I Talk to the Trees (But They Don't Listen to Me)

Expedition to the Outer Coast in vile weather. Actually JL wanted to take me up showshoeing on Hurricane Ridge, but forecast was for weather continuing to be windy and the temperature above freezing days, frozen crust at night. So we went to the ocean instead. I called the elk at all three potential elk spots. "He-e-e-er-r-r-e elky elky elky." No elk. It rained all the way west, sometimes hard. JL tried the technique of speaking optimisitcally about sunshine. Didn't work. I tried being firm, addressed a remark to the sky, "OK, that's enough, just turn it off now." That didn't work either.

So there we were on Rialto Beach in our rainsuits, the wind blowing the rain at us. The beach was clean (JL picked up the only piece of marine debris we saw, a plastic bag), lots of changes in where the logs are and the distribution of sand and gravel on the surface. The camera spent most of the day zipped inside my clothes two layers down. Occasionally I turned my back to the wind and tried to get a picture of, um, not a whole lot. Some people were walking with umbrellas. Should have done.

Rialto Beach and (barely) James Island, March 2, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

There was so much rainfall a temporary creek was running across the beach, difficult to behave as it it were real water. Got my boots wet crossing it. We walked as far as Ellen Creek, then turned around. Ellen Creek was running really full, certainly not crossable unless you were going to wet-log-walk at the back of the beach. There were lots of gulls, and we each glimpsed an eagle who emerged from the clouds and then back in again.

Ellen Creek Running Full, March 2, 2013 (Click for larger image.)

We decided to go around to La Push for lunch, but found the restaurant not open; so we sat for a while on the point overlooking First Beach where you can see the whales when the whales are there to see, long about April. Heard sea lions barking, but didn't see them. It was still raining.

Overlooking First Beach. (Click for larger image.)

The weather slowly lightened as we drove back east. It was still gray and the streets very wet when we got back to Port Angeles, but a couple of hours later it looked like this out the window:

... (Click for larger image.)

Thank you anyway, Olympic National Park.

Volatile Weather

Did went west on Saturday, the forecast for the day was some percent showers, both in town and on the outer coast, both Saturday and Sunday. I guessed Saturday would be better. Yeah, well.

It had been windy. Berries blown off the madrona (in Canada, 'arbutus'; here, 'madrona'; in California, 'madrone') that everyone always stops to photograph along the lake:

Madrone berries, October 20, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

For a while what was probably a freezing-fog line, not a snow line, was as clear as a ruler.

(Click for larger image.)

There was a bolt of sunlight, and a rainbow. By the time I'd pulled off and leaped out of the car with the camera, already faded.

Rainbow along Lake Crescent (Click for larger image.)

Same moment. Looking the other way, a whole different weather (Click for larger image.)

In places the bigleaf maples were fully turned to pure yellow, other places the vine maples gone red. Further along the road, it poured for a few minutes.

At Rialto Beach it kept changing. Between rainshowers I would sit on a log and read, moving on again when drops began to fall on the book.

James Island, October 20, 2012, Rialto Beach (Click for larger image.)

When it rained, all the other people magically disappeared (Click for larger image.)

Ellen Creek runs into the ocean. Soundscape for Cee.

Left early, to have time to go look for jumping salmon on the Sol Duc River. Left in fact just in time. The next weather event was a three-minute sleet storm...

Ocean Day, With Sea Lions (No Pix Of)

Took KB right out to Rialto Beach on Friday, she had come all the way from Germany to get to the Real Outside Ocean, and Outside we went. (OK, ok, she also came for the ceremony in Crestone...) Very very satisfying to drive around with her, she rides with a map in her lap, keeping track of where we are and where going.

Rialto Beach, May 18, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Very little surf, and no birds to speak of (not even gulls and crows, nor even little flitty birds singing in the forest behind the beach). A little wrack, no litter, few people. "This is sure not Florida," I said at a moment when I had settled happily into a bank of pebbles, leaning against a log, watching the occasional through-hiker stomping along, or a bundled-up couple amble by.

Soundscape for Cee, Rialto Beach, May 18, 2012

There was actually one beached bird, KB spotted it. Had we been surveying, it would have been the first reported (dead) bird on the Ellen Creek beach segment since July 10, 2011. Took pictures, will ask JL for i.d. help even though it doesn't count in the scientific record.

Then we went around to La Push, to look for whales from First Beach. Well no, of course, though in theory it is not too late because J.Lee said last weekend she was still seeing them at Davenport, and promised to ask a few to show themselves for me. But there must have been fish moving up the river. Boats were moving in and out from the marina, through the river channel and out to sea; and gulls, and lots of sea lion action. Eagles, many bald eagles, mature and juvenile, sitting around on the snags, in the air, even fishing the river though we never saw one catch anything. Later we had a late lunch in the River's Edge Restaurant, continuing to see sea lions around...

