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

"Salmon Moon"

Surf
of moonwave,
mist of dawn by the sea.
Mist of long lovely night ending.

The moon steps through the night.
It goes out into the south and west.

Between sparse old shoreland spruce
the moon is a silver wing
in the clouds.

All night
the clouds drift over.
All night, salmon gather—
first of the run.

--Robert Sund, from Poems from Ish River Country

Dedicated to the 120 adult chinooks that still return to their birth gravels in the south fork of the Nooksack River.

Carving by Wayne D.F. Thomas

Robert Sund
salmon
NW poetry

Trumpeter Swans return to Skagit

Driving home from work earlier this week, out of Sedro-Wolley and down Cook Road towards I-5, I saw them for the first time: a V of nine Trumpeter swan cruising overhead in the cloud-curdled sky. Today, I saw dozens more in the muddy fields north of Cook.

They are welcome winter visitors here in Ish River Country, arriving in mid-October from their breeding grounds in Alaska. They stand over 6-feet tall and feed in the fallow fields of the Skagit Valley amongst flocks of Tundra swans (which are smaller) and Snow geese. "Birds of Washington" claims an average of 1000-3000 Trumpeters overwinter in the state, from Snohomish County northwards, and local birding listservs are reporting sightings from Seattle to San Juan Island to the Skagit.

These elegant beauties have rebounded from near-extinction in the 1960s, but have been threatened more recently by ingesting lead shot leftover from hunters in Whatcom County and British Columbia. At least 868 have died since 1999. Martha Jordan, a Skagit Valley ornithologist and bird lover, founded the Trumpeter Swan Society and is leading the effort to monitor the health of local flocks and tackle the lead shot problem. She is looking for volunteers to help with swan surveys, and will payfor your gas -- contact her at swanlady@drizzle.com or (425) 787-0258.

Martha is also leading two field seminars focusing on the ecology of Trumpeter swans in February with North Cascades Institute. Learn more and register here.

Skagit Valley
Trumpeter swans
Birds

Lonely Trails

Are overnight hikers the Pacific Northwest's next endangered species? The Seattle Weekly thinks so. Read why here.

Panamanian Frog Hotel

A story in the Washington Post that is both heartwarming and heartbreaking: the tale of the golden frogs of El Valle de Anton in Panama. With a deadly fungus tearing through Central American amphibian populations, the golden frog has been sequestered in a run-down backpacker's hotel at the edge of the mountains with hopes that it can wait out the naturally-occuring chytrid fungus. The Hotel Campestre has become a sort of postmodern Noah's Ark and currently has 40 species of endangered frogs and toads shacking up in it. "The volunteers found glass frogs with skin so translucent that their organs are always on full display," explains the Post. "They picked up frogs that look like rocks and eat freshwater crabs, aggressive tree frogs and shy, nocturnal toads."

The hotel's guests are happily mating, and scientists are monitoring their reproduction, waiting for the day when it is considered safe to release them back in to the wild. But Good Samaritan impulses aside, interesting questions arise.

"There's this moral dilemma," one Panamanian biologist said. "Is this evolution? Should we let it run its course? If we do this for frogs, then do we do it some other time for the snakes?"

Also, scientists wonder if "the frogs they are saving in Panama might be the last of their kind? And might those frogs -- those jumping, squirmy delights -- never see the outside world again?"

Should humans play the role of Noah by taking wildlife out of their native habitats and shielding them from the blind course of natural selection? Is our planet becoming so unhospitable to animals, birds and fish that we will eventually have to create virtual habitat in order for them to survive?

Read the rest of the story here.

North Cascadian Larch Magic

"It was another October gold rush in the North Cascade Mountains of Washington, with foliage prospectors at altitudes of 6,000 feet and beyond gazing at their chosen grail: the alpine larch, a slender tree whose velvety needles turn an incandescent yellow-gold come fall." So writes Linda Baker in today's New York Times' Travel section. Great tribute to the amazing larch tree of the North Cascades high country; read it here.

North Cascades
Larch
Fall Color

R.I.P. Hugo, Jellyroll & Raven

Several Pacific Northwest newspapers reported last week on the disapperance and presumed death of three orca whales from the San Juan Islands pods: Hugo, Jellyroll and Raven have vanished from their usual haunts and hunting grounds. This is a distinct departure from the good news of last spring, when several new orca whalets were discovered, and a terrible turn for the precarious local population. In general, they've been seen as slightly rebounding in numbers, but the mysterious recent disapearances reinforces the reality that Puget Sound's orcas are being pummeled by multiple threats all at once.

What happened to these particular three swimmers? Was it the built-up levels of PCBs biomagnified and stored in their blubber, bestowing upon them the dubious distinction of "most polluted marine mammals in the world"? Or did they starve to death from a lack of salmon, another species not doing so hot in our troubled waters?

"When salmon are plentiful, the whales tend to travel close together," the Seattle P-I reported on Wednesday, "but this year's sightings revealed the whales as spread out, indicating they were foraging and food supplies are short."

The Seattle P-I just published a commendable series on the state of the Puget Sound, written by their crack team of environmental investigators, Robert McClure and Lisa Stiffler. You can read their entire series "Broken Promises" here. Part of the series is a dramatization of the life of one particular Puget Sound orca named "Granny" written by M.L. Lyke. "She has lived long, seen much, some of it best forgotten: Bullets, bombs, nets, babies born dead. She understands the world of orcas. It's always about survival, always about community." You can follow Granny's story here.

Read more about the lost orcas here or here.

Incidentally, while researching the web for orca information, I came across this fascinating movie on YouTube--check it out.



orcas
puget sound
endangered species