Searching

My good friend KF meets me at the farm in the morning.  She has been here once before, but has never wandered farther than the lower section of the farm.  While I waited for her to arrive, for as I suspected, she was trying to find her way here by 6 month old memories, a hawk slope-soars back and forth overhead, its' screeee call coming out each time it wheels to change direction.  A cool wind comes down the valley, putting a temporary chill on a sunny day that will be unseasonably warm.

squatter's cabin

Once we pass the shop building, it is new country for KF.  We stop at the small beach near the USGS gauge finding it reconfigured, a new channel cut through by recent high water.  I find an especially good raccoon track and pour a casting that we can retrieve on the way out.

I take KF up to the squatter's cabin.  She is familiar with some of the artist shacks that were built at Fish Town near the mouth of the Skagit.  KF finds the cabin fascinating, a seemingly excellent spot for a person to do some writing and an improbable location for a prospector.  I know that she will think it over.

After some time there, we head farther up the diagonal road to the area that K and I passed through a few weeks ago when we missed our descent route off of the DNR hill by a couple hundred yards. I continue making family portraits with the forest women....Mother and Son...Mother and Daughter....Mother and Children.  I go through a lot of pixels.

When we feel the need to do a bit more walking, we head up to the upper beach.  It is interesting to see how the river's gravel bars have changed - some changed shape, some changed texture.  Places that were cobbles in the summer are now smoothed over in pea gravel, as are some of the sand patches that I used for finding animal tracks.  KF finds a coyote scat pile on the way across the fields and I carefully collect it as it has many bones from a recent meal that should be identifiable.  I find an aircraft fragment in the gravel of the upper beach.

Today, I collect a good number of specimens. It was a fine day any way you cut it.