Boulder Creek

We made several decisions that were bad-turned-out-good, but the first was to go on this hike and bring two tweens and two small kids. We'd done the lower two and a half miles of it a couple of days previously and while it looked fairly arduous, the distance - 11 miles - seemed pretty doable over one full and two half days. We'd descend to the creek the first day, hike the creek and ascend to the mesa the second and then stroll out the third day. It wasn't quite so simple.

We took forever to get out of main camp. After cleaning, organizing, packing, dropping the shuttle cars and fetching the kids from playing at the creek, it was 4 PM when we pulled out. We promptly made another bad-turned-out-good mistake. Early into the drive, we came to a four-way intersection at a low forest saddle. We took the middle fork; the road we wanted, 3850, was the left fork. For two hours we drove, running down dead-end spurs and back tracking, before finally taking an unmaintained semiclosed connector. Sound sketchy? It was. The road climbed and climbed and climbed, clinging to a north facing cliff. At one point we had to disembark all but Roger and build a temporary cobble track through the valley of a little landslide, but the Subaru proved its worth, climbing and rocking its way through the slide. Just then, we saw a lanky young bear who galluphed up the road before diving down through the fireweed. The entire ordeal, Roger and Mizu huddled over the map, driver and shotgun, while the kids and I sat on the window sills and played leaf-grabbing games and sang and got cold before diving into the warmth of the car only to emerge again. The views were stupendous. Just the long gaze up through the shadows of the reprod was great, an unfamiliar lateral view into the depths of the forest to ogle a huge tree or imagine a cat slipping along a downed tree or there! - in the rhodies - sasquatch, but the majesty of the sweeping northward vista was not to be matched. As we rocked slowly upward, the entire Steamboat drainage was spread out below. Then at last, the trailhead. It was 630. We were hiking at 7 PM.

We went steadily downward for about an hour, then as the sun was dropping behind the ridge to our right, we came to a little shelf. There was a wooded saddle, flat and clear under the standing trees, that'd make a great tent site, but the sky was just a chimney hole above and we wanted to see the stars and chance a glimpse at the Perseids. 150 yards on, the forest broke atop a little knoll. The fire had run up the slope, destroying all the trees and opening the sky. The ground was rocky and covered with small blowdown, yet for all that flat and the view! Open sky above  and to the south and east only naked fingers of the burned forest. The site on the saddle was clearly the better tenting spot, but if we could make the little flat top of the knoll work, it would be spectacular.  While the kids lolled tiredly by their packs and Roger headed back to check out the saddle, I set to clearing the top of the knoll. First sticks, then rocks. I'd almost gotten all the sticks when I noticed several yellow jackets angry around my waist. I turned and turned to see if there was a nest and - I saw it - right where I'd been working - right in the middle of that lovely site. "Run, girls!" I yelled. Then WHAM! the jackets released their attack pheromone and hit me in the side, then the ankle, then the other side. "RUUUUUUUN!" I screamed and then saw Hara coming back up the hill. She'd been below us exploring on down the trail and when I yelled had fled back up towards us - a path that was taking her right atop the nest. "Come one, Hara!" yelled Roger. "No, the other way!" I yelled and then she fell face first, mere feet from the hive. She got up again and ran on toward the other girls and Roger, unable to breather - she'd taken a stob in the stomach. Meanwhile, the jackets were still biting me and the other kids. "F___!" I yelled and "s___!" and "h___!" I ripped off my shirt and killed the one in my shoe. Staggered back to the saddle where we killed one more on Helen. The damage: Lou six bites, Opal two, Hara two. Hara, leg gashed and badly shaken need an hour cry to feel better. Roger sneaked back and recovered our packs that were two or three feet from the nest. We cooked, ate and set up camp in the dark. We all (except Lucie) slept poorly and awoke early with only one liter of water between us.

