Deer On The Road

For certain is death for the born
And certain is birth for the dead;
Therefore over the inevitable
Thou shouldst not grieve. ………..The Bhagavad Gita

We were headed to the airport this morning since Linda was going to Vancouver to our niece’s high school graduation. About 1 mile from our house, we could see a woman on the side of the road slowly waving her hand up and down indicating that we should slow down. Coming closer we could see that there was a young deer lying in the roadway. Assuming she had likely hit the deer we pulled up slowly and asked if she was okay or needed help. She said no, she had not hit the deer. She had just found it in the roadway.

Nasty Beach Garbage

“My wife is always trying to get rid of me. The other day she told me to put the garbage out. I said to her I already did. She told me to go and keep an eye on it.” …Rodney Dangerfield

Yesterday we did our first litter pick up duties as part of our volunteering for the “Imagine No Litter” campaign sponsored by The Friends of The San Juans. The area we volunteered to regularly clean is South Beach, part of American Camp National Park. Since we walk at American Camp 4-5 days a week, it is a logical place for us to help keep picked up.

We normally do not walk on the busy part of the beach, as there are many quiet, empty coves, so we were not really sure what we would find. The park rangers are in the public parking areas almost every day, cleaning the rest rooms and emptying the trash containers, so we thought the beach would be fairly clean. What we found was a lot of plastic trash. The non-biodegrable garbage stays on the beaches, and we found some areas with really large amounts of plastic and styrofoam.

We will need some help to clean those areas, so maybe we can encourge other people to help us do those portions of the beach as part of the Oceans Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup day on September 15, 2007.

There is some really nasty trash there, and we hope we can get it removed from the beach this season. I can’t imagine how awful it would be for marine mammals and birds to ingest or get entangled by this stuff. And it is trash that simply will not go away. Unless we remove it, it stays there forever.

The other thing that was strange was the weird items we found. The large number of plastic tampon containers was perhaps the biggest suprise. I doubt too many women are changing tampons at the beach, so where did those all come from?

Another mystery of the deep I guess.

Trailer Trash Bash

While it won’t be our Second Annual TT Bash, this logo works for us.

Here are a few of the planned activities:

• Sunset Martini Hour – San Juan County Park
• Beach Oyster Collecting – Westcott Bay Oyster Farm
• Samora Roasting Orgy
• Combat Croquet Team Competition
• Doggie Field & Beach Stroll – American Camp
• Trailer Trash Wine & Cheezit Pairing
• Squirt Gun “Capture The Flag” Game
• Late Night Snoring Contest

Other suggestions and ideas are welcome!

Beach Glass

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety-seven now, and we don’t know where the hell she is.” Ellen DeGeneres

I have taken to collecting beach glass on some of our walks. Our dog, Whidbey, doesn’t really like it when I do that as the pace is too slow for her, and I think she is bored with my slow meander along the surf line. But, she really has no choice in the matter, because when my attention is on beach glass, I find it difficult to pay attention to anything else. All of my concentration and focus is on these tiny bits of litter, to the exclusion of all other sensory input. I like to think of it as a form of mental exercise, a quieting of my mind, but in truth it is not. It is just fun.

Eyries

“I have learned that the less I pay attention, the more often I am pleasantly surprised.” Raymond Justice

Yesterday as we set out for a morning walk, we had not even gotten out of the small parking lot at American Camp when a large eagle glided directly overhead, low and close. We could hear the air passing over its wings with that strange swoosh that is testimony to the the wonder of flight. It was a delightful moment, and as close as either of us has ever come to a wild bald eagle. After passing over us, it rose effortlessly up on an unseen current over the tall trees at the end of the parking area. It then descended rapidly, disappearing into tall grass at the edge of an open field on the far side of the trees.

As it was descending, we could hear a chorus of cackled crow vocalizations, sounding more like curses than alerts. We thought it perhaps was hunting and had seen a field mouse or rabbit (or hapless napping crow?) and in just a few moments the large bird rose up out of the grass and came flying back in the reverse direction. We stood in awe as it flew back over us, again low, silent and very near. In the grasp of its impressive talons was not prey, but a large clumb of dry grass.

After passing over us, the eagle rose up gently and landed in a large nest located on the far side of the driveway that leads to the parking lot. The nest was large, probably 8 feet or so across, and in it was our eagles mate. The partner was sitting quietly, likely on their eggs, while the spouse moved about placing the dried grass into the nest.

We stood there, dumbstruck and humbled by the vision of eagles nesting at the near margin of a busy National Park Service parking lot. We were also astonished by the fact that despite having parked in this lot for uncountable numbers of times over a number of years, we had never even noticed the nest.

