Rainforest Solstice

It was a great week. We hunted Diffuse Knapweed while armored personnel carriers zoomed past. It is considered a high-priority target on the natural areas because we have a decent chance to eradicate it, compared to management strategies of other pests such as Scotch Broom which must be controlled from taking over prairies, but is just too prevalent to remove completely. The last two days of the week, we attended a S-130/S-190 refresher course, where we reviewed the 10 Standard Orders and 18 Watch Out Situations. We also played with "sandbox" scenarios where we designed controlled-burn scenarios and then put together teams and equipment to implement them. These exercises were specific to some of the prairies we plan to burn to control Scotch Broom.

Part of the prep work to burn them is to first burn the brush piles that are near the edge of the planned fire lines. So this was our Summer Solstice bonfire celebration! My designated role was to patrol areas on an ATV modified with water tanks and a pump. I searched far downwind of the fire and search for spotfires being set by errant sparks, but fortunately nothing bad happened. Unfortunately, northern California did not fare so well the following day, with an incredible 840 wild fires igniting from a lightning storm. If you know how to do a rain dance, please send them some nice, cool, steady rain!

After this hot, dry work, we needed to cool off. For the weekend, we went on a hike through the Quinault Rainforest. One of our plans was to climb up Colonel Bob, but the storms from last December had toppled many trees and washed out bridges, so many trails were still closed. Snow still lingers as low as 2500 feet, so we might try back again later this summer. We did have a great time hiking, seeing the world's largest Sitka Spruce Tree, many waterfalls, a big lake, a mama merganser giving her baby chicks a ride on her back, banana slugs, and a Ghost Squirrel!

Myths & Mima Mounds

I've recently been working on helping to maintain the Mima Mound prairies. These prairies are about 15 miles south of Olympia, near Millersvania State Park, and they contain many small hummocks about 2 to 3 meters tall, scattered evenly across the plains. Nobody is certain how Mima Mounds are formed, but the prevailing theories all like to employ glaciers that deposited the unstratified sediments as the terminal moraine retreated. However, similar prairie mounds occur in other parts of the world where glaciers are not thought to have existed, so one theory that tickles my fancy are that the mounds were formed by an extinct Pleistocene Giant Gopher colony! What is more certain is that mankind has been maintaining these prairies for a long time -- the native Americans routinely burned these lands to keep the forests in check so that they could harvest rich camas lily roots and other edible plants. Now, it's my turn. I worked along some dedicated volunteers in keeping the notoriously pesky Scotch Broom in check by brush cutting it down, to make room for the native plants like the Lupine and Oregon Sunshine in my photo to the left.

Speaking of glaciers, we went on a short road trip to see the world's youngest glacier: Tulutson Glacier inside the crater of the active stratovolcano Mount Saint Helens. The newly built lava dome rising from the floor of the crater had split the glacier into two lobes, but as of this past month, enough snow had fallen to make the glacier whole once again. It now has as much mass as the glacier on Mount Rainier, and still growing!

We stopped at several waterfalls along the way, and each of the visitor centers too. Weyerhauser has sponsored a really nice visitor center called the Forest Learning Center. They do a good job of showing how logging isn't always at odds with ecological interests, and nowhere is that more apparent than at the edges of the Monument where tree planting did not occur. Granted, an even-aged stand of single species trees isn't exactly diverse, but it's a heck of a lot better than stinking sulfurous ash.

It was terrific witnessing the view from Johnston Ridge Observatory, which houses the webcam we've been watching for years at our home in Plano, TX and from Big Pine, FL. We could see steam rising from three different vents inside the crater, and areas along the rim that looked like very recent avalanches and rock slides. Even from binoculars, it was scary to witness geologic forces on a mountain-size scale at work. We could see a herd of elk munching on grass far below. Inside the Observatory, there was a seismic station recording small tremors in real time, so Saint Helens is still stewing. Unfortunately, the snows has been so heavy that the trails were still closed. So we drove back down to Coldwater Lake, a brand new natural lake formed by the massive landslide from the 1980 eruption that dammed Coldwater Creek. Castle lake across the desolate Toutle valley is another new landslide lake. While we were eating or cheese & oysters, an osprey hovered over the greenish waters, hoping for a meal.

