Adventures: East and West

This past weekend we spent a lot of time outside exploring some of our favorite places.  First on Saturday we headed East to look at wildflowers and birds and the amazing landscape that is the Washington scrub land.

We make this trip at least once a year and a must for me is to stop at the Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park to see the ever faithful Say’s Phoebe that nests there.  I love these birds but they usually stay on the east side of the mountains so I don’t get to see them that often.  I’m happy to report that a nest was being sat upon!

I had the rare treat of adding a couple life birds on this trip as well when both Horned Lark and Sage Thrasher decided to cooperate.  Great birds!!!  Other feathered highlights were all the Osprey, Eagles, Turkey Vultures, Swallows, Loons (calling), Magpies, and Ravens.  We even came across a raven nest high up on a rock face, with squawking baby ravens and adults flying into feed them!

Raven’s nest can be seen in the crack at about the midpoint of the photo.

Mammals seen included both a native Jackrabbit and the non-native cottontail rabbits, Mule Deer, Elk, Golden-mantled ground squirrel, and a marmot.

The wildflowers were lovely as well, one of these days I hope I get to go over there and spend more time with a field guide and learn more than my dozen or so I can identify in that region.

Oddly enough I spent more time looking at the flowers than taking their pictures!

We spent some time just lazing about the spectacular weather too.

The View from my comfy grassy spot.

Laying back on Mother Earth.

Mark communing with the Great Columbia River.

Us, having a wonderful hike in the Ginkgo Wanapum  Recreation Area.

Then Sunday we headed out to a great natural area near the university called The Fill.  This is a spectacular place to look for birds.  We visit often.  Here’s a few photos for highlights:

A turtle with attitude!

While we were watching a red-winged blackbird it  got irritated with a heron poking around to close to its nesting area.  The next scene happened too fast to get a shot of, but the Red-winged Blackbird landed on the Heron’s back and was pulling at its feathers – Ouch!  The Heron landed in front of us, shook the blackbird off and tried to walk nonchalantly away.  But that blackbird stood ankle high next to it and scolded and scolded!  Bold little fellla!

 

The Heron went about hunting, and quite successfully, too!

One last picture, love this “bloomin’ time of year!”

Trash and Treasures

Beach Trash 2/29/12

The above is a picture of the TRASH I collected off of a couple small sections of North and South Alki in only a few minutes.

So what’s the TREASURE?  The fact that these parks exist.  That they are there for me and everyone else to enjoy.  That they provide habitat for birds and sea creatures too numerous to count.  These parks are treasures just as every park, public land, and wild space  out there are treasures.  Treasures we should never forget to… treasure.

She Wiggles Her Fingers and Toes

I’ve been walking daily since Winter Solstice.  Forty-one winter walks so far.  Here in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle especially, it is known for dark wet winter days, yet not even a quarter of those walks have been in the rain.  Each day, be it overcast, partly sunny, fully sunny, drizzling, pouring, or a little of everything, has had its own unique beauty. Especially so near the water as my walks often are, lending the changing moods and colors of the Puget Sound to the beauty of the walks.

These walks have really opened my eyes to many things and as I spend time writing in my journal about them I find myself discovering new ways of seeing and embracing the season that is winter.  Last winter I spent a large portion of the time in a very terrible state of situational depression and I was determined that this year would be different, though many of the situations lending to it are still present in my life… being outside everyday has been at the least distracting and more often healing.  I can not recommend this practice more.

I find my journal writing waxing poetic, especially on the days that are mild enough for me to plop down under a tree or on the beach, taking it all in in detail and writing it all down right there in the moment.

In my writing today I found I was likening this time of year as the time in yoga practice where you are just beginning to wiggle your toes and fingers at the end of a lovely shavasana, the deep relaxing time at the end of any good yoga practice.  The earth in this northern region has been in her own shavasana – not asleep, she never truly sleeps – but resting, gathering her energy to her and now she’s beginning to wiggle her fingers and toes.  The energy begins to rise from the earth and find direction.  It’s in the swelling of the soft furry magnolia blossoms, the several inches of bulbs bursting forth from the earth,and the witch hazel already blooming joined by the alder trees and soon the daphne and Indian Plum.  It’s in all this and more.  The Pacific Wrens are testing out portions of their songs, the nettles are peaking up under the fallen leaves and the water birds are getting frisky.

