I Can Read Their Minds, Now

A few years back, we helped rescue a dog from an abusive cage situation, by one of the Sheriff's deputies.

The same guy keeps cougar-hunting dogs in the back yard.

And a very cute miniature horse.

I shall now bet a Chinese Dinner that, once the clearcut releases the starving resident cougar, and guts the horse, the guy will use that as an excuse to not only hunt down a refugee bush-meated animal, but will teach his daughter the reason the horse was killed was because predators are evil vermin out to get her favorite pet, rather than that Daddy was a psychotic bully with about as much empathy - and understanding of how the planet actually works - as a crab parasite.

I expect egg-rolls with that, mind you.

Man needs a mirror. And a shot of human DNA more recent than the ice age.

List of idiot excuses for clearcutting; as they read this blog and get more desperate, they start trying to sound Green. Like they have a clue how to do that:

1. The forests are being sprayed with poisons by the government, so the logging companies have to save everybody.

2.  The forests are all going to be killed by the Fukashima radiation spreading across the Pacific, so they need to be cut down now.

3.  Forests need to be managed by humans, because there was no wildlife in them until White People got here.

Oh, poke them, and watch them come up with more excuses. All I know is, in 20 years, when the place is going to pieces again, or they're screaming to be allowed to knock down the national parks, I ain't taking the blame. They made this soup, they can swallow it, without blaming the nearest environmentalist for everything from why they can't get a job to why their kids are all on meth. I'm going to make sure they SWALLOW the soup they mixed up, no matter how hard they whimper. 

When This Place Works - And Could Work Better

Beautiful October day over dry grass.

Yesterday's dental appointment was at 2:30 pm, and I had to take the 9:20 bus to Forks, so even after some small errands, had so much time left. Grabbed the Quilleute Tribal bus (runs on the hour) and went down to spend an hour at LaPush on the beach. 

On the busses, my position as the West End North Correspondent came in handy. Yes, that's my title - and get THAT on a nametag; the smaller the job, the longer the title.

The Mother Log on the LaPush beach.

I as able to start linking people up with the new health care system in Washington State, and maybe help a woman - and local vets - get coverage for dental, using specialized funds.

Discovered that people read this blog - where else would they be getting this information? - and they're learning and listening. 

Women agree boys, by hyperlinking on the internet and having to learn to spell, are getting smarter and listening to their mothers. They agree that trophy hunting - hunting for sport or "fun" - is a gateway drug to joining the military, where the ultimate prey can be accessed. We were talking hunting. I said there was NO problem with getting food if it was needed, and a hunter or fisher who fed the family has every right to be proud of that. We're omnivores - we put anything in our faces we can pick or catch. But triumphing over dead animals as though they're an enemy is reprehensible. If you're hungry, hunt and fish and eat. If you're not, leave them alone.

A woman liked the idea of having a yearly thanks ceremony to recognize the animals and fish who feed us, with respect and love and sorrow. As the Makah elder said, weeping as the whale came in: the young men had their tradition back - "But one of our brothers is dead."

A young man on the bus was upset about cash money, as opposed to barter. Somehow the rumor has got running around here that the Federal Reserve is a corporation, and not part of our government. I think it might originate in the prison being privatized. 

Amanita in the RV park

Let me explain money really quickly; it's not little pieces of paper. It's numbers. You may want to barter salmon for everything, but if you want to keep using that cell-phone, Centurylink does not maintain a Halibut Morgue (that's a local reference, to the holding freezer for fist at Neah Bay). If you want to barter, you have to get off the bus, and stop driving because Clallam County needs to run the busses on roads - and you'll have neither, because they don't keep a place to put cattle or dried elk meat. And somebody has to say how much those numbers or worth. Do you want to haggle over all your service bills? Actually, you can negotiate a lot of things - but it's a full-time job.

Credit cards are just numbers without the paper, and they provide short-term, high-interest loans, without application to a bank. That's all. Get 'em paid off on time, and no interest. Do NOT use those numbers unless you HAVE them! It's just a way not to carry paper in your pocket - as money was originally a way not to carry a cow in your pocket. 

Now here's a real - as the Makah call it - Rumor to Rumor moment. I was in a business, and a couple of old guys were angry because their pensions were being messed with. Something about how "specialty pulp" was involved. They mentioned the Florida logging company - the same one ripping the limbs off the Olympic Peninsula forests - was changing pensions. Some kind of trouble with the market. 