The trail continued down the ridge from the knoll and Roger went ahead to scout around the yellow jackets. The path he chose, a slanting scatter along a left-hand slope through fire ravaged forest filled with charred blowdown in all sizes - 1" branches interlaced into a crackling, grabbing web, shattered, tilting tree tops like tank guards with spikes projecting in all directions and huge, ancient corpses like walls and everywhere yellow jackets buzzing and exploring - was a terrible path, but it was the best we had. The other options were the same, but worse - more blowdown, more tangles and all filled with a chest-high sea of fireweed, pink and downy-white, obscuring obstacles and entanglements.
And so the morning progressed through a long, slow series of picking our way through piles of logs, finding little runs of clear ground or strung together log highways interspersed with too-short stretches of trail that we raced across with ephemeral joy before entering another long, slow slog through more blowdown. And all the while, searching out the pink ribbon trail markers and the faint, fire-erased scratchings of the trail. And all the while, our water dwindled and dwindled, a rationed mouthful at a time. Even so, spirits were high and we made steady, if very slow, progress, but Helen was suffering. Earlier in the week, she'd stubbed her big toe and torn the skin away from the tip to her toenail and now every step of the descent was agony. The down-slope pushed her toe foreward into the front of her shoe, jamming her full weight on her wound with every step and then-and-again the forest would reach up a stob or rock to strike the injury unexpectedly. Whimpering quietly to herself, she plugged doggedly onward, her hurt foot curling painfully under in a vain attempt to shelter her cut from contact and pain. As we descended, the possibility of return to the car diminished to nothing and our water shrank and shrank toward none.
At midmorning, the adults had a brief powwow and decided to send Roger down to the creek to get water and return. He vanished, making quick time and we finished a leisurely break with a ration bubblegum- watermelon, strawberry or fruit punch. With only two adults, we slowed the progress of coltish Opal and Hara as we went down through a long section that was pleasantly forested where the trail was largely visible and blowdown more occasional than constant. Helen and I were in the lead when I heard a hooting from below- Roger had returned! We sat on a dusty slant and drank and drank and drank and drank. We read from the Golden Compass and then, inspired by Iorek Byrnison's stirring victory and rousing "Bears! Who is your king?" We sprang up and flowed down the last of the ridge to the creek. Ah! Blessed water! We rested again and took three poops (Opal, Lucie, Lou) before moving downstream and settling in a to a lovely lunch spot. Four black and yellow garter snakes showed us the way to a long, lazy shelf of bedrock where Boulder Creek slid over pans and small pools. It was probably one or two in the afternoon, but we had the breakfast we'd been waiting for all day - tea for the grownups and oats for all. Lucie played quietly in the sand and pools upstream from our kitchen bench, while Hara, Opal and Helen explored downstream past a huge Ponderosa trunk to a little waterfall and dunking pool. The men slept or tried to sleep while Mizu read. Everything was easy and patient and do-what-you-want. It would be crazy to leave this idyll, but leave we must, so after a couple hours we sluggishly rallied up, packed, scrambled up the slip-slope and hiked onward.

We went a grumpy, forgetful hour along the creek before coming to an elk camp on a little bench. A small trib ran down along the south edge of the bench and the burned slope raised up behind. The hunters had made several log benches, laid in a supply of fire wood and the bed sites were numerous and flat. But despite all these positives, an air of burned aluminum and toilet paper wadding hung over the dust and only an exhausted Lucie wanted to stay. Feeling that a campsite was necessary, I decided to push on and scout ahead - Opal and Helen decided to come with me. 100 yards downstream from the elk camp there was a pleasant little camp and presented with this possibility we made another bad-turned-out-good decision. There weren't quite seven bed spots, so we decided to push on.
You see, when we'd scouted the trip earlier, I'd looked down on the creek from atop the mesa and seen a forested creek falling from pool to pool. This matched the description from the guidebook - a guidebook written before the 2008 fire. But this expected forest stream didn't match, didn't emerge - what emerged was a burned out river bottom of rocks, fireweed, brambles, no shade, no camps, no shade and only the charred pillars of the old majesty to signify what had been.
Opal took the lead and with grim determination strode throught the waste, hunting the trail and campsite possibilities with equal vigor. It soon dawned on us that we weren't going to find a camp, that ahead was waste and behind was waste. A half mile ahead, a long shoulder came down from the right - only beyond there would we find a camp. We bravely began the ascent up the shoulder and Opal and Helen churned their way up the rocky slope. Then from behind - a hoot and a yell! Roger and Hara emerged from the brush at the base of the slope and just behind them Lucie riding high on Mizu's shoulders. Soon we were together at the ridge of the shoulder - ahead the trail clung to high slope where unburnt forest came down from above and behind, the waste of river bottom. The adults, fearful of the work ahead turned to the kids to see how they were doing. Opal looked up from the rationing of Pez, Tictacs and gum to say "tired, but good." Helen and Lucie quickly assented that they, too, were tired but good and then Hara finally came out of candy-ville long enough to agree that she was tired, but good, but needed to count Tictacs. So onward we went, with Opal Helen and Hara in the lead and Lucie perched on Mizu's back chirruping, singing and conversating - lifting Mizu's spirits even as she weighed down her back. We zigzagged from shoulder to ravine to shoulder again then to a final ravine down to the final creek crossing. We could see the trail ascending the west face of the canyon and we could see no developed campsites. Mizu and Roger explored upstream and I went down and found a site - a turn and a boulder and logjam combined to make a maze of rock and sand beaches interwoven with boulders. There was no perfect bedsite for seven, but several possibilities would fit us. It wasn't perfect, but it'd do.

