Two in the Bush

Coming home from our daily ramble today, the toddler and I spotted a pair of golden-crowned Kinglets in the ocean spray shrub in our front yard.  Of course the shrub doesn't look like it does in the linked photo; the leaves are all off and only shriveled seed heads remain, which is what attracted the Kinglets in the first place.  We've got quite a collection of birds hanging out in the front yard right now, everything from a tiny Pacific or winter wren to the unidentified sparrow that scuffles by the front porch (I think it's probably a song sparrow) to the flashy little Anna's hummingbirds that are a constant, noisy presence at the window feeder and in the top of the elder tree near the front door.

While the cold snap was here a few weeks ago, I hung out a suet cage for any little birds who might not be able to find other food in the frozen landscape.  The only critters who have found it so far are the local crows, who have done a good job of picking most of it out.  I really don't mind the crows myself, but I'm not going to refill the cage with suet until (and unless) we have another really cold spell.  The crows have plenty of other opportunities for food around here.

The SRKW have been conspicuously absent from local waters lately.  Since we've been having some pretty impressive winds off the coast, I hope they are in some remote, sheltered inlet to the north where no prying eyes can find them but where the new babies aren't facing the challenge of trying to breathe in high seas.  I was hopeful to hear that a number of fins had been spotted off Lummi Island over the holiday weekend, but they turned out to be transients.  Here's hoping our residents show up again soon!

Love Affair, Part IV

This is a short video I made from clips taken this summer, including the encounter with Ruffles mentioned in the last post.  I shot this with the video function on my Canon Powershot camera, which only takes 30 seconds of video at a time, so it may seem a bit choppy.  As you can see from the light in different segments, this video represents several different days and locations of shooting.

The first orcas in the video are members of L-pod, seen here in Haro Strait along the US-Canadian border.  Ruffles is shown closer to the west side of San Juan Island, also in Haro Strait.  A later sequence shows J-pod off of the "Coal Docks" at Tsawwassen, British Columbia, in the southern part of Georgia Strait.

Background music is "Song to the Siren" by This Mortal Coil, a longtime favorite of mine that seemed appropriate.  (Incidentally, the first time I ever heard it was during the reunion trip from the environmental studies camp mentioned in this post.)

I recommend watching the video in full-screen mode if it isn't too pixelated on your screen.  Especially during the Coal Docks sequence, you'll notice a lot more detail of the orca behavior, including spyhopping, tail lobbing, and breaches.

Looking over these last few posts I see a timeline more than the story I was really trying to tell, of the deep connection I feel with the SRKW and the many ways in which their lives have intersected with mine.  I guess that's part of the challenge of keeping a blog that isn't about being a mom while being a mom!  It has been very challenging, recently, to find the time and the right headspace to keep posting.  Headier stuff is on my mind for the next few posts, I hope I can do it justice.  Meantime, I think this video shows more what I feel about these animals than all the writing in the previous three posts on the subject.

Love Affair, Part III

(continuing from here)

About halfway through my college years, I had a remarkable dream in which I encountered a group of orcas swimming close to the shore.  In the dream, people were wading in to touch them, which annoyed me because I felt that was not respectful to these magnificent and intelligent animals.  But I was drawn to them, so I went into the water and approached one, asking its permission to make contact with it.  Suddenly all the orcas appeared to me as humans.  They took me away with them, in the water, and we traveled to an undersea grotto where they offered me food and the leaders of the pod (three female orcas, as it happened, although at the time of the dream I had no idea that orcas had a matrifocal culture) formally offered me their friendship.  I returned to shore to find my mother, who was asking me where I had been and saying I had missed the orcas, and I realized that while the orcas had appeared human to me while I was with them, I had appeared as an orca to other humans during that time.

This was a first of a continuing series of dreams in which the SRKW appear and interact with me.  Sometimes very specific individuals appear, sometimes not; sometimes there is specific communication with them, sometimes not; sometimes I encounter them as human, sometimes not.  I have since encountered a lot of northwest indigenous lore about very similar orca experiences, and have met a number of other people who have had similar dreams.  When I first read the Haida Storm Boy legend, it made the hair on my neck stand up because elements of it were so similar to my dream experiences.  I get a little shiver just thinking of it now.

In the autumn of 1997, L-pod, one of the SRKW population's three family groups, paid a long and unusual visit to Dyes Inlet near Bremerton, WA.  It was an uncommonly lovely fall, with long stretches of calm, clear weather than coincided with much of the whales' month-long visit to this tiny inlet.  They were besieged by boaters wanting a closer look, and as it happened, the organization I worked for had a friend with a whale watching boat who took us over for a magical day with them.  During this month I had a number of very vivid orca dreams, one of which seemed to predict part of the experience I had on that boat with L-pod a few days later.

As my work responsibilities grew, it became my job to coordinate and lead field trips for some local school groups.  Sometimes, these field trips were on boats, not always for the purpose of whale watching but we did occasionally see them.  On one such trip, we encountered J-pod.  We were watching the pod swim past the boat when suddenly J-1 "Ruffles," so called for his distinctive rippled dorsal fin, turned to swim right at our boat.  He surfaced directly below where I stood, then dove beneath the boat.  I ran over to the other side and watched the length of his entire body passing beneath me as he rose to surface again.  That was all, and yet, that moment will be etched in my mind and my heart until the day I die.  From that moment on I felt a profound connection with Ruffles, and was not at all surprised when he became a regular dream visitor.

