Knee-high to a grasshopper

The Chilcotin, being mostly grassland, is grasshopper country. On my way back from Bella Coola, I stopped at Bull Canyon to look at the Chilcotin River, which here flows green* between steep cliffs. On top of the cliff, the grass was knee-deep, and as I walked - or waded - the grasshoppers leapt about me, almost as if I were running through water and they were the splashing droplets, flying up and sinking down again out of sight in the waving grass.

The grass was baked to a toasty brown; the grasshoppers were dressed in matching colours.

I found one resting on a stone and crawled up to him, inch by inch, taking photos between each cautious movement. I got a half-dozen close shots before he decided that was enough and joined his friends in the grass.

His wings seem frayed; too much leaping through stiff grass stalks?

*BC Parks says that the water is glacier blue, but I've never seen it but once when it wasn't green. And that once was when the whole area was on fire and they were dumping red fire retardant from helicopters. The water was red that day.

(This whole area is a volcanic plateau. More about that, later.)