Sunday, we spent at Priest Point Park here in Olympia. The low tide was rushing in, so we were able to see a small tidal bore come rushing in, and the clams squirt in joy for the return of water. Nearby is the Farmer's Market, full of yummy food, fresh cheese, live music, and a giant Fushia that now lurks over our patio with its purple blooms. We strolled around the Capitol building and stumbled into a tour that was just beginning, and learned a little about the building (such as why there is a can of beer in the timecapsule) and Washington politics. One interesting fact; the world's largest tiffany lamp that hangs from the dome was reinforced with a kevlar tether after the 2001 Nisqually earthquake.

It's sometimes a little disconcerting to realize that underneath the entire Cascade range, an ancient continent is meeting its doom! But it's bedtime now, and I need some sleep... maybe I'll dream of Cheese Days.

Log -- along it scampers

Perhaps those of you who are fluent in Hupa translated this week's title into native Indian, "ista:ngq'eh-k'itiqowh", which is also the Hupa name for the Fisher, aka Martes pennanti. Personally, I prefer the Hupa name for it, even though I can't pronounce it. That's because Fishers don't eat fish, or clams, or crabs, or anything else aquatic. Instead, these large weasels like to scamper among dense forests and hunt squirrels, mountain beavers, snowshoe hares, voles, grouse, and the occassional porcupine. What is exciting news about Fishers is that they have returned to Washington after a long absence. About 100 years ago, Fishers were extirpated by a greedy bunch of Elmer J. Fudds, but now a 3 year reintroduction program has just begun. 25 Fishers were released early this year, so it was possible that we were being watched by a pair of curious, jet-black eyes from a tree branch high above the trail.

This past week was spent chasing after Mouse-ear Hawkweed, which is considered a high-priority target on the coastal prairies because it has yet to become a widespread invasive and also due to its allelopathic roots. Another invasive is the Hairy Cat's Ear. But some of the native plants have funny names here too, such as Deerfoot Vanillaleaf, which is the photo to the right. I spent all this cool, rainy week working of invasives, and then had to catch an amazingly early flight back to Dallas to attend a wedding. The afternoon we returned, we spent the day with some friends touring the Seattle Aquarium. They had lots of excellent exhibits, including two giant octopus, their own salmon tower with fish ladder, a giant tropical clam (very striking colors), invertebrate petting zoos, sea otters, a huge "walk-through" aquarium, seals, and my favorite: a pair of playful river otters.

As you may recall, 2008 is Year of the Frog. Consider signing their petition! I bring this up again because they are having a very unique auction to raise conservation funds: get your name immortalized by bidding on an auction: naming rights to a new species of frog!

I hope to see some Giant Salamanders soon; seems like we've been at the right places, but amphibians tend to lurk in the mud and don't come out in the open very often. We'll have to see what adventures await us next week.

Beavers in the Mist

Another week has zoomed by here in the South Sound area. This week, we worked with a biologist to survey wildflower plant plots. These plots were planted in coastal prairies to determine how successful different techniques were for seeding and transplanting certain wildflowers. These wildflowers are important as host plants for the endangered Taylor's Checkerspot Butterfly, so the hope is by restoring prairies quickly with these key plants, the butterfly population will quickly recover. Ideally, the end goal is to establish a mosaic of quality habitats occupied by the butterfly (and more importantly, the caterpillars), which would make the population more resilient to disturbances such as wildfires.

We also spent 2 days running a tractor, backpack sprayers, and an ATV with a powered hand sprayer to go after Tall Oats Grass. It was my first time driving a tractor in several years, and this one had some differences to get used to, including a very touchy clutch that made driving with a full tank mounted on the back a little exciting at times! Almost like being in a tractor pull -- yee haw!

For the weekend, we loaded up the truck with camp gear and went for a loop drive around the Olympic Peninsula. There was still snow on the mountains, and the streams were all running full bore. We saw many waterfalls, such as Rocky Brook Falls (left photo), Marymere Falls, Madison Falls, and the spectacular Sul Duc falls.

