The rain took a pause today in its headlong ambition to make up for our too-dry summer, so it was a chance to get outside for a leaf walk before they are all turned to a soggy mash-up. The colors are glorious this year! As if to make up for all the human strife and anguish, with nothing more than a quiet sigh the trees reveal their hidden wealth: ruby red, gold, brilliant orange, some veined with green for contrast, some so red they are almost purple. When the sun shines through the branches the trees light up like bonfires. I can’t get enough of looking at the display, the wonder of it all.

I try to walk slowly and let my eyes search out the ground strewn with color as the breeze tosses leaves here and there. And then look up into branches still crowded with leaves waiting for their release at just the right moment. Not yet, I’m grateful, wanting the show to go on and on. But that’s the thing, it’s not for me; I’m just the lucky observer. The trees have their own agenda; my part is to notice, to pay attention. To let their lives lift mine with joy.

And I’m not the only one taking this moment: the birds are everywhere busy building up their winter reserves, marauding my birdfeeder and then secreting seeds, or devouring the suet and packing on extra weight for leaner times. The flickers flash their orange feathers that rival the leaves as they dash in and out. Mostly the smaller birds take turns: chickadees, juncos, golden-crowned sparrows, nuthatches, but the noisy starlings boldly shoulder in whenever they see an opening. These are my “everyday” birds, but I had a real moment of awe a few days ago. This startling creature landed on my fence railing and calmly looked about. He then popped down to the ground and waded among the ferns. He stayed for a while, like a being from another world. That was a surprise, a jolt of awe! A touch of the wild!

My thesaurus offers these synonyms for awe: reverence and respect. The hawk, without having to say or do anything but show up, demanded both. The darker side of awe–fear and dread–was also present, at least for any of the smaller birds who were instantly scarce and silent. We felt its power too. A more complex state of awe. And then today, as I was soaking up the tree-glory, two eagles circled overhead, screaming and wheeling before disappearing across the open dome of the sky. “We are here! We are the wild!” Awesome, indeed.

I am a member of a study group that doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects: we’ve recently studied the eye-opening work of Matthew Desmond, Poverty By America, and the complicated issues of how human infrastructure literally crushes the lives of other creatures through the wide-ranging inquiries of Ben Goldfarb in his new book, Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet. You get the idea. These are tough reading and beg for active responses. But a new topic proposed for exploration really hit me: Where do you find awe in your life? And what is your “awe quotient?” (There is a quiz to find out your score! Search for Greater Good Magazine and you’ll find their Awe Quiz!)

Hmmm. I knew what the “right answers” were but I realized I hadn’t been doing much practicing of the practice lately….yes, awe is a practice, just like meditation or athletic training. I felt—well—flabby!  So I resolved to bring back awe into my life with a more concerted and conscious effort.

I went outside. I found one of my favorite really big trees, actually two trees that grow together, entwined for life. I breathed in their essence, imagining their roots even as I gazed up and up into their branches. I felt their rough reddish bark. Ahh.

Nearby, I noticed a moss-covered rock, a whole world—miniature in comparison—but vigorous, various, and brilliant from the recent rains. Worthy of awe. And flourishing near the rock was a thicket of lichen: twiggy, layered, intricate. Two life forms I wish I knew more about. Part of awe is wonder, and wondering-about. Moss and lichen call to us, full of mystery: how do they live? Where do they belong in the scheme of life? I felt a surge of awe just looking into the tangle of greens and grays.

As I wandered home, all around me were trees, their leaf colors deepening into Fall: yellows and reds, orange and a golden kind of brown. I looked for ones of every hue and shape…and found….Mushrooms! Everywhere. Some right in the open, some tucked here and there. All different, so many kinds! It became a treasure hunt! These were my finds, all unnamed by me, but each itself, no matter. Awesome, indeed!

My Audubon calendar marked yesterday as World Migratory Bird Day, a very important topic but one that felt a bit late to the party. Judging by all the activity in my garden the birds have long settled in for the season. I missed my chance to check out a wonderful sounding website BirdCast that has found a way to track and map birds on their seasonal treks, correlating their movements with weather patterns and distinguishing their small bodies from other moving objects…like bats! I hope to revisit this site come autumn to marvel the images of the mass of moving specks crossing my local skies. One thing I didn’t know was that many birds fly by night, making migration even more of a mystery.

Instead, we celebrated Glacial Prairie Day, a much beloved and missed outing since the Covid closures, but now back for its one-day-a-year special opening of a conserved prairie near Olympia. This is a very special and rare place. These prairies developed thousands of years ago as the glaciers from the last ice age melted away leaving a gravelly outwash along the receding edges that favored grasses and a profusion of wildflowers over dense forest growth. The indigenous people, who settled the area as the ice released it, kept the prairies open using controlled burning which allowed their particular food plants to flourish. As Euro-American settlers later proliferated, this practice was lost as much of the wild prairie lands were ploughed, built-over, or allowed to revert to trees. Only small remnants remain like small blue seas in spring, rippling with camas plants in the breeze.

But the alarm has been heard and some of these places have been saved, restored, and cared for using both modern methods and ancient burning tactics. The Heritage Glacial Prairie, under the auspices of the Thurston County Center for Natural Lands Management, is one of these conserved areas. Native plant enthusiasts, Audubon members, and myriad others flocked to the re-opening, rejoicing in the blue sky and blue fields of camas flowers. The 1,100 acres with carefully laid out trails had room enough to allow a meandering pace, spacious views across expanses of fields and rolling hummocky hills stretching up to the higher Black Hills, punctuated with single trees or small stands of Douglas fir, and lined by mossy woods following the course of a river on one side.

The main show was the flowers. The cloudless sky—also rare—was the perfect complement to the pastel colors that dotted the path-side verge. We alternated between ohs-and-ahs as we spotted the many specimens on the ground and then searched the sky for birds. Purple martins cut arcs above us or fluttered to their perches in clusters of bird boxes high on poles, singing and burbling as the spirit moved them. All the while the breezes refreshed us; the very air felt alive and welcoming. We were in a daze of happy discovery: grateful for the day, grateful for all who worked to save this place and open it for our annual delight. We felt as restored as the prairie that buzzed with huge bees, tiny blue butterflies, flashing birds and waving camas blooms.

Yes, I went outside today and breathed in the blossoming scent of flowering trees gracing so many streets and gardens in my neighborhood. Luckily the incessant rain was taking a break and my walk was not a scurry while clutching an umbrella. We needed this reprieve!

But serious couch time is also the perfect opportunity to get in some reading time. So in a build-up to Earth Day, I’ve been binging on three different books that give the history that culminated in Earth Day in different ways. They all tell me something, from different angles, about the years Margaret was most politically active with her conservation work in Olympia and beyond. As we say here, all roads seem to lead to Margaret even if she didn’t make it onto these pages.

I began with an excellent book by Robert Musil, President of the Rachel Carson Council, titled “Rachel Carson and Her Sisters: Extraordinary Women Who Have Shaped America’s Environment.” He documents many of the women who played important roles in creating some of the unsung work of the environmental movement that gave Rachel Carson the platform for her groundbreaking work, “Silent Spring.” She did not appear out of nowhere, unsupported, but lived and worked in an expansive network comprised of many women and some men. It’s a fascinating story of people you are glad to meet and give credit.

In a post on the Rachel Carson Council website, Musil also mentions another author we should all read who digs even deeper into the origins of the modern environmental movement for more insights into early activists who are not as well known as Carson: Chad Montrie who wrote his book “The Myth of Silent Spring: Rethinking the Origins of American Environmentalism.”  Therein, we learn even more about many groups who were addressing pollution, health impacts of living and working in contaminated and smog-ridden areas, and desecration of cherished places. His work deepens our knowledge of more often-forgotten people and groups who fought back against the wave of environmental destruction that surged as industry and urbanization transformed our world.

[See: https://rachelcarsoncouncil.org for more on the work of this Council, an excellent resource for our times]

The biggest door-stopper of all is historian Douglas Brinkley’s third book in his series on the work of American presidents and their administrations to address environmental issues of their days. “Silent Spring Revolution” follows his first book on the role of President Theodore Roosevelt, “The Wilderness Warrior,” and second, “Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America.” This newest book tells the history of what he calls the Long Sixties, 1960—1973, detailing the work of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. I’m just beginning to delve into this book but it promises to be as fulsome as his first two studies.

There are so many great sources for environmental history that will inform and inspire readers. We all stand on various shoulders; it’s helpful to understand the variety of points of view and analysis that add to such a complex bundle of issues. Any action we take—from writing a letter to decision-makers, to protesting lack of action on climate change, or planting an organic garden for pollinators and birds to find refuge—is strengthened when we know we are part of a movement with roots—and branches. Standing with Rachel Carson and all who stood with her is a fitting celebration of this most important day of standing with the Earth we all love and depend upon.

That should keep us all warm on this rainy April 17^th, Margaret’s birthday. I sometimes wonder what she would think of life today if she were granted the chance to take a look. So much would be baffling…but some important things don’t change beyond recognition or disappear altogether.

A friend reports she saw four dippers hunting insects in the rushing waters of the Deschutes River by Tumwater Falls. The eagles nesting in a tall Douglas-fir just steps from Margaret’s old house, wheeling and calling over the neighborhood, and the Barred Owl I hear hooting not far from my house, are voices from the nearby wild that remind us we share this world. Margaret would have celebrated that closeness.

Recently, a friend and I went downtown here to witness Great Blue Herons nesting in a small grove of trees just steps from our busy Farmer’s Market. At first we could only see the large masses of sticks high up in the trees that they called home. But then we spied some movement half hidden deep in the bushy branches and as we peered and waited, first one and then another heron winged into view to join the party. We marveled at the sight of such large birds angling in flight to land in the dense growth. Somehow they folded those enormous wings and tucked their long beaks into a shape that could balance and fit what might accommodate a sparrow or pigeon! They squawked and fluttered, quarreled a bit and groomed, right at home. We were duly amazed.

I imagine Margaret as delighted by such sights and sounds. She would have loved the smaller birds, too. The chickadees, nuthatches, Bush-tits, and juncos that I watch come to my feeder outside my kitchen window, and the Towhees, hummingbirds, robins and jays that claim my garden as their own territories. There is a golden-crowned sparrow poking about under the bushes and a wild-eyed flicker busily contorting itself to stab at the suet feeder that would have pleased her.

Margaret would have noted the honey-suckle leaves unfolding, and the flowers beginning their spring parade. Her trained eye would have found my pride-and-joy tribute to her: the two bright white flowers of my trilliums, planted in her memory that bloom in time for her birthday. The ones I think of as her signature plants, still cherished, returning faithfully in the woods, and with luck, in my garden. A touch of the wild, a touch of beauty. Happy Birthday, Margaret!

Other than the flickers drumming on my roof and sending out their rapid-fire high-pitched calls in search of a mate, Spring comes quietly. Waking up to Spring rain on the roof is not so very different from Winter rain. A solid day of sunshine is cheerier with birdsong, but the towhee trilling from atop my neighbor’s tree still sounds like he’s just warming up and hasn’t yet reached his finest pitch. If there is a dawn chorus it is very tentative as yet. It wasn’t so long ago when we woke to snow blanketing the early sprouts and putting early buds on pause. But every day there is more light, signaling: Awake! Awake!

Today, at last, is the official First Day of Spring, the Equinox! My daffodils are opening, crocus buds are pushing through old brown leaves with shots of purple and lemon-yellow. An early rhododendron has two small blooms, and my Indian plum—admittedly one of the earliest to bud—is showing off its new finery.

Hellebores are early bloomers too; their brilliant colors are a spring tonic, and not just for me. On a recent sunny day there was a small swarm of bees intent on visiting every flower. I was surprised to see so many active bees on what was still a not-very-warm day and glad that I had something on offer for them.

The soft rain ignites the moss; the bright greens and feathery growths are a patchwork quilt of shades and textures that delight my eyes. The soft carpet underfoot and the wispy tendrils cloaking my old maple tree are vibrant and nourishing after the browns and grays of Winter.

Moss is silent in its spread, but other creatures announce themselves with wild calls and flapping wings. We’ve been riveted to watch a pair of eagles claim a tall Douglas-fir that towers over a neighbor’s house. We suspect there is a nest, possibly in the tree just under the tip-top branches of the perching giant but it’s impossible to see into the tangle of growth. If the pair maintain their occupation we’ll have a front row seat all summer as they come and go. What a great opening drama for the new season!

Happy Spring! So much to see!

My Audubon calendar tells me it is World Wetlands Day, and also Groundhog Day. Other calendars note that either last night or the night before (timing seems mystically elastic) that the Earth moved into Imbolc, the day halfway between Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox celebrated in the Celtic world. It’s not too late to look to Saint Brigit to bless your home and especially your cows, if you have any, and keep everyone safe and fed through these months until early crops and fresh grazing can restore all living creatures to robust health. Displaying the color yellow, with, say, a bright ribbon or scarf by a window or hanging from your door is said to draw the saint to your home; you can then wear the blessed item for your protection. As for celebration, a dish of steamed potatoes liberally made golden with butter will do nicely. What could be more Irish?

But back to wetlands.  If we are still feeling our Irish, we can celebrate peat bogs as essential places needing protection and our attention for their role in sequestering carbon. They aren’t as well known here as in Ireland and Scotland but we do have some areas here where sphagnum moss thrives and other specialty plants and their insect partners. We have been slow to appreciate peat’s abilities if we just leave it where it is to mitigate climate change and regulate water flow. I still see bales of it for sale in garden stores and wonder how to persuade others not to buy it or stores to carry it. I used to be that gardener myself until I learned about the harm I was causing.

Again, back to wetlands, to recognizing and celebrating the unsung heroes of the natural world. The oft-heard exclamation to “drain the swamp!” is just plain ignorant and dangerous. Swamps, bogs, seeps, sloughs…wetlands are vitally important to the health and well being of the Earth and all its systems and beings. So today in homage I plan to visit one of my favorite local seasonal ponds, now saved as a park and cared for by the nearby community.

I hope to hear frogs. And birds. And admire the bright green pelts of mosses growing on the trees. I hope to see—although it may be too early yet—the fresh emerald green shoots of leaves beginning to unfurl and the tips of shining yellow flowers of skunk cabbage emerging from its hiding places, one of the earliest harbingers of spring. I’ll listen for last year’s bulrushes, brown and rasping in the breeze, waving above the water and providing a reedy forest of safe cover for nesting birds, amphibians and whatever else makes a home there. There might be a few ducks poking about. Sometimes there are owls in the trees rising above the low place where water gathers. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a heron there but who knows!

I know I will feel renewed. I will feel the turning of the Earth toward a new season of life. I will be grateful for the reminder.

The urgent last lines from Mary Oliver’s iconic poem “Wild Geese” swell into my mind at the sight of Canada geese high overhead, soaring more like mythic birds than ones you might see sauntering at lakeside in a park:

…the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

A visceral response, unbidden, punched through with memory, longing, wild yearning. My “place in the family of things” scudded and opened to one with a wider sky, a landscape with deeper browns, more subtle greens—a thousand shades. The air was both more ancient and newer as my breathe tasted the wind. In a moment the geese, once penciled across the sky, were gone, who knows where. But the lift in my spirit remained. Wildness can still break into the ordinary day and transform our lives if we let it.