Little surf, no whales. First Beach, May 18, 2012 (Click for larger image.)

Nobody. Else. There.

Friday morning. Rialto Beach. There was nobody else there, and mostly nothing else either: no birds, no kelp, no trash, no break in the slope, no... Just the ocean, the beach face, and then the trees.

Rialto Beach, January 27, 2012. Morning. (Click for larger image.)

During the high surf days the waves had swept clear across parts of Rialto Jetty, either carrying the drift away or pushing it over and down the back side of the slope, where it seems it must be going to stay forever or until some unimaginable 1000-year flood on the river picks it up and carries it back out into the ocean. Further to the north, on the Ellen Creek beach segment, the waves had smoothed away the summer berm and flattened the slope of the beach face, shoving all the sand or pebbles up and into the forest edge. It was ever so clear why a scrim of salt-killed ghosts edges the beach. (McKay and Terrich, Gravel Barrier Morphology: Olympic National Park, 1992: "It is evident that frequent overwashing occurs along this part of the barrier and the entire barrier is retreating into the forested area... trees are being killed by saltwater intrusion and eventually are toppled by high waves and drift logs.")

Swept. (Click for larger image.)
From behind the screen of ghost trees, Rialto Beach, January 27, 2012 (Click for larger image.)
A raccoon (??) had passed by (Click for larger image.)

Even for a winter weekday morning, such solitude was unusual. This is after all a premier drive-to beach on the Outer Coast of a well-used National Park. After a couple of hours, a pair of people walked by, and shortly afterwards a through-hiker with a backpack. O noes, I had to share the ocean!! With three other people.

Later I drove around to the La Push side of the river; sat out on the point reading, sleepy. Every last stick of drift had been carried away from beneath the point, and a sharp bank cut. A crow pair was hopping around; skittering sideways towards each other, hunching their necks and clacking their beaks; keeping close to each other. A fishing boat came through the channel into the Quileute River mouth, heading for the harbor. The tide kept coming in.

... (Click for larger image.)First Beach, With Crows (Click for larger image.)

I Found One

Tsunami debris? Tsunami debris. Here. Now.

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, the flotsam guy, was here in Port Angeles earlier in the month. He and James Ingraham gave a presentation at the college about the science of flotsam, their computer model, and the likelihoods— including that the earliest arriving tsunami debris, driven by wind as well as the known movements of water in the North Pacific Gyre, could show up at the 8-month point, like now, rather than at the two-year point as NOAA's water-driven models predict. They showed a lot of debris collected east of Neah Bay, including a big float that they were persuaded is surely from the tsunami coast. December 15 story from Peninsula Daily News).

December 16 followup story reported that similar buoys had been found up on Vancouver Island, and at La Push on Rialto Beach (eeeep, that's my beach, said I), and December 18 a story passing on a news story from Japan that "it looks like those used in oyster cultivation in the Miyagi area, The Mainichi Daily News said... Miyagi prefecture is in northeastern Japan and includes the hard-hit city of Sendai."

So on Sunday the 18th, KF and AM and I were ambling along at Rialto Beach. We crossed Ellen Creek, and there far back in the drift was, yes, a buoy, looking just like the one found at Neah Bay that they had on the stage at the presentation. But English markings.

... (Click for larger image.)

I emailed Dr. Ebbesmeyer. English markings, said I, so I assume not tsunami debris. Oh yes, he said, the same as the others and tentatively identified by Japanese officials. Eeeep, said I. Who manufactured it, what do the markings tell us, [doesn't seem very confirmed to me, I really meant], said I. Still doing research, said he.

But really it seems most likely. Why else are these things suddenly up and down the west coast here, exactly as predicted by the computer models for high-floating objects, unless truly they were carried away from the tsunami coast in the spring and now they are here? As will eventually be boats and houses and all the rest of what is now still out in the ocean... Dr. Ebbesmeyer says people in Japan hide mementos in their house walls, and we will need to be cautiously and even reverently attentive to the debris as it arrives, to preserve what traces we find for their families' sake. Oh my.

Garnet Sand

Went to the ocean on Saturday. My houseguest of the moment, my old friend LB, stayed in the car or wandered about and did just what she pleased; so I did too; please myself, I mean. It was dark-cloudy, then brighter, with subtle light effects my poor little camera is not up to. Golden. The light in the picture below should be golden on the water. Ambled north solo along the beach as far as where Ellen Creek flows into the ocean. Then ambled back. Stopped and read for a while. That's the best, really. I be there, I get lost in a story, I wake out of the story and I am still there.