We saw the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, which has a really, really long spit that reaches out to a lighthouse. It was so cold and windy, that we didn't dare walk very far out away from the mainland, but we did see some impressive scenery, such as the huge logs stranded upon the sandbars, the mainland cliff, the Juan de Fuca straight with the mountains of British Columbia off to the north, and the snow-covered peaks of Hurricane Ridge to our south, near where we'd camp for the night. There were 2 really brave and very athletic adventurers out kite-surfing in the protected lee side of the spit. The winds must've been gusting to 15-20 mph, so they were really flying across the water... the cold, cold water. bbrrrr!

We spent the evening in the pleasant campground of Altair. It's along the roaring Elwah river, which was grayish-white from the silt at floodstage. We saw a huge beaver come swimming out of the mist and forage along the banks, deftly missing the dangerous currents swirling all around. People were very nice, and our neighbors even loaned us some kindling and starter log for our fire. Maybe they felt bad for us, since we were getting a very late start on dinner... but hotdogs fortunately don't take long on the grill. I was hoping to get a view of the sky to see the ISS and space shuttle Discovery fly past, but there was no chance of that with a dreary drizzle falling down.


Sunday, we saw Crescent Lake, a 650 ft deep lake formed from an ancient retreated glacier that left behind a moraine dam. Then was our hike to the roaring Sul Duc falls, which was perhaps the highlight of the weekend. We saw several elk and black-tailed deer that morning, including a newborn fawn near Mill's Lake. The trailhead for Sul Duc falls is near the hot springs, and there were still melting piles of snow in the forest!

Finally, we were running out of daylight and only had time for one last stop -- Ruby Beach. This was a dramatic stretch of coastline facing west into the Pacific. A perfect place to end our trip. We explored among the rocky coastline, and got a nice view of a new lifelist bird: the Black Oystercatcher.

Toto, I don't think we're in the Keys anymore...

This was my first week at my new job with the Nature Conservancy. I toured several of the prairies I'd be working on this summer, and learned many new plants; both the good (natives) and the bad (non-natives). There are over 80,000 acres of natural areas, mostly preserved on the military base Fort Lewis, named after (Lewis Meriwether of the Lewis & Clark expedition, which reached the end of the Columbia river not far from here). This ecosystem is unique, and home to many rare plants and animals; for instance, in this photo is the Paintbrush Castilleja and the nesting grounds for the endangered subspecies, the Streaked Horned Lark. These prairies are part of the glacial deposits of the Nisqually plain, whose drainage begins on the slopes of nearby Mt. Rainier.

While Poison Ivy is present here in the lower elevations of Washington, I'm pleased to report that it's nastier relatives such as Poisonwood are nowhere to be found. Instead of Nickerbean and Acacia, there's Himalayan Blackberries and Stinging Nettles, and in place of Manchineel there is Death Camas (the pretty white lily in this photo). At the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, I found myself constantly scanning the freshwater marshes for alligators.

The refuge was a really great place to get acquainted with the local flavor of plants and animals. We walked over 7 miles there, and saw many birds, bugs, plants, and a beaver-thing (a nutria, perhaps?). Often, there are sightings of seal lions and river otters, but we weren't so lucky. However, we did see a Rufus Hummingbird nest and I added several new birds to my lifelist: Tree Swallow, Band-tailed Pigeon and Wilson's Phalarope. There were many ducks in the water, with little fuzzy ducklings earnestly swimming after mama. Other notable birds for us were Bald Eagles, Townsend's Solitaire, Virginia Rail, Wood Duck, Yellow Warbler, and Blue-winged & Cinnamon Teal.

The Cascade range had a very good winter for snow, and some of the ski areas were open for Memorial Day weekend, which had never happened before. Since it had been WAY too long since the last time I went skiing, and the snowbase was still > 100", this was too tempting to pass up. We ended up in Alpental along Snoqualmie Pass. It was great to be playing out in the snow wearing light pants and a T-shirt! The snow was melting fast, and there were no less than 6 big waterfalls that could be seen along nearby cliffs (one can be seen far behind me in this photo).

After skiing, we drove onward towards Seattle to visit with an old friend of mine, but not before stopping at the touristy hotspot of Snoqualmie Falls, which was roaring at full intensity and splashing everyone way up on the rim with cold mist. We had a nice evening of tasty Indian food and fun games (I lost). Another very exciting historical event that occurred while we gazed over the falls; the Phoenix Lander successfully touched down upon the north pole of Mars... a day for snow, ice and water here and afar!