Yesterday a quick message from my neighbor was like that call, like the poem, like the world offering itself to my imagination: “Cooper’s Hawk. Up in our big Japanese maple again.” Whatever I had been doing was abandoned; I grabbed my phone, a coat and jammed on my shoes and slipped out to see what I might see.

The tree is truly one of the wonders of our street, multi-limbed, huge, a presence to behold. It took awhile to find even such a large bird among the branches, but it helped me sight it by shifting from one spot to another. It faced outward, scanning the area but seeming to ignore me. I was neither prey nor an enemy coming to mob it. (So much for my place in the family of things!) I was able to walk about and try to see it from different angles, but mostly I just stood and gazed upwards, emptying my mind to feel the wildness emanating from that branch.

The hawk was silent and very still and yet its presence was marked; nothing else moved or sang or fluttered while it perched there. Finally, I retreated to allow it to “be.” A different kind of wildness, kin to the geese but certainly from a very different place. As I left to go back into the house I saw the intense flash of iridescence of my resident hummingbird. He had his eye fixed on me from a small branch, steely and boundary-obsessive. I checked the feeders to make sure he had his rations and went inside so he too to get on with his day. Another wild heart!

Birds: from geese to hawks to a tiny but fierce hummer, eagles soaring overhead, the juncos, chickadees and nuthatches, finches and white-crowned sparrows coming to my feeder, the shy flicker also fitting itself to the feeder, crows a deep black winging through the neighborhood on business of their own…all reminders of the wild, just outside.

In 2016, E. O. Wilson published his searing analysis on what we must do to save the Earth—the only planet we have; it’s title is his thesis: Half-Earth. He maintained that we need to set aside half of the Earth for all the forms of nonhuman life to thrive, that is, to pull back from our rush to grab every bit for ourselves in our forgetfulness that we are not separate from what we call the natural world, but part of it. That proposition is at the center of what is being argued and fought over in Montreal now as delegates of “COP15” thrash out new goals and guidelines for saving biodiversity. The UN conference attendees, while acknowledging that not a single goal from their last conference was achieved, are trying once again to grapple with the complexities of the crisis that includes the impacts of climate change but so much more. The new slogan 30X30 inches towards Wilson’s recommendation, a 30% set-aside by 2030 but the details are hazy. Thirty percent of the best land or more marginal bits? Paths for migration of both animals and plants or dead ends that don’t take seasonal needs and climate impacts into account? What about water: the lack of it and its floods and droughts? What about the oceans where lines drawn on maps mean even less?

Those are the big questions. It comes down to land, actual places. Locally, here where I live, what would that look like? Recently I’ve had some appointments up on the bluff above Percival Creek, one of the tributaries that joins the Deschutes River that enters the Sound upon which shores this city makes its home. The creek is difficult to trace; it’s path is closed off from public access at the point where I could see it but down below the hill it spreads out into a manmade lake that probably—this I wish I knew—enters the impounded river and lake that erased the natural estuary in the 1950s, by a culvert. This arrangement has generated a great deal of controversy and, finally after decades of discussion, may—in my lifetime—be restored as a naturally flowing river system. The effort to recreate an estuary has been nothing short of gargantuan. (What does that say about what it will take to set aside 30% of the Earth’s surface for nature?)

That said, it is still, now, as it is, a tranquil place of beauty and life. I know the water quality is not as healthy as it could and should be, but for the moment, gazing at it in the wintery light, listening to the ducks as they dabbled and gabbled amongst themselves, it felt like a place of hope. The trees marched down to the water’s edge; the grasses tangled and provided cover for wading birds. The leaf litter was deep and soft. I remembered that once I saw a kingfisher flashing his blue as he hunted and reigned over his domain there. I resolved to visit this place more often and mark the seasons here.

This place is at the center of a city. Somehow we have managed to set it aside. Much more needs to happen to restore its health but for now, at least it is there. Developers eye its banks as prime real estate for humans. Everywhere, humans want more and more, a nibble here, a grab there, it adds up. We have more than our 70%; we need to give some back. Sounds like a New Year’s resolution!

To learn more about the Montreal conference, see: https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/12/1131422

I had been sweeping my porch and reached for the doorknob to go back inside when I felt it…a squishy, succumbing “something” in my hand. It triggered an instant recoil of dismay and disgust. I just knew it was a stink bug. I had been scooping them up in an effort to keep them from setting up winter quarters inside my house. I didn’t necessarily want to kill them but I definitely wanted them “away.” I had read how they may infest your home in a nightmarish scenario of crawling insects blanketing walls and getting into everything. More “nature” than this nature lover can stand.

Stink bugs have become a season, a brief but harried one as large numbers suddenly congregate and frantically search for safe havens in warmer quarters to survive the coming cold. I had my first meet-up with them in a friend’s garden. They were everywhere, clinging to every surface, zooming around her patio area; one even plopped into my water glass. It was an insect storm. And when I went home I saw that they had arrived there, too. Some hidden signal had been broadcast that set off the tumult, unrecognized by us but apparently unmistakable to the bugs.

I was beginning my education about the unsavory side of stink bugs but realized I knew practically nothing about them other than they can create a disaster in your closets. Their full name is “brown marmorated stink bug” which begins to describe this mottled brown shield-shaped insect, roughly the size of a largish house fly. Their most noted characteristic is their smell, as the name suggests.  They have special glands in the underside of the thorax that can secrete a noxious defensive chemical. Some wasps and birds will eat them but the real problem is that they are an introduced bug, native to Asia—China, Japan and Korea—and that they are not yet a recognized snack for many predators, not to mention their off-putting smell. (Be careful vacuuming them up as the smell may coat your machine for a long time!)

Unfortunately, they haven’t been slow to find food sources in their adopted land. First discovered here in 1998, they have caused millions of dollars in damage to orchard fruits and garden produce. They feed themselves by means of a probing proboscis which they insert in fruit or other delectables and suck out the juices, leaving a “dimpled surface” and possibly also introducing pathogens in the injured fruit: injury and insult! More research is needed, as they say. In this globalized world, they are a very real danger to crops as they spread.

Maybe more birds will develop a taste for these exotics….a late-Fall boost of protein before migration? I’m hoping for a silver lining somehow and not a new blast of chemical warfare. My own positive outcome is realizing how little I know about insects and yet how many and varied they are. I found a great field guide at the library, “Insects of the Pacific Northwest” by Peter and Jane Haggard. It has clear close-up photos of every kind with brief but cogent descriptions alongside, and essays discussing classification issues, life stages, and other information. I discovered that we have our own native stink bugs! This is a much more complex situation. But when I need a break from them, I can turn to the pages of butterflies and other stunningly beautiful creatures. E.O. Wilson was fascinated by this small world for good reason!

Can we call it a rounding error? A calendar mishap? Information overload? I discovered today by mischance that yesterday, October 24, was the International Day of Climate Action. And I was missing in action, chagrined to be part of the problem having driven my old Volvo—a car that predates the EV revolution—up the freeway for a long-sought new doctor’s appointment. There, being a new patient, I filled out a lot of forms, one of them being a questionnaire on my possible level of depression and anxiety.

The questions attempt from different directions to discover, I guess, if the patient has a “problem” that might contribute to their potential health issues. The last one came right out and asked whether I was afraid “bad things might happen.” Why yes! The box to tick had no room for the voluminous answer I wanted to insert, that I spent a lot—a lot—of my time reading about climate change, its impact now and coming in the near future, its politics both local and global, and how “we” are tackling—or not—its effects, its trajectory, and our fate. I wanted to explain that having young grandchildren had profoundly added to my sense of anxiety. And yes, probably all that anxiety did have bodily implications, but somehow framing the issue as a medical one…well, it felt privatized rather than something we are all involved in together. It’s not “all in my head” but very much “out there,” in the public realm.

So, a day late, I wish I had participated in the Day and done something “out there” in some way. But climate change is an every-day opportunity; it’s never too late and today presents itself as a new day. I begin here.

The website that popped up with the information about the Day called it “a worldwide movement initiated by young people concerned about climate change and global injustice” and asked everyone to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve our adaptability—to buy time and save as much as possible, and to create and promote policies to address this complex issue. The photo illustrating the day of action was crowded with young people holding earnest signs like “Science Not Silence” and “It’s Our Future.” Greta Thunberg is acknowledged by a quote. I wholeheartedly agree. But then my eye was drawn further down the page, to other Days listed there.

October 24 is also the International Day of Libraries. Gibbons. Bologna—yes, the bland sandwich “meat” you might remember from your lunchbox days. Disarmament Week. Global Media and Information Literacy Week. And Diwali, the five-day Hindu festival of lights that celebrates good-over-evil, light-over-darkness and new beginnings. Leaving aside bologna—sometimes called mystery meat and a mystery as how it has its own Day—the other Days make great sense as components of addressing climate change. Libraries are the fount of the information eco-system and a good place to begin to sort out both how to inform ourselves and then reach out using media and also how to assess the worth of media messages: some helpful and galvanizing and some toxic and defeatist. If we can begin with an understanding of our true situation we will save a lot of time. If we can put resources into constructive solutions and learn to talk and listen to each other, possibly reducing the levels of fear and division, perhaps thereby we can put down our weapons too? Gibbons, our boreal cousins, we’ll need them too. And a holiday for “new beginnings” sounds hopeful, indeed. 

Indeed, climate change is so big—it’s biggest problem for solving it is its complexity—that it leaves out very little. Practically anything we can choose to work on will be a part of the solution. Personally, I’m very concerned about trees. Plenty to address there. For you it may be birds, or drought mitigation, or food sources. Or gibbons. And every day is a Climate Action day, that’s how dire and gigantic this problem is. We can channel our anxiety and join with others to feel less overwhelmed and lonely, much better for our own health and much more effective. So even though it is October 25, it is still Climate Action Day, as I see it!

As September trails into October we are still waiting for Fall to really kick in. The leaves we long to crunch on crisp morning walks remain green and high on the trees. The few defeated-looking ones, brown and tired, resting on brown and tired dormant grass are there more because of drought than a turning season. And yet…and yet it is Fall, officially, as measured by the tilt of the Earth and the amount of daylight—however bright and warm—steadily diminishing. The sun rose a minute after seven this morning and will slip away just before seven this evening, cutting evening walks short. The school term has begun; ‘tis the season of new notebooks and colored pencil sets, resolutions and new ventures!

In keeping with the celebration of the equinox on the 22^nd, my friend had signed us up for a new project: we are going to restore a plot of land for our local Capitol Land Trust on one of their properties. The trust has mapped out with deer fencing, circles of land like a giant puzzle that need help. Volunteers can sign up for one, or ten, or whatever circles their group can manage, to remove non native species and free newly planted trees from smothering grass and weed growth. We will begin with one and see how we do.

It was a fair-distance walk from the car park to the area of circles, through mixed woods, across a dry stream that will soon enough gurgle back to life, and down toward the shore of Henderson Inlet, but it was full of interest as we felt the peace and beauty of the land sink into our minds. Mature trees: oaks, Doug-firs, an orchard of apples, and others dotted the fields. Above, the sky cleared and became flecked with bits of high clouds, allowing plenty of clear blue shine and warmth to bathe our progress. It was a quiet day, very still with a feeling of waiting, broken only by occasional bird sound: a rising squawk from a heron, low chittering now and then from unseen smaller birds; squirrels—probably—scolding from deep cover.

And then we were there! We found our number and the gate for our piece of the puzzle and entered to take stock. We had several new trees scattered within our area: what we were able to identify as shore pines, Oregon ash, Sitka spruce, some willow and a few bald-hip roses. And grass, long and tangled, undulating and billowing across the field, overwhelming the young trees. The instructions were to pull the grass back and clear a circle of about three feet free around each tree. Using a mix of tools provided, we set to work, but also took time to explore and examine our plot and consult our plant “bible,” Pojar and MacKinnon, to see what we had there. And to gaze at the view, breathe the soft air, and dream a little.

We found ourselves inspired to reclaim this place, restore it to health, and restore ourselves in the process. To connect, to be a part with the land. To make a difference, even if a small one. We felt gifted with the opportunity. Let the new season begin!

Time in mid-August seems to stand still. The dawn chorus has sung itself out as nesting territorial battles fade and the new generation fledge and leave home. The dry heat of late summer crisps the grass and seems to exhaust the trees. Everything looks brown and a little shriveled. A long quiet pause has settled over my garden.

Even the normally raucous jays are subdued. I caught a glimpse of one the other day and I could see why he was laying low! He looked like he had been pulled backwards out of a tight sock. I wasn’t quick enough to capture a photo of his bedraggled appearance but I knew what his trouble was: he was well into his molting process. He had bald spots and some places where new feathers were emerging while in some other parts it looked to be the last days for the old ragged ones still clinging. He looked very disheveled and quite vulnerable.

It’s that time of year. After the bustle of raising the young, the next agenda for birds is to refresh their feathers in preparation for the long flights of migration or for growing an undercoat, so to speak, of downy feathers for winter warmth. Some lose all their flight feathers at once and hide as best they can while new ones come in. A friend asked where all the robins had gone. They may be around but not in sight as they prepare for the next season. Flocking—the gathering on telephone wires and noisy chattering that build up to migration “take-off”—has not yet begun; watch for it.

The hot dry weather has driven worms far underground and wizened the berry crop in places but hey, this is the northwest…rain has got to come soon! Enjoy the fulfillment of summer, the stillness and peace of the moment. Put out some shallow dishes of fresh water for the birds and see who comes for a drink and a cooling dip.

Last week I wrote about Morel mushrooms, location discovered “undisclosed.” But right nearby, short steps from my house, I found these clustered around my neighbor’s tree. Not Morels, that I can tell at a glance; but as Margaret is no longer here to assure me whether edible or not, I simply admired them and left them to their fruiting task. It was enough to see this bursting evidence of what lies under the surface soil.

We’ve also been delighted to see, sporadically, our native squirrel, the Douglas squirrel, named for famed Scottish naturalist David Douglas who wandered this part of the world in the late 1820-early 1830s collecting species. This little fellow is a darker, almost chocolate brown, with large expressive eyes and a cheeky disposition. He is drawn to the seeds scattered from the birdfeeder and the trail I now leave for him along the fence railing. It feels like an exalted lucky day when I catch a glimpse of him.

From our resident eagles wheeling above the neighborhood, to the wild rabbit we saw careening down the street—and even the deer damage evident in our garden—we feel beyond lucky to be living so close to wild nature right in the middle of town.

But on a recent trip we experienced a thrill new to us, awe-inspiring and way-out-of-the-ordinary. We were on a placid-seeming ferry ride heading to Vashon for the annual garden tour when a shout went up from a fellow passenger to look! Look over there!

The day was overcast with mixed clouds and some blue-sky breaks but not too misty to see a dark shape across the waters from our boat: there, not there, but there again. A cloud of exhaled moist air! A fin languidly floated into the air. A large gray shape surfacing and oh my, curving high out of the water in a leap that brought gasps of excitement from the small crowds gathered on the deck. We were all enthralled! It was a lone, smallish—small for a whale, that is—humpback whale!