NO, I didn't ask. They'd have shut up. Resource-rip workers are like football players; they think the entire society needs to revolve around them, regardless of those damaged or left behind. It's only when their own lives are going to pieces because of what they did that we have to listen to their whining and blaming. And THIS environmentalist isn't going to ever let them get away with it again. Suck it up boys; if you're out of a job and your town goes ghost in the future - IT'S YOUR OWN FAULT.

This sounds an awful lot like the corporate idea of "We're done with you, now starve," is in action here. I don't have details. This isn't a tabloid or junk science site, distracting from real problems; I don't claim to be an expert. But - the first damages to the communities for throwing away the real future of their forests may be happening even now.

Money - The Ultimate Weapon

Okay. Now we know. I called the communities up here a bunch of cowards, wimps and fools for putting up with the logging companies, especially Rayonier.

Ghost trees - going away

I take it all back.

Yesterday, for the local newspapers, I was out covering the Great Strait Sale on Highway 112. Everybody puts out items for sale,  from shops to garage sales to special ed classes trying to raise funds for school supplies (that's a whole 'nother ball of worms, thank you very much, Tim Eyman, NOT). 

I was still shaking over the latest clearcut right beside our neighborhood. This one is right down the wind tunnel and on the flood plain. I didn't expect anybody to be on my side. Too often I'd heard how the logger was the hero up here. I wasn't ready for what I ran into.

The town is furious. People in churches are furious. People who make a living off mature woods and tourism are furious. They're stressed, traumatized, sickened. That's right - they're getting health problems. They face floods and wind damage because the protecting walls are gone.

All over the world, the storms and damage are happening, because our forests and wetlands are no longer there to protect us. Huge industries, unmerciful and bloated with cash, slash through the resources of the world as though they're invading aliens. In many cases they are; Rayonier, for example, is based in Florida.

To tell you how much we're hurting, a beloved neighborhood dog just died in his yard, with his family around him. When his "Mom" discovered I couldn't leave the house during the destruction, and so didn't discover the dear dog was passing, and so couldn't come support the family and say goodbye, she was in tears. 

Riven with grief by the destruction, an entire community could hardly move. The way the animals are being treated after these gigantic slashes - the triumphant hunting down of frightened, starving, displaced mountain lions and bears - makes them sick. One woman was angered because a yearling bear, "Not doing anything, just walking near here," was shot just because he was something to slaughter. She reported that the wolves that the State had tried to replace were shot, "And those hunters were all, 'Oh, we didn't know it wasn't legal!' " 

Logging industry, and the hunting industry attached to you (oh, yes, Rayonier has a hunting RENTAL page, as well as a real estate page!); You're damaging the hearts and minds of entire areas. You're attacking their livelihoods. You're ramming your machines through their lives like airliners into towers. They're waking up. And they're on Facebook, now. Not alone, not isolated, no longer unable to talk to each other, hunkering down in pain and fear.

There's a hungry lawyer out there who wants you. There's a class-action suit, based on your reckless endangerment of anybody who lives near your forest, and flat-out animal cruelty, that this lawyer knows s/he can harvest you with. You know who the most dangerous sharks in the American sea are - because they built the place. Go ahead, line up your own lawyers. Because anybody who does come in on your side will be next in line, for supporting an abusive industry. It's coming. It may not be today, or tomorrow, but you've treated the earth, its people - human and animal - and its breathing forests like garbage for too long.

This isn't a threat. It's a warning. And a promise.

And the paper I freelance for, the Forks Forum, isn't off the hook. Every time I send in an article, it is published near the stories of how animals are something to kill, and the latest piece of vomit-on-paper is a triumphant series of hunter-porn about the ONE wolf "attack" that ever was known up here. Some boob wandered into a wolf territory, and the writer is practically staining his pants about how the Big Bad Alpha Wolf was" exterminated." Yup, that's the word. The guy doesn't even know how Final Solution that sounds.

Now, why do I think the paper is in trouble, too? Because if any of these idiots hear there's a predator in the area - or even, in one case up here, a loose cow - they're out womping through the woods looking to kill something. I'm REALLY getting sick of being told I have to look out for stray bullets while mushrooming or berrypicking or just getting some forest time. I imagine the paper can at least be taken for Contributory Negligence, or something else the lawyer/s will dig up.

