"Days are scrolls: write on them only what you want remembered," Bachya ibn Pakuda, 11th century (copied out of the prayer book this morning). I'm in Florida, the usual mis-planned family trip.
I'd rather think about home:
On the ferry home from Vancouver Island last week I saw a humpback whale.
OrcaLab has posted a blog entry about the A30s, the orca family we followed most of the day on the 11th. There's a gorgeous audio file included in the entry.
Decided the many small seabirds I saw flocking and floating early in the month could maybe have been auklets. No reason to think so really, but I'd rather think of them as Somethings rather than Unknowns. Update on September 25: Barbara Blackies thinks my skillion floating and flying seabirds were sooty shearwaters, she heard there was a shearwater event on the outer coast earlier this month.
Tim McNulty emailed that Nalini Nadkarni, the canopy biologist, says branches in the high canopy she cleared of mosses were essentially still bare ten years later. So I might have to stand several decades with my arms out to grow a moss curtain in the understory of the rain forest.
JL from COASST emailed that there is an algal bloom developing, and "there are white wing and surf scoters on beaches in the Kalaloch area. The majority were still alive, but there were also dead birds on each beach that she checked. We now have a similar report from the mouth of the Hoh River. We have no definite information about beaches north or south of that area." She asks all the volunteers who work beaches on the outer coast to go do a survey as soon as possible and report on conditions. I'm in Florida now, and working next week. Can't do my beaches until maybe Sunday next. By then it will already be known how large a 'wreck' is in progress.
Home Monday night. Back to work at the college on Tuesday.
Monday. Off we went to the Hoh Rain Forest. Stopped at the Big Spruce Tree to change pace from highway mode to ambling-though-the-forest mode. The sign there said look for elk. We looked. No elk. We went on to the visitor center, carefully examining the roadsides for elk. No elk. Ambled around the Hall of Mosses loop. Watched a douglas squirrel energetically digging up bits of fungus and eating them right at our feet, shyness wasn't in it. Watched some kids decide a patch of Oxalis behind a big log were shamrocks and that they had found the home of the leprechauns. Read all the signs.
My attitude to the Rain Forest is perhaps insufficiently reverent. Under the bigleaf maples I reach my arms out and hold still for a while, wondering how long it might take for the moss curtains to begin to grow. Another gorgeous maple, my arms just naturally reach out again. Wandering though a grove of, um, big trees, I might just say, "You know, there's some really big dudes in here."
Bigleaf Maple with curtains of Selaginella oregana (spikemoss) (Click for larger image.)
Back at Visitor Center a little girl heard us talking about elk and she said they had seen one at the Big Spruce Tree. (I thought that meant we could count it as sighted wildlife. S. said no.) We gathered up the lunch tote bag and started around Spruce Trail loop. There was another douglas squirrel, this one on a branch right over our heads in the middle of the trail; he wasn't shy either. Picnicked by the river. No sign whatsoever of the promised rains.
Hoh River (Click for larger image.)
Colonade of Spruce and Hemlock on a Nurse Log (Click for larger image.)
As we were driving out, there were elk. Several cars were stopped in the road trying to photograph them. There were maybe six of them. By the time we could see them well, they were leaving. They're really big.
Elk by the road. (Click for larger image.)
The day continued ridiculously sunny. We decided to keep on in have-it-all mode and go to the ocean. More in next post.
Running about the Peninsula for two days. There was some sun.
Spruce Nature Trail, Hoh Rain Forest, June 16, 2010 (Click for larger image.)
Hall of Mosses, Hoh Rain Forest, June 16, 2010 (Click for larger image.)
The days are very long. When we got within reach of home, we darted up onto Hurricane Ridge, ignoring what appeared to be clouds and fog up there, just in case we could see. Good move.
The view from Hurricane Ridge, 06/16/10 (Click for larger image.)
Last sunday we headed westward into a cloudy forecast. First stop, the Twilight store in Forks, which was jammed with people, not all young and not all female. SA wanted to get t-shirts for her son. I will admit to being ever-so-momentarily tempted by a "Team Jacob : Join the Pack" refrigerator magnet. We tried to go to the thrift store but found it is only open two afternoons a week. Then to the grocery store, where we ran wild in the aisles, and stuffed 3 days of meals and treats into the car on top of the clothes, jackets, spare shoes, rain gear, maps, and a complete library of reference books and recreational reading.
