Finding the edge

"A" and I arrive at the farm on a quiet and cloudy morning with just the lightest touch of wind, a day for shirtsleeves as long as one is moving.  For all her time at the farm, A has not yet seen the squatter's cabin and she is eager to find out what this is all about.

We stop once, as I always do, near the river gauge.  There is a fine sand shore here that records particularly clear animal tracks.  But, this time, we find nothing new since Monday when I was last here.  Rain has eroded the sharp edges of the old tracks, including my own.  We can move on.
 

To find the turn into the woods, I tell A how many strides to count.  It will be close enough, even with our different pacing distance.  We hear a woodpecker before we leave the road.  I let A continue up ahead of me so that she can have the cabin emerge from the brush as her own.  When I catch up, she is standing, watching.  A pileated woodpecker is down low on an old alder working away.  Thunk thunk thunk, a colorful crow sized bird throwing large chips of rotten wood.  It seems unworried to our presence.  We watch.

When our movements become too much, it leaves, flying directly and closely over A and nearly crapping on her.  Then we examine and discuss the cabin.

When we move off, we bushwack in a clockwise direction around the DNR hill.  I don't expect to get too far, but I want to see the lay of the land farther in this direction.  We have a lot of salmon berry thrashing to do, but it does go easier when we can stay under the cedars.  Eventually, we begin to follow deer trails up the side of the hill, getting higher than planned, probably within 200 ft of the hilltop.  But, we also find that we have an excellent view of the first valley north of the Stillaguamish.  It is a perspective of the land that will anchor the wanderings with a reference to the planned world.

We make our way home.  We are both tired, but more than that, we are relaxed.  We talk about naps, when we talk at all.

I'm not there

Today, I'm down in the shop building boxes to hold more of the specimens that I've collected wandering through Smoke Farm.  But, sometimes the specimens transport me to the farm and things that I should be thinking about while I'm there arrive here. Specimen 61 is a no trespassing sign that I found half buried in the cobbles of the lower beach.  It is scratched, bent, and has a good dozen BB marks from someone's shotgun.  I'm pretty sure I know where the obnoxious thing came from, and he's not getting back - it is a specimen.  It's currently one of my favorite finds.  It brings to thought the connections that people form.  In this case, the connection with property, which is dramatically different than a connection with land.   One thing that I detected very early on at Smoke Farm was that the people here had a connection with the land and while they do own the property, they seem to own the property because of the land that it is.  The land is not fenced, it is not signed, but it is carefully maintained, watched over and respected - more than anything, it is respected.  I've met people from three different government organizations on the property.  They show up to do restoration, or to verify that the river gauge is working, or to look for spawning salmon.  They are looking out for the land as well.  I've talked with them and walked along to see what they do.  They know where that sign comes from too.  They know because they aren't allowed on that property (see - it is no longer land).  Having and owning might not be the same thing.

Artwork and that neighbor kid, again.

Until March 24, the first 39 specimens and some other stuff are on exhibit at the Anchor Art Space in Anacortes.

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.

Return

The holidays kept me occupied in other reaches.  "K" and I arrive on a cloudy cool morning with the recent rains gone off to the east and into the hills.  The ground is wet, as it will be until June, and the brush has not yet dried out.  We head up towards the north fields, my plan to look at some ponds that I believe lie up against the base of the hills over the upstream end of the slough.  We cut in and walk the old overgrown road that we found on the last hike, stopping to pose for mother and son photographs with some of the cedar stumps.  The stumps have become the physical embodiment of mother earth for me, something I can touch and feel, something sized that I can wrap my mind around with the concept of "mother earth".  I no longer wrap tape measures around them as I did when I started the residency - that seems so disrespectful.  Now, I just take their photograph and try to remember where they are.  I can recognize a great many of them by sight.

mother and sons

The brush stops us before we get to the ponds.  A new approach will have to be tried on a later day.  We retreat to the ravine and climb up the hill.  Some of this is quite pleasant and easy, but eventually it turns into a steep wrestling match with the hill, the ferns, and the tangles of down branches.  We get up to the woodpecker forest and then take a break.  We sit and talk for a few minutes and then there is a thump...the beat of hooves on the hollow forest ground...and we look right to see the hind end of a mule deer just 15 yards off as it bounds in huge leaps downhill and away.  Bounding in that terrain is mind boggling to me.

