Wow- long post (from yesterday)

Yesterday was incredible. Just an amazing experience in the natural world. After an morning inside on a gorgeous sunny day, I decided to go outside. Lo and behold, Nick and Kate arrived at that very minute. So we took to the woods and I showed them my sit spot!

A note about the sit spot... it should be a secret :) I should not have shown them where it was, but I will soon be moving away from this spot. Thus, I felt like it was a nice opportunity for me to show them the sit spot which has sustained me for the past couple months. So we explored my sit spot and it took them no time at all to wander around the area examining all sorts of things.

I am not sure what they got into, but I re-explored a hollowed out snag with super fine wood shavings inside. I was curious if the material was dry or wet and if it had changed much. It felt like soft powder sand as I rubbed it between my forefinger and thumb. Then I sat down to listen to the birds.

Suddenly I found a millipede crawling on my thigh. It was really cool but I couldn't lean down to analyze my thigh with my hand-lens... I'm not that flexible! Carefully I shifted the 29-legged critter (per side) to a leaf and then held it up so I could count all of those legs! Then it wriggled back under some foliage and I went exploring trees and mosses.

That adventure continued on for another hour. I have great friends and we really seized the day.

Nick joined me for adventure number two. It was in search for a pair of sunglasses that I lost on November 10th as some kids were chasing me into the forest at Arroyo Park. It was mission impossible. I had the feeling that the search would give me a peace of mind though I also embraced that the sunglasses were probably lost forever. Nick led the charge up a steep muddy, boggy thicket of thorny shrubs and downed limbs of Bigleaf Maple. Not the easiest approach. I told him I would go around the other way and found it be less muddy... sorry Nick!

Eventually we made it to the spot where I hid from the boys... we then worked back toward the trail from my approach. We had been searching for 10 minutes, making our way slowly downhill. We lifted leaf matter, decomposing forest elements, and moved things around to get a better look. I got down to scout underneath a log and Nick asked me if I had found anything yet. I looked up and saw my sunglasses on his head! Over three months later and they had been found!!

The rubber arm-ends and bits of the nose piece had been chewed by a small rodent. The lenses are probably done for. But the treasure was found! Nick found black sunglasses by noticing small bits of the frame undersides and the arms. It was actually covered by leaves! Nick's powers of observation are incredible. It became mission possible!

Adventure number three began on our walk back to the car when Nick mentioned Post Point. It is a small spit of land south of Fairhaven on Bellingham Bay. After enjoying four hours outside on arguably the prettiest day of the year so far, we reveled in two more during our walk along the coast. Highlights include sticking my head into a sandstone hole and talking... it was like being in my own world. The sounds amplified all around in the near-perfect half-spherical hole. And when Nick did it, I only heard the muffled murmurs of his voice. That was cool.

Then we got into the tide pools. Good tidepooling is never boring. While unfortunately crushing countless barnacles and other shelled creatures, and probably popping some anemones, we saw so much life. Barnacles, limpets, clams, mussels, sea anemones, and HUGE PURPLE SEA STARS! They were suctioned into the cracks of rock close to the shoreline. The water lapped against rocks and sprayed salty mist into those fissures but the sea stars remained still. They remained royal purple with white speckles and lines that made the legs really stand out. We counted over 15 in one small crevice and well over 35 in total. I hadn't seen those in years but they really put a smile on my face.

We picked up trash nearly all day and cleaned up this small bit of coastline too. I laughed at the coincidence when thinking about the story of the man who threw washed-up sea stars back into the ocean to save their lives. When told he couldn't make a difference, the man threw one into the ocean, looked at the naysayer and said, "Made a difference to that one." I picked up another empty beer can and congratulated myself for making a difference. We can all make a difference every single day!

The day ended with sunset, walking in and around a rock labyrinth next to the railroad tracks. The temperature dropped and my hands were numb as we headed back to the car. Six hours outside. Making a difference in the world. Aware and alive to embrace and appreciate nature. We all have this opportunity to some extent in our lives to do this. Thank you, Nick, for your influence on this day. You made a difference in my world.

Deer walking with Nick

Instead of going to my spot like normal, Nick and I went into the woods for a walk. We had no expectations, but let our curiosity guide the way. I had the hankering to look at mosses and lichens while he was exploring plants. We found our respective tasks challenging and we certainly learned a lot through the struggles of "unclarity." I do think we found and properly identified the Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus repens) [p176] along the edge of the trail. The three leaflets were lobed and toothed, as described in Pojar and MacKinnon's  Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast.

Suddenly a game trail appeared and we felt the urge to follow it. Nick first wanted to look at a Bigleaf Maple (Acer Macrophyllum) while I went to the ground to sift through the mossy base of a Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera). And after an interlude of tasting and subsequently identifying and a not-so-licorice-tasting Licorice Fern (Polypodium glycyrrhiza) rhizome, we embraced the Black-tailed Deer (Odocoileus hemionus colombianus) which we assume made the path.

Sure enough... deer sign on the ground in the form of a pile of "Raisinettes!" And then another and another as we tracked its path for about a quarter mile. Though we may have strayed from the exact steps, hand it to us to look like deer and think like deer:
What is the path of least resistance? Where is a good place to take a break under shelter? What is there to eat right here? Where is the potable water?
We tracked it around a small patch of forest littered with tightly knit groves of Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) and tons of mosses. We explored the medicinal uses of Devil's Club (Oplopanax horridus) while observing its new buds just breaking the surface of the branches.

Nick analyzed an approach of how one might climb a particularly huge Bigleaf Maple while i got back into the tiny moss forest world. In the end, I saw more capsules, operculum and peristomes... correctly noticing subtle differences between species. I made a go at trying to identify one and think I got it right: Fan Moss or Large Leafy Moss (Rhizomnium glabrescens).

Then we headed home because I was getting cold and we were both a little hungry. We tracked out using a path we found and picked up a lot of OLD trash along the way... One Mountain Dew can must have been sitting there since the 80's; it had logos I've never seen. We filled up a paint container (that we found in a clearing) with debris and brought it to the trailhead.

We decided to leave it there, perhaps as a small trash recepticle for others who might want to contribute to cleaning up our forest... In fact, we left it right next to the crap that some "Hippier-than-thou" Bellinghamster "didn't see" while s/he was riding a bike as his/her righteous dog deposited it so neatly. Yes, I have coined this phrase and will accordingly pursue putting the phrase onto bumper stickers.