Actually, it was much better than it'll do. Let me explain. Below the trail crossing, the creek ran through a long rock garden before bending to the right in the face of a low bedrock cliff. Two elephantine boulders guarded the low side of the curve and had snared three huge Ponderosa trunks which formed a massive H chest and head high. Taken all together along with the inevitable snarl of smaller wood, the H formed a challenging barrier to the lower creek. But all that tangle had slowed the spring high water and just below it a small C-shaped rock beach had formed. Near the water's edge, two large rocks formed slanting backrests - one the kitchen, the other the living room. Behind and upriver, we leveled the crown for Mizu and Lucie to sleep and in an adjacent pocket between two small boulders a nook for Lou, Opal and Helen. Below the kitchen and beneath a gnarled exposed river-edge rootball, Roger leveled a sand beach for himself and Hara.
A small, narrow pool ran clear in front of our camp and on the low cliff across it, a single towering fir stood sentinal, bark burned black and skin age whitened against the sky.
Once arrived, we immediately divided the labor three ways - Mizu began cooking, I began flattening bed spaces and Roger went fishing. The kids mostly chilled out, helping here and there when needed and willing. The making-camp-not-yet-fed grumps were mercifully short and snuffed completely when I stole a dad tax of Chili Mac. Roger returned with eight fingerlings and once he'd made a bed spot for he and Hara and then eaten, we were all encamped, fed and ready for bed.
Now came the luxury of wilderness camping. The girls made a fire ring and I made hot chocolate. Roger made a fire and Mizu got out the whiskey. I ask you - is there a better place in the world than a campfire by a mountain stream, with stars overhead and a warm drink in your hand? A bit of the Golden Compass and a snuggle with Mizu finished off Lucie and so Helen and Opal went off to read in their sleeping bags - Mysterious Benedict and Fellowship of the Ring. Hara snuggled down with Roger then fell asleep. Then Opal's light was out and only Helen was awake - or not. I soon found her asleep face down on her still-lit headlamp. 

The fire had banked enough coals and Roger set to cooking the fish. He'd prepared them beautifully - just removing the organs and strung them through the the mouth in a line on a long maple skewer. He laid them first one side then the other so they rested horizontal over the coals - heads held by the maple skewer and tails by a piece of driftwood. The driftwood soon ignited, charring the skin, but the fish was done.
At its best, trout tastes like the stream it came from and this was trout at its best. No seasoning, but clear and the experience. The flesh was cool and clear - we flicked the bones and skin back into the fire.
To close the day - whiskey, stars and campfire. Two Pacific salamanders and an enormous toad plied their trade mysteriously in the stream as one by one we went to sleep.

We woke lazy, with tea and books, with snuggling and fishing, with oatmeal and hot chocolate. All too soon, the sun was down the walls of the canyon laughing at us - we'd slept so late and moved so slowly. Packing was grumpy, of course, and slow so that it was lunch time once we set foot on the trail. We met the steep climb with a firm blend of squabbling, whining, resignation - but underneath it - strength. Helen took the lead with hat and stick, Opal and Hara and Roger on her heels. 200 yards back, Mizu, Lucie and I labored slowly and steadily as Lucie gained momentum with each step. Quickly we attained the 400 vertical feet to height of trail and began rolling along ravine and shoulder then suddenly, lunch. We gorged on jerky, nuts, cheese and mango while entertaining Phillip Pullman's exegesis on free will, original sin and the preoccupations of the Church. Is it any surprise that the crew was sluggish and sleepy - dazedly stumbling like exhausted house flies when it was time to hike again? But again, with that same determination that characterized the entire trip, the went onward.

But soon, Helen stopped. "My stomach hurts," she said weakly. This is a common complaint of tired Helen, so I gave back my standard "Do you feel like you are going to barf?" "Maybe." And then I realized she'd taken off her hat and was putting her hair up in a ponytail. Uh-oh. Helen hates pony tails. Then, with a polite half turn away from us, she puked. First spittum, then a gush of jambalaya red-and-white, then another, then a great outpouring of Velvetta-orange chunks. In the midst of all that, like a wide clown smile, the red curve of her strawberry bubble gum. She rinsed her mouth and wiped her face. "Did you pee yet today?" I asked. "I went back at camp when I woke up," she replied. Dehydration, then, until proven differently. So doctor-prescribed water bottle in hand, Helen perched on my shoulders and up we went.