It’s also happening in the people.  Gardeners are out in their yards, even under grey skies, weeding and cutting back last years growth, they look up and smile from the inside out as I pass by.  The people that get out there, outside, close to the earth show the signs of the season the most. While other still glare out the window at the light drizzle forgetting the beauty of the bright sun from the day before, mumbling how it’s always raining.  I wish I could encourage those latter folk to put on their shoes and coats and wander outside and take time to look for the beauty that is there each day, waiting to lift the spirit and redirect the mind and heart to brighter ways of being.

Do you have a winter practice of being outdoors?  How is the earth wiggling her fingers and toes where you are?

Nightmares, Dirt and Poetry

Woke up before daylight crying so hard I was hyperventilating.  Another nightmare. I held my breath and counted to ten slowly, both to stop the hyperventilation and get myself under control.  I had to keep counting my breath over and over as a wave of the emotions from the nightmare would sweep over me.  Breath.  Observe the emotions, the pain -but don’t react.  Keep breathing.  Finally calm again yet not wanting to go back to sleep.  Exhaustion finally won and I drifted back off curled up close to Mark who had drifted off again as well, his hand still resting on my back where he had gently rubbed as I tried to regain composure.

I dream again.  This time, though, I am lucid.  I know I am dreaming.  I am sitting in a bed, my husband next to me, when I see a large dog standing in the doorway.  I point it out to Mark but he can’t see it.  He still can’t see it as it starts moving towards me, aggressively.  I realize it must not be a real dog and I sweep my hand through the air where it has come at me.  I announce that the dog is in the astral and I get angry.  I jump up, my heart in my throat as I yell a chanting rhyme at the dog and chase it.  It runs before me, but reluctantly.  I keep chanting.  Banishing it with words and actions till I chase it out the front door.  But before it gets off the porch it grows larger.  It reaches down and angrily grabs the last dwindling basil plant out of it’s planter.  Shredding it.  Then morphs into some hideous creature before disappearing.  I still know I am dreaming and I stand there in my dream, pondering.  I feel I know what I need to know and so I start to try and wake up, it’s hard.  Then I’m awake and back in bed next to my husband, but things don’t seem quite right, and it is like I am moving through quicksand.  I realize I am still asleep and I start yelling, “I want to wake up.  I want to wake up.  Over and over. I finally do.  For real this time.  But I take a moment to be sure.  I sit up, absolutely certain I will not allow myself to drift off again.  Enough is enough.

Despite the horrors of the morning, our energy is good.  A little tired but looking forward to the day.  We read about various ways that the holiday of Imbolc  or Candlemas or any of it’s other names over the centuries is celebrated.  We talk about how we might like to celebrate this balancing point between winter and spring.  We have some good ideas, some of which I may share in another post.

We take off to run some errands and end up at a nursery where I fall in love with a Daphne bush and these bright pink primroses with lacy white edges.  Mark wants to make these my early Valentines gift this year and I won’t argue.  I’ve missed the Daphne I had for years that I finally planted in the ground in Olympia and had to leave behind.  I’ve wanted another ever since, and finally, this year, instead of cut flowers I get a whole small shrub of them to bloom over and over each year – at this balancing point between winter and spring, where I am needing a little more spring and a lot less winter.  We gather up our treasures and as we drive through the city the car is filled with the scent of daphne.

Today included a walk through the Arboretum in the rain.  We visited the Rowan trees and the big sister Maples next to the Rowan grove.  We walk through the woods, seeing the Magnolia trees fat with blossom getting ready to burst in the coming months.  The rhododendrons as well and the Indian Plum about to burst.  I can’t help myself – I gently kiss the tip of the nearly open blossoms, grateful for what they tell my winter weary spirit.  We walk past fragrant blooming Witch Hazel with Helebores flowering at their feet.  I hug a cedar tree or two, breathing in the fragrance of their bark.  We visit the Oak Grove where we sat and meditated among the trees last year with a group of Druids.  Each visiting the trees we sat with.  As I stand before my oak tree, cheerfully wishing it a happily approaching spring I clearly get the sense that Trees are not impatient for Spring.  ”Fine then”, I say, “Enjoy the rest of your winter.”  Humbled by this bit of wisdom, yet still, myself, impatient for Spring.  I am not a tree.