mother and son

We traverse the hill lower than last time.  It is steeper with much more downed timber to cross.  I cannot say that it is fun.  The going is much easier up above, but we're not there.  I even overshoot the descent towards the squatters cabin, the lower elevation hiding the shape of the river that signals the turn.  For awhile I tell "K" that I know where we are...but then, standing among cedar stumps that I have never seen before, I know we are somewhere else.  So, the next thing to do is to drop down on the road and figure out how far off we are.  It turns out that we were 145 strides off...maybe 200 yards.  But it is a spot I need to return to just to photograph the spectacular forest women that stand there.  We never were lost, we just didn't know where we were.  We never know where we are.

Fungi

"A" joins me today for another stiff hike.  We've not met before, but as most everyone I've run into at the farm, we will get along just fine...I don't worry about such things.  As we ride up I find that "A" also knows plants and mushrooms much better than myself.  I tend to learn such facts only when I need them...he comes prepared.

The day is overcast and a few degrees warmer than it was two days back. 
Frost is absent from the trees and brush as we walk out to the squatter's cabin. 
A flicker greets us from the barn. 

We're going to walk the same hill that I walked on Monday, but instead of climbing straight to the top, we will go up about halfway and walk across the slope until we are over the north fields.  There is no other way to get a feel for the lay of the land other than to travel it, particularly here in the northwest under the dense tree canopy.  No map, no aerial photograph will show what we will find. 

After a short steep start, we get into the salal and fern level and begin picking up deer trails that run cross slope.  It's easier walking than on Monday, mostly because we aren't going straight uphill.  "A" starts spotting mushrooms and I start watching for them also - since I have someone that can tell me what they are.

barrel mushrooms

something in the oyster mushroom family

There's some variety to the hillside as we walk.  The large trees are mostly Douglas Firs, there are a few stumps, and some alders, of course.  The ground is steep, but it eases up in places.  The understory can be salal and fern, or just waist deep fern, or fern and Oregon grape.  It is, however, a full trip with a diverse variety of lichen and fungi...more than we can take in on a single walk.  As we near a ravine that forms the edge of the clear cut above the north fields, we find ourselves in a stand of dead alders, a stand that has more fresh woodpecker activity than I have ever seen in one place.  There are chips on the ground and holes in everything.  Some, the rectangular holes, are recognized as pileated woodpecker signs, but other have been here as well.  It may be worth returning to just to sit and see what shows up some day.

lichen, but I can't find my copy of Pojar & McKinnon

I have identified this as the crazy looking orange stuff - don't eat it.

We get into the edge of the clear cut, but it is often choked with blackberry vines.  So we retreat back to the deep ravine deciding that clambering over logs is better than crawling through thorny vines.  As we're dropping down in, we find a very cool fungus.

log is about 4 inches across - click on this for a bigger view - it's cool.

White rooty tendrils cover most of the wood, but notice that the tendrils radiate out from small holes.  I'm not sure what made the holes, but perhaps this is an insect/fungus dependency.

At the bottom of the hill we find the remnants of a logging road and a couple very fine cedar nurse stumps. 
It was an outstanding trip.

Out with the neighbor kid

My neighbor J comes with me to the farm today.

As we reach the Stillaguamish valley, the heavy overcast melts away to clear skies.  We find the farm deep in frost, the temperature below freezing, ice on puddles but not in any running water.  It is cold enough that the rime on the tree branches is not becoming forest rain. 

With an assistant for the day, I plan one of the hikes that heads into steep and difficult terrain.  It is one that I would do alone, if the days were long and the nights not so cold, but with the sun dipping behind the hills by 4pm, it would not be a good place to turn an ankle alone.  We head out to the squatter's cabin, seeing a several eagles along the way.  Coho salmon are running and they seem to bring a great many more eagles than when the pinks come up in September and October.  At the turn uphill from the river, we change from our lowland rubber boots to hiking boots. 

From the squatter's cabin, it is 50 yards of salmon berry and dense brush until we reach the edge of the tall evergreens.  There, the brush changes to ferns and salal.

