Big Sis

Me and my sis Dotti at Mukilteo.

Kurt Vonnegut in the Berry Patch

Us: Lalalala, let's go pick some berries and make wine and pies. And not pay attention to it being a Krakatoa year, and berries might not be as common as they usually are.

Bear waking up on the hill: RAWR! (Translation: You fucking monkeys get off my hill and away from my hibernation food!).

Me: Click all car doors open, walk quietly but QUICKLY over to Dan, and mutter, "Pick up all your equipment and get in the car."

Dan:  Didn't say a word. Picked up his equipment and got in the car.

The September 11 harvest.

Well, for most humans, berrying and stuff is only a hobby, anyway. We can buy all kinds of subsidized food, including berry jam. Ursa Major up there needs the food he can pick to make it through the winter.

And when you see two-inch-thick berry canes ripped to shreds, as with a machete, maybe not so much arguing with a much larger, more irritable omnivore who is worried about the food source.

So we went and picked Chanterelles, instead. Results: Blackberry wine, blackberry pie, more blackberry filling, and mushroom rice for supper.  Not so shabby. That double dish is corn-breaded fish fillets from the freezer, from a couple day's teasing the greenling on the beach.

(Kurt Vonnegut, captured at the Battle of The Bulge, said he and his fellow platoon-members didn't say "Nuts!" or anything to the SS. They held up their hands and went along quietly. Basically, we didn't make any smart remarks to anything that heavily armed and wearing black, either.)

(Sadly enough, ran into my childhood in the Pacific Northwest, again. When I was a kid, dumb-ass grownups used the back gully as a rubbish tip. Ran into a local rubbish tip up here, again, when you think people would finally have learned better. One wonders, sometimes, if one is in a time-warp from the 1950's.)

Short Commons, River Tension, Live Heart, OMG

Which is the phrase for "There's not a lot to eat." And why birds are dying and washing up on the beach. Yesterday, found this adult red-tail hawk washing around on the edge of the surf, and picked it up, bedding it up on the beach plaintain.  No, we can't feel anything when we're dead, but - you know. We do it out of respect.

How do you know the Clallam River is rising as the tide comes up? The surface tension on the dry rocks is swelling.

A Douglas Fir that went down a long time ago on Slip Point (Clallam Bay beach) and cut. Still bleeding blood-red pitch.

Dan, making fun of the Chemtrail sillies.

The Real Working Forest

Believe me, even loggers up here KNOW forests are the lungs of the planet - and even the food-link to the algae that produce so much of the oxygen. They're asking, "But what do we do for our grandkids?" Admittedly, they still wince at the word "education" (imagine the industry propaganda that caused that) - but their kids are teaching them!

As one girl (admittedly south state) had tattooed on her belly: "We are the ones the grandmothers have been praying for." They're asking questions, they WANT education (including the highly necessary arts) and they can see ahead. One converted logger said his grandkid showed him how much money was in FUN (and your entire paycheck doesn't go fixing the @#$!!! machinery).

This is an Audobon Area - all those birdwatchers want good trail guides, and will pay, and fancy wild birds, in a proper environment, are a self-replicating, no-expense resource. If we must put it in those terms for us Geezers. "Jobs" are about serfdom, but a fully-restored forest offers hundreds of self-employment jobs. Now we need more classes about running your own business - and it's not that hard!

Note: a waitress at the Lake Crescent lodge (on a slow day) listened to how to run her own comicon at the lodge, as did people on the bus. They're all listening to the possibilities of tourism and entertainment. The term "Working Forest" works even better if it's a fully-restored forest with beautiful trails.  The real money will be in beauty and fun, for everybody, because the old model of theft, murder and greed is failing under our feet. 

We owe it to the kids to stop wiping our butts with the lungs of our planet - and pooping in our drinking water.

Sheds Off House

Yes, they are. They came down in an hour. Now I need to get a shot of the side of the house, painted. Which it is.

More Clearcut Dancing

Follow-up to the Pillar Point cut, which seems to have been part of a "salmon-stream clearing" project.

On the way up the west coast of Washington State, so many - MANY - well-printed signs about the "Olympic Land Grab."

First of all, it's another expensive print run. Which organization or corporation is paying for the printing and distribution? Who's got the money?

Secondly, logging interests talking about a "land grab" are practicing historical projection (Look in the mirror, folks).

On the Hoh river salmon-stream clearing project, a crane was vandalized, evidently by "environmentalists," as a local paper has it. The red spray paint referenced clearcuts.

The Pillar point cut goes quite a ways into the woods and along the highway. A chance for somebody to pick up some trees under cover of a state project? The same on the Hoh river?

Did the highway 112 cuttings finally set off a reaction? Again, asking and wondering. These things seem to be linked. Maybe folks are tired of the lungs of the planet being slashed down to make chipboard and to wipe our butts with.

Oh, and down by Chehalis, ran into some fellow born-in-Everetts, but they bragged about living in that forest-failed armpit for 50 years (never getting out?) and put down "kids today" who "don't want real wood," but replace sawdust board cabinets every five years.

And where, pray tell, are said kids supposed to get "real wood?" Hire Dr. Who to run back in the Tardis a half century or so and bring some back? Please. Do get out and THINK once in a while.

Down On The Farm.

My aging hens are safe and happy at Dryads Rest, in Chehalis, Washington. They have a farmyard, a clean roomy coop, a whole flock of hens and a big handsome rooster named Tiberius. They're sorting out the pecking order. Black and Tiberius had a cockfight, and he's still trying to keep the peace as the hens work it out. Red, who was so terribly torn up by the neighbor's dog, is just fine. Little Inky seems to feel safe.

I have to think about whether or not I want chicks in the spring. For one, I'd have to find a place for the aging hens, and there's only so many non-producing adoptees a farm can take. Then again, they'd still have the ability to produce some chicks and add to the bloodline. We'll see how I feel when I get the January gotta-do's in the yardwork and building line.

For second, Dan says my homemade tofu is an acquired taste - and he's acquired it. And I use a lot of homemade soy-milk. So maybe the whole hen operation will be replaced by a couple bags of soybeans every year.

Though, if I ever end up on a bigger piece of land, I can run a chicken operation, now I've learned about their care and medicating, etc. 

In the meantime, the co-op's tourist operation and the locals all want my homemade sea salt, and since I make it for us anyway, I can get the extra cash that way.