My work, focused on preserving Puget Sound habitats, brought me in ever closer contact with other whale researchers, and I began to learn the more intimate details of the lives of the SRKW population:  their nicknames, their habits, their personalities.  Whale watch boat operators told me stories I will never forget, like the story of the orphaned unweaned calf whose uncle and brother were observed trying to chew salmon up into food the baby could digest.  (This is especially noteworthy when one considers that orcas have no molars.  Their teeth are designed solely for gripping and tearing.  Stop and think for a moment about the thought process that was necessary for this helping behavior, and realize just how intelligent and emotionally connected to their relatives these animals are.  Not very different from us, at all.)  I learned that SRKWs live their whole lives with their mothers, that they eat almost nothing but salmon, that they have individual calls to identify their family groups, and that every fall and winter they pass right in front of my house.

Growing up, I never knew this, because they are nearly always on the far side of the water, where unless one knows exactly what they are looking for with a powerful spotting scope or binoculars, they are virtually invisible.  I started watching more carefully, and was rewarded by more frequent sightings.

And then, last year, a dream truly came true:  I was asked to be a naturalist aboard one of the whale watching boats in the San Juan Islands.  I spent part of each week in the incredibly beautiful waters around the islands, sharing my love and knowledge of SRKWs and the other flora and fauna in the area with hundreds of passengers, seeing them recognize the magic of this place and these creatures who embody the essence of it.  I learned to identify many of the orcas by sight, using the distinct combination of their dorsal fin and saddle patch.  And I spent many days with Ruffles.

One day with him stands out in particular:  the pods were spread apart foraging in Haro Strait, only a few whales here and there.  My boat happened upon Ruffles and stayed with him for a long time.  He's a favorite among the whale watchers, both because he is so easy to identify and because he clearly doesn't mind the vessel traffic and is known for his close passes.  We cut our engines to drift while we watched him approach along our port side and pass in front of the boat.  Suddenly he turned and went back down the port side toward the rear of the boat, still a couple hundred yards away.  He passed behind us, made a sharp turn and came up alongside our starboard side, surfacing literally so close I could have reached out to touch his dorsal fin.  Again I felt that sense of deep connection with him.  Some of our passengers were disappointed that we hadn't seen more whales that day, but I felt transported by the experience for the rest of the week.

Love Affair, Part II

(Continued from this post.)

After the trip to southern California, my focus on the orcas diminished somewhat but it was always there in the background.  In eighth grade, I did a project on John C. Lilly and his research into human-dolphin communication.  My parents were always passing along whatever news articles or books about cetaceans they thought might interest me, but as I turned my attentions to my adolescent peer group there was not so much passion for the orcas for several years.

My career aspirations changed; I decided I would be a veterinarian, and took a job working in a clinic to start down the long road to that goal.  In my junior year my high school biology teacher, an amazing woman to whom I will be forever grateful, insisted that I sign up for an environmental studies camp to be held in the wilderness of British Columbia.  Working part time, taking AP classes, and preparing for the upcoming SATs, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was spend a week in the wilderness falling behind.  I tried to fudge the application to sound like such a rabid environmentalist that they wouldn't accept me, but as fate would have it, I was accepted and went off to a life-changing week.

I was raised with a strong conservation ethic, but one that had not really encouraged activism beyond the odd letter writing campaign.  At this camp, secluded in the upper Skagit Valley and mentored by a set of phenomenal counselors, among them Thom Henley, I was inspired to become an environmental activist, to use my developing skills as a writer and educator to share information that would hopefully inspire others to act on behalf of this precious planet we all share.  I came home with hopes of a career in environmental law or journalism, began to write an environmentalist column for the school newspaper, and harried my parents about making sustainable buying choices around the house.

That fall, a group of the campers decided to have a reunion in Victoria, B.C., where Thom lived.  The Puget Sound contingent set sail aboard Princess Marguerite II on a beautiful Friday afternoon.  We were determined to stay in the passenger cabin and conquer our homework before arriving in Victoria, so we could enjoy a guilt-free weekend.  This plan worked well until, somewhere in Admiralty Inlet, one of my traveling companions spotted a dorsal fin alongside the ship.  He pointed, stammering in excitement, and went racing out to the deck.  Our homework completely forgotten, the rest of us raced out after him.

No, it wasn't an orca.  It was a pod of Dall's porpoise who stayed with the ship, weaving around and beneath the bow, for most of the rest of our voyage.  Another passenger claimed they were actually Chinook salmon (!), and upon reflection I think the phenomenal ignorance he displayed was another piece of inspiration for me to share (accurate) information about the natural world with other people.  (Dall's are often mistaken for baby orcas by people who don't realize that orcas that young would never be seen traveling alone under normal circumstances, but to mistake a bow-riding porpoise for a fish?)