Everyone stayed to watch as it rose, rolled, and heaved out of the water, again and again. Probably unaware of the admiring group—we were not at all close by—but just enjoying the slap of water and the feel of the cool air. Finally we were reaching the dock and had to get in our cars. We had a wonderful day looking at amazing gardens, but sighting the whale was the unexpected delight of the day. Another very wild delight!

Humpbacks are making a comeback in Puget Sound waters. They had been severely decimated by unrestrained whaling for years as they migrated north to Alaska from Hawaii, Mexico and Central America in the Spring, and then retraced their routes in the Fall. But in the last few decades they are recovering their numbers; there is hope for them. Some of this population makes a detour into Salish Sea waters to feed and loiter where we can catch glimpses of them. They come to find krill and forage fish like herring and sand lances, a kind of pit stop to help them on their journeys. And while here they remind us to keep a watch out. You just never know what might be outside!

Today happens to be World Oceans Day, as designated by the United Nations to raise awareness of the threats faced by these crucial waters and actions we can take to address them. The theme this year is “Revitalization: Collective Action for the Ocean” Begin with awe, and then find some way to get involved. The Humpbacks are recovering but there is so much still to do.

Mushrooms are on my mind. I spent a chunk of time yesterday searching online to discover a possible date for the founding of the New York Mycological Society…so far, unsuccessfully, but I’m still hoping for an aha! moment. Soon after moving to New York City in 1927, Margaret joined the Boston Mycological Society and some time after that met Dr. William Sturgis Thomas who was an avid mushroom hunter and promoter, leading forays and spreading enthusiasm through his field guide, The Field Book of Common Mushrooms, with a catchy subtitle “with a key to their identification and directions for cooking those that are edible,” published in 1928. Did Margaret get encouragement for her own first book on mushrooms, Mushrooms of Field and Wood, published the following year, from her new friend and colleague? And was the emphasis on “edibles” a seed planted in her mind for her second book, published many years later, The Savory Wild Mushroom? (You can easily see how investigating Margaret’s complicated story leads down myriad paths of enquiry!)

At any rate, Dr. Thomas launched a New York group and recruited Margaret to serve as its secretary. They seemed to have worked together until Thomas’ death in 1941. Meanwhile, they had a lot of fun gathering with other converts exploring the countryside beyond the City for their favorite gourmet treat.

Margaret wrote about mushrooms and was active in other mushroom societies for the rest of her life. She was a nationally recognized expert and a local celebrity who welcomed knocks on her door from neighbors wanting her okay-to-eat blessing of various specimens collected from field and wood. Annually, she organized mushroom displays in downtown store windows and at garden shows to help locals build confidence in their hunting and cooking adventures. She spread the word in accessible pamphlets called Nature Notes and in newspaper columns. Olympia became a center for mushroom literacy, a legacy that continues.

In this Note, she carefully describes the Morel, its distinctive shape, colors, and where to look for it and when—Spring, not Fall—and its preference for “old neglected apple orchards where apples have fallen and decayed on the ground. Or on burnt-over land.” She also calls our attention to another mushroom, the Brain mushroom, that has a close resemblance to the Morel but which is poisonous to some people. Interestingly, she uses as references her own mushroom book and the one written by Dr. Thomas.  It’s a nice remembrance three years after his passing.

Mushroom lovers rarely—perhaps never—share their secret places where they find their treasures. But they continue the generous impulses established by early mushroom advocates to share those treasures! We were the lucky recipients yesterday when there was a happy knock on our door and an offer of a handful of Morels to spruce up our dinner from our neighbor, which transformed an ordinary evening into a mini feast!

Margaret’s recipe in The Savory Wild Mushroom for Sautéed Morels is very simple: After careful washing and a brief parboil, she advises cutting them in half, dusting with flour and frying in butter, with a little salt. We skipped the parboil step, but added thinly sliced shallot and a little olive oil with the butter. You could hardly go wrong keeping everything to a minimum to let the woodsy Morel taste shine. We clinked our wine glasses to Margaret, to wonderful neighbors, and to the bounty of nature.

On a more serious note, if you want to learn more about the ecology and status of mushrooms today, here is a source for learning more and for actions being taken to preserve this critical life form so essential to the health of the Earth. Margaret would have been so interested in these new discoveries!

“Carpets of lush seedlings swished around our ankles. Columns of taller hemlocks marched down fallen logs, their leaders lusty in their search for the sun, roots entwined with the wood….I stopped and looked back. Silhouetted in the setting sun, rising above the others, rooted in the volcanic rocks that nourished her, was the Mother Tree of this wide swath of seedlings.”

The words—and all the work that stands behind Suzanne Simard’s insights—that confirm the intelligence and connectedness of forest communities strike deep chords within me. That trees communicate, share and care for each other in ways we are only beginning to understand is one of the most profound and positive discoveries we have had of late. It gives me such hope that there is an order, a power working in the world based on, not tooth-and-nail competition but compassion and caring. The revelation of the role of Mother Trees feels like only a beginning of possibilities, of other relationships supporting life, that if we learn how to look and listen, we will find what has been there all along.

What better way to celebrate Mother’s Day—and belated Earth Day—Mother Earth Day, then, than a walk in the woods. We went to McLane Nature Trail and let the peace of the pond and forest soak into us. Everyone we saw there was in like mode, quietly letting the sun and surroundings fill them with wonder and quiet joy. From the sight of dabbling baby Wood ducks, gem-colored mallards, the murmurs of nest-making Canada geese to huge turtles sunning on a log and tiny dark forms of newts swimming in the shallows, new life and old was flourishing.

And everywhere the forest revealed its layers of centuries of growth, trees supporting trees in life and past-life, no tree stood alone but in family groups. Companions, mothers and seedlings and young trees reaching up for light but grounded in soil partly composed of ancestors. We walked in awe of the complexity of relationships evident even to our untrained eyes: from nurse logs to what I thought of as venerable-looking grandmother trees. The peace of the woods stayed with us. A refuge in time of need. A celebration of the Earth and a sharing of Earth wisdom.

Some time after she had been teaching for several years, Margaret began work on a special bird book for children, called Wing and Tail Feathers. It was not a field guide-type of book but a narrative story featuring two children, a brother and sister, Jack and Ruth, and their parents, who were great nature-lovers and who, day by day, without being too didactic but rather, through example and demonstration of their own feelings and interest, passed on their passion to their children. The book is full of information about birds, flowers, and other nature subjects, but its real strength is emotional: its deep appreciation and love for the natural world. Through immersion in the life flourishing in their own garden, nearby excursions, and longer day trips, Ruth and Jack’s parents encourage the children’s explorations and deepen their knowledge of their world, but even more importantly, they demonstrate how they feel about all they see and touch.

This is Margaret at her best! The more pages I read of this work, the more I was convinced that this was Margaret’s magic as a teacher made manifest. The mother’s voice was really her own; the father’s as well. But the real genius was that she was also present in the children’s questions and responses. She had never lost touch with a child’s point of view and sense of wonder. All the parts were written from Margaret’s own experience—all remembered. Most of all, what comes through is her intense interest and love of nature, and her willingness to share with others and thereby foster their own wonderment and affection. This was her gift.

The following is an excerpt from the book. I hope you too will read into this story what I see and catch a glimmer of why Margaret is a model for us to follow today. And why we still celebrate her birthday, April 17^th, as a day for a walk in the woods or even, a day in the garden, watching birds and perhaps trying this experiment ourselves:

Later in the morning Mother was helping Jack tie fresh suet to the low branches of the dogwood. Mr. Chestnut-backed Chickadee was so eager for a bite that he circled around and around their heads.

“Keep very quiet children,” whispered Mother, “and I will hold a piece in my hand and see if he will come to me.”

Mr. Chestnut-backed Chickadee fluttered toward her, but just before he reached the suet his courage failed, and he stopped in mi-air, his little wings whirring.

“Just as if he were back-peddling,” murmured Jack under his breath.

Then Mother very softly and sweetly whistled the three notes of the Chickadee love-song.

Mr. Chickadee came again, and this time really landed on the suet. The dear little beady-eyed mite! How they loved him for his fearless, trusting heart!

They hardly dared breathe as he pecked and tore at the delicious lump of fat. But Mr. Chickadee had conquered his fear, and to the intense delight of Ruth and Jack came to their hands too, time after time, often holding tight to their fingers with his little black claws.

Though Mother had always known that Chickadees and sometimes Purple Finches and Grosbeaks became very tame, this was the first time that a bird had ever fed from her hand. She and the children could hardly wait for evening to tell Daddy about it.

And the next morning Daddy himself wanted to hold the suet! When Mr. Chestnut-backed Chickadee flew to his hand, when those tiny, tiny claws fearlessly clasped his bare fingers, Daddy looked at Mother with a strange expression in his dark eyes and said, “ I never before had this kind of feeling about a bird!”

Margaret is still working her magic!

Every spring I feel a tug of worry: Did my two trillium plants make it through the winter? I bought these plants at my local native plant sale several years ago and found a place for them where a camellia bush creates a protective arch of branches and the ground is cluttered with ferns as companions. I hoped they would feel at home there. I don’t think they approve of being moved about after settling in.

Every year they are slow to reappear and yet, to my joy, there they are, at last! By slow, I mean they flower later than the ones in nearby Trillium Park, aptly named, as each spring this is the place to find glorious patches of the white lily. My friend and I make pilgrimages, beginning early—hopeful but pushing the season—until finally we see one “there” and “there” and “look over there!” We learned about this ritual and annually conduct our search in memory of Margaret who greatly prized trilliums and worked hard to teach everyone to both revere and respect this native beauty. She warned that picking this flower and its bright leaves will starve the root and likely kill the plant; if we love it, we should leave it grow and enjoy it where it is.

Margaret describes this “threefold poem of earth, air and water” as a plant “made on a plan of threes.” “They all have three spreading green leaves, three petals, three green sepals and six golden stamens….The green leaves are at first folded around the flower buds.” This makes it very difficult to spot this flower as the green is lost in a sea of other greens at first. But, “as the stems grow upward, the leaves flare out, showing the pointed bud held up on a short stem. As the buds open, the three-petaled flowers send out a delicate perfume…”

A flower for the senses: crisp white petals against vibrant green leaves, an elusive scent, and appearing just as the frogs are pelting out their spring song in the nearby pond and birds are chittering and calling in the trees above. Also, stoking our sense of longing. Our sense of surprise and simple joy when we first see the white petals lighting up the forest floor. Our sense of relief that spring has truly come and that beauty still survives.

We were enthralled to participate in a geology walk yesterday that gave us a whole new insight into the underlying structures of our local wooded park. Under the tree canopy and undergrowth bushes and vines, and layers of moss, decaying leaves and dirt…are layers of rock, gravel, sand and clay, arranged in ridges, swales and scatterings and pock-holes from tiny to lake size. Our geologist guides could read the landscape and unpeel eons of time and the activities of repeated lobes of glacial ice for us. What seemed random or buried or simply mysterious assumed shape and a temporal quality new to our inexperienced eyes. Time stretched out and out; we thought in terms of thousands, tens of thousands and more years.

Certainly the sun shone and the earth tilted on its axis to mark “seasons” but what are seasons without plants pushing through the dirt, flowering and leafing out? What are seasons without pollinators visiting those flowers and birds singing the dawn in and frogs calling from the nearest wetland created by a gouging glacier from long ago? So while we examined trails of gravel and cobblestones, we could also see ”time” unfolding before us on a different scale altogether.

An erratic boulder left behind by a melting glacier was now graced by a blanket of vibrant green moss and sprouting young ferns. Indian plum bushes were flowering. Red current bushes splashed their brilliant color in the fresh green of the woods. Overhead, birds whistled and called, intent on their own agenda of mating and searching for nest sites.

The woods pulsed with springtime energy….all the while the rocks and glacial ridges appeared solid and static. A firm foundation, almost unnoticed. But now we could see two kinds of time: the long, long view of continent building, the ages of mountain formation worn down by gigantic lobes of mile-thick ice wearing rock to silt again and again, while melting-ice water rearranged the landscape, cutting rivers and depositing materials in waves and kettle-holes. The stillness of the rocks was an illusion. And the other kind of time, the time we live in if we are paying attention, of blooming plants and baby birds in Spring, stretching into warmer summer, gold and red into Fall and still and cold in Winter. A third kind, faintly heard, hummed and skipped around us: insects who might live days or weeks, lives compressed into shorter bursts of growth, reproduction, and then death.

It was a great exercise in holding different time scales in mind and appreciating how they all swirled according to type but also all meshed to make our world. The sun pushed through clouds to announce the first day of Spring; the rain held off for our walk in the woods but wasn’t to be denied for long. The cobblestones and gravel would soon be shifted here and there by streams or buried by drifts of leaves or held by tree roots. Nothing stays in one place forever but it all belongs and has its place. The geology lesson added a new layer to ponder and enrich our sense of wonderment. A celebration of Spring with new depth!

“In Walden wood the chickadee”

            ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In Walden wood the chickadee

Runs round the pine and maple tree,

Intent on insect slaughter:

O tufted entomologist!

Devour as many as you list;

Then drink in Walden Water.

Even Emerson was charmed by these gregarious little birds. They are one of my stalwarts; we have them year round here. I never tire of watching them. They gather in the branches that shelter my birdfeeder and take turns swooping in for the black sunflower seeds. They enjoy the suet too and hang every-which-way on the feeder, choosing just the morsel they want.

The seeds they fly off with may be stashed in some crevice for hungrier times. Here’s an astonishing fact, gleaned from my David Sibley book, What it’s Like to be a Bird:

“….a single chickadee can store up to a thousand seeds in a day, or eighty thousand in a season. This strategy is called scatter hoarding, as the birds simply tuck food away in any crevice where it will fit00in a cluster of spruce needles, in a bark crevice, and so on. Incredibly, the bird can remember where each item is stored, and at least some information about which ones are the best quality and which ones have been eaten already. The hippocampus—the part of the brain involved in spatial memory—is larger in birds that live in colder climates, where storing food is more important; it grows larger in the fall to accommodate multiple storage locations; and then shrinks again in the spring.”

Isn’t that amazing! (I wish I could develop that capacity to find my phone when I misplace it…) I wonder if it’s akin to having a photographic memory? And now, listen to this fascinating fun-fact, also in the Sibley:

“Despite the fact that chickadees are reliable and consistent visitors to bird feeders (they especially like sunflower seeds), more than half of their diet year-round is animal prey. In the northern winter, they hunt for dormant tiny insects and spiders, including eggs and larvae, which are found in bark crevices and dead leaf clusters, along twigs, and in other such places. In the summer, they mostly bring small caterpillars to their nestlings (they can collect over a thousand in a day, but for the first week or so after hatching the adults make special efforts to seek out spiders to feed to their young. Spiders provide the nutrient taurine, which is essential for brain development and other functions.”

How do they know to do that, that spiders will confer such a benefit? I would guess this is an evolutionary success story, but still, how do they pass along this knowledge and practice down the generations? Their brain power is simply astounding to me, for feats of memory and communication. All that dee-dee-deeing has hidden depths! These are not “ordinary” birds. But then, all birds are extraordinary, each in their way.

