laptops, blogging, Twitter, and the rest of the plugged-in foofaraws. 

Instead we basked in that rare Cascadian commodity, sunlight. These were dog days to be sure, with a few afternoons hitting triple digits. We swam in the river and didn’t think twice about unanswered emails or what wild food options might be afoot. For that matter, the foraging was slim anyway. Chinook salmon had already pushed through on their way to upstream spawning grounds and fall steelhead had yet to arrive; it was still too dry for mushrooms and the evergreen huckleberries were just beginning to form hard, green little nodules on the bushes.

Come dusk, though, when the heat dropped a notch and does brought their fawns to the meadow to browse, the lazy day was given a jolt of earthly electricity…