Rialto Beach, December 3, 2011, at a brighter moment (Click for larger image.)

When it works it is deeply soothing, I smile all the way home. (This is different from ecstasy moments, which are rare and I can't remember the last time I had any, a couple of years at least. Don't need 'em either, as long as I get to entirely stop for a while in the sound of the waves.)

Rialto Beach at Ellen Creek, December 3, 2011 (soundscape for Cee)Rialto Beach, more or less from where I sat reading (soundscape for Cee)

The place along the beach where the garnet sand sometimes appears put on its subtle show. A gull posed. And on our way west, the elk were out on Beaver Prairie.

... (Click for larger image.)
... (Click for larger image.)Elk on Beaver Prairie. Resolved: No more waiting. I must shop for a new camera, no matter what else is going on: one which will reach out to the elk, ... (Click for larger image.)

PS I did want to mention as I have before that whenever I am there at Ellen Creek, I think of it as the Raymond Carver point—"Where water comes together with other water"— though he made that phrase for the place where Morse Creek flows into the Strait of Juan de Fuca; and that I always look at the modest creek flow and think of Ivan Doig's story in This House of Sky of getting swept into the ocean, right there, by a winter storm tide. (Hope the link works. You're welcome.)

Not-a-Duck

Accumulating distraction reports: On Wednesday took PG out to Salt Creek County Park. The tide was coming in, she couldn't really see how Tongue Point emerges from the Strait covered all over with kelp and tidepools. There were lots of harlequin ducks, and some black oystercatchers (lo-o-o-o-ve oystercatchers). Also merganser, an eagle, a grebe, some cormorants.

Then we went on out to Ediz Hook. There were great blue herons, a loon, buffleheads, sanderlings, dunlin, lots of wigeons, a red knot (unusual; we had trouble believing we had it but we did). Also lots of harbor seals hauled out on a log raft.

Tongue Point going under the waves, November 2, 2011 (Click for larger image.)Island in green water, Salt Creek County Park (Click for larger image.)Great Blue Heron on the boom by the pilot station. Port Angeles beyond. (Click for larger image.)

Friday we went to the ocean. The forecast was for clouds but instead we had a day like this:

Rialto Beach, November 4, 2011 (Click for larger image.)

Stupid blogger changed the interface, I have to reload these, but for now...

Soundscape for CeeAt Ellen Creek (Click for larger image.)The 360

Saturday evening, back out on the Hook, lots of ducks and a not-a-duck. Some experienced birders also couldn't figure it out. This morning PG thinks maybe it was a pigeon guillemot. Also we had scoters, wigeons, buffleheads, mergansers, harlequins, and not a single eagle.

November 5. American wigeons in Port Angeles Harbor (Click for larger image.)November 5. Klahane Ridge and Mount Angeles emerge above Port Angeles (Click for larger image.)

Ocean Again

The Ocean Prediction Center forecast something like 12-foot swell. Barely noticable on the beach, right? Wrong. Hello, winter surf, you've been almost forgotten, so glad to see you again.

October 9, 2011, about 2 hours past high tide (Click for larger image.)

This was a COASST survey day. Needed actual beach to survey. Even at 90 minutes past the high tide, no beach to speak of. I set out anyway, immediately caught by water washing into the drift and up above the knee (thank heavens for rainpants and waterproof boots), retreated to a log and just watched and listened for another half-hour or so.

No dead birds, though on the Rialto Jetty beach segment there could have been any number hiding under the accumulated drying foam. Which is always painful to see since Akashiwo caused all those dead birds two years ago (1), (2), (3), but apparently not causing harm under present circumstances. Pelicans, crows, gulls. Misty, sometimes very misty, but essentially sunny and warm.

Pelicans in the mist (Click for larger image.)Piles of foam always spooky, but not actually harmful... (Click for larger image.)

The tide did eventually recede, the sea surface less wild. Last weekend's fresh wrack lines along the Ellen Creek beach segment had been swept away, the beach clean and bare.

At Ellen Creek, October 9, 2011 (Click for larger image.)Later afternoon (Click for larger image.)

The First Real Weekend of Summer

It was kite weather, and not. Inland just a little it remained sunny; on the beach, the marine layer drifted in, rarely so thick you couldn't see the blue behind the veil, or sunshine-over-there. There were enormous numbers of people on the beach: 78 people and 7 dogs on the clicker for the Ellen Creek Beach segment, though by that time the fog had slipped in. All over NW Washington, people must have looked at the forecast, declared this the first real summer weekend of a cold season (as well as perhaps the last one), and bolted for the Outer Coast.