Rain had been forecast but luck was with us, the sky was cleared of the lowering clouds and light flooded the woods. The dozen eager participants in the Winter Twig Identification class could dispense with umbrellas and focus on the task: really looking at the bare branches of shrubs thrusting skyward along the paths of the park forest.  Could we describe their arrangements of branches and twigs, their colors, textures and growth patterns? More than just a maze of sticks, some with prickles, some smooth, could we see them as individuals with stories to tell if we only knew how to attend?

Yes, stories. That was my ultimate take-away from my two hours of slow tramping through the woods, close fingering of branches (except for the truly prickly ones), and fascinated listening to Ted, our enthusiastic instructor. Each bush had something to tell: a story with a beginning, middle and presumably end, with character development and characteristics, as well as relationships with a whole host of other beings. How did it happen to be growing just here? Did a bird spread its seed from a mother bush over there? Were conditions here just right, with the necessary soil nutrients and light—enough and not too much depending on preference—reaching it through the lattice of other branching trees and bushes? Did this plant have reciprocal relations with other nearby plants, through joint tangled root systems exchanging nutrients and other communications deeper under the soil*? Did this particular bush host pollinators and welcome birds and other browsers, or conversely, repel hungry mouths with a foul taste or the armor of thorns and sharp prickles?

The stories were all about survival and growth, season by season. Though our class was focused on developing skills recognizing plants without benefit of their foliage, Spring growth was advancing faster than the calendar. Twigs were plumping, buds sprouting and tips of nascent leaves showing bits of green. Still, we concentrated on the structure of the plant and the growth patterns of the branches and any remnant bits of fruit or flowers still clinging from the season before. Ted helped us learn to look at each feature for clues of identity, but also as evidence of how the plant functioned.

See these tiny freckle-like dots, for instance? These are called lenticels; they are the pores through which the plant breathes. And these tiny rings here? Those mark the spot where a bud scale—a protective covering—is shed when the bud awakes from dormancy. And these three tiny dots are vascular bundles that are the “veins” that deliver nutrients and water to the emerging leaf. Some of the vocabulary was almost Shakespearean:  some twigs were “glabrous” while others were “pubescent,” in other words smooth skinned or covered with tiny hairs.  Some buds were “appressed” while others could be “ascending,” which described their relative degree of snuggling against their twig and not their social status or measure of happiness.

These were details; the main classification descriptors were the two dominant twig architectures: one being pairs of buds that appear on opposites sides of a stem, or the other, buds that alternate on the stem, stair-stepping up the sides. Plant identification was a matter of divide and conquer: opposites or alternating? And then the details of bud shape, size, color, bits of fruit, favored location and bingo! Ted—and eventually alert students—would know what was before us.

Many of the bushes we examined were plants I knew were in my own garden, some of which I had lost track of their names. With care, I should be able to recognize just what I had brought home from various native plant sales! But for this day, I was already ahead. I had walked in the woods for two hours, enjoying the company of others who felt connected to the trees and bushes, vines, moss and ferns. I had soaked up some sunshine, heard birds trying out their springtime voices, and grasped some of the basics of botanic lore and vocabulary. It was wonder-full.

*If you are interested in learning more about what goes on between root systems, a good place to start is with The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.

It wasn’t a really harsh winter, no, but just another layer of feeling shut down, still. A kind of scraping along on a low level of energy. I’ve had to be patient and kind with my balky self, nonjudgmental but underneath a muddle of waiting for a spark of light. Now spring is here, creeping in under the fog, lighter earlier every day! Still cold but a new loosening-up is in the air.

I began to take baby steps to recovery. I did some celebratory baking for Imbolc, the halfway point between Winter Solstice and Spring, the Celtic holy day honoring Brigit in early February. Or make any time you need a little “something!”

            Rosemary Oat Bannock

Mix 1 cup of oats, I cup of oat flour, 3 tablespoons of sugar, a pinch of salt, about 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh rosemary, some orange zest (to taste). Cut in 6 tablespoons of chilled butter and knead with your hands to form a large round flat cookie-type patty. Cut into wedges and place into a lightly greased cast-iron pan. Mix the yolk of one egg with a half cup of cream to liberally brush a coating on the wedges; sprinkle with sugar. (I used demerara brown sugar) Bake about 20 minutes until brown in a 400 degree oven. Eat when warm for best flavor.

But most of all I went outside to look for those first signs of the new season: my neighbors’ golden burst of witch hazel, and the tight buds of Daphne in another garden getting closer to opening every day to dazzle our senses with their divine perfume. The snowdrops are bursting into bloom and some shy crocus bulbs are revealing some color.

And I scrubbed out my birdfeeder, put away during the worrisome pine siskin disease-spreading incident of winter, and hung it back up stocked with fresh seeds and suet outside my kitchen window. Word in bird society was quickly communicated by whistles and flutters. Nothing lifts one’s spirits better than a flock of bushtits zooming in to take turns in twos, threes, or tens. Chickadees and nuthatches, some finches and the flicker crowded in. Towhees and juncos picked at the spilled seed below. It was a grand party!

Then, best of all, an email came one day from an alert and generous curator* who reported a new acquisition: a photo album with images of children playing between a pasted-in collection of poems by M. McKenny. Was I interested in seeing them? Was I! It was everything a biographer could want: a new discovery that filled a hole in the storyline and provided fresh interpretations and deepening understanding of personality and events. And not incidentally, more tonic for Spring hunger. Here was a poem about that favorite harbinger Skunk Cabbage. As they say, enjoy!

Skunk Cabbage

Welcomed by the jolly frogs,

Singing gaily from the bogs,

Springtime’s herald now behold,

Dressed in suit of gaudy gold.

Where alder lifts her misty head,

Where snowy lily lies abed,

Where ferns crowd thick upon the ground,

And wood-pecker’s tap the only sound,

There by a little silvery brook,

For brave Skunk-cabbage we must look.

* From the Susan Durr Collection 2022.1 (unaccessioned scrapbook of photos and poems by M. McKenny), Schmidt House Archives, Olympia-Tumwater Foundation.

Thank you Karen Johnson!

Did I miss the moment? I declare, this tree in my front garden was not blazing orange just the other day, I would have noticed. But look at it now! Did it turn color overnight in the dark?

Seeing it all autumnal and gorgeous, huge and dominating my whole view, while enjoying its beauty I did have a sinking feeling too. Do trees change color like that, all in an instance? Or was I just not very observant? Was my tentative project, as described in an earlier post here, to take up the practice of phenology—the noting of significant natural phenomenon “firsts”—more of a wish than a commitment?

It would take real dedication, real attentiveness to master the basics, also discipline and steady application. Not to mention skill and knowledge beyond anything I possessed. I hoped the latter two would increase as I delved into the methodology. I need to deepen my study of trees. I had a lot of half-formulated ideas that needed work.

Is there a kind of switch triggered by, say, hours of daylight, temperature, or some other mechanism that signals the tree to drop its green and highlight brilliant orange or yellow? Yes. A little searching online confirmed that as sunlit days shortened and temperatures dropped, trees slowed their food production process to save energy; this was chiefly true in northern climates but less to not true in southern locations. (Conifers seem to be a whole other story. Let’s look at that another day.)

Leaves are “green” because they contain chlorophyll, the substance that allows them to convert energy from sunlight, plus water, by the process of photosynthesis, into carbohydrates as food for growth. The changing season signals the tree to break down its chlorophyll and store it until the next growing season. All this time leaves have had other substances with yellow and orange, red and purple pigments that were overwhelmed by the green chlorophyll but now, in its absence, are made visible—and glorious. 

It’s likely that my maple tree was changing gradually, the green fading, the orange intensifying, but the mix of chemicals “muddied” the color until the green was truly broken down and the orange freed to flare into the fire it now presents. I’m going to make sure I enjoy it while it lasts. The cold will shrivel today’s brightness into wrinkled, tired looking remnants of past beauties. The tree will be at rest. But come spring…I strive to be attentive to swelling buds and the unfolding of new leaves as the cycle is renewed. Maybe I’ll even “catch the moment” and write it on my calendar…next year.

If you would like to learn more about the practice of phenology a great website on the legacy of Aldo Leopold has inspiring information. He kept a small notebook in his pocket for years, a place to jot down observations while in the field. Now Foundation scientists can create detailed spreadsheets comparing “firsts” from earlier decades with dates from recent years to chart climate change literally flower by flower, tree by tree, and bird by bird. It’s astounding and illuminating. And so important. See: https://www.aldoleopold.org/teach-learn/phenology/

One of the best places to see large mature trees is in cemeteries where the trees are allowed to stretch out and achieve their full magnificence. On the pioneer edge of Olympia the Masons and other community groups set aside an ample place for burials away from the bustle of the port and business section of town; it remains a peaceful and contemplative destination for tree gazing and historic grave visiting. Many of Margaret’s family are resting in peace there.*

My friend and I went there recently to see a particular chestnut tree. It is well over a century old and its large bulk dominates that part of the grounds. Its muscular looking trunk has pushed aside some too-closely placed headstones and embraced others in amongst its protruding root system. Its many branches create a world joining sky and ground. This tree has both presence and grace. Standing in its shadow we felt its quiet power, its age, and wondered at all it had experienced over time. We wished it well and many ages to come.

The tree was engaged in releasing this year’s bounty of seeds. The chestnuts grow encased in very prickly shaggy coverings. No squirrel could tackle such a bristly defense but now the cases were splitting and peeling back to release the seed at last. The ground was thick with spent cases and rich with chestnuts littering the grass. We searched and picked up chestnuts to examine them more closely. They were so different from other chestnuts I had seen! They were small and thinner-skinned, almost flimsy compared to the stone-like “conkers” I was familiar with. We were puzzled….was this a result of this summer’s heat wave and drought?

As we pondered, a young man came bounding up, also intent on chestnut hunting. He too was an enthusiast but one with more knowledge. He was excited to tell us that this was no ordinary chestnut tree but a survivor of the terrible blight that destroyed almost every chestnut in the east in the early 1900s. It was discovered that a fungus was spreading like wildfire through the majestic groves and despite a frantic program of removing diseased trees up and down the country, the air-born fungus spread and spread and devastated trees everywhere. It was one of the first documented tree epidemics, but alas, not the last. Dutch Elm disease and others to come also played havoc with beloved trees and changed American canopies forever.

But this tree, perhaps planted by an early settler, had survived in its isolation. We marveled to think of its singularity and our luck at its discovery. The young man was an east-coaster now planted in the west; he assured us there was a scattering of others in the area. We felt an even deeper reverence for this great elder of a tree knowing more of its story and its importance as a survivor. Maybe its offspring could help repopulate a chestnut forest and renew a lost tree heritage? Our hope for the regeneration of the world was renewed!

*Margaret herself was not laid to rest in the family plot but is thought to be scattered as ashes somewhere in a private ceremony. There are several beauty spots in and around Olympia that when I am visiting them I can’t help but wonder….is Margaret “here” and now part of the cycle of life in this place? I don’t know. But just imagining, it places her “everywhere.” Which feels right somehow.

Waking now to darkness and silence: it’ll be awhile before the sun makes any kind of appearance. And when it does it may be bright and cheerful but without the brassy heat of summer. The air has a welcome coolness and at long last we’ve even had rain! My calendar declares this the first day of Fall, the autumn solstice, a marker day in the turning of the Earth.

 The dawn chorus has long quieted to nothing. Birds are now intent on flocking behavior, readying for migration or are laying low, completing their annual molt and growing strong new feathers. The towhees in my garden are looking especially disheveled and secretive. I am reminded to leave some cover plantings for them to hide away in while doing the fall clean up of the garden and to spare flowers going to seed for winter food. Chickadees have discovered the drying sunflowers and are darting in and out of that clump. Their calls are softer, mere chips. There is more stillness. The flurry of mating, territorial displays, feeding the young, and all the bustle of summer is over. I too feel ready for a change.

At times like Solstice I think about Phenology, the science that tracks “firsts.” Wikipedia’s definition from the Greek origin of the word goes to the heart of the matter: “to bring to light, to show, to make appear.” It’s the practice of noticing and recording: the first sighting of a bird in spring, the first buds opening on a tree, or the appearance of a flower in bloom. In Fall, it might be when birds begin to gather on telephone wires before migration or the first crimson leaf on your sweet gum tree or even activities of insects and spiders as they prepare for the next stage in their life cycle. Temperature and light measurements, the first freeze, the timing of dawn and sunset. Whatever is occurring outside that we can observe and note and compare over the years to find patterns….and with climate change, the breaking of patterns.

But while I am interested in the practice and discipline of Phenology I recognize that I am too scattershot in my attention. And too uncertain of my own observations: Is this really the first? How long has that tree looked like that? What am I missing? Keeping that kind of record will probably remain an aspiration! But I’m sure there are ways to find such records and use them as prompts for exploration. That might be just as useful….there is so much to learn!

Meanwhile, the trees are holding the moment, tentatively turning a leaf here and there but not yet rushing into glorious reds and golds. The leaves scattered on the ground are more a statement about this summer’s drought than the new season. I’ll try to keep watch this time, maybe pick just one tree and pay attention to its cycle.

And tune into a presentation I found on the Aldo Leopold Foundation website:

Phenology and YOU: Bringing Leopold into Our Time, a lecture hosted by Professor Emeritus and Wisconsin Conservation Hall-of-Famer Dr. Stan Temple 

October 5, 5:00-6:00 PDT.

Registration required (it’s free): https://my.demio.com/ref/25eGcmpj0pvgXsYt?mc_cid=0fd09eb5ec&mc_eid=887ba62def

Of course, there is a word for this feeling of connection, this utter peace and calm that fills me and settles me anytime I find myself on a forest path or standing under big old trees looking up into their branches: dendrophile.  A word for people like me who love trees and forests. Who just feel so much better in their presence. And, as follows, who want to protect them and just let them live out their very long lives. We dendrophiles know we need trees in our lives and to know they were there before we were born and will, with grace, outlast us by generations; they will stand sentinel for our children and grandchildren. Trees give us perspective and a larger sense of time and place. They literally ground us.

So, after a time of reading too many bad-news stories, of worrying about the world and whether humans would ever evolve, anxious about pandemics and drought and conversely sea level rise and other calamities, we went for a forest walk.

After about three steps into the woods, into the oxygen-laden air breathed out by the trees, into the dappled light touching every shade of green and brown and patchy gray and unnumbered unnameable colors, all the cares began to drop away like last year’s leaves. (They don’t disappear but become new soil for the next season of life; part of the solution if we could only see them that way.)

I remembered what I had learned from two Forest Bathing experiences, practices derived from the Japanese teachings called shinrin-yoku and decided to make this walk into another immersion. I slowed my breathing and my steps to tune into this different pace, this world of standing still and yet fluid with cloud and sky and lap of water in the nearby pond. Small birds floated through upper branches, calling in high-pitched whistles and busy murmurs—likely chickadees and bushtits. I paused to listen without needing to follow their movements, to just be present.

As I opened to the moment, the many layers of the forest revealed themselves: from root systems hinting of all that lies beneath and is the real beating heart of the forest, to sturdy trunks branching off to find sunlight and guide raindrops down to thirsty roots. Late-summer leaves looked a little tattered and care-worn, their work almost done for the year. Moss and lichen furred the surfaces of trunk and branch while ferns and tangled undergrowth huddled and competed for space and light. Some places where the canopy had closed in were dry-shod and brown with duff; a few steps later where a tree had fallen inviting sun to pour in or where water trickled, devil’s club, berry vines, Indian plum and other bushes flourished. There was a place for everything. I tried to feel the dryness and then the more saturated areas through my own skin, to be a part of each without favoring one over another.

