snow geese of the skagit

Spent last saturday peregrinating the Skagit flats, studying raptors and owls and bald eagles with North Cascades Institute and a field scientist-expert guide, David Drummond. We discovered the flock of snow geese, wintering over with us all the way from Wrangell Island, down in southern Skagit county on Fir Island, the wedge of dike-enclosed land riding low between the two mouths of the Skagit River.

I took a series of up close and personal photos, and have posted a selection over at Flickr -- you can see them by clicking here. I recommend viewing the excursion in "view as slideshow" mode.

Local orcas head south

Why are Ish River's orcas traveling all the way to central California this winter? Dozens orcas from Puget Sound have been spotted recently in Half Moon Bay and around the Farallon Islands. Scientists have identified them as belonging to the "K" and "L" pods, and the obvious answer as to why they are so far out of their historic range has to do with their appetites: salmon are more plentiful in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River systems than they are in the ailing Puget Sound. "They are extending that far to try to keep everybody fed," said David Bain, research director for Global Research and Rescue in Seattle. "It's a bad thing, in that whales ought to be able to make a living locally."

Spotting them so far south "extends their range 1,000 miles," according to one researcher, which brings to mind questions about the lengths to which animal species can adapt their behavior in response to human-caused disruptions in the ecosystem and about the long, winding, mysterious pathways of evolution.

By the way, orcas can travel at 3 miles per hour, and cover 75 miles a day. Thus, it would take them something like 10 days to two weeks to move from Ish River country to San Franciso.

Informative articles in the San Francisco Gate here and Seattle Times here

orcas
puget sound

Skagit Sunday Sund

Don't cry geese,
in this floating world
it's the same anywhere you go.

--Issa (1763-1827), translated by Ish River poet laureate Robert Sund.

photo from "planetphotoman."

Spare Change?

--By Pultizer-winning cartoonist David Horsey at the Seattle P-I.

Mount Rainier Gutted (or, The Restoration of America's National Parks)

Well, the mountain itself is doing fine, but most of the human paraphernalia surrounding the mighty volcano -- roads, visitor centers, bridges, campgrounds, trails -- have been utterly demolished in the floods of November. For the first time in its' 108 year history, the national park is closed. The destruction is awe-inspiring, and I recommend you check out the web slideshow at the park's website to witness the raw, unforgiving power of Mother Nature.



The slideshow is here -- it takes a second to load, but will drop your jaw -- or you can enter this page for the full menu of videos, galleries and other depictions of destruction.



The demolition of Mt. Rainier National Park's assets presents a perfect opportunity to rally behind a campaign to provide more funding for our national parks. This is a huge passion of mine -- to raise park budgets instead of diminishing them by a thousand tiny cuts, to invest time, energy and federal dollars in to repairing and updating park facilities, which are in a woeful state from decades of benign neglect. I believe that our national parks (and other public lands) are this country's true treasure. Our protection of them -- North Cascades, Canyonlands, Yosemite, Glacier, the Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain -- is our gift to the rest of the world, those of us among the living as well as for the generations to come.

Mt. Rainier National Park could serve as the poster child for our park's desperate need for investment. It is a well-loved, heavily visited park and nobody is going to argue against its' repair. Its' catastrophic destruction serves to dramatize our parks' plight, though honestly, most probIems are more invisible to the casual visitor -- leaking septic tanks, crumbling trails, air pollution and less and less staff to do behind-the-scenes work.

I hope that in the next presidential election there will be a candidate (calling Al Gore!) that takes on stewardship of our public lands as an issue and makes their restoration a plank in their campaign. It would be great to have this issue brought out in to the limelight so that, at the very least, awareness of the problem would be heightened.

I know, I know -- the current administration has messed up everything damned thing it has touched so severely that national parks will seem to most to be way down on the list of priorities. But a campaign to protect and restore our parks could be included in a more general campaign to incorporate sustainability in to the federal government and its'/our assets. Think of it -- national parks could be remade in to living laboratories of new sustainable technologies, a place where the public could experience "green living" and see how "normal" it can be, and a place for experimentation and study. I see no reason why the parks couldn't go off the grid and be energy sustainable on their own -- solar power at Zion, geothermal at Yellowstone, wave power at Olympic -- not too mention composting toilets, the removal of asphalt, mass transit for employees and visitors and LEED-certified structures.

And let's not forget that the root of the term "conservative," which Bush, Kempthorne & Co. claim adherence to, is "conserve," which my dictionary defines as to "protect something from harm or destruction" and to "prevent the wasteful or harmful overuse."