It was early still, so we went to the Hoh Rain Forest. It's down to a routine by now: first stop with each successive party of visitors is at the Big Spruce Tree. It's big. There's ferns, and—most of all—stopping resets the pace from driving-to-get-somewhere to Being There. We had by then driven out of the fog and clouds, and had lovely sunshine the whole time we were in the forest. We picnicked, then to the visitor center, then around the Hall of Mosses Trail, all three of our cameras snapping but at different details.
Hall of Mosses in the sun. June 14, 2009 (Click for larger image.)
Then we found a grassy sunny spot and read our books for a while.
By 6 PM we had unloaded the food and stuff into our cabin at Kalaloch Lodge, on Olympic National Park's coastal strip, and were down on the beach. SA had her shoes off and was standing very still with the water around her ankles, watching the waves roll in. PH was looking for rocks. I was walking in the water. It was a miracle: the sunny weather held. Later we sat in three different spots and read our books for a while.
Repeat five or six times, over the next 60 hours :-).
Sunset at Kalaloch, Olympic Coast. June 14, 2009 (Click for larger image.)
A proper sunset, maybe a little cloudy on the horizon but yeah: the sun fell into the ocean. Monday morning, down on the beach as the tide receded. The beach at Kalaloch is very flat, the tide goes out out out and the incoming waves wander in about half an inch tall...
Dropping tide, Kalaloch, Olympic Coast, June 15, 2009 (Click for larger image.)
but we didn't stay, we wanted the low tide in the tidepools at Beach Four a few miles north. Highly satisfactory manifestations of purple and orange stars, green anemones, barnacles and so on.
Beach 4, Olympic Coast, low tide, June 15. (Click for larger image.)
The tide began to come back. We walked past the tidepool rocks. SA had her shoes off and was standing very still with the water around her ankles, watching the waves roll in. PH was looking for rocks. I was walking in the water. Still the sunny weather held. Later we sat in three different spots and read our books for a while.
The roadsides of the West End are thick with cow parsnip, whose name we could never remember, no matter how often we retrieved it and said it aloud. All over, all the marginal places: roadsides, bluffs, field edges. Soon we had a whole roster of roadside 'animal plants' to mix up in our aging brains, cow parsnip, plenty of foxglove, some goatsbeard, and skunk cabbage leaves each four feet tall.
Cow Parsnip at Beach Four, Olympic Coast. (Click for larger image.)
Back to the cabin; and for the rest of Monday and all of Tuesday, all we did was walk on the beach, alone or in pairs or all three together; and read books, alone or together. We saw seals, and lots of gulls, crab shells and parts. Pelicans. Any day with pelicans in it is a good day (though PH and SA didn't seem to care). Monday sunny, Tuesday cloudy and moving towards light rain.
Wednesday morning, checked out of the cabin and stopped on the way at Ruby Beach. Fog, light rain, those wildly photogenic sea stacks, a few intertidal critters; variously picking up rocks, walking in the water, standing still watching. Back on the road. PH had of course remembered the Forks thrift store hours, so on our way through Forks we went there. Then lunch at the wonderful taqueria MS had told me about, and home.
Ruby Beach, Olympic Coast, June 17. (Click for larger image.)
(Company this week. We did the headline tour of the north and west Olympic Peninsula.)
Perfect sunny weather in the forest. We took two of the trail loops from the Visitor Center, Spruce Nature Trail (which loops out to the river) and the Hall of Mosses.
In the Hoh Rainforest. Spruce Trail. (These photos are J.K.'s)
The rangers say it is not certain why the mosses prefer the bigleaf maples. Perhaps something about the configuration of the bark suits them better ("PH and porosity," says one of the rangers. "I was just reading about it.") Perhaps, they agree when I hold my arms out and pose as a maple standing there in the crowded Visitor's Center, perhaps also the more horizontal habit of the maple limbs makes it easier to establish there...
In the Hoh Rainforest. Hall of Mosses. (This photo by mb.)