Where the terrain lifted up, ranks of trees aimed for the sky. Where a stream had carved its course, light danced on water-washed pebbles. Come fall, salmon would thrash out redds to hold their eggs for safe-keeping until the next generation were ready to emerge. The forest held still in anticipation. I tried to absorb that patient sense of waiting, waiting for rain, waiting for the salmon. But for now, letting the heat of the day warm me.

We came to places along the trail where trees had broken and fallen, crashing down on other trees and changing the landscape. Those kinds of upsets would be catastrophic for human life but in the forest were part of long cycles of growth and decay. The fallen trees, if left in place, send their bodies back into the soil, nurturing the next generation of life. How shall we live to become the nurse trees of our communities and families to come?

Eventually we passed along the shore of the beaver-made pond that sported bulrushes and a thick mat of water lilies sunburned by the long summer sunshine. The forest lined the water which lay open to the light, making a contrast of dark green and bright blue. Other than ephemeral birdsong the forest had been quiet and still but the pond sparkled and rippled with a slight breeze. A small gathering of ducks paddled here and there noisily feasting on water plants and gossiping among themselves. We were back in the world but relaxed and lightened by our walk.

Aha, there was the small Capitol Land Trust sign and our friend waving us into a narrow driveway off a road busy with traffic pelting town-ward, heedless of the forested land that stood silent and seemingly patient with the scurrying humans racing to their errands. Within moments of turning in we were in the deep quiet of the woods. The trees closed protectively around us as we first breathed in the scented peace and rested our eyes on shades of green and earthy browns. This was conservation land, saved and set aside from the scrum of road traffic and relentless onslaught of sprawling development that we had traversed to arrive here. But my first impression was that we were the ones being saved by the forest.

Our guide told us the story—ongoing—of how the land had been purchased, two parcels, one a pioneer farm and adjoining it an old tree farm and logging operation, and that now it was being transformed into a place local school children could explore. There, they could experience a recovering mix of forested lands with scattered patches of clearings dotted with native tree plantings, small bushes and grasses, and some wetland and salt marsh areas, and follow paths that led down to the Henderson Inlet shoreline. The 108 acres was a sampler of lower Puget Sound habitat, something of everything.  Many local groups are helping restore the land, including schoolchildren, with the thought that their hands-on contributions will form a lasting bond with their native place. Its mission was evident in its new name: Inspiring Kids Preserve. For kids, expressly, and for the kid alive and rediscovered in us all.

Taking the first steps along the path leading us into the property was already working its magic on me. Just gazing into the trees was loosening something tight; a sense of calm and wonder seeped into the opening space in my chest. It was a warm day but the intense heat we’ve recently experienced was abating. The sunlight was friendly instead of fierce and the air full of evocative smells: grasses, blackberries ripening, wet patches and leaf mold. It was very quiet without feeling empty. Birds were present but not visible; there were signs of life and movement but just on the edges of sight. I imagined being there at dusk or dawn, sitting somewhere just off under cover to see who might pass by or emerge from the bushes. One of the most promising spots was the lip of a pond where beavers are known to slip in and out for night foraging. Just to know that they were there somewhere in the dense growth was exciting; a webcam has captured their movements for us to witness:  https://youtu.be/nO8FDa40-9g

Further down that trail we emerged onto the shoreline. A saltwater beach looped and curved around a small inlet; a whole precious mile has been preserved here. Geese lifted from the water and circled as we watched.  The beach was speckled with shells and rocks, no doubt sheltering some small creatures waiting for the tide to turn. We continued to explore the paths leading back up to other features and types of habitat. Some areas are fenced to allow young trees a good start and promote native plant growth. Other areas are more established and exhibiting the various stages of rebirth, maturity and decay, all part of the natural cycle. Owl nest boxes were posted in likely spots to encourage new families to roost and add to the diversity of wildlife. Other animals find their own resting spots; deer had many places to bed down in and some unidentified creature was enjoying the abundant fruit crop and leaving a sticky trail for us to note. We saw two small snakes wriggling through the grass. There was a feeling of being in the midst of myriad secret lives holding silent as we passed by.

We headed back into the forest, stepped carefully through a wetland area, saw the remnants of old orchards and emerged onto a different beach area. There was so much variety and points of interest to explore. It’s a place I would like to return to in different seasons and times. But for this time I was grateful to have discovered its presence and know it was being cared for and preserved and shared with local children and teachers. A new generation can root itself in this land and find a connection with trees, birds, wetland plants and animals, the timeless action of tides and the passing of clouds and sunshine. It is a place of renewal and hope. Thank you to our host and to Capitol Land Trust for this remarkable gift and vision.

This was a guided tour. Please respect the work of the Trust and enquire about your own possibilities for a tour: https://capitollandtrust.org/conserved-lands/visit-a-preserve/  This site is still a work in progress but will open for the public when it is made ready. If you are interested in making a donation or joining a work party to further this project or any of the Trust’s work, contact Capitol Land Trust here: https://capitollandtrust.org/get-involved/  You can also find stunning photographs of this site on the website as well as a charming video presentation of the program at Inspiring Kids Preserve: https://capitollandtrust.org/conserved-lands/conservation-areas/budd-henderson-inlets/inspiring-kids-preserve/

You’ll be inspired!

The frantic bird days of spring and early summer are over. All the courting and territorial posturing contests, the nest building and protecting, the flurry of stuffing the gaping mouths of the mewing newly hatched babies—all the annual round of keeping the species viable—now pauses. There is still the wonderful fluster of young bushtits arriving at the feeder in a cloud soft gray and then as quickly disappearing back into the tangle of leaves. They know just how small and vulnerable they are. Likewise the disheveled looking new chickadees who dash in for a quick sunflower seed and zip away to safety. Mostly it’s quiet.

No one, however, can miss the noise of raucous young scrub jays or the pesky starlings that arrive with such a screeching and clatter. A more melodious—some say monotonous—sound emanates from mourning doves as they gather in twos along the telephone wires to exchange the news. (It’s always the same stories.)

Ah, mid summer! We can settle comfortably into the season.

But recently I was treated to a new bird sound, a striking call that whistled and vibrated through the tops of the trees, electric and compelling. I had to travel across the continent to experience it; we don’t have these birds in the west. For me it was a quest to “make real” a bird that existed only on Christmas cards and gift-wrap, almost a cartoon of a bird. Are Cardinals really that red? Yes.

But they are still difficult to spot. I caught some glimpses as one would flash through the bushes or perch on some high branch or telephone wire backlit against the evening sky. Hard to see and harder to capture in a photo, but my, their call is clarion, bell-like, nothing like I had ever heard before. Not to be taken for granted if you are lucky enough to live in their eastern territory. I know on future visits east I will be looking and listening for this fire-engine red blaze of a bird.

I was never quick enough to record their song but luckily the Cornell Lab website has an excellent presentation of this familiar and not-familiar bird for you to experience. I highly recommend it: Search for the post “Built to Sing: The Syrinx of the Northern Cardinal” at http://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/

The longest day of the year has come and stretches out the daylight hours that remind us of our childhoods when summer seemed to spread out like a glorious “forever”picnic. The sun beams down—some North-westerners would say relentlessly—in a quest to ripen tomatoes and induce afternoon naps whatever our morning plan had been. The only sound beside my neighbor’s soothing wind chimes is a persistent buzzing: how fitting that the first day of summer also brings us National Pollinator Week.

From my reading chair on my porch I can see several dancing white—are they moths or butterflies—alighting and flitting merrily among the flowers. The nearby hanging hummingbird feeder attracts a new pair of hummers who zip and dive and sip and zoom away to explore the fuchsias and honeysuckle vines. And before I can capture it with a camera, a beautiful yellow and black-striped butterfly sailed by and disappeared. I am sorry to say I don’t know the names of any of these lovely insect creatures. I once attended a fascinating Black Hills Audubon chapter program about our local bees; there were an astonishing number of species, some so tiny we could hardly see them and some large and bumbling like striped teddy bears. All earnestly doing their important work of gathering nectar and spreading pollen and so propagating plants wherever they went. We couldn’t live without them.

And yet…we don’t seem to know that, or connect the dots that when we indiscriminately spray poisons to rid ourselves of “bugs,” or grow only big spreads of mono-culture grass, or plant exotics that don’t match up with the needs of native insects, that we doom not just these essential beings, but all the birds and other creatures that depend on them, as well as ourselves. Our food and forage crops absolutely depend on pollinators to grow our foods. Plants are the foundation for everything. With pollinators as their partners, plants can’t do without them–and neither can we.

But for now, this week, begin with noticing birds and insects wherever they appear; get to know who visits your garden, what attracts them and nourishes them. Delight in their colors, their dances, their busyness. Let yourself feel connected to the great chain of being and swell with gratitude for how it all works to feed everyone. Plant more flowers, put out small dishes of fresh water, and leave some areas a little wild as places of shelter. Welcome summer!

To further explore the integral relationship between native plants and a vibrant insect pollinator population, read Bringing Nature Home by Douglas Tallamy.

To learn more about National Pollinator Week, see: https://www.pollinator.org

To learn more about what products to avoid using and other ways to support pollinator health, see the Rachel Carson Council website “Take Action: alert:

To read an inspiring essay on this topic, one of my favorite writers, Margaret Renkl, has an essay published in The New York Times here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/opinion/butterflies-bees-pollination.html

The Audubon grapevine had great news in May: There was a report of baby wood ducks seen on the main pond at McLane Nature Trail! My friend emailed that there were three families of this colorful duck with about 20 ducklings among them, plus a mallard duck with thirteen ducklings paddling in her wake! That is a lot of ducks! We made a plan to get out to see them, but one thing or another, it was more than a week later before we could get ourselves over to this DNR woodland and beaver pond site, one of my favorite nearby nature places.

The parking lot was crowded with families and walkers aiming to hit the trails but everyone was spread out and it did not feel too crowded. We are just “coming out” of our strict Covid sheltering, but we and our friends were all vaccinated and felt ready to stretch our wings a little.  We headed for the first pond lookout where a woman was focusing her impressive looking camera at the water. We looked but could see nothing until she called out, “Turtles!” Sure enough, we could see some movement in the dark water and finally made out a shape and then a reptilian head poking its nose up for air, and then another shape making for a tuft of reeds. Wow. That felt like a bonus discovery.

And then, here and there on the water, we began to count ducks. The wood duck mother—we only saw one—was poking about finding bits of food and sending out a steady warble of what might be a duck version of cooing to her babies. She burbled along but otherwise didn’t seem to be paying close attention as the ducklings nibbled, explored, and, while staying in her range of vocalizations, seemed to have their own agenda of discovering what the world may hold for them. It was quiet and peaceful out there on the pond. But try as we might, we could only find four or so ducklings.

That was a lot of attrition.

As we scanned the pond, searching among the lily pads for more ducklings while strolling along the boardwalk, we chanced to look up to see a hawk sailing overhead doing its own recognizance. We were there to witness the sweetness of new life; the hawk had its own reasons. I reminded myself that it too probably had young ones to feed and baby ducklings were no doubt tender and delectable. I “know” everything must eat to live but I confess I didn’t want to be on the spot just then. It’s been a long difficult winter.

We headed for the forest trail and the shelter of the big trees. Looking down from the boardwalk at the wealth of new growth pushing up to the light, we chanced to see one more baby. The pulse of life beats on!

Last weekend was so warm and sunny here I was able to overcome my “Alberta heritage reluctance” and plant the tomato starts that were bursting out of their little pots yearning for their proper garden sense of spaciousness. Feeling wildly optimistic, I also planted two squash plants and a tiny row of sunflowers. I held my trepidation at bay with the thought that the lilacs had bloomed just fine. You see, the rule of thumb deeply embedded in my psyche was to wait until the Queen’s Birthday before planting. That would be Queen Victoria; her birthday celebration is the second last Monday in May. No cake, just the starting bell for gardening.

You guessed it: it snowed! Not here, thank goodness, but in Edmonton. I was chastened, at least for my dear friend who sent me this discouraging soggy looking image.

It’s turned chilly here again, but not that chilly! The threatening rain will water the garden. We’re in the see-saw of Spring but our oscillations don’t usually swing as far as including the white stuff. I have to remember where I live now. The march of flowers coursing through my front garden keeps up its pace. I am still, after all these years, astounded at the easy abundance of green life that surges in waves beginning in what should be the dead of winter and continuing until the leaves crisp and fall. It’s a marathon, not the sprint of Alberta gardening.

I would have loved to see Margaret’s garden in its prime. She would have planted and tended with confidence based on her deep knowledge of plants and place. Following her, I will keep learning and observing and recording my adventures. This year I am trying my hand with Sweetpeas, one of her favorites. I’ll let you know how they grow! Meanwhile, here’s a tiny bouquet of a poem Margaret wrote in her time:

Sweetpeas

All flowers in my garden are free,

Except the wayward sweetpeas;

And, they,

Out of love and gratitude, 

Have forged tiny green chains,

And chained themselves 

To my lattice

And to my heart.

It’s a bit chilly today, but not cold. Close your eyes for a moment and picture deep, deep ice covering the land, pressing the ground with an indescribable weight, holding everything in its grip for ages….and then, about 13,000 years ago, trickle by trickle, easing and letting go….melting, retreating from whence it came. And finally releasing, the land rebounding and gradually re-greening itself.  Left in its wake were outwash soils—the scrapings and debris of sand and gravel and boulders—in piles and trails ready for colonization by plants, closely followed by browsing animals and people.

The people recognized these glacial prairies, as we call them today, as crucial foraging grounds for tasty and nutritious bulbs, berries, greens, seeds and places opportune for hunting deer and other animals. They learned to tend these places using controlled-burn fires to keep them open and unshaded by forest trees. We colonists are lately learning and adopting these cultural practices to help save these unique landforms. One of the most unusual—world famous among geology aficionados—are the Mima Mounds south of Olympia that feature circular mounded  “pimples” of various sizes—several feet high and by diameter—that dot the area like a bad case of chicken pox.* But don’t think “disease,” think “amazing, curious, full of life and color.” Especially at this time of year. Spring flowers delight your eyes at every step along the trails that thread between the mounds.

We went, especially, to see the blue camas in flower. This is a blue like the sky of a perfect summer day, the blue of a bluebird, or piece of good china. We didn’t see large drifts of the flower as we have in past years, but small clutches of it were everywhere that charmed us as rare discoveries. Mixed with the bright clear yellow of native buttercups, the green of unfurling ferns, the tiny white petals of native strawberries, and the pinks of shooting stars. Splotches of grey-green lichen add to the patchwork. The prize of the day was finding small groups of the chocolate lily, hard to see as they keep their down-facing beauty hidden, but some ardent flower-seekers ahead of us on the path shared their discovery with us. Thank you!

