Sarah Ause / saussie.com »

The day after returning home from Phoenix, I was heading to Boston. I’d never been before, but it seems like a fabulous city. Cold, but fabulous. I was there on assignment, but snapped a few photos of my own while walking down the street…

70-degree weather in Phoenix was amazing… and so were the fresh-picked oranges. I am so ready for summer.

The dogs and I spent the last three days of our trip exploring Colorado. I’ve never really been before (unless you count passing through while sleeping most of the way), so it was nice to finally experience a little more. I left my parents’ a day early so I wouldn’t have to have all-day drives and the pups and I could take our time in that big rocky mountain state. We drove through national parks and monuments, stopped for hikes in gorgeous canyons along the way, and even hit up the local dog parks when we could. We planned to camp, but weather pushed us to motels instead, and that was okay with me. They are good travelers, my little ones. We had a good time.

I beat the weather this time. Well, sort of. Every year when I go visit my parents in the Black Hills, the weather wreaks havok on my plans. Two years ago, I spent the night in a community center when the interstate shut down from too much snow. With no intentions of letting that happen again, last year I chose to travel a month earlier, and by airplane. But of course, it snowed too much just before I arrived and the trails I wanted to hike were all closed. Then my flight out got canceled due to freezing rain and I was stranded at the airport for eight hours. This year, I would not let the weather win again. I opted to drive once more (for flexibility if the weather did plan to suck) and to leave yet another month earlier.

I arrived on Monday, promptly checked the weather report, and discovered I’d have one nice day of weather… Tuesday. So mom and I (and the dogs) got up early that morning and hiked Harney Peak (one of the hikes the weather thwarted me from last year), and I showed that weather who’s boss! Of course, the next few days were cold, windy, or snowy… but I had that one good day, so my trip was a success. The only incident that I hold any sort of contempt at the weather for is when I woke up at 3 am one night, about to wet the bed, and had to go piss outside in the freezing, snowing, wind. I should explain. See, my parents live in a tiny one-bedroom ranch house. They built a chicken coop last week and decided I’d get to sleep in it, rather than taking up their entire living room during my stay. So me and the dogs had our own lovely 12-foot cabin, equipped with an air mattress, space heater, and no chickens. Oh, and no toilet. I’d have gone inside the house, but their dog would bark and I didn’t want to wake up the house at that early hour. So I bared my ass and peed ice… for like two minutes straight. It was miserable. But peeing aside, the chicken shack was quite nice and will never actually house chickens now. It’s going to stay a guest shack… and a guest shack with no toilet. Let’s hope future guests remember to let everything out before they go to bed.

I know you’d all love for me to continue with stories of my peeing adventures, but here are a few photos from the week…

Zoe at Sylvan Lake after we hiked Harney Peak

Bill’s barn

Baby Shitty stalks like a lion when hunting horses

Clancy is cute

Bobert unloads hay while wearing one of the many hats in his new hat collection

Jackie and Jemma

Sue’s dogs

Zoe on the trail to Harney Peak

and Pumpkin

While it’s still 90 degrees down in the desert, and the trees are maintaining their springtime hues, up here in the mountains, the temps are cooler and the fall color is at full throttle. Not surprisingly, this photographer could not be happier. Yesterday, the dogs and I hiked Daly Canyon, and today Ecker Hill (with old canine roommate, Chloe), and with such brilliant colors everywhere, I had to post. I love fall.

A couple days before I left for Jackson, Becky posted a photo on her Facebook page. It was a photo of Paintbrush Divide, and it made me desperately want to hike there. It’s a 20-mile hike, up to over 10,000 feet, but I didn’t care. We would go there. Nevermind that I’ve hardly been hiking at all this year, and it would be the longest day hike I’ve ever done. The way I saw it, who cares if it kills me? Why do a shorter hike that you’ll soon forget about when you can do an epic, back-breaking one that you’ll remember forever? And so last Saturday morning, with grand plans of waking up early and hitting the trail, we slept in. But don’t worry, we still hit the trail.