Soon after, the high ridge on our left faded, we entered a shallow ravine full of viney maples and I dared to hope. Was this the same shallow ravine that bordered the spring? It was, it surely was, but after all the unexpected difficulties, I waited. Opal then voiced my hope, "We're here!" and I grumped a "We'll see." But she and my hopes were right, we were there! I dropped Helen on a round and my pack and went back to help the others - Opal and Hara were springing down the path, Roger looked sprightly under his two packs , Lucie had dismounted and danced ahead of Mizu, "The spring! The spring! The spring!"  

There is nothing like cold, cold water. There is nothing like the shade of a madrone. There is nothing like the certainty of what lies ahead. And there is certainly nothing like the certainty that the path is short and downhill.

And we danced to the end. Roger was light-footed under his and Hara's packs, I floated under the weight of my, Helen and Lucie's pack and Mizu ran, literally ran, after the unencumbered Opal, Hara and Lucie. And Helen herself dismounted eventually and so - as conquering heroines all seven adventurers crossed under the huge pipe on their own feet under their own power.

"Bears! Who is your king?"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Addenda

-Roger biked 3.5 hours to pick up the car the next day.
-We spooked a herd of elk up out of the river bottom - 75 to 100 cows, calves and bulls scrambled up to the ridgeline.
-The girls discussed, played and pretended on the Golden Compass from the spring to the car.
-We just missed the big waterfall - it was 20 yards downstream of our camp and 150 from the trail crossing.
-As we passed up the canyon we were just below and above many burned stumps - one was twisted and marbled, charred black and glossy, swirled with faces, fish, horses, snakes, trolls...
-Hara stepped in the creek three times, Lou twice, Helen once, Opal once, Mizu once, Lucie once, Roger twice - but on purpose.

Renewal

I am going to pick this blog up again, but it will be a homesteading and farming story more than anything else - no frisbee. There was a time when this was a dual frisbee - homesteading blog and what I want to do now is to clarify who's following - separate the frisbee from the non-frisbee. So if I can't figure out who you are from your profile, I am going to block you. No hard feelings! If I messed up, just email me back and I'll reinstate you. If you want frisbee stuff, go to Win the Fields. 

Flood 2012

View from the wedding tree on Thursday afternoon

Looking down on the Marshes of Morva and across at Pop and Kaki's house

Not taking it seriously...

Still not taking it seriously

The driveway

Out the bathroom window. Objects may be larger than they appear in window.

The snow that helped fuel the whole mess

Donut Party

The Donut Party has been a New Year's Eve tradition at our house for over twenty years. Jan gets out her grandma Opal's donut recipe, Ray fires up the deep fat in a big kettle and over three or four hours hundreds of donuts are cooked and eaten. The traditional toppings are cinnamon and powdered sugar, but in recent years Mizu and I have experimented with filled donuts. We have used jam and apple butter and creme anglaise and chocolate sauce. Each year we have a big debate over whether or not we will have the Donut Party; as Jan and Ray have gotten older they are less and less enthusiastic about two days of work sandwiched around a house full of drunk people. Mizu and I are still really excited about the party and keeping up the tradition and so we push it and take the burden of leading the charge. Once we get going though, Jan and Ray are all in - cooking, cleaning and organizing.












This year, leading up to New Years I had been thinking about the party. In particular, I was stuck on how many extra donuts we had every year. There comes a point when it is impossible to eat another donut. (Although you'd be surprised how many donuts an otherwise super healthy hippie can eat.) Along about August I had a brain flash...Deep Fry Party! We would supply the hot oil and the cooking expertise and everyone else would bring things to fry. A giant batter filled Stone Soup!

And so it came to pass. For tradition, Jan led off with donuts but those quickly gave way to an incredible variety of things: steak, french fries, onion rings, jalapeno poppers, kalamari, oysters, scallops, Reese's Peanut Butter cups, salmon, pickles, dilly beans, marshmellows...

Although everyone had their favorites, two things stood out for me. First, scallops wrapped in prosciutto. These went in unbattered and came out heavenly. Salty and pungent. At the end of the night, Greg H cooked up a couple pounds of salmon he'd caught earlier in the fall. Simultaneously, I was frying homemade salt pickles and dilly beans. To have a chunk of salmon in one hand and pickled goodness in the other! Oh glory!