There were mixed groups of families, friends, and solo walkers enjoying the wide-open skies, the fresh breeze, and the tiny treasures along the paths. We saw very few birds; perhaps earlier in the day would have been better for them, but I did see a butterfly that I hoped was something rare, like a Taylor’s checkerspot, but I was unable to match it with any of the ones listed on various websites. It was delightful, in any case. The walk was refreshing, fascinating and uplifting—full of beauty and interest. We were so glad it has been preserved and is being “tended” today to keep it thriving for the tomorrows. Margaret would have been so pleased. She served on the committee in 1966 that helped guide the state to set aside these lands and care for them, and then open them for the public to experience. Special places indeed.

* There is no final agreement about the origin of these mounds. Glacial remains? Or—and this is intriguing—the result of ancient pocket gophers creating their tunnels and nesting areas? Reader boards at the site discuss the theories but leave it to your own imagination to decide. Makes for a lively discussion as you walk the trails!

Margaret once described the progression of the seasons this way: “the quiet anticipation of winter, the joyous activity of spring, the restful fulfillment of summer, and the hopeful acceptance of autumn.” We can share with Margaret some of what brought her joy in the weeks leading up to her birthday and celebrate her special day, April 17, and then carry on, season after season, anticipating and noticing all that Nature brings. To begin, if you happen to awaken in the early hours, before the sky lightens, open a window and listen for the dawn chorus of birds. That urgent calling out of bird to bird will set you up for coursing of energy that rushes through all beings in this season of bursting of new life.

A few weeks before her birthday, Margaret would have looked for her favorite flower, the trillium, appearing in clumps in the dappled shade of mixed forests. Its clear-white three-petal flower rises on a stalk above bright green heart shaped leaves that grow in whorls of three, a flag announcing that spring has truly arrived. It’s not the earliest flower—skunk cabbage heralds the season in its own vibrant way, Indian plum puts forth its small flowers and other bushes and vines unfurl their bright pink—but finding trilliums in bloom puts a stamp on spring, a feeling of relief. “We made it!” Trilliums are rare so seeing them reappear we can exhale and renew our sense that however precarious, wonders do still happen.

To celebrate Margaret—and follow in her footsteps—I went for a walk with dear friends who are familiar with her storied life and who also revel in finding spring flowers and noting all the new growth and the appearance of old favorites. We went to a local park that follows the steeply descending course of the Deschutes River through a series of falls as it rushes toward Budd Inlet and Puget Sound. The park has been closed for months to refurbish its trails and add new features so it was with great anticipation and a sense of discovery that we took to the path that threaded the high banks of the river. The froth and surge of water, the glint of the sun and sparkle of scattered drops as water met rocky outcroppings added to the festivity of our outing.

We were richly rewarded!

At the end of our excursion we found a spot and set up our chairs—still socially distant but close enough for real conversation without the aid of technology—and enjoyed sharing our reflections with some cake with a salute to Margaret. We calculated that it has been 136 years since her birth in the old house that overlooked that same river around a few bends from where we sat. So much has changed—the house is long gone and the river itself has been impounded behind a dam to create Capitol Lake—and yet so much remains. The same spring flowers still bloom and delight. Her story still resonates and her teachings still matter: Don’t pick the trilliums! Let them flower and fade back into the earth so they can gather strength to return again, spring eternal.

The narrator in Willa Cather’s novel, My Antonia, upon arriving in Nebraska from an eastern state, looked upon this place with wonder. As he “peered over the side of the wagon” that was carrying him to his new home, he felt, “There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.” In daylight the next day, it was the same: “Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red grass, most of it as tall as I…As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as water is the sea.” There were no trees.

This is the windswept landscape that depressed the spirits of another incoming settler, this one from well-wooded Michigan, J. Sterling Morton, in 1855. He recalled he “…could not but be oppressed by the sense of treelessness…No forest was visible on either side, as far as the eye could reach, and only here and there, along the banks of small creeks and in deep ravines, would a few fire-spared trees be found. Even these were mostly maimed, scarred and deformed by surges of flame which had swept down upon them from the burning prairies during nearly every fall of their precarious lives. Thus everywhere the waves of rich land stretched bare of shade to the horizon.” Morton ignored the derision of his neighbors and set out to rectify the situation; he planted trees: American chestnuts, Osage orange trees, black walnuts and orchards of fruit trees. And then he preached the saving grace of trees wherever he could to everyone, listening or not.

In 1872, Morton promoted his idea of a new American holiday celebrating trees; he called it Arbor Day. He declared, “All other anniversaries look backward; they speak of men and events past. But Arbor Day looks forward; it is devoted to the happiness and prosperity of the future.” Gradually, others, in one state after another, took up the cause and added pageantry and poetry to the annual ceremonial tree planting. And now we have a national Arbor Day, April 30, but also state and city sponsored Arbor Days as various climate zones allow—Washington State’s is held on April 14 while Alaska waits until the third Monday in May to assure any newly planted tree has a good chance of survival. In any case, any day is a good day to celebrate trees.

Here in the Northwest we are blessed with trees. The moisture-laden winds sailing in from the Pacific Ocean confronting the Olympics and Cascade mountains pour their wealth of life-bringing water on the land and the land responds with Douglas-fir, cedars, Big-leaf maples and sinuous Pacific madrone, to name just a few of the tangle of forest specimen. One of the giants, Western Hemlock, was named our Washington State tree in 1947. If you have time and opportunity, you might plan an expedition to visit one of the great trees native to this land in celebration of Arbor Day. But for many of us, smaller street and garden trees are our more familiar companions and justly deserve our affection and care. It would be a lonelier, more barren world, bereft of many birds, with less color and interest, without our street trees, garden trees, and trees in local parks for we city dwellers. Wherever trees grow and brighten our days, Arbor Day is a good reminder to give thanks for such beings in our world.

Margaret was always careful not to claim she was a scientist. She worked closely with many professionals, especially those engaged in mycological studies. They often turned to her for help in both finding fungal species and identifying obscure mushrooms. She was a recognized expert….and yet….not a scientist. She had no college degree or position in any institution.

Many “amateurs,” especially women, were in the same position: very knowledgeable and respected, sometimes recognized but more often working behind the scenes, nameless. They helped their husbands* or brothers or worked diligently holding together various botanical organizations, editing journals, keeping the membership lists, the work that must be done that supported the forward march of science.

Earlier, scientific work was not as rigidly organized as it became and there were fewer barriers between serious students of the various branches of what became science and those who, say, loved flowers or ferns or gathering shells on the beaches. Many early Victorians had amazing collections and knew the names of all their prizes, and some went on to further study; the line between collectors and “real” botanizers was quite permeable. Botany was a common and popular subject in schools or could be learned independently through the many books and journals meant for anyone to peruse. There were clubs with open memberships and societies and public talks and exhibitions. Margaret was raised in just such a fluid and accessible setting and worked her whole life to keep those doors open for others.

Margaret learned her botany in school and in the family garden and on walks in the countryside. And then she took it further, bought a microscope, and really studied her subject and shared her findings widely with her many friends and neighbors who were also keen to explore the natural world. Everyone studied at least some botany in school and so had a grounding in the subject and a foundation for more learning. That seems to be no longer the case.

I’ve been reading more about botany now, inspired by Margaret, but it’s slow going. I flounder; I don’t have a system for remembering all the new vocabulary and definitions. I even bought a textbook but it is very dry reading! And it feels remote from actual plants somehow. Maybe I’m not going about this the right way; maybe I should get more acquainted with the plants in my own garden first: really look at them and learn the shapes of their leaves, the times they flower, the seeds they produce, everything there is to see. And then apply the terminology the textbook insists upon.

As so often, I ask myself, “What would Margaret do?” She’s make sure it was fun, an adventure, that I do know!

A fascinating woman of this type was Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton (1857-1934). As a young woman, she was already an accomplished botanist and bryologist (the study of mosses) as a charter member of the illustrious Torrey Botanical Club. She wrote hundreds of scientific papers, was curator of the moss collection and editor of the club journal. After she married fellow club member, Nathaniel Britton, she worked tirelessly with her husband to found and staff the New York Botanical Garden where she again created a renowned collection of mosses. They were energetic collectors of plants who traveled extensively to find new specimens; wherever he went, so did she. Later, she became concerned with the plight of wild flowers and founded the Wild Flower Preservation Society in 1902 to educate the public and create reserves for the vanishing beauties. And yet she is little known today. A brief biography can be found here:

https://sciweb.nybg.org/science2/libr/finding_guide/egbweb.asp.html

According to my Roger Tory Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds, given in his customary staccato language, the Bald eagle: “….with its white head and white tail is all field mark. Bill of adult yellow. Immature has dusky head and tail, dark bill. It shows whitish in the wing-linings and often on the breast….” (emphasis in text) He adds that the “voice is a harsh, creaking cackle, kleek-kik-ik-ik-ik-ik or a lower kak-kak-kak.” That at least is very descriptive: harsh and creaking!

We—the small cluster of neighborhood walkers all masked and distanced—were certainly halted with our gaze pulled skyward by that call which shattered the peace of the afternoon. There, not too high for viewing but ducking in and out of view behind some tall Douglas firs, were two eagles circling and calling and gliding in this and then that direction, but always crisscrossing and making a huge racket. Were they courting? Were they male and female or two males challenging each other? Did the females have the same field marks, the white head, especially? We were tentative in our speculations.

Once back home I could peruse my handy field guide. Peterson doesn’t come out and say in so many words, but in his case the absence of comment indicates that the mature males and females share the same markings. Peterson gave me the basics but I still had questions. I then turned to the website of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as an additional trusted source. I learned that females can weigh as much as two to four pounds more than the males and have a wingspan half a foot longer, but that would have been difficult to measure from where we had stood transfixed. More locally, the website of Seattle Audubon indicated that yes, now would be courting season as the time for egg-laying is generally late winter to early spring. So it seemed likely that these were a male and female pair of eagles.

The female lays two eggs in her nest of sticks high up in a conifer tree, but slightly sheltered by the trunk and some branches, not at the top where it would be vulnerable to crows and other dangers. Unless separated by mishap, eagles mate for life when they are four-to-six years old. As they can live as much as forty years, that’s a long relationship!

The mated pair care for their young together, taking turns in the nest until hatching, which happens about 36 days after laying. One parent stays with the young while the other hunts, again taking turns. It takes a long time for such large birds to mature. It is ten to twelve weeks before the chicks can fly and two to three months before they can defend themselves and venture out from the watchful scrutiny of their parents’ sharp yellow eyes!

We will keep a lookout for the pair on our weekly walks. Seeing eagles adds a buzz of excitement and a welcome distraction to our Covid-limited world. Outside our daily human-centered preoccupations it’s a tremendous lift to remember there are eagles, great seven-foot wings scribing trails through the sky, waking us up to lives lived in quite other realms.

Here are links to the sites I mention:

http://birdweb.org/birdweb/bird/bald_eagle

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Bald_Eagle/lifehistory

We are now a month into the new year; yesterday was the Celtic celebration of Spring, Imbolc, a feast of burgeoning light, new growth and healing. Hold that thought as cold and snow pounds swathes of the country and here in the Northwest the sky was dark and brooding all day yesterday as rain poured out of the clouds as if it meant to cover the entire earth. Today, however, at least this morning, we are having a reprieve from the incessant rain. I was able to take a walk without having to huddle under an umbrella….easier to see and count new wonders!

With Ireland in mind, my first impression was how very green the world was! This is the season to celebrate moss. As the rain saturates this plant it swells and stretches and grows; now is its chance to flourish and show off all its intricacies and complexities of growth. Having just read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s awe-inspiring book, Gathering Moss, I notice moss everywhere, bright brilliant green and shimmering with rain droplets. I will write more on moss later but for today it was the tapestry underlying and nearly overwhelming all I saw.

Poking up through last year’s fallen leaves, small bulbs were thrusting into light. The daffodils, crocuses and snowdrops are heralding springtime. And the hellebores are beginning to open in the race of early flowers to welcome the season. Forsythia throws its bright yellow spray to the sky with joyous abandon and soon the daphnia bushes will overwhelm passersby with their bracing scent. My honeysuckle vine is greening bud by opening bud.

Crows are everywhere—but remarkably camera-averse—investigating the new growth. My local squirrels are taking advantage of the momentary dry spell to taste the various buds on street trees.  I could hear our neighborhood eagle screaming its presence but could not locate which tree where it might be sheltering. Everyone was busy engaging with the moment of respite. Rain makes the Northwest but that blue sky after the downpour makes my heart sing!

P.S. Now that it’s February and I haven’t seen a pine siskin in weeks I put my feeders back up. However, if siskins do show up, I’ll take them down again. I hope my chickadees return. There was a lone Bushtit checking out the empty space the other day; maybe it will get the word out now, if it should return.

I had to look them up to be sure, but yes, these smallish, streaky-brown birds with flashes of bright yellow on tail and wing feathers that were flocking into my garden were Pine Siskins. I had not had them at my feeder for quite a while. They are lively!  While confirming their identity, I learned that they are a type of finch, albeit smaller with a finer pointed beak. They adore thistle seed or small seeds like millet and acrobatically hung off my clumps of untrimmed flower stalks gleaning seeds, saved for just such a purpose. They appeared voracious.

Siskins are noted for their flocking behavior and for mobbing feeders. Some writers called them gregarious, while others shaded more to “aggressive” or “domineering.” Other feeder birds might agree. When Siskins move in, your chickadees and nuthatches are sidelined. But it seemed only momentary at my house. Siskins breezed in, partied, and left for new places; maybe I didn’t have their preferred foods. They can’t handle sunflower seeds still in the shell and are peckish about suet, my main offerings. I tried to capture them in photos but they swished around too rapidly to have more than blurry images.

They began, though, to show up on neighborhood postings and in anxious emails and message boards. All that close flocking and eating and general congregating—just like we humans used to do in pre-Covid times and now should not—can lead to tragedy. First there was excitement and wonder at the arrival of this northern bird from the conifer forests and mixed boreal woodlands of Canada, identified as an irruption from their normal migration pattern due to food shortages in their winter range. But it soon turned to dismay when more and more sick and dying birds were discovered at feeders and in gardens. The close flocking and feeding behavior that draws our attention facilitates the spread of salmonella bacteria that can contaminate feeders, birdbaths, and water dishes and be passed bird to bird. (Humans and pets can be impacted too. Wear gloves, wash your hands thoroughly and clean areas frequented by birds.)

Sick birds are said to be lethargic and appear tame—or at least indifferent to human approach. They have fluffed up feathers, perhaps swollen eyes and an unnatural stillness. Besides being careful about your own exposure, seeing birds in this condition signals that you need to take down your own feeders and dishes and clean everything with a mix of hot soapy water rinsed with bleach water. See here for  exact instructions: https://wdfw.wa.gov/news/help-protect-wild-birds-deadly-salmonellosis   And then retire your feeders for a week or more. Some advice recommends not putting out feeders again until sometime next month to be sure the Siskins have moved on and the danger has abated.

It was a melancholy sight to see a line of Bushtits clinging to the dangling empty string from my feeder. Where were the goods? It’s been very quiet for days now. I rejoiced to see a few juncos scrambling around under the ferns and in drifts of old leaves the other day. And the hummingbirds are as territorial as ever; their feeder is entirely their own and not endangered. How I miss “my” birds! But I have to remember it’s not about me, but their health and lives. And take the long view.