The plan was to do the entire Paintbrush Divide loop, which heads up Cascade Canyon to Lake Solitude, over the divide, and then back down Paintbrush Canyon to the car… but well, I puttered out from not eating enough on the trail and carrying too much extra water. We reached Lake Solitude, the resting stop before making the final uphill ascent to the divide, and I downed some Emergen-C and some carbs and instantly felt better. From there, we could see the trail to the top, and it looked simple enough, but it was getting late, and though I felt great, I wanted to keep feeling great. Heading up to the divide and down the other side would tack two extra hours onto our time, and so I had to make the hard decision to say no to the place I wanted to see so badly. We turned around, and headed back for the car. There’s always next time…

Several hours later, covered in dirt, we arrived back at dusk. In the end, we hiked 18 miles, which almost seems like a waste to not have just done two extra miles for the full loop, but those extra two miles are the most brutal ones… so I think we made a good decision. We picked huckleberries and rinsed off in the lake, changed clothes and headed out for a beer.

Becky in Cascade Canyon

a pretty red bird that let me be his friend and get really close

Becky shrinks her swollen feet in the chilly water of Lake Solitude

one of the many marmot friends we made

and a pika

and a moose

and as Becky is a plant biologist, we also made friends with all the flowers, like these paintbrushes and elephantheads.

the fresh huckleberries we picked and chowed down on at the end of the hike

and of course, my infamous bridge pose.

It’s been almost three years since I lived there, and two since I’ve been back to visit, but I finally got back to Jackson this past week and a half on my way to and from Montana for work. I opted to drive instead of fly so I could stop and see Becky, who moved there from Kanab a few months ago, and some friends in Park City on the way home. Jackson is so beautiful, but man, that town seriously sucks too. I have a love/hate relationship with the place… love the land, hate the people. SO MANY PEOPLE. Luckily, Becky lives out in the middle of nowhere in Kelly, with the grandest, unobstructed view of the Grand (and the rest of the Tetons) from her window. I spent the weekend hiking my ass off and photographing wildlife before heading up to Montana for a couple days, and then back to Jackson for a few more… before continuing south to Park City, and finally home last night. I wasn’t due to return until today, but sometimes home just beckons you and everything else takes a back seat. Road trips give you so much time to think that my brain is pretty fried, and I just wanted to get back into the mindless drill of everyday life so I can stop thinking for a little bit. It’s not really working for me yet, but at least I’m home with the furry family, getting my snuggles on with Haley and co…

I’ve had so many posts I’ve been trying to catch up on lately, but I get so busy with work and travel, personal life and play, that they all just keep getting pushed back. I’ll write something to post, then never finish. And so tonight, while I’ve tried to push some out, and can’t find the motivation to do so, I’ve come to a simpler solution… just forget about it and post some photos. I think that’s why people come here anyway…

I rang in my quarter century birthday by catching bats in the middle of the night!

I planted two more gardens… but this dill plant is not mine.

Molly took a cute photo of me and my cute boyfriend.

I saw Busta Rhymes’ likeness in the Cedar Mountain trees.

breakin’ all the rules somewhere in Pennsylvania

campfire art

I’m standing in front of an island, under the blinding Florida sun and a blue sky. Just ahead, a group of chimpanzees lounges in the shade, taking cover from the sweltering mid-day heat. There is no fence between us, only water and blades of tall green grass.

The animals groom each other, nap, and pick grass with their human-like fingers. Chimps share more than 98 percent of their DNA with humans. As I look at their expressions, bodies, and mannerisms, I think about whether they are close to being human, or if we are just close to being chimps.

