Memories

I slept out under a clear sky once more.  A siren up the valley  sounded and the coyotes sang back, beginning with one very long and even howl.  When I opened my eyes, it was to fog.  Dew had formed on everything, including me.

I slip my feet into boots still wet from yesterday's wading.  Memories.  Cold wet boots are the Kuskalana Glacier, where cold wet boots were actually frozen boots that only became wet after being worn a few minutes.  Wading in hiking boots is always a stream near Engineer Creek, where my friends followed caribou trails, while I, after too many miles of punching scrub willow, retreated to the openness of the river, preferring wet feet to be really wet, and not minding cobbled bottom.

Some thing or some occurrence at some later place and some later time will undoubtedly be Smoke Farm.

Walking into the wind, back towards the barn, I look up to find something out of place.  As still as stumps, what they are doesn't register immediately.  My brain lags in adjustment behind my eyes...a doe and a fawn are doing the same with me.

 

Castoreum

It doesn't take too long.  Castoreum comes to my nose just as I begin the walk up the road from the barn.  Three years of tracking and observing the habits of beaver has left my nose unusually keen to the musk that they spray to mark territory.  In the still air, in the shelter of the cottonwoods, odors linger.  It's possible that I am catching the scent from the trees themselves because what they eat does affect the scent.  It's hard to say.

At the double log bridge, I pick up the scent again.  Here, I expect it and a newly felled cottonwood overhanging the bank of the creek confirms.  This has been a regularly used feed zone all winter.  As I move towards the bridge, I flush a few baby ducks.  They swim upstream into the protection of the brush.


The river is higher today.  The unseasonably warm and sunny weather of last week has increased snow melt somewhere.  It might be a foot or so higher than on my last visit.  Today, I have to wade shin deep out to the gravel bar to collect rocks.  I didn't expect that and left my rubber boots at home.  But, I find something pleasant about hiking boots full of water.

the grass is higher too

"He was a newcomer to the land...  The trouble with him was that he was without imagination.  He was quick and alert at the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances."  
Jack London - To Build a Fire

Just something I read over dinner.

Belonging

I am up early again as is my new friend A, who slept not far away.  I heard her move in the night and she tells me that her sleeping bag was not quite warm enough for open air.  We make coffee and while others sleep, we take a hike and find a couple of our friends awake when we return.

Since things are off to a very leisurely start, I head off to move some rocks.  But, I run into S coming the opposite direction up the road and she asks to go for a walk with me, so we do.  We visit the squatter's cabin first.  I lead until we are close, then I point towards the last stretch of trail and stop talking.  I follow a short distance behind.   When we are done exploring and discussing that interesting structure, I ask, "what next?" - my way of politely giving a person a way out of a long hike.  S surprises me some by wanting to push on farther away rather than head back for breakfast.  In fact, I notice that if I stand still, she will walk farther into the forest.  It is a good trait and one that many of my artist friends have...their curiosity drives their creativity.  "Let's head up the road, I have a cool stump to show you."  I tell her that I pose my hiking partners with stumps and that some of them have a wonderful ability to look like they were born there and that they belong there.  I talk of them as matriarchs and how they guide me back out of the forest when I wander.  We get to that tall stump, and S climbs to the top of it.
She asks, "have you been up here?"
I respond, "That is not my relationship with them."
And she does something gentle that I've seen no one else do, and she looks like she belongs there.

May 12, 2012
Night was just cold enough to reach through my sleeping bag with only the stars as the skin of my tent.  Sometime in the early morning night, a half moon rose and drifted sideways across the sky.  Wind came sometime early also, with a breath of chill touching my side with each gust.  When it woke me, I had a starlit sky above and fuzzy in my nearsighted vision.

I rose before sunrise, made breakfast, and headed out to continue work.  As the sun rose and arced through the sky, the half moon disappeared.

Site visits for prospective Lo-fi artists begin today.  I knock off and wait for people to come at noon, but they are more casual and leisurely than I am about time.  But, they do arrive, and each meeting is a good experience with the possibilities of lasting friendship.  We have fine discussions, we tour the landscape, we eat an excellent dinner, and when all have retired to various buildings and spaces for the night, I lay down under the stars once more.