The drink of the evening was the Valley of Texas. Here is the recipe:
3 parts fresh grapefruit juice (pink is better)
2 parts gin
1/2 part Fernet
shake
serve up with a dash of bitters

Summer!

I know that people contend that western Oregon only has two seasons and I don't entirely disagree with them, though I do choose to recognize the tiny glimmers of the other two when they decide to show up. The differences between those two-ish seasons have seemed much more noticeable during my years of living in Deadwood than they ever did while I was living in Seattle. Part of it is the amount of time I spend involved with the outdoors here in Deadwood. Even though I spend plenty of time indoors here, you can't get away from the outside in the same way you can in the city when you need to get the firewood in, put the garden to bed, tarp and un-tarp various piles depending on how dry you want them, etc. The other part, though, is that both of my Deadwood stints, separated by 11 years, have been heavily influenced by the school year. Lou and the kids and I all have lives tied up in the school schedule, and summer break looms large and significant in that schedule. In Seattle, I worked a job that maintained its schedule year-round. Looking back from this nearly-December vantage, those times seem to belong to a different story than the pick-up, drop-off, pack, and unpack routines of the school year. Here are a couple of pictures I'd like to share just because they seem so sunny and golden now:

The first is Lucie crossing the logs on the way home from an afternoon visit to the Sunny Beach on the West Fork Creek side of the property. That beach probably won't exist next year, after the water has moved all the sediment around the log structures in that part of the creek. It was fun while is lasted! Next is just a summery pic of Helen and Opal when we were out on a blackberry-picking walk. Finally, Lucie is showing off her green bean haul--she really did pick all of those and we ate them for dinner.














Fall!
Since I have already admitted to believing in the existence of a bit of fall here, I thought I'd back it up with some pictures. Here are the girls playing in the maple leaves we went out an collected to cover the garden beds with--the garden's winter blankets. (Our camera is strangely fuzzy in the center of the pictures. Probably dropped it one too many times.)













We also had the biggest burn pile that we've ever had, fueled by lots
of the brush we created over the course of this summer's fire break clearing project.







I took the girls trick-or-treating in Deadwood. We tried this last year and enjoyed it so much that we engineered it again. There aren't many tricksters out here--in fact our kids were joined by one other this year and I think that may be the highest tally since 1988. People out here don't usually keep treats handy, since they are much more likely to end up eating them all themselves than to hand them off to little visitors. Because of this, Deadwood trick-or-treating requires a bit more organization. We called several neighbors to see if they would mind stocking treats and playing host to a stop by four little visitors. Everyone we asked said yes. The treats the girls (and the adults, truthfully) got were generously prepared and generously given. Thank you, friends and neighbors!

End of the Run

This deep in November, the salmon are almost done for the year. They are still around in great numbers, but so ragged. Their sides, backs and tails are tattered from making redds and infected with fungus. No longer sea-silver or the deep, rutting red of the largest and most impressive fish, the salmon have faded into monochromatic black and white. This Saturday past I went for a long walk, first along West Fork, then down Deadwood Creek from the ford to the Summer Bridge watching and taking photographs. Here (left) you see the log emplacement set in by the Forest Service to create structure and habitat. The other photo is the view looking up West Fork from atop the logs.

There a single riffle between the driving bridge to our house and the two photos above. On my way home every day, I stop on the bridge to look at the creek. These past two weeks, I've been watching the salmon fight and squabble over the prime territory atop that riffle. Yesterday, I was able to sneak right up on the fish guarding the spot.






There is another really great spawning site at the ford. Between the ford and the confluence with West Fork, Deadwood Creek drops over a small log emplacement. This is an older structure than the one photographed above and uses a different architecture. The one photographed uses massive trees placed with a Chinook helicopter. The structure by the ford uses much smaller logs placed with heavy equipment (like a back-hoe.) The logs are held in place by steel cables attached to rocks or even the bedrock where possible. The problem is, steel rusts and logs rot. Two winters ago, one of the two logs forming the structure washed out, but in a surprising development, formed a really nice spawning site after the creek had washed away some of the silt to expose the gravel underneath. The dog and I spooked the fish, but I did get a picture of a completely spawned out salmon. Nice teeth!














