Goats on a Salt-Laden Cliff

I am proud to report that this photograph just won 1st Place in the Wildlife Photography Division at the Teton County Fair 2021 in Wyoming!

The photograph captured a mountain goat and her newborn kid defying gravity as they licked the salt off of a mineral-laden cliff at the Roosevelt Fault in Glacier National Park, Montana. They were about 100 feet from the ground, seeming to navigate this vertical rock face with little effort. Mountain goats have remarkable agility on cliff surfaces. This is in part is because they have hooves with hard outer casings that can dig into the tiniest of rock crevices as well as soft pads on the bottoms of their hooves that can mold to the contours of a cliff’s rock formations.

I’m not sure what gave me more delight that day – watching this baby goat maintain its balance as it managed to keep up with its mother, or taking in the pure joy that was experienced by all the people who came to watch them alongside of me. In keeping with the spirit of the mission of Changing Focus Photography, I gave this photo away to anyone interested in preserving the feelings we all enjoyed that day.

Again, the gift of photography will now help those positive emotions to endure.

T.L. Wilson

T.L. Wilson (formerly Terry Wise) has lived through a myriad of personal and professional lives, each of which has led her to the same place, with the same purpose: to provide hope and inspiration to others. Terry is the author of Waking Up: Climbing Through the Darkness, a book that offers a road map to emotional health to people who are faced with a diversity of life’s challenges (grief, depression, suicidality). Terry served on the boards of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the American Association of Suicidology and spent a decade delivering keynote speeches in every state in the United States. After happily re-marrying in 2010, Terry wrote a novel, Viewer Indiscretion, penned under the name T.L. Wilson. Terry’s most recent endeavor as a photographer is to capture and share the beauty of the world around us through a different lens—a camera lens. It is her belief that recovery from mental health challenges is achieved incrementally and it is her hope that each image will provide doses of joy to the eye and warmth to the heart. Her mission is to make the world a better place one book at a time, one word at a time and now…one photograph at a time. To view more images, please visit www.ChangingFocusPhotography.com