Continuing to frolic around with S. We spent the weekend in the West End, beginning by rolling her wheelchair around the accessible bits of the Hoh Rain Forest in the rain, rain, rain, of which all the photos are locked up in her camera because it ran out of juice and we don't have a charger cord. This is the height of the Olympic National Park season, the visitor center was swarming with families sheltering from the rain, or traipsing off into the Hall of Mosses in lightweight ponchos knotted up at the bottom to keep the little kids from being entirely encased and walking in circles on their own gear.
Then out to have dinner in the Quileute Reservation's restaurant on the harbor at La Push, where miraculously the sun came out. What's fresh tonight? Only halibut at the moment. Ok, halibut. But while we were eating a fisherperson came in with a gigantic salmon, flourished it aloft, and then vanished into the kitchen; everyone applauded, and all the diners who hadn't ordered yet ordered salmon. Then we drove over to the parking area on the low bluff between the ocean waves coming in at First Beach and the river mouth, and watched the sun. drop. right. into. the. ocean. between Gunsight Rock and Little James Island.
Sunset, Gunsight Rock at La Push (click for larger image)
Sunset, Little James Island at La Push (click for larger image)
Saturday was Washington Coast Cleanup Day. M. and I signed up for the beach at the mouth of the Hoh River. It's on the Rez(map) and usually private though not posted, and we expected there would be lots of people taking advantage of an opportunity to do our symbolic sweeping of the temple gate someplace you usually don't feel welcome. But in fact there was only the site leader L., and us, and S. who was driving the truck to haul things away from the end of the road at various sites.
It was a really glorious day.
Low Tide, the mouth of the Hoh River, Hoh Reservation
We were told to take a quiet moment at noon to remember Jan Klippert, founder of the Olympic Coast Cleanup, who passed away in January.
So it was just us, you know, and a whole lot of drift logs. Styrofoam, litter, plastic, metal, a tire. Ocean and sky, an eagle. S. said that the other day there were lots of gray whales, blows all over the place. But we didn't see any. (People always say that the other day there were lots of whales. It's always some other day, not this one...)
I hauled out a few bags of bagable-size trash. M. went much further down the beach then worked her way back doing the same. But I didn't like hopping deep into the drift, the footing was way too unstable. So L. took care by himself of the two drums and the big ball of netting that I'd spotted back there among the logs. One drum—which was still sealed and had a small amount of unknown substance in it—he carried and pushed out of the drift, rolled it down to the beach and then along the beach, and horsed it back up through the drift again to the end of the road. The second drum was empty, flattened and rusted out, and he decided that it was not intrinsically hazardous, so instead "we" worked on the blob of netting. He had to cut it into chunks that wouldn't be too heavy to haul or drag.
Nets
L. & S. kindly said that our tiny team had probably gathered more pounds of trash per person than any other team on the coast, one whole pickup load and then a second smaller one.
Waiting for the truck to haul out more
Across the river we could see the Oil City cleanup team walking out with bags of trash. They had a long way to go to get back to the vehicles. On the Rez side you could drive almost to the beach, so we had a much easier time (and could do metal and big blobs of netting...
Across the River, the Oil City cleanup crew walking out with trash
I forgot to bring the tree-identification handout the national forest ranger gave me in Quilcene, so when I got to the Hoh Rainforest visitor station I asked the Park ranger if he had one. This one was a one-page summary; he pencilled in the proportions on the sheet. 60% sitka spruce, 40% western hemlock.
I took the handout and a library book (Stephen Arno, Northwest Trees), and shambled along the Hoh River Trail, looking closely at all the conifers. If it's only going to be two kinds, surely eventually they will come into focus and I'll see that this is not that. Spruces are not hemlocks. Apples are not oranges. Oughta be obvious after a while, don't you think?
Yeah, right.
Some of the time I thought the big ones were all spruces, and the smaller trees in the understory were all hemlocks. Most of the time I knew I hadn't a clue what anything was unless it happened to be a bigleaf maple or a fern. Those I could recognize. But I had a nice walk in the forest, about an hour in along the trail, and then back again.
Spruces or hemlocks Mosses hanging from Bigleaf Maple
PS First I went up the Sol Duc. Lots of fish hanging out in the pools below the Cascade, probably a couple hundred of them. But not on the move, just hanging out. No leaping.
