Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

The Ninja Librarian has gone hiking again (or still, depending on when you last visited). So we're having    Friday a bit early. This one's from April 2014 and might help answer the question of what I'm doing out there... Pete the Peak-Bagging Pika This is a pika. He would be just a bit large to hold in your hand . He's also a wild animal, so if you see one, treat him with res pect and don't try to pick him up. Pika Pete wasn't like the other pikas.  Oh, they all liked the rocky talus slopes high up on the mountains.  But for most of them it was enough to find a burrow near an alpine meadow where they could harvest their winter provisions and watch the seasons change from the front porch.  Pete was different. Pete would sit on his front porch and, instead of looking down over the meadow and thinking about eating grass and harvesting stalks of delicious flowers, and preparing for winter, he would look up at the high peaks and dream about climbing them.  He alrea

Okay, confession: we spent 5 days in Sequoia NP...and only saw a few of the big trees as we drove by on our way out.  How did we do that, you ask? We spent our time far above their habitat.  Here's the scoop. Day 1. After driving up from SF late on Friday, we had to rise early Saturday to go stand in line to get a backcountry permit. I miss the days when we just signed in at a trailhead and started hiking, but it's a reality. Numbers have to be limited in too many areas. We get our permit, and even after eating breakfast and finishing our packing, we are ready to hit the trail at something like 9 a.m. Yes, I'm making breakfast on the curb. With deer. And using a paper towel as a coffee filter. The trail to Pear Lake, our first camp and the only one that is a) below treeline and b) restricted, is crowded with dayhikers. That doesn't ruin the scenery, and people-watching can be a distraction from the hard work of carrying a first-day pack up 2000'. A prime feature of

The Ninja Librarian has gone hiking.* While we are away, here are some marmots for you. *This also means that responses to comments will be delayed. There's no internet in the mountains, and if there were the NL wouldn't use it. So: marmots. I believe the marmots in question, from Sequoia National Park, are yellow belly marmots. I never before saw a marmot washing its face. Keeping watch This guy was watching our camp last year in a different part of the Park. They crave salt, and will chew any kind of gear or clothing to get it. I'm pretty sure he was eyeing my boots. These guys are all lovely. Marmots are cute and furry and a lot of fun to watch. As a public service, I'm adding a photo that's not so lovely. This is a spot called Lonely Lake. It took us 3 days to reach it, two days off trail. And what did we find? Someone's trash. Not from a hiker, this time. From someone who either carelessly or deliberately let go a mylar balloon. If we hadn't carried it

In a nice collision of discouragements to a new story, not only did Terribleminds.com not give us a writing prompt this week, but the Ninja Librarian was out backpacking and only got home late Wednesday. Somehow, with all the other chores, a new story didn't get written. So...how about a sneak preview of The Problem of Peggy, i.e. the Ninja Librarian #3? This is from Chapter 1, and is about 2000 words. Trouble Brewing With nothing much for entertainment in Skunk Corners, everyone came to the spelling bee. They couldn’t all jam into the schoolroom, so we all trooped over to Tess’s, where the barroom had more space. Johnny agreed not to serve anything stronger than sarsaparilla while the kids were there, and we got down to some serious spelling. Eunice Reeves was up, trying to spell “procrastination,” when I slipped out the door for some air and a trip to the privy. Tom and Tess between them were running the spelling bee, and doing a fine job of it.   I finished what I went out to d

We are into the summer travel and hiking season, and that means less time to read and review books. But it means more photos to share! We recently spent a week in Maine, so here are a few highlights. Among other things (like visiting colleges with our about-to-be-Senior), we spent three days camping at Flagstaff lake, a large man-made lake about 25 miles from the border with Quebec. This gave us a chance to get up very, very early and see the sunrise (do you know how early the sun rises in Maine a few days after the summer solstice??). Given how warm the days were, it was something of a surprise to find it was only 43 degrees when we crawled out at 4:45 a.m. Mist rising on the water before the sun hits. We thought this pond looked like moose habitat, but the moose didn't cooperate. We went on to climb peaks in the Bigelow Range, some of the highest in Maine (not very high by western standards, but the trails start low and climb rather directly). This was the sucker part, the easy w