The last spot I looked was down by the Summer Bridge. Here, the creek takes a long, looping bend and drops through a series of riffles and pools. There is a large (for Deadwood Creek) island with spawning sites on both sides. In a low-water fall such as we've had this year, the fish congregate in large numbers in the pools. Mostly, they laze in the current, but occasionally they squabble and tear around the pool with a great deal of fussing and darting. This year I saw over 20 and heard many more below where I was watching.

Chillin'














Squabblin'














A giant redd, easily 15 feet in diameter. You can see the great sweep dug out by the fish and the ridge of throw-up gravel (one of three) running down the middle.

Summer has been great. Great. We've had loosey-goosey routines (or no routines at all sometimes) and haven't kept up on all the goals we set ourselves back in early June, when summer seemed like a great expanse of time ahead of us. We didn't have the kids read every day and we didn't get all our storage space organized, and now, in the end, I can't think when I would have done those things anyway. Would I have cut out visiting with lots of friends, both here in Deadwood and during our various trips? No. Would I have cut out our afternoons at the creek? No. Would I have cut out some of the time the kids spent running wild in the garden? No.

We got back from a beautiful wedding on Sunday night and Ray picked up five boxes of peaches from a local grower on Monday. It is also time to pick the blackberries....and zucchinis....and cucumbers.....and figs....etc. Now it is Wednesday night and our counter is filled with 30 quarts of canned peaches, two gallons of pickles, fourteen jars of blackberry jam, and ten jars of peach preserves. Not bad, especially considering that we still managed to feed the kids and make sure that they weren't disappearing into the wilds. Thank goodness that Margie has delayed her departure to Alaska for a couple of weeks (sorry Krissy and Red :)), but all this would never have gotten done without her.

Here are a few pictures from summer. I didn't take that many this summer and now I'm regretting it, but I guess that was one of the things that got subsumed by some fun or other. As usual, I apologize for the quality of picture. Something's better than nothing, though.

Big Bear

Halfway through my run, where I usually see the beavers working or floating in the creek, I saw the biggest black bear I've ever seen. Now, those of you who know me well know my memory isn't good enough to be certain about the validity of that claim. It was a huge black bear, though, and it just stood there as Panther caught sight of it. Panther charged toward it and it just stood there. Panther got within 20 yards and it just stood there. Panther stood there and the bear just stood there. Finally Panther twitched, probably preparing to run away (she is not the world's bravest dog), and the bear turned and lumbered off into the forest. Panther gave token chase, but she returned quickly. I decided that this morning I didn't need to run the last few hundred yards to my turn-around point.

Followers

One of the conundrums of living in the coast range is what to do with the open space and pasture land. The two choice are to mow or to pasture animals on it. If you opt to mow, you are looking at a lot of time on a tractor or riding mower. The minimum at our house is three full days at the end of spring and three more at the beginning of fall. If you opt for animals, you don't have to mow but you have all the headaches that go with having animals. To add insult to injury, the climate and landscape isn't really conducive to pasturing and it's almost impossible to avoid buying hay for the winter. We choose to pasture. Animals may come, but not until we've got the house and little children situation in a lower maintenance stage.

When you mow, you are destroying habitat and shelter. Snakes, rodents and insects flee the tractor in droves and attract several different predators. The classic are the ravens. There is a breeding pair that make our little section of the valley home and as soon as they hear the mower fire up, they'll swing by to check it out. Hopping along through the just cut sections, they seek out animals killed by the tractor or fleeing through the piles of cut grass. Ray was followed by a coyote once, doing the same work as the ravens. It showed no concern for Ray or the tractor, instead prowling along behind eating mice and gophers. The most surprising predator is the white crowned sparrow. They like to lurk the margin between cut and uncut. I assume they are picking up the myriad little insects thrown up by the tractor, but I don't know for sure because they flee the tractor and work in its wake.

Fire in June

Just so it's on the record that it isn't all peaches and cream down here, I had to build a fire yesterday morning. Admittedly, it was half to burn up all the paper trash that was stuffing the firebox, but it was cold. A front had moved in the afternoon before (Monday) and it was cool and rainy. We had inside day and did a lot of painting, but after a cold Helen emerged from three hours of playing in the bathtub I gave in and lit a two-sticker.

Yellowthroat

We are always looking for nests this time of year. The last couple of years, we have found robin nests and the girls have had the chance to watch the whole sequence of eggs, incubation, hatching, fledgling and flight. We were pretty disappointed this year when we didn't find one and then! I stumbled across a yellow throat nest while clearing brush down by the creek. Here's a stock photo.