Having an immediate experience with wild cetaceans reminded me how much I loved them.  But I didn't consider returning to my original idea of pursuing cetacean science as a career.  By that time, I had come to realize that a lot of the jobs available would be either in marine parks or in the military, neither of which held any appeal for me.  Somehow, living just a hundred miles away, I missed connecting with the Whale Museum or the Center for Whale Research.

I continued on to university, and continued to be an active activist, without connecting this childhood love with my current reality.  In my final year at school, I took an internship with a non-profit that worked on regional water quality and marine habitat issues.  That internship turned into a full-time job as an environmental educator, and gave me the opportunity to share my knowledge of and love for the place I live with thousands of people of all ages over the next decade.  And as part of that job, I got to go whale watching once in a while.

Baby, it's cold outside

The soft-settling first flakes of the season turned in to an all-out winter storm shortly after my last post.  At about 10pm on Monday night, this was the view out my front door:

The snow is sticking around for a few days, courtesy of a cold arctic air mass that has been sitting on us following the big winds, but even now the clouds are moving in and the temperatures are creeping back up toward freezing.

In weather like this, the overwintering Anna's hummingbirds are desperate for food to fight the cold temperatures. Since the feeders freeze regularly in this cold, keeping them fed is a small challenge.  They prefer to start feeding around half an hour prior to sunrise, which even during the short days of this season is usually earlier than I want to venture out in the cold.   But, that's part of the obligation of keeping a bird feeder.  The birds depend on you, and you need to be dependable.  So it's out in the cold, first thing in the morning, to set out a thawed feeder.  If the feeder freezes and I bring it in to thaw, I can expect the dominant male hummer (who has officially claimed this feeder as his own) to hover expectantly outside the kitchen window in the spot the feeder usually hangs, waiting with understandable impatience for me to return it.

First Snow

Snow in the lowlands of the Salish Sea is always a fascinating thing.  First is the question of if the snow will come, and when, and how much.  Given our position between two mountain ranges, next to salt water, at the point where the jet stream swings widely north or south, predicting any kind of weather here is challenging.  But when the s-word occurs in the forecast, people want to know when and how much, and that varies wildly from zip code to zip code because there are so many variables, so many microclimates.

How people respond to local snow is interesting.  In my observations, people who were raised here treat the snow as nature's excuse for a holiday, and if at all possible take the day off to stay cozy at home, or play outside.  People from snowier places tend to ridicule the cautious locals, until they try to navigate the steep hills of downtown Seattle and realize that flat, midwestern snowscapes are quite a different animal than snow here.  And those from warmer climates either wisely stay home, or venture forth under the mistaken impression that their large 4x4 or AWD vehicles will protect them from hazardous conditions.  This is another reason that those of us who grew up here tend to stay home if we can!

I would like to describe the regional snow cycle, but the reality of global climate change is that all bets are off.  When I was small, we would regularly get a little snow here before Thanksgiving and after Christmas, but rarely in between.  A big "snow event" meant 4" at out house, maybe 6" up the hill away from the water.  Living right beside the water, snow on my lawn virtually guarantees a lot more snow everywhere else.  I have known many "snow events" in which my house got a lot of cold, slushy rain, but just 100' up the hill snow was sticking to the ground.

The year I began college, we had an unusual snow year that happened to coincide with me taking Atmospherics 101.  During that class I became very familiar with the conditions necessary for a major "snow event" to happen here, because we had one on January 1, February 1, March 1, and even April 1.  This was following a "normal" snow event the preceding December.  Another big snow occurred in 1995, and then there was a long period of mild, warm winters.  The only snow we got for several years is what I call frog snow--snow that occurs around the spring equinox, after the frogs have begun their spring song.  It is usually a wet, slushy snow that doesn't last more than a few hours in the lowlands.  I was beginning to think that climate change had taken snowy winters away from us forever, and that my children would not have a chance to experience snow days.

Fortunately, my fears were unfounded.  A few snows that fit the pattern I remembered from my childhood occurred in 2007, and then 2008 brought what is referred to here as "Snowpocalypse."  Never had I seen snow like that!  It snowed for days and was a foot deep in our yard--unheard of!  Even my dad could only remember one other snowfall of such proportion, some 60 years ago.

Last year was another snow-free winter.  We had cold temperatures, but the specific combination of warm wet air in the south and cold dry air in the north converging over the Puget trough just didn't happen.  So this year I am happy to welcome the snow again, and hopeful that this first fall is a sign of things to come.

It began yesterday in fits and starts, and still now is just dusting the yard, but the water and islands have all taken on a soft-focus, grey velvet look.  There are still bright leaves and chyrsanthemum blooms in the garden, all contrasting beautifully with their snowy garnish.  The winds are supposed to pick up later today, and more snow is expected with them, so if the forecast proves true we should see the water whipped up into a dark froth, wave edges like knapped obsidian rushing southward ahead of the cold arctic air that makes it all possible.