My last editor offered this idiot writer a large payment for going to observe salmon-fishing grizzlies - at night. 

"WTF?" I thought "Is he trying to get him killed?"

Then again, this editor also left a crazed story about a mythological Japanese airfield up here, which he told my last editor (or this one, I get 'em mixed up) was "A bomb in the system." It's bad enough having to see my decent articles published in the same rag as crazed paranoids who fear the woods and wild animals - can you imagine being the editor for this chop-shop logging blatt? No wonder these people don't last.

The paper also runs a series called "The Real Forks." Now, I read this thing and think it's hilarious - but it's just some woman doing the little nicey-nice stories. You want the REAL west-end stories - you come here. I don't give a fuck any more.

Rotting Heads - But Not Zombies

Respect? Or White People Values?

Okay, I'm giving my neighbors the benefit of the doubt. The house always has teenage boys running in and out. The person in charge has a laid-back attitude about kids. Yeah, I had to tell them their kids were jumping out of the ditch to run at a car; I really don't want my insurance rates raised when I make red paste out of a little boy. Which is a TAD too laid-back for me, thank you. I'm not paid to raise other people's kids (and I have a contract for that).

So - you tell me what this photo says:

1. Is it an old symbol of respect for an animal people who die - a lot - so we can eat? As in: returning the heads to the woods?

2. Is it trying to get the skulls clean (and I have no idea if respect was shown or not, beforehand).

3. Or is it kids defying the game warden, as one passing biker suggests?

At Ivar's Salmon House this year, a little girl was asking her mother what the First Nations art meant. I asked her mom if I could explain. It went sort of like this:

"Those are spirits."

Her eyes bulged. "EVIL spirits?"

I took a moment to remember what modern religion has done, and said, "No, powerful spirits. See that one? That's a salmon. That one's a bear. If you go into the woods and show respect, they'll feed you. If you disrespect rivers and forests, someday they'll go away, and they won't come feed you. You'll starve. Do you understand?"

She did. Her mom didn't look happy; in our religion, we have a god and a demon (although the western god was originally just one person in a good or bad mood), and one is loving and the other is mean. But when people really live close to nature, if you disrespect nature, the food goes away. This is true. Unfortunately, we've brought in our own selfish beliefs and spread them around.

People up here think they're living "close to nature," but they're what Dan says: "Industrial workers in the woods." Every year they're buying all the things they need to survive while short trips into the woods. They're pretending.*

The woods are full of food, fuel, shelter, medicine, time and quiet. I'm not afraid of them. I circle if I'm "lost," with the natural instinct to find my troop. If I'm hungry or thirsty or need shelter, it appears. I don't run or panic or scream or threaten. It took me ten minutes to make one of those little rock-splinter knives that have been found at a camp on the Hoko River, out of what I found lying around. I'll eat fern roots, if I have to.

Disrespect is death. We've treated the Earth like dirt for several centuries, now. Soon, we shall be reaping our harvest of pride and short-sightedness, and returning to the dirt, ourselves.

Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.

*First Nations people are trying to get their old ways back, mostly realizing we're about to shoot ourselves in the feet. With the clearcut next to our neighborhood, cutting right into the flood and wind tunnel, there will be whining and wailing to their godlet about "WHY?" next typhoon season. Rather than sniffing, "I told you so," I should be getting business cards from a hungry lawyer, for the class-action suite? Hey, the logging companies harvest everything and everybody else - so it's their turn. What goes around, comes around. Call it recycling.

Latest note: evidently somebody must have read this and missed the point entirely, because they've stuck a hunting permit around one of the antlers of the more lifelike of the two rotting heads. Yeah, making sure we all know it's legal - that's the point of how to treat animals. In some states, cock- and dog-fighting are still legal, too. 

Pickin' in the Heart of Evil.

We have a favorite spot for picking chanterelles. We got this nice little haul from areas that would usually be too damp, but this year it's been dry, so we're picking 15 feet to the left or right, beyond the wood sorrels and in the moss.

But like everything else we've loved for years up here, Rayonier is tearing the heart out of it. We were witness to the Heart of Evil as we walked through this usually quiet spot in the woods (well, sort of skinny, stick woods - but Rayonier is panting to put the toxic boiled-down result into your body and lungs).