August 27, 2011. Soundscape for C. Note the fogbank in the west.

This was a COASST survey day. No dead birds to report, unless I was just too spacey to notice. One notable bundle of feathers, but no measurable parts = it can't be identified and doesn't count. A bit of wrack. On one stretch the beach was substantially reshaped, though there have been of course no winter storms. A handful of pelicans flying past and a few cormorants in the air, down along the Rialto Jetty segment.

Rialto Jetty Beach Segment, August 27, 2011 (Click for larger image.)The Other Aspect: Kite Weather (Click for larger image.)

Another henge-builder with an interesting mind had been at work in the drift.

Climbing Cairns (Click for larger image.)No Measurable Parts (Click for larger image.)

As usual, stopped at the pullout over the river to get online, this time the excuse was to check on my North Carolina friends just then having a hurricane. There were about three dozen mergansers in the river, flitting back and forth from shore to shore like they were playing some kind of water-soccer. Two eagles, moving more lazily from one side of the river to the other.

I need to ask Tim McNulty about these signs. How is the Wild Olympics Campaign progressing, and why is the only evidence that it is happening at all these (completely delusional) anti- signs on the West End? Maps and whatnot on the Wild Olympics Campaign website.

... (Click for larger image.)

Summer Mode

The days are very long. Sunday afternoon headed west, June survey for dead birds on the outer coast. It's the season of 'June gloom, Juneuary, or tomato hell... whatever' as Cliff Mass writes, and I love it. Even when it's sunny inland, the marine layer keeps the oceanside gray, but by mid-afternoon on Sunday it was raining all over.

Cloudy, south end of the beach at Rialto Jetty, June 12, 2011 (Click for larger image.)Rain, looking north from near Ellen Creek, Rialto Beach, June 12, 2011 (Click for larger image.)

Unofficial report for COASST: no dead birds, lots of other beach matters to report: There was a deer on the beach, only the second time I've seen one there; by the time I'd whipped the camera out from under the poncho, he was walking away towards the drift. Ellen Creek was in summer mode, not running across the beach but just seeping out through the berm. Two black oystercatchers were on the sand, then flew to a rock (we don't usually have any shore birds at all at Rialto). The sea was very flat. Flights of pelicans out at sea. Some sea stars & bryozoans in the wrack, but mostly various kinds of kelp.

Deer on the Beach (Click for larger image.)Black oystercatcher (Click for wider view.)

What appeared at first to be a piece of log shaped like a seal was in fact a dead marine mammal. I'll confer with my Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary mentor tomorrow because— as is often the case when left on my own with a dead creature and a data sheet— I couldn't identify it even though it should be obvious. It was way too small for a sea lion, but it had ear flaps so it couldn't be a harbor seal. I had to leave blank the ID fields at the top of the Marine Mammal Stranding Report.

The bryozoan (moss animal) Flustrella (appearances notwithstanding, a colonial animal) (Click for larger image.)Wrack. Ellen Creek beach segment, Rialto Beach (Click for larger image.)

Windshield wipers all the way home. :-)

PS Lovely interactive graphic about summer and winter beach profiles, part of a very instructive website from the Coastal Morphology Group, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Failing-To-See-Whales Season

Saturday it was rainy in the morning, but eventually I got rolling and went West. It was like being surprised by the expected: it was gray and rainy and beautiful along Lake Crescent, the oldgrowth lowland forest on the lakeshore by Barnes Point was dense and mysterious and some of the trees are BIG, there was leftover snow by the highway past the Fairholm store though the elevation is only around 1000'. It quite seriously rained for a while, but was lifting by the time I got to La Push.

I was looking for gray whales, the blowing breaths and stray bits of whale backs of the northward migration now in progress. No whales. There are rarely any whales when I am looking. (Other people see them, plenty of reports.)

First Beach at La Push, Looking to the South. No Whales, April 16, 2011. (Click for larger image.)First Beach at La Push, Looking at James Island. No Whales, April 16, 2011 (Click for larger image.)

Eagles over the water, yes. Surfers, yes. Fishing boat traffic, twilight tourists, sound of waves, clearing skies, yes.

Fishing Boat in the Channel (Click for larger image.)

From there you can see the beach where I usually go except in failing-to-see-whales season, but to actually get there you have to drive east up the highway, get across the river, then back west again. I did that. Walked to Ellen Creek and back.

The river overlook. Quileute River, the jetty, James Island and Pacific Ocean Beyond (Click for larger image.)

I came home. It was fairly beautiful out, even back here in town.

The Road Home: Lake Crescent, April 16, 2010 (Click for larger image.)