We eventually make it home and I wrestle the Daphne out of its plastic pot, placing it into the planter I have for it and nestling the primroses around its feet. I have dirt under my finger nails and in my hair, where I kept trying to push it back out of my face with soil encrusted fingers.  I bury my nose in the Daphne again and grin, ear to ear.  Satisfied I go back inside and to dinner.

After dinner we read poetry to each other.  Three books sitting on the table to choose from.  Mary Oliver, Robert Frost and Shel Silverstein.  We move back and forth between the books.  Moved deeply by Oliver, pondering at Frost and laughing hysterically with Silverstein.  The eclectic nature of the poems being read making the evening that much more unique and fun.  Then I notice my sketch journal sitting on the table as well, so I pick it up and read a few poems from it and then a few entires from the past couple years.  I see the sketch I did of Mark wheeling me through the p-patch under a full moon in a wheel barrow and we laugh at the memory.  We marvel at how much it snowed in 2009 and at the eclectic nature of three Haiku poems I wrote that winter.  The lightheartedness of a couple captured moments and then the blatant truth of the last one on the page.  It capturing the reality of that time for us in so few words.  We’re glad we aren’t in that place anymore.  We’re glad that we can move from nightmares to dirt to poetry all in one day.

Here are the three poems from that page in my sketch journal.

Bagel and cream cheese
Cat pushes closer
My bagel, Thank you!

Open Haiku book
Cat wanting attention
Close Haiku book

The homeless man asks for money
I shake my head
I may be homeless tomorrow

10th Anniversary – Part 3 – Cannon Beach

After our very wet hike on Friday we headed north to Cannon Beach looking for a sit down coffee shop where we could dry out and warm up.  We weren’t having much luck finding what we were looking for, one place was closed, and the other didn’t look very sit down cozy like.  So we ended up going to the small local history museum to start with.  It was free, which was a very nice bonus since we were on a super tight budget and still hoping for a warm coffee eventually.  We spent just shy of a couple hours walking through the museum, learning some fun history of the area.  My favorite story was about a woman who’s husband had been the mail carrier  but also had other things he had to do as well.  She finally convinced him to let her carry the mail and she did so with a horse who had a hankering to eat clay along the trail.  Here are a couple pics from that section of the museum.

I’m an adventurous sort and in another time and with better health I would have been this kind of lady – doing whatever it took to get a break from the monotony of housework and to get a little adventure.  I think people like Lewis and Clark, John Muir, and other explorers (and naturalists) of past times had the best jobs ever.  Of course I don’t agree with the methods of all those early explorers or the way some of them treated the native people of the lands they explored.  But still, the excitement of constant new discovery, never knowing what was around the next bend, all that appeals to me in deep ways.  So I love reading stories about people who lead lives like that, especially women who were outside their time in the things they did.  This museum had some good writers and designers working together to make it a very interesting place to visit and if anyone reading this is ever in the area, I do highly recommend it.  Here’s their website.

After the museum we tried finding a cozy coffee spot again and finally just gave into finding some hot coffee.  We took our coffee and parked the car near the beach and sat watching the mist and low clouds move over the water and make haystack rock appear and disappear.  Mark read his book for a while.  I watched birds and did little sketches and made notes in my sketch journal.  It was during that time that I tried to sketch something we had seen a little earlier when driving up to a look out to see if the tide was out enough for a walk on the beach yet.  I had to apologize to all eagles everywhere due to the sketch, but these pictures capture the moment pretty well, including how thick the mist was.