Because Tim Eyman ripped out the ability of a State to support itself, the State is forced to sell off its timber as fast as possible, in a manner that will cripple it for decades, if not finally make this just another Failed Timber Town area (with the feeling-sorry-for-themselves you always get from resource towns). You can see the desperation in the logging trucks ripping through town. So the trucks were roaring up and down the road by the woods. One driver, stopping to "secure" his load (they're overloading, so don't drive too near them), even stopped to kick the beer cans I'd tossed out into the road, until I could get a bag, back into the woods. He didn't even think of picking them up. To him, the woods are just cash and a garbage dump.

Chanterelles, Hen of the Woods, Oyster Mushrooms. 

I was picking up the usual garbage in the woods. The kind of people who are loggers and hunters throw beer cans and beer bottles around the elk trails. They even shatter window glass where an elk might step. Think about that. 

Dan called me back in from poking around in a thin patch. Usually, I'd have come right out, but this isn't really a bear or mountain lion area. So I said, "Why?" He said, "Just come."

So I did, slowly and carefully. if it WERE a large predator, running and panicking is the dumbest thing you can do. And if I'm in somebody's living room, I don't want to look like I'm wearing a stocking over my head. I don't carry a gun because I usually can't, in most situations, and stupid happens with guns. So I'll rely on my head and moves and mouth, thank you, as I have, so many times before. 

I get to the road, and I see a couple of guys, and one with a deer rifle (I don't know guns, and I don't care to, unless I need to ask my gun geek friends), but Dan says it's what it was. THIS is the thing I need to get out of the woods for? Well, I start to fume. I needed to stop picking because there were testicles with bang-bangs in the area?

Between the garbage and the roaring logging trucks, my hackles really started to go up. I am so goddamn god-vomit tired of men telling me, as a woman, I need to stay out of the woods because I might get shot. Yeah, I mean you, Mr. Forest Ranger who told me that one day. Just try it, boys. The day of the hunting accident is over - you need to be up for manslaughter with reckless endangerment. 

On the one hand, Mom pounded manners into me. I find it extremely hard to be rude to people. So when the hunters said, "Seen any grouse," I just joked, "The last bunch of grouse hunters up here admitted they were just exercising the dogs."

I thought they'd think it was funny. Hey, some of their own had said it, right? But Dan - as a guy able to sus the guy twitches - said they were NOT happy with that. What? I was putting down their hunting prowess or something?

Then, as we were getting into the car, another logging truck stopped. The two hunters immediately got into a conversation with the driver, all excited about the timber sale jobs up in the clearcut. Well, that explained that: loggers. Scared to death of the woods, descended from clerks and European farmers, and out to grab theirs. If they can't be cutting it down, they want to make it bleed.

Then the driver said, "Somebody got a cat up here! 150 pounds!" The guy with the gun joshed, "I"ll bet it's 300 pounds by now!" 

And that's when it hit me. Finally. After ten years up here. D'uh. We're talking facepalm. 

When Dan's dad would clean the garden - with a tractor - the rats would run out, and Dan would run around with a shovel, sharing rat-killing duties with the red-tailed hawk his dad wouldn't let anybody kill. 

The loggers are using clearcuts to drive predators out of their homes, and shooting these starving, disoriented, homeless refugees. 

As we pulled out, I leaned out the door, and said, "So, going to go shoot some more refugee animals?" They waved and looked confused. I hope so.

Even the Masai have stopped killing lions to prove how brave they are, and have become the Guardians of the Lions. But up here - bravery is based on a man named Huelsdonk, who, according to this family, read too many cowboy stories back in Germany. He came out to the Peninsula and lived off government money in the form of bounties (yes, we were really stupid back then), destroying all the predators he could line up in his sights. This crazy Kraut helped drive the wolves to extinction, and called the lions forces for destruction. Evidently, he didn't even own a mirror.

Then I realized who the "cowboy story" writer must have been. A German named Karl May. Who never saw America while writing the stories that, later, would be the model for the Lone Ranger and Tonto. 

Now, can anybody else name another huge fan of Karl May? Who had all his books? And thought the idea of conquest and a place to live for his people, regardless of who stood in the way, was a good idea?

With people like Heulsdonk and Hitler lapping up his nonsense, May may be one of the most destructive writers of all time. 

