Washington – Page 14

Look Who I Found!

I visited Ridgefield a handful of times over the Christmas break and was saddened to see that my favorite spot to watch bitterns, a little strip along Rest Lake, had been mowed close to the ground. There is plenty of cover in other areas near this strip so the bitterns still have ample places to hunt, they just won’t be visible from the road. So I was ecstatic on my last visit, when I had stopped to watch some bufflehead in an earlier section of Rest Lake, to notice this bittern hunting in the tall grasses. I only had a little window through the grasses to see it but it was a real delight to watch one of my favorite birds again.

Balancing Act

A peregrine falcon throws up its wings to maintain its balance atop a dead tree as the wind blows across Canvasback Lake.

Wet From Above, Wet From Below

A male northern pintail swims across Rest Lake on a rainy winter afternoon, his back covered in tiny water droplets from the gentle rain.

Yellow Shoes

Cathlapotle Plankhouse

A full view of the Cathlapotle plankhouse as the fog clears on a cold winter morning.

Cathlapotle

This entrance artwork sits above the oval entrance to the Cathlapotle plankhouse at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. The art was designed by Tony Johnson from the Chinook Nation and executed by Adam McIsaac.

An Explosion of Green

I was hiking the Hoh River Trail in the rain when I walked past an open area and was struck by this explosion of green, a young moss-draped tree arching in all directions. There were so many different shapes and sizes and textures of green, clover and maples and moss and ferns and the large trees beyond, all different ways life has adapted to live in this damp and verdant forest. If I could hike in only one type of terrain, it would be the forest, nothing restores my spirit like a walk in the woods.

Alas, Poor Yorick!

Shakespeare on the beach

Mobile Homes

Kalaloch’s Beach 4 in Olympic National Park may not be cleverly named but it has wonderful patterns created long ago by piddocks digging into the sandstone. The ground underneath them was moving slowly, slowly even for shellfish, and now sits just above sea level, out of the reach of even the highest tides. Everything is relative, you’ll find much more ancient signs of ocean life high up in the mountains, as the older rock is pushed upwards by the shifting land below.

Piddocks are still around today, still digging into sandstone, you can read more about them at the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife’s piddock information page.

Poet Tree (Rain Forest Edition)

I was first introduced to Langston Hughes by a poem posted on a neighborhood tree less than a year prior so I was delighted when I visited the Hoh Rain Forest to see they had placed signs with poetry along the Hall of Mosses Trail, with one of those poems being Langston Hughes’ “Snail”, placed before this tree that arched from one side of the trail to the other. As you can see from the puddle in the trail I finally got my rain in the Hoh Rain Forest after years of trying, and you can see from the picture below that the sun came out at times too.

Little snail,
Dreaming you go,
Weather and rose
Is all you know.

Weather and rose
Is all you see,
Drinking
The dewdrop’s
Mystery
“Snail” by Langston Hughes