Snow doesn't usually linger here.  It is, to me, a reminder to live in the present and enjoy the serendipitous blessings life brings from time to time.  Whatever other plans I had for today will be set aside to enjoy the snow--gazing out the window at the falling flakes, and walking through the silent stillness that only comes from snow.  It has been a strange autumn, with an early start but somehow without the full feel of the season. Although winter doesn't officially begin for several more weeks, the first snowfall always marks the first day of winter and a special holiday on my personal calendar.

Love Affair, Part I

My earliest memory of orcas  is a children's picture book published by the National Geographic Society about Namu, a northern resident male who was accidentally caught in a fisher's net off of Namu, British Columbia, and became one of the first orcas in captivity.  I remember that this book, a gift from my grandmother, came with several other books:  one about bees, one about pandas, one about recovering sunken treasure.  But it was the book about Namu that I wanted read to me over and over again, and it was the pictures of Namu swimming with his captor that enchanted me.  I wanted to see Namu for myself, and was devastated to learn that he had died before I was even born.

I became obsessed with whales and dolphins.  In first grade, during the ceramics portion of our art class, I made a pinch-pot with the clumsy image of an orca etched into the bowl.  In second grade, we went to Alaska, taking a ferry boat up the Inside Passage.  I was so excited, sure that I would finally be seeing live orcas in person!  I spent nearly every minute of the 3-day trip glued to a window in search of fins or blows, and didn't see a single whale.  I was, however, lucky enough to visit an elementary school in Juneau on the day they happened to have a Tlinget elder come to teach a dance to the students.  I recall that he gave me a dance blanket with two orcas on it to wear while I learned the dance, and I was thrilled.

Later that year, as my parents were packing our camper for a family vacation one morning, my mom came rushing into the house, calling my name.  "The blackfish are out!" I remember her yelling, and I was out the door in a heartbeat, barefoot in my nightgown.  There, right in front of our house, a superpod of orcas--almost certainly the SRKW--were swimming past.  As I think of it now, it makes no sense that they would be there, then--it was late July or early August, a time when they are usually found about 100 miles north of here, and they were all very close to the eastern shore.  I have never seen them come so close since, but I vividly remember watching them go by that morning.

I discovered a book about killer whales in the school library, and for the rest of my time at that elementary school mine was the only name on the check-out card.  I had practically memorized the book before I left fifth grade.  In third grade I begged my old first grade teacher to let me come back to class and teach her students about whales.  That was my first stint as an environmental educator.  I decided, once I knew there was a name for it, that I would grow up to be a cetologist.  My tenth birthday gift was a trip to the Vancouver, BC aquarium to see Skana (who, although I didn't know it at the time, was a member of the SRKW population) and Hyak.  Although Skana died in the year after I first saw her, a poster of her performing at the aquarium hung on my bedroom wall for years.

While I was in middle school, my family took a trip to southern California to visit the essential theme parks of a middle-class American childhood, including Sea World in San Diego.  It was here I finally, after so many years of wishing, had the chance to interact with live dolphins at their petting tank.  It's enormously hypocritical of me, and I realize that, but I am glad that I had that experience before I came to understand how awful it is to keep cetaceans in captivity.  While in SoCal, we also visited Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which is where we figured I would end up going to college if I pursued my goal of becoming a cetologist.  The hot, humid climate didn't agree with me, though.  And I didn't want to study just any whales, I wanted to be with the SRKW.  Those were the whales I had fallen in love with, but I didn't know what I could do with my life that would bring me closer to them.

Finally, a SRKW sighting!

In an effort to combat my impulse to hide in the house through the dark winter days, I packed the toddler up this morning for a trip to the local zoo.  I was just unloading the stroller from the parked car when I got a call from another member of the household, reporting orcas swimming past the house, twelve miles away.  Figures!  But, learning that they were southbound, I went about my day as planned, knowing that they would more than likely turn north and pass by again before sunset.  Read the toddler a book, scan the water with the binoculars.  Fold a load of laundry, scan the water with the binoculars.  Etc.

Sure enough, around 3:30 I spotted some blows in the distance, and was able to watch them pass for about an hour.  They were far away, I could only spot the occasional tall male's fin, but saw lots of blows and there was a fair amount of breaching and cartwheeling going on too.  I knew I'd loose sight of them when the sun set, but just before the sun went down it broke from behind the clouds and turned the water a peachy-pink color.  The sunlight hit the orcas' blows so that they glowed a deeper pink, and it became very easy to see that there were an awful lot of them out there.  Beautiful!  I later heard reports that members of all three resident family pods had been identified.

This video shows some footage of the orcas taken today from a news helicopter.  The lower whale of the first pair you see swimming together is young male L-87 Onyx.  At about 2:04 left in the video, the male in the top of the frame is J-1 Ruffles, oldest male in the SRKW community and my very favorite.  It is likely (although I can't identify her for certain in this footage) that the female swimming with him is J-2 Granny, believed to be Ruffle's mother and also believed to be 99 years old this year.  The two are rarely seen apart from each other.

'Tis the Season

Signs of the season:  harlequin ducks joining the mixed flock in front of the house, increased traffic from the Anna's hummingbirds at our kitchen window feeder, chickadees flitting amongst the trees and shrubs on the block, fresh snow on the Olympic Mountains...and holiday displays in all the stores.