Since we're talking Germans, one of my best friends, a very enlightened German professor, once told Dan, "In Germany we have the village idiot. In America, you have idiot villages."

(As for shooting cats: go into the local liquor store and see the picture of the kid holding up a dead bobcat. OH, he's so proud of himself. I've seen a grandmother shown a picture of a dead bobcat on a cell phone, and she's cooing over her granddaughter for killing the cat. Why? They're not going to eat it, and we don't need the fur. This must explain the guy in Forks who is trapping and shooting his neighbor's cats, while they whimper in protest and do nothing about it. I think I'm done writing about this area. These people are either monsters or wimps).

Forks might have been accused of having vampires, but what they all have up here is zombies.

(NOTE: One woman who has been reading my blogs says, YES, she KNOWS catch-and release is bad, but she loves to fish so much! I said, I do too, but I don't fish EXCEPT to eat. She said she'd work on it. Look, I boycott beef. Will never buy it; if you swallow the DNA of cows, you want the whole world to be grass. But if I'm at a cookout, I'll have a hamburger. No use being rude. I suggested she gift herself a couple catch-and-release days a year, and she nodded and said she should. At least she means to try. Credit where credit is due.

Re fishing on catch-and-release days, and why sport killers are just stupid: if you fish on a catch-and-release day before a keeper day, and you want to know WHY the place is full of hungry seals on the keeper day, maybe you should deny yourself the nasty pleasure of filling the fishing area up with wounded, bleeding, face-and mouth-ripped fish. I mean, where do you THINK seals get their food? FORKS OUTFITTERS? The border patrol would stop them, along with the Hispanics the Forks mayor is out of his mind scared of.

The other day, I heard some people up here talking, without being able to quite catch their words - and I swear to god, it really DID sound like "hyuk hyuk hyuk." I am so sick to my teeth of the Stupid and Proud of it.)

Sekiu Running Dog

Kim and Petey (with Mom's help).

Will Kim actually breed a dog based on Lab, Cocker Spaniel and Chihuahua? 

Petey, who hangs out at Olson's resort, is black and sweet like a lab, small and big-footed like a Cocker, and has the silky coat of a Chihuahua. He fetches, has a soft mouth, swims like a duck, and is loving but loyal. He can jog for miles, will probably hunt, and can still come in and love on the sofa or a lap without causing pelvic failure. And his huge feet just say "puppy." Yes, that's a full-grown dog.

Kim was wondering what to call it - "Cockalabahua" or something like - but we decided it needed a REAL breed name. 

And now I want a Sekiu Running Dog.

Taking the Day Off To Play Hunter/Gatherer/Farmer

From left: Mushrooms (Orange Chanterelles, pear-shaped puffballs, Oregon gomphidius, crested coral), Jerusalem artichokes, giant barnacles, potatoes. Not pictured, but gathered the same day: eggs and raspberries.

Northwest giant barnacles. Steam 'em; they taste like crabs.  Well, they ARE crabs.

Let's Teach The Kids!

It's not uncommon to see someone who's caught a large fish up here laughing and sniggering while beating it to death.  While I fish, too, and clubbing is one of the quickest ways to kill a fish, I don't treat these animals who die so I can live as though they're enemy humans I want to exterminate.  And I don't fish unless I'm hungry for fish.

Right now it's Catch-and-Release fishing season up here -- that's right, tormenting animals for the fun of it and teaching the kids to do it, too.

Now is the time the big cabazons (relatives of bullheads) and other fish somebody didn't want wash up, dead of stress or worse, because somebody out there was playing with them and threw them away as so much garbage (even little bullheads are delicious, by the way).  The fisherman slash Styrofoam bait flats apart and throw them in the water -- and we all know what plastics are doing.  

Dan and I keep a beach up here clean and we know when these loser fishermen are in town.  I've even seen them leave salmon in a boat to rot while they go have a beer or dinner, because catching the fish is all it's about, not eating them. How many of us know those who hunt for bones on an animal's head and not to eat it?  And hunters and fishers wonder why they're losing support -- because they won't police their own. 

Along with the Gulf Spill, I don't know how any human dares look another animal in the face right now.  I say this as a human who tries always to use less, share and damage less at all times.  It's my idiot species, and I can't say I'm not one of them.

If this planet was a test, NO humans are going to heaven....