Could We The People make the restoration and stewardship of our public lands and parks a patriotic cause? Or are my political and populist dreams, like the photo below, a dead end?



Mount Rainier
national parks
sustainability

Bald Eagles on the Skagit

I spent all of last Saturday (1/6) watching bald eagles on the Skagit River with a North Cascades Institute field seminar led by local eagle guru Libby Mills -- we concentrated our search between Rockport and Marblemount on Highway 20 and had great success throughout the day. (We were lucky enough to not only stay dry, but also get some rare sunshine.) Dozens of eagles were easily viewable from the highway at the Rockport turn off, and our class found a prime viewing spot on the opposite side of the river where we stopped counting white heads after 100! One solitary big-leaf maple tree on the river's edge held between 30-40 eagles. Both adults and immatures were actively feeding on chum salmon carcasses that were washed-up on gravel bars. Our group also saw large steelhead jumping out of the water near the Marblemount hatchery (and the attendant fishermen, on shore and in drift boats), though the eagles weren't hunting them, probably because the chum carcasses were so plentiful. Libby reported seeing over 400 bald eagles (!!!) from one vantage point on the Skagit earlier in the week; she thinks she must've got lucky by showing up in the middle of a migration coming down from BC.



North Cascades Institute, where I work, has Eagle Watcher volunteers stationed up and down Highway 20 every weekend in to early February. They are out there rain or shine with spotting scopes, field guides, info on good viewing sites and lots of enthusiasm and good cheer. If you want to learn when and where the Eagle Watchers are located, please visit their webpage. There you can also find out info about the Bald Eagle Interpretive Center in Rockport, the Bald Eagle Festival in Concrete and more.


My favorite part of the outing came at the end of the day, when our group watched the eagles fly away from the riverbanks and disappear into the snowy mists on Sauk Mountain as they headed to their night roosts. Wish I would had a zoom lens to get better photos...

Skagit River
eagles
birding

nearer to Spring

I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

'We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,'
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.

- Oliver Herford, "I Heard a Bird Sing"

Setting the buds

'We provide consolations to get through winter—vitamin D supplements, smoked salmon, candles, Christmas lights, cassoulet, oatmeal, velvet, Irish whiskey with hot water and lemon. But for all the comforts we give ourselves, for all the heating and bright lighting, we're still basically creatures who have more in common with the furry beings of the world, and even the leafy beings of the world, than we think. Our bodies are inextricably linked to seasonal cycles.

I wonder if there was a time in human history when sluggishness in winter was good for survival? Should we be using this semihibernation as a time of renewal? Should we be, figuratively, setting the buds for spring leaves and flowers?"

--Constance Casey, from "Sleepy Solstice: Why plants and animals hibernate in winter." Read the entire article on Slate.

Record-Breaking Rains (Plus Freezing Temps and a Surplus of Snow!)

November 2006 is laying seige to several records for exteme weather here in Ish River Country. On Tuesday, November 28, the low temperature was 12 degrees, not including the piercing wind chill. The low temp for Wednesday was predicted to be 8 degrees, which would shatter another old record. Seattle also broke the record on Tuesday with 18 degree temps recorded. Whatcom and Skagit counties are the coldest in western Washington, and also have the most snow, and the lingering Arctic air has turned our Fourth Corner in to something akin to Planet Hoth. Whereas points further south have received anywhere from a trace to a couple of inches of snow, my neighborhood had well over a foot on Sunday and the foothills of the North Cascades are reporting two feet of dry, fluffy white stuff.

Even more dramatic is the region's assault on the rain record, a dramatic deluge that even made the Sunday New York Times. Here's their take on our wet, wet month:


"At midday on Sunday, near the end of what is typically Seattle’s rainiest month, the official rain gauge at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was well past 14 inches and rising, having mocked the November average of about 5.9 inches and smeared the previous single-month record documented at the airport, 12.92 inches, set in January 1953.

Storm after storm has slammed the Puget Sound region, riding warm air from southern parts of the Pacific Ocean.

Now some wonder whether the weather here might deliver the single-month record for rainfall since such data was first collected back in the 19th century. The mark, 15.33 inches, was set in December 1933."

Meanwhile, the Seattle Times reported today that "only a trace of light snow fell overnight so November's precipitation tally at Sea-Tac International Airport stands at 15.26 inches, just shy of the 15.33 inches of rain that made December 1933 the wettest month since weather record-keeping began in the 1890s."

So, we've got a little over 24 hours for .07 inches of precipitation to fall to set a new high for saturated sogginess here in the Great Northwet. Stay tuned....


