Month: November 2022

I found a huge purple sea star in one of the pocket beaches in Olympic Sculpture Park.

These beaches are designed and managed to improve habitat and ecosystem functions while still letting many people enjoy them. The tide was low and I looked around and realized the five armed echinoderm was situated in a bed of hundreds of marine snails. When this sea star wants to eat, it just has to displace itself a few inches in any direction and drill into one of these fat morsels.

I also found a small bat flapping about on the ground in midafternoon in Seward Park. I wonder why it was disoriented – injury, cold shock, or affliction with white nose fungus?

Other sightings that day included Steller’s jays, spotted towhees, bald eagles, common mergansers, dark eyed juncos, chickadees, cormorants and a huge flock of coots on Lake Washington.

On a nighttime bike ride I saw Orion rise next to the Space Needle like the mythic hunter was about to strike the tower and would soon dominate the winter night. A busker was nearby playing the Tatooine cantina theme from "A New Hope." This brought on fond associations. Then I listened to him play the first Christmas music of the season. A drunk lady coming out of a concert flopped over right in front of the musician so he had to stop. I cruised home on my bike and enjoyed the slick streets and the spectacle of two idiot drivers who had just smashed into each other, probably while drunk.

I feel I’m ready for winter. I own more wool this time. The other day I slept for 13 hours, which alarmed me since I missed all the day’s daylight but I also felt deep appreciation for not having children to wake me up and I made up for the lost daylight with that nighttime bike ride. Some acquaintances have expressed how life is over now that it’s cold and they are going to roll over and give up for five months. Those people are needlessly giving power over their psyche to external, natural circumstances and they should consider getting out there on foot or on a bike looking for living things to prevent feeling that the cold and dark oppresses them. Go look at slugs and leaves as they continually cycle and change.

A dead Asian longhorned beetle being eaten by ants

The shell of a dead western pond turtle

A dead Canada goose gosling

Dead and living barnacles on a tire from a downtown waterfront pier

The skull of a dead cynodont, perhaps closely related to the common ancestor of reptiles and mammals, at the Burke natural history museum

A dead dark eyed junco

A dead eastern gray squirrel

Dead great blue heron remnants (I think)

A dead looking dog on a hot day

A dead looking stuffed animal I planted for giggles

Long-dead people

A dead chicken head

A dead crab pincer at Alki Beach

A dead crow

A dead gull in Chinatown

A dead purple shore crab

A dead tree in Seward Park

A dead young squirrel

Dead, deep in worship, or enjoying drugs

A dead cat that a driver in my neighborhood killed with their car

A duck eating from a severed salmon head

A dead rat in Pike Place Market

A neighbor selling a coffin. Perhaps there is a dead body inside. You never know until you look.

I camped in the eastern Olympic Peninsula on the last warm weekend of October 2022. I enjoyed learning about the landscape and the plants, animals and fungi of this old-growth forest. I met sharp and funny people who love being outside. And I smoothed my preparation for winter camping in the same area by testing out my gear and attitude.

NATURE
We set out under bad wildfire smoke that prompted lingering dread in us, which we discussed before agreeing to go in and do it anyway. The forest was very dry and also quiet and seemingly dormant except for the noisy stream and everything around us looked resplendent in yellow from the changing alder leaves and in green from the hemlock needles. The dryness was remarkable but soon it will again be a damp bed as the lichens and moss grow back over the winter months under steady moisture. Fires were allowed within a pit. At night we roasted nachos and s’mores and could see no constellations through the forest canopy and it served as a small consolation that this effect will be the same in the coming winter when the cold fog buries the stars.

PEOPLE
We were a small group and each camper had an interesting story. One was profiled in a recent documentary about people who enjoy the outdoors despite their trepidation and uncertainty about being welcomed there. Another was a geologist with a zeal for identifying wild organisms with the iNaturalist app. I like the help of an app and I also like my "Field Guide to the Cascades and Olympics" even though the abbreviations are excessive and the illustrations are weak. A couple of days later on my favorite paleontology channel online I saw her presenting fascinating speculation as to whether all eukaryotes are descended from Archaea. Another camper was an aerospace engineer and another was a 70 year old woman who camped and hiked as an emblem of her emancipation from her idiot longtime husband. As we cooked and ate the beans for our nachos these people made every wisecrack and pun on beans you could ever want to hear, and then made five more.

PREP FOR WINTER TRIP
I discovered that I will need to pack my underquilt for every night under 45 degF because my butt was a little cold in the hammock due to compression of the insulation. I will take more bear precautions because of several third-hand but horrific anecdotes about bears that my companions shared. I will need to master the psychological challenge of being at camp, in the dark, from 4:30 pm until sunrise. Or I could take the advice of many backpackers and hike through that long period of dark and embrace it instead of sitting down after a truncated hike and feeling defeated. To do this I just need to get better and setup and takedown in cold, dark and wet weather. I will relent in my lightness aspirations and take along a bigger backpack at 40 liters volume instead of trying to cram things in. I now feel prepared for a winter trip when it is cold and wet and dark. And I will take inspiration from the defiance of my camping companion and the curiosity and fierceness of heart of this group of nature nerds.