This island life of sun, grass and water is new to these animals and a far cry from the metal cages, needles and darkness they endured for decades. In the 1960s, many of these chimps were captured as babies in Africa for use in the United States Air Force space program. Others were born and raised in labs strictly for use in biomedical testing, or were raised for entertainment but then sold to research facilities when they got older and became too strong for trainers to handle. Their endless cycle of being poked, prodded and tested on continued for 40 years, long after the Air Force gave up using chimps in its research.

Despite their different beginnings, these chimps all ended up at the same place: the Coulston Foundation, a New Mexico biomedical testing laboratory with a horrid record of violating the Animal Welfare Act. In 2002, on the verge of bankruptcy after losing government funding, Coulston agreed to sell its lab to the Florida-based rescue group Save the Chimps. Along with its facilities, Coulston “donated” all 266 of its chimpanzees to the group, which already had 21 chimps previously owned by Coulston.

Save the Chimps has been expanding its property near Fort Pierce, Florida to accommodate the new arrivals. The 12 islands are now complete, and the chimps are making the move. The Great Chimpanzee Migration, as it has been dubbed, brings up to ten chimps at a time from the former Coulston facility in New Mexico to their new island home in sunny Florida. To date, more than half have been moved.

Back at the Coulston facility, conditions have vastly improved under the direction of Save the Chimps. The animals can move around and interact with each other. Their diet, once strictly dry monkey kibble, now includes fresh fruit and vegetables. And the staff is providing the chimps with activities vital to their mental well-being. They paint pictures, play with toys, and forage for hidden treats.

Started by Dr. Carole Noon in 1997, Save the Chimps has become the largest chimp sanctuary in the world. Noon knows the animals all by name, recognizing their differences in appearance and personality.

After a 2,000-mile journey, a group of chimps has just arrived in Florida. Caregivers and other staff gather around as each chimp is unloaded from a custom-built trailer and released into the building attached to their island. Hand-decorated posters hang on the outside wall, greeting Ariel, Ritt, Katie and Emily to their new home. This migration marks a milestone: There are now more chimps in Florida than at the New Mexico facility.

The new arrivals will stay inside the building for a few weeks to help accustom them to their new surroundings. Then the door will open—and will stay open.

When the doors first opened for Tanya, who was born in Africa, she reached down and touched grass for the first time in more than 40 years. When it was Carlos’s turn, he elbowed two chimps beside him, ran outside, ran back inside to hug one of his friends, then went off to explore. Others take more time to adjust. It took O’Dell more than a year to venture past the pavement and into the grass, but eventually she did.

“This isn’t easy. They’ve lived in boxes, forever. And when I open that door… I give them the choice. Do you want to sit in the box, or do you want to go sit in the sun? And they decide,” says Noon. “A simple choice is something they never had before. The sum total of what we’ve done is given them a choice.”

From across the water, a mother chimp seems to smile at me. Her young one clings to her while chewing a on a piece of grass. To prevent captive breeding, all of the males here have had vasectomies, but the surgery sometimes fails. But these young ones are spared the lives of their parents. They will not suffer at the hands of humans and in the name of science. They will spend their days climbing in trees, soaking in sunshine, and eating fresh fruit and veggies. They will live a life closest to what they were meant to, and I think that perhaps this is why the mother chimp smiles.

(Note: I shot and wrote this story late last year, but waited to post it until it ran in the magazine… which it just did)

UPDATE: Sadly, I found out today (May 4th) that Dr. Carole Noon, founder and director of Save the Chimps, passed away this weekend from a recent illness. The chimps are lucky to have known her, and their lives are forever changed because of her.

While strolling along the shops of the Santa Monica promenade this weekend, I did a double-take. TEAGUE? Yes, Teague… my friend from Park City. What the hell?! Since I met him a couple years ago, I knew he split his time between work in L.A. and skiing in Park City, but actually running into him there still blew me away. What’s crazier though is that an hour before running into him, while driving around trying to find a parking spot, I saw some dude getting out of his car in an alley… but obviously failed to realize that it was Teague. I guess it’s just a very small world… even in a big city like L.A.