For Memorial Day, we toured several geocaches around town, such as nearby Tumwater Falls, Priest Point Park, and the state forest. It was fascinating to a fish ladder in person for the first time; a series of concrete pens that had small chutes to let water channel through them and let the salmon swim upstream past the dam.

Next week should be fun. We start tomorrow with a plant plot survey on Johnson Prairie.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend!

The Journey to Tumwater Hill

We left on a Monday morning, with not yet having a place to stay or having seen the Northwest. 2,300 miles later, we finally made it to Olympia! Originally, I had planned on taking 8 days to make this drive, with some time to camp and explore the country we'd be driving through. But having never traveled before with cats, we wanted to keep things simple. It was almost like self-imposed torture to be so close to many national parks, monuments, forests, and wildernesses and not be able to experience them. Even from the seat of the car, the scenery was exciting, such as Shiprock, the Way of the Ancients, and Valley of the Gods, and the thrilling drive up Moki Dugway.

We did make time on the drive to tour around Natural Bridges National Monument, and did a few short hikes while cats slept in the car. I was surprised by how much snow was still hanging on the mountains, even as low as 8,000 feet. The short hikes we did took us past inspiring landscapes of sandstone, which still showed the dune forms with petrified cross-bedding clearly visible in the weathered rocks. From one cliff, we could look down into the cave that sheltered Horse-collar ruins, an ancient and unique Anasazi home that was abandoned 700 years ago as the climate became too dry to support their farming practices.

We then drove through more beautiful canyon lands, and across the office space of my former crew boss's, Capitol Reef National Park. He lives in a quaint old farmhouse, so we hope to visit him again on our way back home and this time make plans to stay long enough to explore more of the area. After a huge dinner at Diablo's, we blazed tracks all the way to northern Utah. Our last day we made it to the Columbia Gorge just as the sun was setting, and had time to enjoy the cold spray from a few magnificent waterfalls, such as Horsetail and Multnomah Falls, which are the 2nd highest falls in the USA.

We arrived in Washington at nightfall, with the snow on distant mountains looking ghostly by the moonlight. We spent the next day viewing apartments and settled on a place in Tumwater, whose claim to fame is it is the gateway to the Inside Passage (with awesome looking totems that look out from the bridge to the Sound), as well as the site of the first pioneer settlement in Washington back in 1845. On our walk at nearby Tumwater Hill park, we can see the state capital, the sound, and most impressively, the peak of Mount Rainier. The forest is full of unfamiliar plants; huge maples, stinging nettles, lush ferns, and many others that I'll need to learn soon.

Today was our first full day in the apartment, which we spent hitting up garage sales across town, buying lots of used furniture and getting used to driving around town. Tomorrow should be a fun day of hiking around nearby parks and getting ready for my first day on the job as a Prairie Restoration Tech!

Wild Wild West

We have over 2200 miles to drive across Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and finally Washington. There's so many sights I would love to see along the way... places that have been on my "to-do" list for a very long time, such as the Latir Peaks, Maroon Bells wilderness, Chaco & Frijole Canyon, Hovenweep, Canyonlands, and many more. With the cats in the car, it's just not possible, so we'll have to save those gems for another adventure.

It's been a whirlwind at home setting up a house-sitter and giving away plants, fish, and cheeses. Now we're on the road again. My Trusty Truck is now spruced up with a Brahma camper shell, which needed some TLC, but will be perfect for the long road trip ahead. We're taking our cats with us, so if the weather's nice, then the camper can serve as our sane-asylum.

We still haven't selected a place to stay in Olympia yet, but have a list of places to look at. We're only packing what can fit in our truck, so if anyone has a friend near Olympia willing to part with a couch, TV, bookshelf, toaster, beanbag chair, bed, blender, or matching salt & pepper shaker... please let me know! :-)

Hopefully, I'll have an internet connection soon and get time to update this next weekend, once we've moved into our new home for the next 6 months. Meanwhile, check here to see what's going on in some of the nearby Parks we hope to visit soon:


Mount Rainier Webcam

Mount St. Helen's Webcam


Happy Trails!