It is steep, very steep.  When we can find a deer trail heading up, we follow it, otherwise we weave in and out of downed branches and trees, and around boulders, seeking the easiest terrain, when we can imagine it.  About half way up, the salal suddenly disappears and is replaced with a thick cover of Oregon Grape.  We also find a few non-native Hollies and one or two Himalayan Blackberry vines.  But mostly, it is the plants that we should find in a northwest forest.  We notice no stumps.

The neighbor kid, J

I notice something white near my feet and pick it up.  One to two inch long hairs of ice are clinging to a branch in a dense clump.  In fact, I thought it was animal fur when I spotted it. They are amazingly delicate, although we discover that they can be pushed and sculpted by gently pushing them with the finger.

They can also be made to disappear by blowing warm breath on them.  I've seen a lot of rime and hoar frost before, but never like this, never in the forest.

When we crest the hill, we find cedar stumps again.  Perhaps the steep hillside was too rocky for cedars to survive, but here they are again at the top of the hill.  The top is an old clear cut.  We walk to the high point for a view.

After some coffee and cookies, we return the way we came.  I had been careful to look behind me, so I would remember what the scene should look like if we come down in the right place.  It's harder on the legs, but easier on the lungs than the climb was.  We find the drainage that created the blow-out on the diagonal road...just another piece to some puzzle that I haven't created yet.  It doesn't seem to run with water anymore.  We come down just a hundred yards from the squatter's cabin intersecting a deer trail that, for some reason, I remember and recognize from a month ago.  I wish I knew how that part of the brain works.

To finish off the day, we hike up to the upper beach where we find a bird kill site, a dismembered coho salmon and a drift boat coming downstream.

You only have one chance

You only have one chance to experience a place as wilderness.  Returning to that spot, it will never be the same, it will always be a reunion. 

The first time I came to the farm, S. asked me if I wanted to look around and I responded, "no, this will do just fine."  I walked much of the land before looking at any maps....my way of not peeking under the gift wrapping, but instead preserving the discovery for a time when I would be standing amongst it.  As time goes on, I create my own stories for what I find, the squatter's cabin being the best example.  I think out loud and share my theories on who might have built it.  This is where I differ from the scientists that I've worked with.  They do not have that luxury, their facts and conclusions are up for peer review.  While my creations are up for peer review as well, they need not be facts. A friend of mine coined what I do as "personal geography" - as good a description as any.  I map what interests me, I collect what I find - but I find what interests me, and I am particularly good at filtering out disturbances that do not count, in my mind.  I can create my own wilderness even in places that are no longer wild.

S. is at the farm today and sheds a bit more light on the squatter's cabin.  But, he is clearly careful not to ruin any surprises for me.  The cabin was attached to a mining claim, but both of us acknowledge that that does not mean any mining took place.  It does not, in my mind, look like something a prospector would build.  But, if there was a claim, there might be a record, and a record would have a name.

I head out to collect another piece of wood.  This one takes on mystical qualities.  It was almost unmovable two days ago.  Today, I can lift one end with just fair effort.  Then, as I trundle it towards the road, I need to adjust it, and once again, I cannot so help me lift it.  I sit back and wonder how to get out of the fix.  With no brain solution, I go back and pick the end up without much trouble.  When the time comes, it drags me on my ass, quite unapologetically, to the bottom of the hill.

I return to retrieve my pack and tools and finding sun penetrating the forest, I take time to sit up against a cedar for awhile, glad to have brought a thermos of coffee out.  I am tempted to sit here until the sun goes away.  But, curiosity takes me to the last piece of wood, one that I only noticed two days ago as it is partially buried.  I load it up.  When the time comes, it drags me fully out of control to the bottom of the hill.

Out of gas, I rest in the sun, and then go and walk the creek, this day taking the far side.  There is a lot of beaver and deer sign.  They like the same trees - the beaver cut down a cottonwood, the cottonwood sprouts a hundred shoots, the deer come and eat the shoots.  It looks like the beaver are coming to the creek overland from the river as most of beaver sign is on the river side of the creek (the creek parallels the river through much of the farm).