I find the "Holiday Season" to be very simple and incredibly complicated at the same time.  Simple, because what's going on here, whatever the name or trimmings, is a simple celebration that here in the northern hemisphere the days that have been getting shorter and darker will start to get longer and lighter again.  Simple because here in the milder maritime Pacific Northwest, there is an almost instant visible response to the increasing light from the natural world--within just a couple weeks of winter solstice, there will be bulbs peeking up somewhere, ambitious primroses or camellias blooming in the garden, ornamental plums fringed with fragile pale blossoms.  All these plants with origins in colder climates find the maritime winter to be equivalent to the early spring in their DNA.

But then we monkeys come along and complicate things.  On a social level, in our deeply divided country it is now a matter of some consideration whether it is more appropriate to say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays."  Personally, I much prefer the latter, more inclusive phrase, although I know that it has just become code for Merry Christmas.  Since my family celebrates the winter solstice as a religious holiday, and we have close Jewish friends, I am maybe a bit more sensitive to this issue than most, but it really does bother me that people of any faith would try to claim ownership over this time of year with one single holiday instead of sharing good wishes in the real spirit of the season.  Celebrations surrounding the winter solstice are some of the oldest recorded, long before Christianity.  Alas, there seem to be many of my countryfolk who don't allow themselves to be troubled by historical fact when they are being carried on waves of fanaticism.

The other driving force here, though, is commercialism.  My older daughter and I went in search of some last-minute costume pieces three days before Halloween this year, and found the costume and candy displays already being shoved aside for Holiday (read:  Christmas, since neither Yule nor Chanukah, contrary to popular belief, are gift-giving holidays on the order that secular Christmas has become) decorations.  Local stations are already playing Holiday (again, read Christmas, with the possible exception of Adam Sandler's Chanukah Song) music.  It won't even be Thanksgiving here for another week and a half!  But more rides on Holiday shopping than any tradition's religious observance.

For one thing, those who watch economic health are always anxious to see how much money is spent by consumers this time of year.  Some predict this year will be the same as last year, which is lower than the year before,  which for some is troublesome.  Far more troublesome, I think, is that something that started as a religious tradition is now something that a large part of our economy relies upon to be successful in any given year.

Often overlooked by the mainstream in all this is the vast amounts of environmental degradation and waste created by the "traditional" (in quotes because the idea of Christmas as a Santa-driven consumer orgy only dates back about 80 years or so) celebration of Christmas.  Creating and shipping merchandise from far points of the globe to stores in the United States creates a stream of impacts for each individual item, beginning with the extraction of the natural resources used to make it and ending with its disposal.  Many if not most items purchased as gifts come with gross amounts of overpackaging that can't be (or simply isn't) recycled.  Add to that the tradition of wrapping gifts in an additional layer of paper and plastic ribbon and you've added another layer of waste to the picture.  And then there are the meaningless gifts given out of a sense of guilt, that by themselves generate huge amounts of waste. Call me unpatriotic, but if the economic downturn leads to less of this environmentally destructive nonsense during the holiday season, that is really something to celebrate.

Us and Them

Up early this morning to get a jump start on things before the rest of the house woke up.  I took the garbage out, noticing that the weather was clear and the stars huge and bright in the pre-dawn sky.  I also heard some suspicious rustling in the shrubs behind the chicken coop, but it was too dark to see what made the sound.  I have my suspicions.

On Samhain night, as is our family custom, we left out a plate of food to share with the Ancestors and Beloved Dead.  (Unlike leaving something unharvested in the garden, I have yet to figure out an ecological benefit to this practice, but we do it anyway for the sake of tradition and in memory of those we have lost in our lives.)  And around midnight, some shuffling and clinking and the occasional squeaky protest let us know that the "ancestors" had arrived in the guise of a family of raccoons.

When I was small, raccoons here were shyer.  My dad, leaving for work very early in the dark winter mornings, would sometimes report that he had seen a few crossing the road, and on rare snowy days we might find some tracks.  When I was a bit older, I would find the tracks in the mud near the beach, evidence that the raccoons were taking advantage of the all the food resources available in their environment by hunting for tidepool critters during evening low tides.  But of late, they have become quite bold and there have even been some reports of them acting aggressively toward humans.

Raccoons are a good example of wildlife who have embraced humans with open arms, like crows, pigeons, Canada geese, rats, gulls, and in some cases coyotes and deer, and the humans have been unintentionally welcoming.  In the suburban borderlands between the city and the wide open spaces, these critters thrive on manicured lawns, home-grown fruits and vegetables, unsecured garbage, pet food left out on porches, and sometimes the pets themselves.  What's interesting to me is the attitude of humans toward these animals, and how it changes as they grow more adapted to the environments we have changed the most.

My own attitude toward raccoons has changed a lot.  I still enjoy their presence, but I'm a lot less enthusiastic about them after they halved the population of chickens in our backyard croft.  To be fair, we had not done an adequate job of providing the chickens with a maximum security facility, and the raccoons, true to their nature, were simply taking advantage of that.  I am also now aware that raccoons carry a stunning array of diseases, some of which are transmissible to humans with potentially lethal effects, so I'm not too keen on the notion of a family of raccoons living (and pooping) in my yard.

