I got up before dawn one morning and took Cassie hiking. She's as good a companion as you'll find; always happy and she doesn't give a hoot if I stand behind my camera for 10 or more minutes at a time, waiting for the light to change.

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As a matter of fact, I think it just gives her more time to check out all the smells. I swear she's part fox; she certainly looks it when she pounces upon a vole hole.

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I feel very fortunate to live down here, where it is possible to still find open vistas, uncluttered with the development going on farther north (and south, for that matter).

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I love the buttes and the high prairie, the old west feeling they give me. The clouds are transients, here then gone, but the buttes stay the same.

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The sky seems huge, as vast as the prairie rolling away like frozen waves on an ocean.

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Anyways, the buttes and the high prairie and the incredible wide open sky are my subjects this week. I hope these photos show the beauty I feel looking at them.

Mick