A slug

May 11, 2012

It is as much a summer day as one can expect - warm and sunny, the farm is green with new growth, the cottonwoods all leafed out and the grass in the meadows is somewhere between thigh and chest high.  My days here, the past few months, have been ones of exploring, days of finding new things and days of finding the outer edges of what I can call the farm (it does go beyond the legal edges of the farm).  But, today is a work day.  Familiar with the area, I decided to make something for others to find, an installation that will do no harm, but perhaps cause people to pause and think.  I've been told and seen that one of Smoke Farm's best traits is the exchange of ideas that occur when people come together here.

So, I move rocks.  Lots of rocks.  2 buckets at a time, 6 buckets to the wheelbarrow, 3 wheelbarrows before a rest.  The red breasted sapsucker that likes the cedar tree where I work returns.  It is unafraid of me and we look at each other from 6 feet away.  When I move, it just sidesteps a bit further around the tree.  As I collect rocks, I spot a mule deer on the far side of the river, a 100 yards downstream.  It looks back and spots me, watches me, and then takes its time walking further downstream.  I return to moving rocks.

Rain Day

Occasional afternoon showers arrive before I do.  They arrive all at once.  They stay.

A steady rain falls on a day that isn't too cold for people that live here.  It is just enough that I don't quite feel like diving into it.  I have to wait for a friend to arrive, so I make a small batch of cinnamon frybread, leaving the kitchen door open perhaps just to ease myself into what might be a full day of rain.

S and I head upriver to the diagonal road.  The cottonwood forest has the smell of new growth.  Even the rain can't keep that down.  The river is running high again.  It is already a foot or two higher than it was when I left on Sunday, so it has been raining upstream of here for some time.  The small sand beach by the USGS river gauge is nearly disappeared.  I always check this spot for animal tracks.  I cast a fine cougar print here once, but today there is no reason to drop down for a look.

Our first stop is the squatter's cabin.  I lead to the grove below it and then point S towards the trail and let him find it himself.  He says that it has a good spirit about it.  This is not the first time that someone has said that.  I've always felt something creative here and I may be wrong about that, but a feeling of "creative" and a feeling of "good" could be easily confused.  S photographs while I collect a nice sample of witch's hair lichen.

We drop down and continue up the road.  We are exploring this area as a site for a collaborative project and we spend a couple hours moving around examining stumps and thinking about the shape of the land.  This is a mostly cedar forest in this spot, so while it rains steadily, we don't get nearly as wet as one would expect.

Our plan improves as we talk it out.  When we go, we continue upriver to the slough, which is once again thigh deep.  One of the two logs that the kids had placed as a bridge is gone and we have no reason, apparently, to get wet from the bottom up, already being wet from the top down.  We take a round-about route back, walking to the braided grasses, the lower beach and the barn before settling in at the kitchen to finish our chat.  A fine day, a fine day for sure.

Kid Camp, Day 2

It began to rain lightly sometime well before sunrise, so I moved my sleeping bag a few feet back under the edge of the metal roof.  None of this silenced the frog that had croaked all night long some 20 feet to my left.  I did enjoy the singing.  The lightest of rain on a bare metal roof can sound like a monsoon in full roar.  But, it was one long rolling rumble of the thunder that signaled the time to rise.  And, with that, the rain stopped.

I ran off into the woods for an hour and a half to work on my own project, after which I returned as I was the bannock chef for breakfast.  I was once complimented by the eldest elder of the Sauk Tribe for my frybread and for some reason the Smoke Farmer's like it too.  Flour and baking powder...go figure.  G made a fine set of scrambled eggs with left over sweet potatoes and shredded beef from last nights meal.

We hike the creek today.  Where it exits the hill it is spread out in shin deep flood, as it has been all winter.  When we walk the creek, where the creek is actually in the creek, I point out the beaver sign of cut trees, peeled logs, a drag or two.  We end out at the river where my track casting assistant from yesterday teaches one of the others how to cast a track.  It is all deer tracks, although there is a fawn in there.  The two of them cast a good adult deer track.