To learn more about Pine Siskins in general and about the meaning of irruptions, see here: https://www.audubon.org/news/-pine-siskin-finch-irruption-fall-2020

And here, at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for more species information and a great map showing Siskin territory and what is impacting their normal range of habitation: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Pine_Siskin/media-browser-overview/67276581

The official New Year was days ago, I know, but it didn’t really feel like I had turned the page until this morning. Monday morning: a new list for the week, facing forward after the weekend, time to take stock. First, look out the window and notice that it has stopped raining! We’re in the middle of one of those weather “rivers” that pours water out of the sky and feels like a permanent geographical fixture; you can’t imagine how it will ever stop. But somehow the sky is less pulled down on the treetops and roofs and there is a visible smudge of light in the sky that must be the sun. No time to hesitate! Go outside!

Looking up, the first thing I see is an eagle slowly passing over the neighborhood, barely tipping its wings and intent on surveying the possibilities. And in the same frame of vision, I see a vivid-pink flash of a hummingbird. The definition of “bird” stretches almost to breaking point to encompass these two! Besides the cessation of rain, I am counting this twin sighting as my #1 Wonder of the Day.

And instantly know that instead of New Year’s resolutions—you know, lose those extra pounds, be more organized, and clean out a few drawers—I’m going to collect Wonders; make that a minimum of three a day. It’s a wake-up call from winter hibernation or Covid-induced fog. I feel better already.

There are several ways to discover Wonders. Some present themselves like the eagle and hummingbird. For my next Wonder I only had to follow my nose. We have a bush in our side yard that blooms in winter; if anyone can identify it, please do. It has the freshest sweet-but-not-too-sweet scent from tiny white flowers that just gladdens my heart on these dark days. I stand in front of it and breathe in the scent and feel that spring cannot be lost no matter what the date. I have Wonder #2.

And I have a theme: What other signs of early spring can I find? Soggy brown leaves litter the ground and bits of fallen branches from the windstorm nearly hide my next find. There is a tiny, slightly battered, but bravely pushing upward primrose whose pink catches me eye. It’s very modest but not at all prosaic. I’m counting it as #3 for the lift it gives my mood.

I see green shoots pushing up here and there, probably the bluebells that will take over my garden later, but perhaps because they are so prolific they don’t quite feel like a bona fide Wonder to me today. Ah, but what’s this? Again a pink color draws me to peer more carefully in the clutter of last-year’s leaves. This seems incredibly early, but some of my strawberry plants are in flower! Very pink, indeed. Spring is more than a wish; it feels like a promise kept. Strawberry plants blooming in January is a Wonder, a bonus, #4. Everything is going to be okay.

This morning as the sky lightened, there was no brightness, no evident sun, not even a fiery red one like the day before. Instead, there is an opaque featureless gray of fog, possibly—probably—laden with smoke and particulates from fires still consuming the west like hungry monsters. So I was charmed…distracted…pulled into reverie when I  opened an email inviting me to revisit Newagen Seaside Inn, near Boothbay, Maine. We had once stayed there in late July, 2018. A lifetime ago!

The come-hither photo of perfect pumpkin-orange and golden Fall leaves, mostly still clinging to trees lining both sides of a path you’d give anything to be exploring, but just enough decorously scattered on the ground to add some crunch, drew me into the scene. I could almost smell the trees and catch a salty breeze coming off the nearby bay. This is a very special place!

The Inn and its surroundings are, of course, Maine-perfect and a dream vacation destination but the reason we had made a stop there was for me a pilgrimage to pay my respect for someone I have long studied and held in awe: Rachel Carson. She used to stay at the Inn when she was working on her Sea books, examining the tidal pools, finding the threads of life that linked every minute form to the cosmos of the whole biotic community. She loved the area so much she eventually settled in a small cottage just a few minutes away from these rocky beaches.

The hotel is proud of its association with the life and work of Rachel Carson and eager to relate stories of her time there.  Even more powerfully, you can follow a sign-posted path to a favorite beach on hotel property where her ashes were scattered at her request when she died in 1964. As the small waves washed in and out and pooled between the granite rocks, endlessly obeying the waxing and waning of the moon, I gazed at the crevices, the bits of shaggy seaweed, the flecks among the gravel and tiny shell pieces, as if to see her essence still there, mingled with all the ongoing life she loved and wrote about. Her words floated in my mind, now carved on a marker, captured in bronze from the page where they first appeared…

I had read her excellent biography by Linda Lear and all her Sea books before our journey there, so my mind was super-charged with her story and with her own evocative descriptions of shore and tidal life, on out to the very depths of the oceans just then being explored in its darkest reaches for the first time. But all these words spun in the breeze and floated like so much flotsam, efflorescent, out to sea. What remained was her solid love of place, her will to share it with us all, and her granite resolve to save it for its own sake. The air coming off the water was so fresh and tangy. I left with a new resolve to dig into my own place, to put down roots, and find my own words. But I’ll always remember finding Rachel at Newagen.

The sun sends out its welcome beams of light and warmth, warmer than I expected, as I set out for a morning walk. It is very quiet, no dog walkers, the traffic light, everything holding stillness for this while. Except for the birds who are hidden in leafy surrounds, chirping, making plans, exchanging observations on the day and the new season. Do they know it is the first day of Autumn?

The days are perceptively shorter. We rise in the dark now and dark descends too soon after dinner, it seems. But today, after the early morning clouds melted away, a golden light makes the sky appear an even brighter blue, a huge blue bowl that does not hover and limit sight, but stretches to infinity and makes all things feel possible. What a relief after days and days of heavy smoke-choked sky and lowering clouds with no silver lining.

Birds are gathering on the tops of trees, fluttering and circling, settling, then calling and unsettling again. They are restless, testing their wings, and uncertain. Is it time? Not yet, not quite. How will they know the moment when their flying will take on purpose and the migration begin?

I keep walking, scanning the ground for colored leaves, acorns still clinging to their caps, and if I look in the right places, chestnut conkers, gorgeous deep-brown, shiny orbs shaped perfectly to hold in my hand and rub with my palms. I plan to fill small bowls with them to create my Autumn tableau of treasures. But I am too early; they are not ready for collecting, not yet ripe and freed from their spiky cases. Only a few trees have begun to turn from green to gold and red and brown. Still, I do glean some leaves, a beginning. It’s just the first day, I must be patient though I long for a change. The turning of the season, a closing and an opening.

Ah, but some creatures are well aware of the passage of time. The garden spiders are busy, their webs more elaborate and visible. They are now fully grown and mature, ready to mate and produce eggs that they will bundle into a silken sac that will protect the tiny spiderlings until next spring’s warmth. Then the cycle will begin anew with the tiny spiders growing, shedding their exoskeletons for new roomer ones, busy with life, until we again see them as mature beings, urgent with the need to keep the generations coming. Be kind to their webs, let them fulfill their destiny.

Let Autumn come and be welcome.

Everything feels hushed, stagnant, hunkered down, the sky dull with smoke and ash; collapsed in upon itself, sorrowing and rejecting even the blurry red sun that burns a hole through the murk but warms nothing. We’ve been reading the terrible news stories about the fires obliterating whole towns and blackening landscapes to the south and east of us here. The heavy smoke covering our skies tell us of worse things happening not so far away. Our hearts ache with worry and fear for those in danger.

But wait, what’s that soft dappling sound this morning? Rain! A wash of life-saving water to clear the air, refresh the dusty trees and spread a little hope. It didn’t last very long but maybe it will start up again and really get down to work. It was like a small candle of possibility that help is on its way. 

I have been thinking about the time in my younger years when several people I knew took up Tarot card reading, not with a belief exactly in the esoteric realm but perhaps because it was a way of posing questions to oneself. Where am I going? (Tarot involves a lot of questing and journeying, literally and metaphorically.) What is important? Who or what can help me on my quest? It was all very romantic and poetic. But what I was remembering now was the cards, laid out in a pattern that told one’s fortune, were of two kinds: High Arcana and Low Arcana. The lower set were said to indicate directions and decisions that were within your own range of power to influence and choose, but the higher cards—especially if you had a preponderance of them in your reading—indicated that what was happening in your life was not within your control. Forces beyond your grasp or understanding were determining your path or limiting your actions. You were in the grip of Fate!

Life has felt like that of late! We are in the grip of a worldwide pandemic; we are living in a society that feels like it is careening off any recognizable path; and now we here in the West are literally on fire. Those all feel like High Arcana cards.

Again, wait! While it is true that this troika of woes is overwhelming, we can choose how we feel about it all and we can do something—maybe just small acts, or maybe more effective ones if we join with others—but still, choosing our response and finding inspiration or just tenacity to keep going, keep practicing acts of kindness and good sense, promoting justice and a path to healthful living for everyone, caring for the Earth and each other, it is in our grasp.

The rain did not fall for more than a brief respite, but it was refreshing. It was a start. The Earth welcomed it and it raised my spirits too.

Everybody noticed it. The cleaner skies, the quiet, the lull in traffic. The pause, some called it, as we all hunkered down, stayed sheltered, and waited with held breath to see what “safety” might look like. It was the surprise silver lining in a very strained and anxious time—not over yet, not by months—but as humans and their machinery retreated, wild animals began to creep and then saunter into the vacated spaces. They must have been there all along, waiting along the margins, hidden by our noise and busyness.

There are images online about wild goats with impressive headgear taking over Welsh towns, of wild boars trotted uninhibitedly through streets and rooting in gardens, wild buffalo, foxes and coyotes, elephants, monkeys, penguins turning up where you don’t expect to see them, and even a sea lion pressing its nose against a shop window in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It was heartening to many that even in these dark and dreary times Nature could rebound and startle us with hope and thoughts of regeneration. Whether at our behest or happenstance and opportunistic, wild animals were asserting their right to spaces we humans had assumed were ours alone.

We are not alone—and never have been. It’s good to be reminded. And good to coexist not just with other humans, as crucial as that is, but with all beings: animals, birds, trees, moss, insects. Inconvenient or not. Everybody welcome? It’s a goal, a thought.

Well before the pandemic tamed the traffic, deer have inhabited my neighborhood. Our streets dead-end into the high banks of the Deschutes River estuary, now captured by Capitol Lake, but still wooded and crisscrossed by narrow trails made by many creatures. The deer come up and wander the streets and gardens, favoring roses and other tender and tasty bits laid out like a smorgasbord for their pleasure. Coyotes, raccoons, and sometimes foxes slip through alleyways and live largely unobserved but unmistakably present. Birds are abundant and living their complicated lives, season by season. All woven together rubbing shoulders, so to speak, or playing out the ancient rituals of prey and predator.

We replanted much of our space here with native plants and leave tangles of vegetation for cover, put up birdfeeders, and keep the birdbath fresh. Our Welcome mat for wildlife is out! We humbly revel in signs that our way station has found some notice among the locals.

I would like to here praise my favorite New York Times contributing writer, Margaret Renkl, who recently posted this essay and said everything better that I was attempting to communicate. She is an inspiration! I wish she lived nearby.

One of the great pleasures of getting to know Margaret and her work is to discover, here and there all over the country, other women—kindred spirits—who also were turning to Nature for inspiration and frankly, aspiration. Many made their living from their knowledge of natural history, whether by teaching it to others, through writing, through their art, or by designing gardens and by other means. Though often the money earned was needed for daily life expenses—certainly Margaret was dependent on her own earnings to live—one gets the impression that love of Nature was preserved inviolate and kept a private delight that sustained them no matter their circumstances. Margaret and women everywhere went out into fields and woods, to riversides and ocean beaches, tide-pools, and mountain meadows, to feed a hunger, a curiosity and a need quenched nowhere else but in wild places. Though often unknown to each other, they formed a kind of tribe we can recognize when we come across their life stories.

Good friends introduced me to one such woman whose story is unusual to say the least, but who carved an independent life for herself along a path strewn with wild flowers, birds and woodland creatures familiar to the sisterhood. Gwen Frostic was born in 1906 in Sandusky, Michigan and lived her whole life in that state and now is so associated with the Wolverine State that she was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 1986, and even has an official day honoring her on May 23. The School of Art at Western Michigan University is named for her, as is a Woodland Shade Garden in Grand Rapids. She was granted several honorary degrees in recognition of her long career of artistic work. But beyond Michigan she deserves to be better known.

Gwen was reputedly a crusty personality but her art, for which she was renowned, is delicate and intimate. She especially drew inspiration from her native flora and birdlife for her linocut images, which graced her trademark stationary items, calendars, prints and other items. Studying her designs feels like a walk in the woods, a trip to the river where flowers might spangle the tangle of ferns or a bird alight on a branch just ahead. You imagine her eye taking in the sight, memorizing it and reducing it to its essence and then reproducing it so that it is reanimated, alive again and sealed in the moment. Her work is fresh, full of delight and appreciation of form and the suggestion of movement. Looking at it, you want to go for a walk and see what you too might find.

As a young child, Gwen suffered an undiagnosed severe illness, which left her with the marks akin to cerebral palsy: damaged hands, a limp, and other impediments which would have discouraged many another person who didn’t have her steely strength. She never let her physical state slow her down or prevent her from learning to use her hands to form exquisite art in her own unmistakable style. She ran her own business, created her own studio, and fashioned her own life. She took chances and made a great success out of her own hard work and genius. Her studio out in the woods beyond the tourist town of Frankfort on Lake Michigan was a magnet for anyone who knew her art.

Although she died in 1986, her artwork is still available for those seeking it out. The calendar I have that showcases her images is helping me count the days in this difficult year. Some day, when the possibility of travel opens again, I plan to visit her part of the world and explore her landscape and marvel at the wild flowers, trees and birds that inspired her and that she brought to the attention of so many who saw Nature revealed through the work of her hands and attentive eyes. Her life story is an inspiration. Her art is a timeless delight!

To learn more about Gwen, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwen_Frostic

https://web.archive.org/web/20010506005958/http://www.freep.com/womenhistory99/qgwen1.htm

And especially see her still thriving business website at https://www.gwenfrostic.com/

And they are loud! Quarrelsome and bossy. Or thin, thread-like conversations and twitterings. Or searching and pleading for a parent to drop a little something their way for a snack. Sometimes there is no sound at all, just a quick skirmish and peck. It’s the season of juvenile birds.

They show up at feeders, a little disheveled, fluffy, undecided as to color, squawking for parental “input” but eventually discovering how to feed themselves. The youngsters of some species are almost the same size as their overworked parents but still sit tightly with beaks open, waiting for lunch. They try out new wings, quivering and tentatively flapping, sometimes rising a little and then resettling, and sometimes seemingly discovering the joys of flight in a bound. I haven’t been able to work out a pattern for maturation: Do larger birds take longer to mature, while small birds live quicker lives, from egg to sky in mere days? The bush-tits that crowded my suet feeder were fluffy one day and then too soon indistinguishable from the adults. But the teen-aged scrub jays are still careening around practicing their swoops and high-shouldered swaggers.

There is a lot of action around the feeders. As an experiment I put a rimmed dish on the fence near the water dish for birds that were less adept at perching on the vertical hanging feeder. I filled it with a suet block and sometimes cracked seed mix to see what was preferred. The jays make a show of possession but the smaller birds—not to mention the resident squirrel—show up and take their fill. It’s a parade of birds, a show of personality and tactics. Some come alone, quickly and with some stealth, while others come in flocks or pairs. It’s Grand Central for bird watching!