The news isn't all harshness: Mount Baker Ski Area has set a new record over the past week for "the most snowfall in one storm cycle in Mt. Baker recorded history," as their website gleefully crows. "We received 8 feet in 5 days and 12 feet of new snow in one storm cycle. This will be a November to remember!" They have plentiful photos of skiers and boarders choking on bottomless, feathery powpow here.


Pacific Northwest
Bellingham
Seattle
Mt. Baker
Winter storm
Rain record

Saturated

Rainest November ever here in Ish River Country as back-to-back winter storms hammer the Northwet : 11.64 inches fell in Seattle while rivers spilt over their banks, lights went dark and phones fell where the first chair of the season creakily climbed up the ski hill for yet another season. The Hoh River Road suffering a 75 feet long by 25 feet=deep blow outt, North Cascades Highway closed down weeks earlier than normal and the Mount Baker Highway is down to one lane near Maple Falls. The backcountry is reportedly getting hammered too; Mt. Rainier National Park is closed down for the first time in its 107-year history, with untold numbers of bridges, campgrounds, trails and road miles scoured out of existence. It is too soon to know how bad it is elsewhere in the remote corners of Cascadia.



I wonder in particular about the thousands of salmon that are making their annual return to Ish River spawning grounds in these past weeks. With fast-moving water saturated with soil and other suspended particles, the caving in of river banks and scouring of riverbottom gravels, I don't see how these storms can be helping. On the other hand, the fury of the winds and rain are washing a huge bumper crop of trees in to and down rivers, where they will snag and accumulate, building up new in-stream structures that provide excellent habitat for salmon fry. In fact, at the Salmon Summit in Bellingham two weks ago, a lead scientist in the salmon recovery efforts of the Puget Sound basin explained that the lack of quality woody debris in local waterways was one of the foremost limtiing factors in salmonid rehabilitation. So.


I also tend to suspect that these types of extreme weather events give the landscape a good scrubbing. Not only do they remind us of powerful forces that lie outside of human control, no matter how clever we think ourselves, but I can se how the carving of new river channels, closing of old roads, clean sweep of old detritus and refreshening of water tables, lakes, ponds, marshes and other wetland are all rejuvenating results. Then again, as the influence of Homo sapiens on the plant's climate increases, it is hard to tell when a storm is naturally revitalizing or freakishly destructive. So.

Seattle Times covers the deluge here, and provide the chart below.


Pacific Northwest
Flood
Salmon
Rain

"I feel like one of the great cedars of the North Cascades has fallen"

Harvey Manning, the godfather of Washington's wilderness system and tireless trail bodhisattva, passed away last weekend at the age of 81. Manning's influence as an environmental leader, author and advocate cannot be overstated, and as his friend and former president of the Alpine Lakes Protection Society Rick McGuire succintly put it, "I feel like one of the great cedars of the North Cascades has fallen. It's hard to sum up a man like Harvey. He was a force of nature."

Most people will know Manning as the co-author, along with his longtime hiking partner Ira Spring, of the "100 Hikes" series of trail guides published by The Mountaineers Books. Compared to the bland, unimaginative trail guides of today, his creations were full of personality and passion, wit and wisdom. He never hid the conservationalist agenda present in his prose, and he was unapologetic in his fervent love for all things wild.


Incidentally, my favorite Manning title is not a trail guide at all, but an idiosyncratic travelogue entitled "Walking the Beach to Bellingham." It is a hilarious book in which Manning, well, he walks the beach, all the way from Seattle to Bellingham, following the shore of Puget Sound and sharing local lore, natural history, political diatribes, bad puns and sharp observations all the way. You can all of his offerings here.

The Seattle P-I has a story on Manning's life here and the Washington Trails Association has another one here. While it is hard to read, Peter Potterfield's excellent Manning profile for Backpacker Magazine is reproduced here.

The Alpine Lakes Wilderness, North Cascades National Park, the Issaquah Alps, Mt. Baker Wilderness -- all of these places remain green, rugged and wild in large part because of Manning's zealousness. I hope there are more like him alive and kicking in the Pacific Northwest today. As McGuire puts it, "He left the Cascades a much better place than he found them."

All Wet

Much of Ish River Country is underwater this week, as record rainfall riding in on the Pineapple Express dumped on the mountains and filled the rivers to overflowing.



Here is a view of the Nooksack River inundating Lynden in northern Whatcom county near the border with BC (photo from the Bellingham Herald).

More to come....

Pacific Northwest
Flood
Nooksack