Bald  eagles still enjoy reverence and respect as wildlife here, although I have heard that in southeast Alaska the birds are so common that no one gives them another thought, and some tourists who want to see the eagles are told to go to the garbage dump to watch them scavenge.  In the Salish Sea we are still happy to see the eagles around, because as recently as 30 years ago they were still quite rare here.  As the local population has recovered and nesting pairs have moved in to urban greenbelts, they have become a much more common sight.  I frequently hear them calling when I'm working in the garden, or see them flying over the house or perching in the taller trees nearby.  Their population increase has, however, been detrimental to the local great blue heron population.  Several heron rookeries have been attacked by bald eagles.  As a great blue heron fan, I'm not happy about this, even while I am grateful that the eagle population is doing so well.

River otters are another example.  It happens that around here, river otters use the salt water environment as long as there's a source of fresh water nearby.  And it happens that in an area as rainsoaked as this, there is almost always a river, creek, storm drain, or some other source of fresh water nearby.  Coincidentally, river otters really like riprap shorelines, which are a relatively easy and inexpensive way to address shoreline erosion, especially around marinas where riprap is also used to build breakwaters.  So as humans have created more riprap shorelines, the river otters have moved in, and it seems they also enjoy hanging around on docks and the boats moored nearby, where they do completely unreasonable things like poop.  A lot.  All in the same place.  Because for river otters, poop is like Facebook--a quick way for them to get updates from all the other otters in the area.  If your boat is the spot they have chosen for one of these fecal information kiosks, that's no fun and in fact causes great frustration among the owners of such chosen vessels.  I recently saw a news article about a dog who ate poison intended for river otters at a marina (note that the reporter's explanation of why the otters "mark their territory" in this article is completely wrong, but it was Fox News, after all).

It seems that the more successful another species is and the better it is able to adapt to the same environments we have changed to make ourselves comfortable, the less we tend to like it.  Basically, the more they become like us, the more we start to feel like they don't belong close to us.  Which is curious, really.  If you look at how the human population has scattered over the planet and become successful in wildly divergent environments, is it really possible that we might feel threatened by animals who take advantage of the changes we've made?  Why don't we just domesticate them into pets or working animals, like our ancestors did?  Or is this contact with wildlife who aren't backing down triggering an old instinct forgotten as we have largely cut ourselves off from the natural world--the instinct that reminds us we're not at the top of the food chain after all?

Inside Voice

Waking up this morning to the rattling of rain in the downspouts outside the bedroom window makes me feel like it's time to start hibernating.  This feels like the first real rain of autumn, in that it isn't accompanied by gusty winds, and is heavy and constant.  I'm writing this about seven hours after I woke up, and in that time the rain has not slackened in the least.  It is this kind of rain that gives the Salish Sea its reputation as such a wet place, even though it is much wetter on the west side of the Olympics and in fact areas of the Salish Sea are relatively dry due to rain shadow effects.  There is even a native cactus here, believe it or not.

The rain is so thick that I can't see more than about a mile out into the water.  The eared grebes and scoters made an appearance in their usual patch of water earlier this  morning, but mostly it is just dark gray, and my attention turns toward making my nest a cozy retreat from the wet outside.  It isn't especially cold yet; temperatures are in the mid-50s today, and will be in the 40s tonight, perfectly normal for this time of year.  But the humidity is high--94% as of this writing--so even sheltered outdoor space feels clammy.  The creature comforts of my indoor nest become very appealing:  curling up in an armchair with my knitting and a hot mug of cocoa or cup of tea, the slow cooker full of a hearty stew, the sweet smell of baking filling the house.

On the agenda today is rendering down last night's Jack o' Lanterns into pumpkin puree, some of which will be made into these:

WhaleHo's Pumpkin Oat Scones
1 cup unbleached white flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1/4 cup sugar, dried cane juice, or preferred sweetener
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup firm butter cut into small pieces
3/4 cup chopped currants or raisins (optional)
3/4 cup chopped nuts (optional)
1 Tbsp dried orange rind, powdered (or grated rind of 1 small fresh orange)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup pumpkin puree

Preheat the oven to 425 F.  In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients except oats.  Cut in butter.  Add oats, currants or raisins and nuts; blend together.  Mix the milk and pumpkin puree together in a small bowl.  Make a well in the center of the dry mixture and add wet ingredients all at once.  Mix until the dough mostly cleans the sides of the bowl (some oats might be left behind; dough will be quite sticky).  Divide the dough into two equal parts.  Pat each part into a 1/2"-1" thick circle on a lightly greased baking sheet.  Sprinkle with maple sugar or a cinnamon-sugar mixture, and bake for 15-20 minutes or until top is lightly browned.  While still warm, cut each circle into wedges with a sharp knife (it helps to wipe the blade clean between each slice).  Serve warm.  Makes about 16.

Science and Religion

Predictably, it is pouring rain this weekend.  No fun for the trick-or-treaters, and it means I can't get out into the garden to finish putting it to bed for the season.