The eagle in the above pictures was standing only twenty feet or so away from where we pulled up and was eating the remains of a bird.  I saw it tear off a chunk of meat and swallow it down while Mark took the pictures.  The eagle was sopping wet and was being harassed by gulls.  It  eventually picked up the bird carcass and flew further down the beach.  What an awesome bit of nature in the raw to see up close.

After finishing those coffees we did finally head out for a walk on the beach and within moments of getting out of the car the slight break in the rain and mist passed nad we were getting drenched all over again.  It was pointless trying to use my binoculars so there were many mystery birds flying in and around haystack rock that I never got to be sure of what they were.  Though, I believe I did hear some Black Turnstones and there was one Canada Goose floating about in one of the large tide pools, which was a little odd to see.  We managed a couple pics but then the camera had to be put safely out of the rain again.

As I walked along the beach we picked up trash and Mark and I stuffed it in our pockets till we could get back to a trash can.  The amount of plastic trash, small and large on the beaches during our visit was heart breaking.  I plan on sharing more about that in another post and share some pictures too.

In the mean time I will share that the lack of cozy place to sit and have organic coffee got both of us to thinking about what it would be like to fill that niche somewhere in the north coast area, maybe even Cannon Beach.  We talked about what we would do, what the place would be like, who would do what, how we would make things awesome and green and cozy and relaxing and fun.  We dreamed quite a bit and since we got back we’ve talked about it several more times.  It’s not a now thing, but who knows – it could be a future thing… because anyone who has been to the Oregon Coast in the winter and pretty much any time of the year knows that there are plenty of days where a cozy place for yummy beverages is just what’s needed – a place to dry out our webbed feet!

Wordless Wednesday – Bike Snuggles

We now interrupt the week long Oregon Coast trip report series with a picture of Ducky (my lovely blue Peugeot mixtie) and Zoom-Zoom (Mark’s handsome Jamis Aurora) cuddling up along Alki during a break on this last Sunday’s bike ride. (ok so it wasn’t wordless!)

 

10th Anniversary Trip – Part 2 – Oswald West State Park

Thursday’s afternoon and evening misting rain turned to a heavy rain shortly after crawling into the tent for the night.  When we woke the next morning it was still coming down, and hard.  We had known this would be the case, so it wasn’t as big of a deal as it could have been.  We had planned for it.  Hard core rain gear, extra layers and we set out for a bit of hiking.  I wanted to take Mark into one of my favorite coastal state parks – Oswald West State Park.  The man the park was named after was the 14th Governor of Oregon and responsible for the first part of making sure Oregon’s coastal beaches remained public for all time.  The second part of that process was handled by Governor Tom McCall nearly fifty years later after a hotel not far from where we were staying on our trip found a loop hole and tried to privatize a strip of sandy beach.  It’s a fun bit of Oregon  history and I for one am grateful to those men and the ones who worked with them to make sure that Oregon’s beaches would remain completely public.

Oswald West State Park is an amazing State Park.  It is not overly developed. The one walk in camping area was closed several years back after some very old spruce trees started coming down, one landing on a tent that had just moments before been vacated.  It wasn’t deemed safe after some arborist’s checked out the remaining trees around the camp and so it has turned into a day use area.  I am saddened by this is a way, because I never managed to camp there, the one time I tried it was filled up and I had to change my plans.  In another way, the area could use time to recover, for the now downed logs to become life-giving nurse logs and for the forest to grow back up in the area that was once the campground.  Maybe some day it will be safe again, maybe not.

The hiking in this park is magnificent.  There is the hike up to the top of Neakahnie Mountain or out to Arch Cape, both of which I will have to take my husband on another time, since they were socked in by low clouds, fog and mist the day we could have hiked them.  Instead we stayed low, following the trail along a creek, past ancient Spruce and Western Hemlock and a few Cedars.  Their feet adorned with the lush and rampant greenery of salal, huckleberry, sword and deer ferns and many other coastal forest plant.  The creek rushed down through boulders, over small falls, around old root balls of trees and down into the pounding surf of Short Sands beach in the amazing Smuggler’s  Cove.  Waterfalls rush off the coastal cliffs and down into the cove further north of where the trail  reaches the beach and you can see the waves that draw the crazy bunch of hearty Oregon surfers on other days.  But on this day we had the place to ourselves.  The only car in any of the trail head parking lots, the only people on this day willing to go out into the pouring rain, where we began to drip as much as the moss covered trees around us.