On the return, we stop at the double log bridge over the creek and the kids spend a half hour jumping into the cold water.

April 21 - Kid Camp, Day 1

This weekend is kid camp at Smoke Farm.  We have 8 middle school kids and 4 adults under the watchful eye of M.  I arrive early to get in a couple hours of my own artwork before the camp starts.  The wonderful aromatic odors that were in the forest on my last trip are already gone, but the grasses continue to grow and the cottonwoods and maples work overtime to put out new growth.

Once the kids arrive, we hike to the north fields.  High water in the slough gives them a chance to build a temporary log bridge.  They don't need my help, since I actually was an engineer at one time, so I take one of the kids who is standing on the sidelines and I show her how to cast animal tracks with plaster of paris.  The bridge project gives the rest of them a fine opportunity to also get wet, although after dozens of crossings back and forth on the new bridge, it is M, herself, who is the only one to take a dive.

 

I had spotted the remains of a gable roof in a brush pile in the north fields, and this is the goal for the kids.  They remove the enough brush so that we can pull back some of the rotting roof and peer in.  An old belt driven pump and some pipes show the building to be a collapsed pump house.  Someone pulls enough brush from the upriver side for us to see the old concrete cistern.

A makes an exceptional taco dinner for us all, so that mayhem may ensue until bedtime. 

With clear skies, I find myself sleeping under the stars, looking at pinpoints of light, light that has taken 10 or 100 years to reach me.  It is a humbling experience.  We are so small in what is a true and vast wilderness.  To think that not a million Earths, nor a million solar systems would fill the space between any two of those pinpoints of light.  I find myself thinking that those that aspire to try to lead our world would be well advised to spend a significant amount of time sleeping under the stars.

Smells

J and I arrive a bit after nine on a day of expected showers with some wind, but the temperature will be typical for spring...not a bad day to be caught in a shower.

The cottonwoods are beginning to leaf out, the grasses are just a step ahead and all the shrubs just a bit more so.  Once again, Smoke Farm is intensifying the greenness of it all.  In winter, it was the forest with its cedars and firs that kept that color, which can be almost overwhelming here in the Northwest.  But with spring, everywhere, everyplace will take that tone.

But, as strong as that single color can be, today it is the smells that we comment to each other about.  There is the most wonderful scent drifting through the cottonwoods as we walk towards the river.  It is a complex mix that we don't recognize in its additive combination.  There is citrus and cinnamon and mint and pepper.  We sample different plants as we walk, finding a hint on this shrub, and a hint on that tree, but never finding any one of the culprits to be the majority.  On past trips, it has been the view, or the sounds of running water, or the sight of salmon or birds.  But, today it is the sense that is most difficult to describe.  It is the sense that must be experienced.

We check out the beaver activity at the creek, where beaver are doing what beaver do, cutting trees and eating bark, and leaving the leftovers as a sign of their mostly nocturnal work.  The creek is running good and full, and the restoration is coming along.

Walking up the river, we find that the guy across the river is building three cabins in the most insane of locations.  Neither J or I can figure the thinking that must have gone into (or not gone into) the location.  He is right at the edge of the gravel bar, not more than 6 or 7 feet or so above the current water level.  He is not building in a 100 year flood plain, he is building in a once a year flood plain.  I comment how it should only be a couple of years until the cabin floats off down the river like Huck Finn's raft.  It makes no sense...none at all.

I take J up to the squatter's cabin, which he finds fairly fascinating...as everyone does.  The floor has been pushed up more since I was here last.  The gradual slide of the hill with gravity and the wet of winter and spring are pressuring the cabin more and faster than I would've expected.  I am glad that I have documented it carefully.  It begins to rain in earnest while we are there and once we leave the cabin, only the cedars provide shelter for us.

We finish our trip by working our way in a circuit out through the lower beach.  I point out the pear trees and 3 maples that stand close to where the Baker homestead was.

All through that rain, we could still smell the citrus-pepper-mint-cinnamon of the spring forest.