The yellow throat is a little swamp warbler that builds its nest out of grasses and in grasses and thickets. It is a sneaky little bird and you rarely if ever see them. They are all around in the grasses, willows and nine bark that cover the low areas around the creek. I went out for a walk by the creek late last evening and their scritchy little warning 'crik' was all around me. I was certainly near some nests, but they are impossible to see without clearing a bunch of brush.

The one that I found is down by the head of the oxbow where the path down to the old beach goes. It is a deep-bowled, fist-sized nest of old grasses and the mother disappears down inside it when she is on the eggs or hatchlings. The eggs were a lovely white speckled with red (me) or black (everyone else.) Mizu and I are both able to sneak up and see the mother on the nest. The girls aren't quite quiet enough. Unlike a robin, who will explode out of her nest, the mother yellow throat disappears back into the grasses soundlessly. The last couple of times I've been by to look at the nest, she has remained on it for a moment, opening her mouth as if to be fed. I wondered if the male fed the sitting female. (Subsequent reading frowns on that theory; the males seem to be a fairly dissipated, philandering bunch of pretty boys.) Here's the eggs:


Day before yesterday, the girls and I went down to look at the eggs at the outset of a hike with Pop. Hatchlings! They must have just come out that morning, for they were pathetic little wrinkles of pink with huge gray bulging blind lid-covered eyes and mad scientist tufts of gray feathers emerging randomly across their bodies. When they heard me whispering to Lucie, two of the four craned their awkward necks skyward and silently opened yellow beaks for a tidbit. Here they are (a bit blurry):


If you go to look at them, watch out! There's a giant dog poop in the path.

These days I run whenever I can grab an hour of time from something. Now that it is getting light early, that hour most often comes in the morning, before the kids, and all their attendant requirements, are awake. The joy and satisfaction I get out of the run is worth dragging myself out of bed for on most mornings.
Our dog, Panther, recognizes my running clothes, and is always waiting eagerly to be let out and explore while I plod along. The first thing I noticed as we headed out the door this morning was the CROK of a raven. The ravens have control of this valley (and our compost pile) and it
is only by dint of their constant attention and diligence that they keep it clear of invading crows, hawks, osprey, and eagles. We are often treated to mid-air battles out over the pasture. So it is no surprise that they were broadcasting our presence almost before we are out the door.
I blearily began running down the driveway and the loud CROK of one raven sounded out of the mist right above me. I wondered at why it was keeping such close tabs on us this morning, but then moved on to comparing the cold mist I was inhaling with each breath to the hot steam I had been breathing in a sauna a few days earlier. Though probably equally wet, the weight of the humidity in the sauna slowed my day almost to a stop while I was enlivened by this morning's mist.
Contemplating this and other equally inane things I ran the first half mile. Again I heard the CROK loud and low above my head, and this time another answered from across the valley. The raven flew ahead of me, perched in a tree and waited until I had run past. Then it swooped over me again, so low I could hear the rustle of air in its wings. We live pretty closely with these ravens, so this wasn't all that unusual. This morning, though, instead of turning back as it usually does, it continued this behavior for all of the almost five miles of my run. It must have passed over me about 20 times, CROKing every time.
Despite spending most of my run-time thinking of lots of mundane and outlandish reasons for this behavior, I am at a loss as to why the raven kept our company this morning. Panther and I, with our decidedly pedestrian and terrestrial habits, certainly don't seem of much consequence to the ravens. I enjoyed the company, though, whatever the motivation.

After Dinner

Summer is here and I am going to try to post once a week. Yesterday eve was lovely and so rather than back shortbread for the strawberries, we rallied outside for a walk.

We headed down to the summer bridge site (not in yet; still waiting on the water drop) and decided to go canoeing. The canoes were still there from the teammates visit last weekend, so we flipped one over headed upstream toward the ford. Just past the willows and under a medium-sized ash, there is a deep excavation were the beavers have dug a den. It is hard to see up inside with the brightness out and the darkness in, but the claw marks of the beavers are scoured all across the margin with the water. Interestingly, there weren't any beaver sticks lying around. Maybe its otters instead. I'm still trying to sort out raccoon, otter and beaver tracks and these weren't full prints, so there was no way to tell.

