To Ed in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne

Best wishes to you and the family during this rough stretch.  I will think many fine thoughts for you. 

We will always be team mates and although we don't chat on a regular basis, when we do get together its as if we just stepped off the pitch at Greenlake, Brockton Oval, Steamboat Springs, the Superbowl Day game in Miami, the Bahamas, the Jamaican Army game or at the Mardi Gras Tournament those many years ago.

One highlight I'll never forget was at the Edmonton Rugby Festival.  In your giving, sharing and creative ways you helped turn a 6'4" thickheaded and churlish prop into a well deserved speechless (well maybe there was some whimpering) 6'4, 260lb smurf, and all it took was a gentle shove.

I'll nurse a single malt on this side of the pond as long as you do the same on your side when you can.

Cheers Ed!

Paul

Merry Christmas Baby

Try not to tap your feet!

Watershed

Ridgelines

Sub-Alpine Fir

Snow Falls

Part 1.

The snow falls.  

For western Washington it is a relatively big event. In the lowlands of Puget Sound a snow storm happens, maybe, a couple of times a season. Some years not at all.

You would think that we could be just a bit more sophisticated over something as trivial as a storm, but out here in the 4th corner folks are serious about the weather. Ten years ago and just 45 miles east of here, on a shoulder of Mt. Shuksan, a snow gauge measured over 1100 inches of snowfall. A world record for 1 years total!

The snow accumulated so deep that the Mt. Baker Ski Area had to bulldoze a path under some of the lifts so skiers could ride the chairs safely.

That many climbers, hikers and skiers become obsessed with the weather is understandable. On the same day skiers may encounter fresh powder, high winds, patches of sun breaks, rain, sleet and bitter cold. For added protection, some skiers routinely carry a folded up garbage bag with a head and arm holes already cut out. 

In the high Cascades, I have been caught in snowstorms every month of the year.  

We have been conditioned to carry the "10 Essentials" (maps, compass, first-aid kit, matches, fire starter, flashlight/headlamp, sunglasses, extra clothing,  extra food and water, knife) virtually anywhere we carry a backpack. 

In the winter we carry expanded versions of the ten essentials in the back of our cars. 

Napoleon Dynamite carries tater tots in his pockets, we carry waterproof matches, swiss army knives, and rain gear.

Many out here are fishers - commercial and sport. Every waterfront city of any size has a memorial to local fishers that have died on the waters here, out in the Pacific or up in Alaska.

We also have the Douglas Fir and other shallow rooted trees. In the forests each tree serves as a buffer for it's neighbor from the wind. As housing developments spread into 2nd or 3rd growth timber areas, many trees were left isolated from other trees. Without that protection, the wind quickly knocks over single trees and smaller stands onto houses, cars, streets and power lines.

And that causes power outages!

Mt Shuksan from Mt Baker Ski Area

Well, the good news is Baker opens tomorrow.  Bad news is that it is like herding cats getting rugrat #1 organized.  Last years ski pants, "where are they Dad?", goggles, glove liners, Cat Crap® to keep goggles from fogging up - all is getting organized.  Kits will be organized eventually so all they have to do is grab the gear bag and go each week.

Finally old enough to sort through everything and find "stuff" by himself.  He'll get ready, he's learning responsibility.  

Gotta leave he needs to upload some tunes to the Ipod.  Rocking below the face of Shuksan,  how good can it get!

Waiting for Snow V 2.0

Snow?  Tonight?  Yeaaah..er...yiiiiikes!  Better stock up on the essentials, milk, cocoa, marshmallows.

Rugrat one and two want it to snow desperately!  I overhear them discussing possible school closing on Monday.

Posturing as "cool, unfazed" teens who have seen it all, they still can't help but sneak glances outside to see if it has started. If they notice me, they won't look but their thumbs get hyperactive sending text messages around town, "has it started yet?"

Me?  

The kid inside wants to wake up to a fresh, untouched blanket of white and the promise of new adventures. I want to hear that muffled sound of silence; see my neighbor glide up the middle of the street on his cross county ski's; load up that ancient toboggan and shoot down the driveway.

But sadly reality sets in, you wonder if your aging parent is going to make it out of the nursing home and back into assisted living, if your 401K is going to come back or will you be working until 67 or older.

She who must be obeyed yells out, "are you going to forget the milk - do I have to go get it?"

Sometimes it would be great to hangout with some buddies, throw a few snowballs at cars going by, drink hot chocolate again and laugh so hard (at something dumb you did or said), that melted marshmallow shoots out your nose.

Guess I better head down the hill for the milk.