The Pacific Northwest maritime climate is usually mild enough that winter gardening is worth doing.  (This year the predictions say that may not be the case, but in general, cold-hardy vegetables do well here year-round.)  I, however, follow the old Celtic tradition and stop my harvesting at Samhain, leaving the garden to rest until Yule. Celtic folklore variously says that food left in the fields after Samhain is for the Faeries/fair folk/Old Ones, or that malevolent spirits will spoil the food so there's no point in trying to eat anything harvested after that.  But from a practical standpoint, leaving something behind in the fields to decompose through the winter is pretty good agricultural practice, since the composting vegetation will nourish the soil.   Samhain is a time to listen for messages from our ancestors and those who have gone before.  Sometimes, those messages are embedded in the cultural traditions handed down to us.


Consider a pre-scientific world in which people live or die by the annual harvest and pass along successful growing strategies by oral tradition.  If farmer Angus picks his fields clean before Samhain, his crops might not do so well next season.  Farmer Iain, on the other hand, leaves some of his plants in the ground, maybe even with a little fruit still on them, and plows it all under in the early spring as he prepares to plant.  He gets a bumper crop.  The obvious explanation is that Farmer Iain found favor with the Fairies by leaving them ample food at years' end the previous year, while stingy farmer Angus was cursed for his miserliness!  Now, we can justify this superstitious folk practice with a scientific understanding of how soil amendments improve crop yields.  I would offer that many "superstitious folk practices" have similar origins and purposes.  Just because our ancestors didn't use the scientific method doesn't mean they didn't observe patterns and document them.


The first salmon ceremony widely practiced by northwest indigenous peoples is an elegant example of this.  Salmon is the foundation of diet and culture for most local indigenous groups, and archeological evidence suggests that even in this incredibly dynamic ecosystem, salmon was a consistent, abundant resource for more than 2,000 years.  In this ceremony, the first salmon caught in the season is cooked and shared with all the members of the community, and the remains are then returned to the river. Two critical actions, direct and symbolic: sharing the salmon by everyone having the symbolic taste shows everyone that salmon is a valuable resource to be shared and stewarded, and that sharing it strengthens the community. Further, Western Science has finally figured out the value of returing salmon carcasses to the river--they provide food for the invertebrate species that form the base of the freshwater food web and in turn feed the baby salmon the following year. 


This ceremony embodies the cultural/environmental wisdom that informs cultural practice: Salish people knew that the salmon skin and bones must be treated in a particular way, which involved returning those nutrients to the natural system from which they came. No salmon remains were burned; that was considered taboo. It was an insult to the Salmon People, who would withhold their bounty if so treated. As it  happens, where salmon carcasses are not returned to the stream, the salmon population declines. These ceremonies were more than entreating the powers of nature to be kind and provide well, as superstitious folk practices are often portrayed.  On the contrary,  they actually helped the ecosystem.


Some folks might look at me askance when I tell them I won't harvest the last squash and kale in my garden because I'm leaving it for the Fairies (in the form of myriad decomposers),  or they might consider the First Salmon Ceremony as it is practiced today quaint relic from native cultures.  I think there is probably a lot more value in many of the traditions and practices passed down to us by our ancestors than we might find at first glance.  Something to consider as we listen for their messages this season, in a world where traditional practices are disappearing on a daily basis.  Blessed Samhain.

Bird Party

Blustery weather has made sighting conditions challenging in recent days, but today the rain is light and the waters calm.  Today will be mostly a day of indoor domestic tasks, so it's fortunate that the window over the kitchen sink affords a fantastic view of central Puget Sound, some islands, the Kitsap Peninsula, and, gods willing, the Olympic Mountains. No mountains today, though.

This morning has been good for sightings so far.  No SRKW, who so far are spending most of their time farther north in Admiralty Inlet this fall, but lots of birds, and I was lucky enough to spot a pair of Dall's porpoises (also called "broken back" or "spray" porpoises) cruising south at one point.  Flat water is ideal for spotting porpoises, whose dorsal fins are so small that they are easily hidden by any chop.

I haven't yet determined why, but there is Something about the water just offshore, framed by the kitchen window, that is very attractive to a lot of waterfowl.  That particular spot is currently gathering a small flock of horned grebes and another of surf scoters, beyond which I also spotted a Pacific loon earlier.  There's a bufflehead and a few common mergansers in the mix out there today too.  Rounding out the view as I gazed over the water this morning, a bald eagle flew over the waterfowl, who did not seem appropriately nervous given that the local eagles actively hunt the migratory brants that will be gathering here over the next few months.  Maybe those birds out there today know that the salmon will keep the eagles busy for a while.

Sightings

The weather guessers are predicting that the long clear spell we've been enjoying will be ending this weekend, so the toddler and I took advantage of the nice day with a quick trip to the beach.

Heading out the door we received a barrage of criticism from the male Anna's hummingbird who is aggressively defending his winter territory from others in the neighborhood.  The squeaky-hinge call of these birds is everywhere when you know what you're hearing, even if the birds themselves are so tiny and fast that you don't always see them.  Even knowing our resident Mr. Anna's is perched in his usual lookout at the top of the red elder tree next to the front porch, it can be tough to spot him.  We feed any hummers who make it to our kitchen window feeder throughout the winter and well into spring.  The Anna's have been overwintering here in the Puget Sound basin for at least fifteen years now, although historically their overwintering habitat range didn't extend this far north.  Climate change, or some other factor in the environment?