We only took a few pictures because of the heaviness of the rain and the non-waterproofness of our camera.  The rain was driving in so hard when we were at the cove there was no good way to take a picture.   Even later when the rain turned back into a heavy mist and we headed to Cannon Beach to visit the small local history museum and find some hot coffee, the camera didn’t get too much use.  What pictures I have from our hike in Oswald West State Park I will share with you here and in the next edition I’ll share about our time in Cannon Beach on the same day and how driving to see if the tide was out enough yet for a good walk can lend itself to awesome surprises…

Me posing with who I fondly call "Grandpa Spruce", an enormous and ancient elder of the coastal forest.

A suspension bridge over one of the coastal creeks in Oswald West State Park

A Tenth Anniversary Trip – Part 1

I am seriously missing the Oregon Coast.  That’s where I was fortunate enough to spend a few days recently to celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary.  A place I hadn’t gotten to spend time at in way to long and a place where I used to spend a a great deal of time in the past.  It is a special place to me, a place where I feel the most at home than anywhere else I have been.  It doesn’t matter where on the Oregon coast either, really.  Though I do have a few places I might call favorites.  The fact that I was able to share one of those places with my husband for our anniversary was a very special treat – for both of us!

Now, this wasn’t a typical winter time anniversary celebration, as it might be for the majority of people in our culture.  Most people, when they think ‘anniversary celebration at the ocean’ they most likely envision a cozy suite in a nice hotel or a cottage rental near the beach or something similar.  A fireplace, a comfy bed with soft sheets and fluffy comforters.  Maybe some room service.

Well our get away didn’t look anything like that.  We did have a fire, which was in a metal fire pit.  Sheets and  comforters were replaced by winter weight sleeping bags.  The “roof” over our home away from home was a giant blue tarp strung between shore pines and a good rain proof four season tent.  Yep, we went camping.  In winter.  For our anniversary.  And we loved it!

And I miss it.  I miss being outside more.  I miss the lack of distractions, the mass to do lists that come with having a house and lots of stuff.  I miss the camp fires at night where we sat staring into the flames till our eyes began to droop, oh a little before 9pm.  I miss falling asleep easily to the sound of rain on the tent and waking up really early in the morning to moonlight so bright it seemed like dawn was already there, though it was still a couple hours off.  I miss watching it grow lighter, waiting for it to be light enough to take off hiking.

I miss the long walk (several miles round trip) down the beach in my bare feet (yes bare feet in winter – I was at the beach!).   Walking from our campsite at Nehalem Bay State Park down to the wonderful little village of Manzanita where we put our shoes back on to walk a couple blocks to the natural food store.  There we got some bulk oatmeal and bulk cinnamon so we could walk back to camp in the now gloriously sunny day to have second breakfasts of what I woke up craving earlier that morning.  The first time I hadn’t taken oatmeal with me camping and I end up craving it, lesson learned.  Organic coffees in hand we make our way back down the beach, I run in and out of the surf a bit, my feet once again bare.  I am in my element.  I am at home.

And I was sad.  Sad, because in a few hours we would have to take down our little tarp and tent home and head back.  When all I really wanted was a few things, like my bed and my cats and to stay – forever.

I’ll leave you with a few videos and pictures till I post again with more details of our trip.  Like the day it rained so hard our waterproof everything just couldn’t hold up and we were drenched, but happy – no other soul around as we hiked in a magnificent rain drenched coastal forest.  And many other fun little adventures…

This first video is of me playing with Madame Ocean – we missed each other!  I apologize if you get a little dizzy watching the beginning of this, my husband learned that walking with the camera on video isn’t all that easy!