Favorite Places: The Columbia River Gorge

Snow in New Orleans?  Shivering in Florida? Temperatures dropping across the nation!  

Up here in the fourth corner we are expecting high winds, a cold front dropping down from Canada and Alaska, and a moisture laden storm system moving in from the Pacific.

It all adds up to a couple of feet of snow in the Cascades, and as much as 6 inches here in the lowlands.

So why a windsurfing photo?  

Well, I thought this was as good a time as any to remember that in a little over a week the sun reverses course for 6 months, days start to get longer and eventually warmer.

This is also a message for someone special. 

Home will always be out here in the west for you. 

You won't forget the sense of place you absorbed over the years at favorite places like the Gorge, Multnomah Falls, Mt. Hood, the High Desert and the Coast.  

Oregon.  

Where you were born.

The Nature of Snow Geese

The action is continuous. Pre-dawn to well after sunset.   Five thousand Snow Geese, Chen caerulescens, slowly leapfrogging across 80 acres of winter wheat, each one chattering incessantly nuh -nuh- nuh -nuh.  Snow Goose babble? Snow Goose psycho-babble?

Geese in the back of the "pack" are tired of feeding where so many have already fed and where so many droppings were, well, dropped! They leap to the air, flap wings to gain air speed and height and then glide to the leading edge.  But satisfaction is short lived as others quickly land in front. The geese arrive from every direction, they take off in every direction.

It would be an air traffic controllers worst nightmare to attempt to sort out all of the comings and goings.

But geese seem to figure it out much more efficiently and agreeably than we humans do with all of our technology, written history and egos.

Still, I can see that they must believe in the goose equivalent of the old adage that "it is always greener on the other side of the fence."  

I watched a flock of 3000 early one Sunday morning as they waddled slowly towards me, ripping the wheat out by the roots.  They fed on both sides of a small drainage ditch.  I chuckled as dozens at a time leapt, flapped and landed on the other side just as an equal number took off and landed where the first group had just vacated.  Over the span of an hour it continued non-stop until the flock was within 10 yards of where I sat.

A Red-Tailed Hawk, Buteo jamaicensis, sat atop a nearby telephone pole. 

This raptor version of Dennis the Menace, placidly sat watching for 45 minutes before suddenly jumping from the perch, going into a shallow dive and leveling out just inches above the flock. Startled geese on either side of his flight path erupted violently but quickly calmed down when they saw the threat glide past.

It was a goose version of the wave or  geese getting goosed.

The hawk finished his first pass, soared up, stalled, performed a wing tip roll, and provoked a new line through the field.

He had no intention of attacking.  

The hawk did it because it could.  

This was its nature.

Another day, I sat for 90 minutes waiting for the geese to waddle in my direction.  I thought my timing might be perfect for the image I had pre-visualized.  Sun dropping below low clouds, dozens of geese silhouettes as they flew in from the bay for their evening graze. Thousands in the foreground.

Minutes before the sun emerges, a car pulls up, two doors fly open and loudly slam shut, two children run up to the fence yelling, jumping up and down.

5000 geese fly off to the safety of the bay.

The mother stopped to teach her children respect for wildlife. 

The happy and excited children rush to see the geese,  it was their nature.

Saturday dawn, I pull into a turnoff adjacent to the hunting club fields.  A fish and wildlife agent has just finished picking up the carcasses of 125 geese, carefully placing them in the bed of his pickup.  A person or persons, vandals, drove out on the field during the night and opened fire on the hapless geese. A wanton act.

A wanton waste.

Responsible hunters in this area do much to provide habitat for the snow geese. They plant fields that provide food all winter for the birds, long after the hunting season has closed. They teach hunting ethics and safety to young and new hunters.

Watch a lab retrieving a bird from the inter-tidal marsh and you will see the classic image of man and animal working together.  It becomes art in the same manner that fly-fishing is art.

Humans have history.  We have knowledge.  

The American Bison almost went extinct.  The east coast cod fishery almost went extinct.  Puget Sound and west coast salmon runs are endangered.  Poor forestry practices have destroyed habitat. 

Years ago federal troops were sent to Yellowstone because poachers were quickly eradicating the wildlife.

Today in the east, the coal industry is destroying forests, valleys, mountaintops - the landscape.

For profit, for fun, or out of cruelty, it doesn't matter what the motive is,  if we as humans don't learn from our mistakes and do a better job of protecting the natural resources of this earth, all species will suffer - but especially the human species.

The vandals drove into that field late at night and like cowards slaughtered 125 Snow Geese.....

                              ......  because it was their nature.