At the beach we spotted a cormorant fishing just offshore, but still too far out to determine exactly what kind it was. (Someday I'll learn to bring my binoculars with me everywhere I go!)  The toddler is currently obsessed with water in all its forms, and made a staggering bee line across the bands of seaweed covering the cobbles to get to the waves.  Keeping her from a full-body experience with Puget Sound diverted a lot of concentration from my usual fin search, but it was great fun watching her exploring the shoreline with both hands and no apparent concern for the cold water.  The tide wasn't out too far, but far enough to find a purple shore crab under a rock near the water's edge.  The toddler isn't quite old enough yet to be as fascinated with non-mammalian life forms as I am, but she gave it more than a passing glance before I carefully replaced the rock.

Our walk ended with a quick spin through a grassy lawn area in a nearby park, where we spotted an invasive eastern gray squirrel rooting among the fallen sweet chestnuts (also non-native) and checked out the lichens growing on the bark of an oak tree.  I suspect this particular tree is a Garry oak or Oregon White Oak given the timing of its spring leafing and autumn colors, but I'm not sure.  It certainly doesn't follow the same habits as the non-native oaks planted nearby.

Later in the day I learned that the SRKW spent the day in Admiralty Inlet.  Maybe the coming rains will lure them further south after the local coho runs.

Seeing the Forest for the Fins

A clear October day is a gift in the Salish Sea, one that pulls people out of their houses and into the brisk air, the sun and the wind.  The stable high-pressure weather systems that bring these lovely clear days usually also bring with them winds from the north, teasing with a hint of colder days to come as we enjoy the fleeting sun, and reminding those who know of the Duwamish legend of the battling winds.  The days here are short enough now that we savor sunlight, ignoring sunscreen to eke out whatever little vitamin D content we can, feeling the warmth on our faces that feels nurturing in the face of the long winter ahead.

With luck, walking the shores of central Puget Sound will grant other gifts:  here a baby harbor seal, newly weaned and just striking out on her own, is hauled out on the cobbles on the lee side of a point.  There a small flock of harlequin ducks rides on the rippling water.  And in the distance, the supreme gift:  the three pods of southern resident killer whales who call the Salish Sea their home, following the late fall salmon runs through Admiralty Inlet as far south as Point Defiance, entrancing those lucky enough to see their tall fins parting the water, their gleaming black and white bodies leaping clear of the waves and crashing back down again.

They are here to eat salmon, adult salmon who gather in the estuaries and wait for the rains to call them upstream, where the whales will not follow.  The salmon will fight the current, swim through a toxic soup of stormwater runoff from streets, yards, and rooftops, struggle past dams, and search silted streambeds for a patch of gravel where they can lay their eggs before they give up and give their bodies back to the water that bore them.  Their bodies are eaten by creatures of every size and type; microscopic decomposers who in turn feed the insects that the newly-hatched baby salmon will seek for food the following year, and terrestrial vertebrates--raccoons, otters, coyotes, eagles, others--who will drag their bodies out of the streambeds, or pass their post-salmon-eating waste in the surrounding forests, nourishing the soaring fir and cedar trees with nutrients from the deep oceans.

The trees grow tall and strong, shading the rivers, keeping the streams cool and fresh with oxygen, so the salmon eggs live, grow, and hatch.  The baby salmon make their way downstream, eating the insects that fed upon their parents' bodies, down to the eelgrass meadows that sway beneath the waves in the shallow estuaries, down to the graveled shorelines where the sand lance and surf smelt spawn, down to the salt water where they can feed and grow large, down to the Salish Sea where the orcas wait for them.  Every piece of this ecological web fits together neatly, supporting the SRKW population who, unlike other orca populations around the world, prefers salmon as their primary food.  

Of course, over the years the web has been stretched and damaged as humans try to find their place within it, often not aware that we are a critical part of it ourselves.  The magic of the Salish Sea is that it is, still, a functioning ecosystem in many ways.  The system described above does still work, more or less.  In recent years, more human effort has been made to protect and restore some of the habitats critical to the salmon, and therefore to the orcas, and this year the salmon are returning to some local rivers in unprecedented high numbers.

Growing up on the shores of the Salish Sea, watching the seasons change and the simple miracles of seeds growing, migrations happening, the tide answering the moon and the leaves answering the sun, even as I learned the science of these things I learned the magic of them too.  As an environmental educator, a naturalist, a mother, a priestess,  a homemaker, and a person yearning for reason, compassion, justice, and equality to prevail in the world, this magic sustains me, informs me, inspires me.  

The web of life that surrounds me here is also a metaphor for the wider world.  All things are connected; acting on one, we act on all.  The connections might not be obvious, but the changes become obvious the closer we look.  Does it seem like a stretch?  Stick with me, hopefully I'll make it clear here, with honor and humility, reverence and mirth.