And a little fire to warm up by afterwards:

A happily married couple at the beach…

Signs of Life in a Winter Forest

Schmitz Park, January 18th, 2011

No rain yet today so took off towards Schmitz Park after lunch.  Reached the path into the park as various gulls, crows, Northern Flickers and a Stellar’s Jay cried their alarm – a raucous cacophony of sound.  Never spotted the source of their unrest, a hidden bird of prey, most likely.  With a high pitched flight note a Brown Creeper flew onto the truck of a tree I was standing near.  I watched it creep its way up the mossy trunk and branches before it let out the high note again and flew to another tree.  Black-capped chickadees dangled from the bare branches of maples, feeding on tiny insects hidden from my sight.  A Ruby-crowned Kinglet chattered as it hopped among the briers and shrubs, a brief flash of its bright red crown patch before moving deeper into the undergrowth.  Male Anna’s Hummingbirds singing here and there.  A single Winter Wren scolds me as I walk past it.  Hopping from branch to branch close to the ground, with each harsh scolding note, its tale pops up, as if it has to pump the sound of itself.  It quiets down as I move on.  Not too much further and I stop and squat down, amazed to see small nettle plants beginning to emerge already.

A little further on I see the bright green tips of the new growth of Skunk Cabbage popping out of the mud.  In another spot the Spring Beauty has begun to grow.

Signs of the Pileated Woodpecker’s recent activity are everywhere.  Yet the bird is still no where to be seen.

I check the Salmon Berry branches for signs of buds starting, but don’t see any yet.  Not much new growth or buds forming on any of the trees or shrubs, but the mosses and ferns glow with their vibrant greens.

I hear the first few raindrops hitting the plants around me before I feel them.  Rain or not I can’t bring myself to leave the forest yet.  Tucking my camera into my jacket,  I take a deep breath of the cool fresh air and head off to walk another loop of trails.  A Northern Flicker calls from some where high in the tree canopy.  The chattering of Golden-crowned Kinglets and Chestnut-backed Chickadees come from the deep green of the Cedars and Douglas Firs, unseen but envisioned easily as they move in the dense foliage looking for little bits of food.  They add their music to that of the flowing creek that cuts through the park and I notice a few Oxalis near the steps before I cross the creek on large rock stepping stones.

I make my way through another muddy section of trail as the rain begins to come down more steadily.  It’s coming down hard as I leave the park, the cold drops hitting my nose and cheeks, one drop finds a way onto the back of my neck and a shiver runs through me.  There may be plenty of signs of life in the forest, even a few signs of the coming spring, but it is most definitely still winter.  That thought is emphasized by the rain turning to ice pellets before I reach the warmth of my home once more.

A Three Year Old Goes to the “Fish Museum”

Pretty soon shoulder rides by Aunt Maurie aren't going to be possible - that kiddo is getting big!

My nephew Caleb recently turned three, but this story starts back in October, when his brother, Connor,  turned six.  We had taken Connor to the Seattle Aquarium for his birthday.  You can read about that adventure here.  When he got home and his little brother, then two, heard about what Connor got to do, he informed everyone that he was going to go to the “fish museum” with Aunt Maurie and Uncle Mark for his birthday- this bit of news got back to us, thanks to my mother-in-law.  So when Caleb’s birthday finally rolled around we made sure to get him to the “fish museum” to celebrate.  We all had a blast and we all slept hard later!

We arrived in time to watch the divers!

Caleb checks out what it would be like to be an octopus.

It looked like so much fun, Aunt Maurie had to try too.

Then of course you have to try being a jelly fish.

Uncle Mark trying to keep up with a three year old - short legs can go real fast!

A happy three year old.

Uncle Mark and Caleb taking some time to pose for the camera.

Caleb found the shelf of books so we had to have story time. It was about someone with a grass toupe - silly!

It's a hug an Orca time!

Caleb and Uncle Mark play, "Let's ride an Orca!" Thankfully not the real kind!

Caleb admires his new Orca friend. Before we went outside he wanted to make sure it was protected so it wouldn't get wet - no wet Orcas here!

A little running around outside the aquarium before meeting up with Grammy and Grandpa to go play with legos and give Aunt Maurie a chance to sit still and eat her lunch!

PS – Taking pictures of a three year old with energy is like trying to take pictures of flitty little birds – a lot of them come out blurry!