My favorite ones to observe are the young flickers. For such large birds with such powerful serious-looking beaks, they are shy and nervous feeders. I have at least two of them visiting. They avoid the jays for the most part but occasionally can be seen waiting under cover of the bushes to take their turn when the more aggressive jays take off. They creep out, talking quietly and eat large chunks of suet, carefully wiping their beaks between gobbles. Their coloring and markings are so beautiful but I am as drawn to their expressive eyes that seem to communicate both their fear and wonder simultaneously.

But there are two juveniles who never come to the suet feeder but who are even more thrilling: tiny hummingbirds! I am indebted to my astute neighbor who noticed them one day sitting on a wire strung to my house. Too tiny to see clearly and almost lost in the background of a leafy tree, still they caught her eye as “different.” Sure enough, as we watched, they were clearly testing their wings. Fluttering, rising off the wire, and then clinging to it. And then trying again, exercising tiny muscles, gaining confidence. I saw them several times now that I knew where to look. Every day they seem to alight but leave with more ease and determination; I can no longer tell them from their parents by their behavior.

In these standstill times when one day is too much like every other day of isolation and waiting, watching young birds appear, grow and explore, and merge into the flow of life is a real gift. Who knows what our own lifespan will bring us or how much time we have to experience what comes our way. Meanwhile, the birds are putting on a show and growing right before our eyes.

Although my camera is never to hand when a hummingbird approaches the fuchsia bush for a sip, I keep still and watch the precise maneuvering it employs to probe each tiny blossom, an acrobatic hovering that must be worth it, though how many drops of nectar can such tiny flowers contain? My garden is a tangle of plantings with just such moments in mind, and especially in these stay-at-home months, my main source of nature-nourishment. Any bird activity keeps me watching and wondering who will show up next. But I realized with a sense of woe that I have seen very few butterflies this year.

I’m lucky to live in a neighborhood that’s fairly environmentally conscious but this lack is likely a widespread phenomenon. I’ve been dipping into a very enlightening gardening book by Douglas Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home, with the instructive sub-title, “How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants,” for insight on what to plant next in my tiny refuge. According to Tallamy, the key to biodiversity is native planting. Plants that belong naturally in your area support healthy insect life, the foundation for a wealth of birdlife and so much more. He describes a host of popular plants introduced by “well-meaning horticulturists looking for exciting new species to sell in the garden trade” that have made many a backyard a desert for wildlife and which have, in too many cases, escaped the manicured confines and now threaten to overwhelm whole areas because—of course—they have no indigenous enemies to keep them in check. Think about the infamous kudzu and Japanese knotweed; think about English ivy!

Not the postcard ivy-covered cottage of a Jane Austen movie, but the nightmare version rampaging through out local parks. The kind strangling even Douglas-firs and entangling and smothering every native berry-producing bush and species of undergrowth that is the glory of Northwest forests. I recently spent a morning learning more about English ivy with a good friend who dedicates time every week to addressing this scourge in a very hands-on way. We went to Watershed Park—one of the places dear to Margaret McKenny who led the effort to keep that area in its natural state—to see the state of nature there today. When walking on the trails there is so much to enjoy that the dark green menace might not be that obvious, but let your eyes stray further and you’ll see trees with thick ropes of ivy snaking up the trunks and dark green patches of the trefoil leaves that blanket areas that should be more variegated.

My friend led me off to an area where I had never ventured before, to show me the extent of the problem and what can be done about it. Ivy was everywhere. It latched onto trees and blanketed the ground, swelling over fallen logs and invading every nook and cranny. Its tendrils and root systems reached high and low. Clearing breathing spaces for native plants and saving trees before the ivy kills them by rampant-growth weight alone or by vacuuming up all the nutrients and sunshine needed for survival is both an art and a science. Understanding how ivy roots, grows and spreads is key to unraveling it from any area. Ivy wants to reach for the sun; if you can thwart its spread and leaps upward, you can start to cut it back. First save the trees—for the sake of the trees—but also understanding that trees are the ladders to light. And a tall tree loaded with ivy that is brought down by wind catching in the clogged branches is a highway of several hundred feet laid down in a new direction for that ivy to spread.

You can attack the problem at the root. And what roots! Arm-thick muscular-looking growths emerge from the ground and press against the base of trees, sending up shoots that reach into the crown. Fortunately you don’t need to climb the tree, just cut that root and break the link, stripping the tree of the vine to about chest-height. Try not to damage the tree as you pull the ivy away from the bark. The rootless vine will whither and die. For good measure dig up as much of the root mass as possible.

And gather up the snipped vine and either remove it for disposal or stash it in such a way that keeps from re-rooting until it can be retrieved for removal. (Note: It should not be composted as that can merely reintroduce it if it is not thoroughly destroyed.) An area several feet around the tree should be cleared as well.

Ivy on the ground can likewise be cleared in ever-expanding circles, checked periodically so no new starts can repopulate the areas.  It takes diligence and devotion. Ivy is an implacable foe. But standing in a clearing free of its menace is exhilarating! Seeing a tree thriving anew thanks to your work is like removing a dark gloom from your heart. Encouraging the small growth of native plants that in turn will support all manner of wildlife and birds is a miracle born of your persistence. How often can our efforts be so graphic and measurable? Removing ivy takes force, a force driven for all that we hold dear. It’s a start to bringing back birds and butterflies and a brighter future. My friend toiling away in this patch of forest is a quiet hero whose legacy is as tall as a Douglas-fir and as wide as the world. I can’t thank him enough!

If you are interested in clearing ivy and other invasive species from our local parks in Olympia, get in touch with the Park Stewardship program here: http://olympiawa.gov/city-services/parks/volunteering.aspx  Children and teens can help too.

Or wherever you live, look for a similar program.

Another group working to free areas from this invasion and restore natural eco-systems is the Olympia Coalition for Ecosystems Preservation. Find opportunities to get involved here: https://www.facebook.com/OlyEcosystems/

When shopping for plants in local nurseries ask them to consider not selling invasive species like English ivy, and of course, don’t buy any for your garden either! For lists of what other plants to avoid, see here: https://www.co.thurston.wa.us/tcweeds/  

A good friend let me know that a beloved senior citizen in her neighborhood was nearing the end of her life. She urged me to visit her so that I might catch a glimpse of her mature stature and significance, even though she had already lost great pieces from her aging body. I am writing here about a Katalpa tree, estimated to be as much as one hundred years old.

When it was planted on East Bay Drive circa 1920, the main thoroughfare that leads out of town here in Olympia, was nothing like its paved orderliness of today, nor was the neighborhood a tidy collection of homes overlooking the bay. Cars were coming into their own but some horse-drawn conveyances were still employed, though the competition was clearly trending toward the motor-car. Perhaps the tree was planted in celebration of the end of the Great War, a popular expression of remembrance and looking forward to a new world.

Originally, Katalpas (also spelled with a “c”) were found primarily in Midwestern forests but settlers may have brought them here as reminders of former homes; now they are a popular nursery tree. They are a rapidly growing ornamental tree that soon produces a sizable canopy of giant heart-shaped leaves. As the tree grows, it twists its trunk and some branches, creating a dramatic and distinctive shape. After several years of growth it begins to put forth showy and fragrant white blossoms that remind some observers of irises or trumpets every spring. Hummingbirds are drawn to the blooms like magnets. As the season progresses, these flowers develop into long bean-like seed pods. There is always something of interest happening with these trees!

If you are lucky enough to have one in your garden or neighborhood it is bound to capture your attention and affection.  But like all living beings, these trees cannot grace our views forever. It will be sorely missed, its majestic spread has seen so much history and it has touched so many lives. My friend was surprised but heartened that so many passers-by have left notes of condolence and respect for the grand lady of the neighborhood. Trees can be such a presence in our lives, their place in the canopy not to be taken for granted. I’m glad I was able to visit her before it was too late to take note of this important being.

 A while ago I discovered a British organization, The Tree Council, that is devoted to the love of trees, with the intention of that love leading to actions working to protect trees. And these are not trees in the abstract but actual individual beloved trees in neighborhoods and local walking areas.

One of their programs encourages followers to “visit remarkable trees.” Remarkable being in the eye of the beholder:

“Every tree is beautiful – but sometimes a particular tree captures our attention. Perhaps it’s the way it sits in the landscape; perhaps it is the tallest or most advanced in years of that species you have seen. Perhaps it simply gladdens your morning walk. If you have a favourite local tree, list it on our map of remarkable trees so others can seek it out and enjoy it.”

 A map with designated trees accompanies the invitation.See:https://treecouncil.org.uk/take-action/visit-remarkable-trees/

 The Council also promotes the possibility of becoming a tree warden to help care for local trees, as well as outings to find and marvel at trees nearby and throughout the country.  What an amazing tour that would make for a visitor (when we are allowed to travel again.) I remember the awe I felt standing under a great spreading tree on the grounds of a grand estate that had hosted the first Queen Elizabeth in her day. Deer grazed off at a distance. The air was still; time was at a standstill, just for a moment. The tree seemed to transcend all human effort; it was witness to great events of dynasty and history—and the small daily life of twittering birds and the hum of insects. Hard to say which mattered more. Our own neighborhood trees, whether great and noble, or just planted yesterday, can give us moments of insight and appreciation of time and its passage in their own ways. Trees, of course, give us so much more.

What would it take to develop such a program of tree wardens here? The City of Olympia has an Urban Forestry department, as do most cities, but this would be a way volunteers could perhaps play a role in caring for trees and acting as ambassadors for trees. We all have our favorites! And we feel terrible loss when we lose one that we feel closely connected to but have no role in its well-being or ultimate fate. I just begin here with musing but this sort of idea might be something that catches fire when we come back together to rebuild our society.

Meanwhile, get to know the trees in your neighborhood. They are remarkable! They sustain us in these difficult times.

Arbor Day follows close on the heels of Earth Day, just two days later, as seems only right. But as this year is so off-kilter, let’s give ourselves weeks or even a month if we need it to celebrate the importance of trees in our lives and communities. Traditionally, Arbor Day is marked by planting trees in both public places with ceremony and speeches, as well as privately in our own gardens in remembrance of people and events dear to us, or just because we love trees. It doesn’t need to be complicated.

The first Arbor Day was held April 10, 1872 in Nebraska City, Nebraska, initiated by Julius Sterling Morton who had moved to that nearly treeless state from New York. He and his new wife had taken a homestead and began by planting an orchard and other trees that eventually transformed their land with hundreds of trees. They appropriately named their home Arbor Lodge. Morton took the tree-planting gospel public, giving speeches, writing articles, and encouraging the planting trees wherever he could. He served as acting governor of his state from 1858 to 1861, was a member of the State Horticulture Society, and was appointed US Secretary of Agriculture by President Cleveland, among other offices. Everywhere he served he promoted the planting of trees and more trees. Nebraska made Arbor Day official the year Margaret was born in far-away Washington Territory, in 1885, and Morton continued to spread the word further until most of the country celebrated Arbor Day the last Saturday in April or on a day best suited to the planting of trees. Hawaii and Alaska, when they became states, had very different calendars, for instance, according to their climates. That moveable date gives us license to celebrate whenever we can best do so.

Let’s make a difference! Plant a tree!

We have some records that show Margaret participating in Arbor Day activities. As a member of the Olympia Tree Committee, appointed by Mayor Amanda Smith, Margaret had the honor of helping to officiate at various ceremonial tree-planting occasions. Here we find her with Governor Albert Rosellini planting a Coastal Spruce tree in celebration of Arbor Day in 1961. This tiny tree has a fascinating pedigree. It was said to be a scion of “The Lone Tree, which served as a maritime beacon since it guided Captain Robert Gray into the harbor in 1792.” And if that wasn’t enough to distinguish it, the Governor also designated it as a memorial to Charles Tallmadge Conover, who had coined the moniker “The Evergreen State” for a national campaign advertising Washington as an up-and-coming destination soon after statehood. The legislature adopted it as our official slogan in 1893 and we’ve been proud and green ever since. The tree flourished and still bears its historic association with dignity.

Locally, as the state capital, we have many trees planted to honor individuals who have made their mark in some way. But sometimes it is the tree itself that holds our attention. On one corner of the grounds grows a majestic White Elm that can be said to be a grandchild of the famous Elm under which, legend has it, General George Washington took command of the Continental Army on July 3, 1775 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A visiting University of Washington student was able to send a rooted cutting from the old tree back to Botany Professor Edmund Meany in Seattle who successfully planted it and then had more cuttings made for new trees. This tree was ceremoniously planted by the Bi-Centennial Committee, headed by Supreme Court Justice Walter Beals and the Sacajawea Chapter of the DAR, on February 18, 1932 to mark the 200^th anniversary of George Washington’s birthday. Appropriate orations, prayers and patriotic sentiments celebrated Washington and his glorious legacy but today it is the tree itself that expresses the continuing importance of the founding values we associate with the first president. And for good measure, another cutting was made and planted just to the west of the big tree in 1979 as a promise to the future. Trees are living links to our past and harbingers to a time we hope will be a credit to our best traditions.

Earth Day is Fifty! We could have all used a better splash! Maybe tighten up some pollution regulations, close down the last coal power plant or decide not to keep building that pipeline trenching through the landscape and maybe put up some solar panels instead. A girl can dream.

I lost myself instead reading one powerful online story after another, some uplifting, some hair-raising. Here are links to some of the most inspiring: to introduce the idea of Earth Day, one of my favorite writers, “Chorus at the Dawn of Earth Day” by Gary Paul Nabhan, as featured in Orion Magazine. Another one of their special Earth Day essays was an unexpected delight: I learned something new about Amy Tan: https://orionmagazine.org/cms/assets/uploads/2020/04/tanbanner.jpg 

Emergence magazine, if you haven’t discovered it, offers real sustenance and substance, as well as stunning beauty in their posted essays and artwork: https://emergencemagazine.org/  And the Rachel Carson Council was full of stories and actions backed by research and information, as befits their name: https://rachelcarsoncouncil.org/ But don’t forget sheer joy to keep you putting one foot in front of another; listen to Birdnote for a reset when you most need it: https://www.birdnote.org/blog/2020/04/earth-day-2020-50-years  Puffins!

But even the best stories were other people’s stories, other people’s experiences. I needed to go outside, or at least stand on my front porch and see for myself. I needed to breathe in lilac scented air and breathe out the deep gloom that had settled in my heart. Climate change catastrophe looms like a shadow around the coronavirus upheaval, but that day I had to just open my hands, palms up and try to let some of the pent up fury and sadness go, just for now. There was a steady Northwest-style rain, the kind that washes all the pollen out of the air and soaks down into the tree roots. We badly needed it in this dry spring.

I needed the lilacs, the most we’ve ever had on our bush, are just coming into their own now. And my eyes drank in the blue sweep at its peak in our front garden. It’s my prairie even if it’s not camas. Somewhere out near the Mima Mounds, there is a real glacial prairie ablaze with blue and yellow and pink and every soft and vibrant color even if we can’t visit it this year. The butterflies and birds have it as their domain. It is enough to know it is there. That the Earth will go on, in ways we cannot fathom just now, but that we hope will include us. We must resolve to deserve—and serve—this beauty. Every day is Earth Day, really.