It was a humbling lesson in mindfulness, and especially so at a place you think you know fairly well. Our eagles nest discovery will be a source of fascination as we watch them hatch, feed and care for their eaglets over the coming weeks and months. We are certainly thankful for the pleasant surprise provided by our lack of attention!

For a fascinating look into eagle lore, check out this post entitled “Beaks of Eagles” by Charles Thrasher at his blog, Salish Sea.

The Olympic Mountains

“The great omission in American life is solitude. . . that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incinerator of the spirit.” Marya Mannes

I stand looking directly south across the straits of Juan de Fuca to the Olympic Mountain Range. Snow capped, ragged tops ranged at a uniform height fills the horizon before me. The peaks floating atop a band of misty clouds that cling to the foothills below gives the appearance that the mountains are pasted into the sky.

Although the Olympics are within daily view and a half days drive of about 3.5 million Puget Sound residents, they are virtually unpeopled, unknown, and unvisited except by occasional summer backpackers and park rangers. To me they are a symbol of wildness, nature and solitude; a daily reminder that wild places really still exist, even if sometimes only in our minds.

At regular intervals, I find myself yearning for that great quiet, that aloneness which allows me to hear my heart, my own voice. But I am fortunate for I have found two places of refuge. One is the daily morning walk at American camp, where I can practice the art of mindfulness. The other is my journal.

My journal, usually a conversation between idiots, occasionally graces me with an insight or authenticity that is from another source; certainly not a source that acts through my everyday life and thoughts. So the quiet and solitude I find inside the pages allows the voice of the collective unconscious to appear.

All I know is that I am grateful for those brief appearances of clarity, and it is good to have a small Olympic Mountains inside.

New Beginnings

“From the end spring new beginnings.” Pliny The Elder

The moon was full as we stood atop the earthen bulwark at American Camp on New Years Eve. No fireworks or raucous, drunken parties here; the wind, stars and silence were party enough. Strung like an uneven circle of dim, poorly formed pearls, the lights of Bellingham, Anacortes, Seattle, Sequim, Port Angeles, and Victoria looked like isolated orbs in the leaden darkness.

This place, this silence, this feeling – this is why we came back to the San Juans. This is ours, this is mine. I do not fully understand why living here gives me a sense of belonging, but it does. Perhaps a lifetime of not belonging and not being who I need to be has made me more sensitive to the emotion of connection. Or perhaps I am simply getting older and need to believe that there is a special place for me in this world.

Of Mice & Dogs

“To live fully in a place all your life, you keep aiming smaller and smaller in attention to detail.” Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

Almost every day for the past 4 months, we have taken our dog Whidbey for a walk at Greenbank Farm. She needs these walks as an outlet for her energetic disposition. We have watched while the farm has changed its mood and personality from late summer to early winter and the changing panorama is a delight to observe.

Whidbey has not lost her excitement for the farm, nor we for the joy of watching her, and she is as enthusiastic and happy today as she was on her first walk. She has her familiar encounters, from the blue herons who hunt in the open fields and allow her to approach only so far before launching themselves into flight, to the alpacas who rush forward towards her, heads and chests high in a show of solidarity and bravado, as she approaches them from the safe side of the fenced pasture.

Rock Talk

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” Norman Maclean – A River Runs Through It

Old rocks – that what the San Juans are made out of. Very old rocks, older than the mainland. Imagine a micro-continent riding on the top of the Juan de Fuca plate, riding fast, slamming into North American plate and getting stuck to it. Up from the “basement of time” these rocks came seeking the light, rising from the deep, only to be covered in a coffin of ice a mile thick during the last ice age. Scrapped clean in some places, rubble rock and bouldered in others, these islands were created. As the ice melted then came water, plants, animals, people.

Most of the rock of the San Juans is metamorphic. Metamorphic rock starts out as some other type of rock, and has been substantially changed from its original form when subjected to high heat, high pressure, hot, mineral-rich fluids or some combination of these factors. In metamorphic rocks some or all of the minerals in the original rock are replaced, atom by atom, to form new minerals.

And so we, like the rocks, have come to this place to transform and reshape our lives. Have we experienced enough heat and pressure to form a new mineral, a new us? We shall see; we shall hope.

The rocks, they remain, and they talk if you listen. We are hear to listen.

Illuminations Come Late

“Regrets are illuminations come too late.” Joseph CampbellAnd so we return to the San Juans after an absence of six years. Six years of regret and longing. But that is behind us now. We return in anticipation that this will be the place where our ashes and our spirits will eternally rest mingled with the wind, water and land. That is a comfort, knowing where you will be forever.

Until then, come with us on our journey swimming in the Salish Sea. Come see this watery place where the land, sea and sky join to create a rich story, vivid with sights, scents and moods. Alive with the memories of the rocks, plants, animals and people, the Salish Sea was shaped in fire, crushed by ice, defined by water.

This is a love story – our love of this place.