Done with canoes, we headed over to Evening Sun Beach. Evening Sun just formed this past winter. The creek is always shifting and moving like a hose writhing across a lawn. This year it threw up a big, west-facing sand bar just above the giant logs the Forest Service put in to provide structure and salmon habitat. I hacked through the blackberries and we traipsed across the big logs to the beach. Lucie immediately undressed and started playing in the water. Helen and Opal began to explore underneath the logs. Mizu and I weeded canary grass. Opal got brave enough clamber on the logs by herself and realized she could jump the six feet down onto the sand without getting hurt. Helen sloughed off a chunk of bark to reveal a swarming ant colony. After they'd run off, she found a crawdad carcass/slough to poke with a stick. The stink determined it was a carcass.

Time for bed. On the way back across the pasture we stopped to swing on the rope swings hanging from the wedding tree. It was my turn to exercise, so Mizu put the girls to bed and I went for a bike ride. It was still a lovely evening, but the high point was watching a family of beavers for about ten minutes. There is a flat stretch in the road above our house where the creek and the road run parallel for a couple hundred yards. I love looking in the water at that stretch, particularly during salmon season because it is so easy to see into. Last night I was rewarded by three beavers just chilling. They spent about 80% of their time grooming, scratching, licking, rubbing. They had an incredibly human way of sitting on their haunches and scratching their chest with both front paws and an incredibly doggy way of scratching the side of their belly with their hind feet. (A fat, fat, fat dog.) They did a little snuggling and grooming of each other. They'd kind of circle hug in the water and gnaw gently on each other. They ate a little, mostly gnawing on sticks that I assumed were willow, but that Mizu who has also watched these beaver, thought were blackberries. I also saw them eating canary grass!

Then home. I made a Manhattan and read while Mizu worked.

Pure gold on a cloudy day

All morning the kids had been playing pretty much on their own. I knew that it couldn't last forever, so the first time they came to me to play referee I fed them. The second time I sent them to get warm clothes on and hustled us outside.

I had a mission in mind. Having a mission in mind is a dangerous thing around here. Usually all my well-laid plans are twisted beyond recognition by the ruthless needs of the kids. I find I am better able to roll with the punches if I avoid all but the most amorphous plans. On this particular day, I am working hard to let go of my agenda when all of a sudden the kids begin running up the hill, yelling to me that they want to beat me to the skunk cabbage. I can't believe it! They have co-opted my plan and are running away with it. From that point on I am just along for the ride as they propel us from one spring wonder to the next. We hit all the special places I wanted to go to and it took no cajoling or bribery from me.

Here's a themed sampling of what we saw:





Skunk cabbage on the left

Johnny jump-up on the right









Daffodils at an old house site Crocuses on Japhy's memorial






Forsythia in the garden





I got my dose of golden color today, even without a glimpse of the sun. I was cheered by it and so were the kids. Here they are about halfway through our walk:






What I wasn't able to capture with a camera was just as cheery. Like the the way that Opal and Helen independently decided who got to carry the bouquet of grass that they were picking: They turned to each other with their hand behind their back, counted one-two-three and both brought out scissors. Again, paper this time. Finally, Opal threw paper and Helen scissors. Opal handed Helen the grass and they ran to catch up to Lucie and me.
Or Lucie sticking her head into a tiny culvert because Opal and Helen tell her she can crawl through because she is the littlest.
Or Opal and Helen carefully settling the snail that they unearthed into Opal's grass-lined pocket so that "no bird can see it to eat it". (I doubt the snail was very concerned with the dangers a hypothetical bird may pose as it was tossed about in a five-year-old's pocket.)

I'd like to remember this day.

Mizu's standard disclaimer, or "The pasta is probably a bit overdone and I think I undersalted the soup."

I've been recurrently thinking I'd like to post more often, but up to this point a mild frown and an "I'll work on that tomorrow evening" are as far as I've gotten. This kind of writing is always difficult for me--I get paralyzed by who may read it and will I offend anyone and should I say this or that....you get the picture.

At the same time, there are many things each day that I would like to record and my shoddy memory does not seem to be up to the task. Somehow this format, with the ability to include picture, videos, and links, is more appealing than the rarely opened diary sitting beside my bed. Now I plan to throw caution to the winds (and if you believe that...) and will focus on writing about everyday things I want to remember--even if they will be yawn-inducing and even though I may cringe a bit as I hit the "Publish Post" button. Nobody has to read them, right?

If you do read them, I'm sorry for my lack of expertise with the formatting.....

Monday Night Pizza

Yesterday we had a final, bonus edition of Monday Night Pizza. This would have been especially sweet if we had done it for this game, but instead it was this game and sour. Since our Dink Days back in Seattle, Mizu and I have made pizza Monday nights during football season. We started small making a mere two pizzas a night. We've gradually worked up to the point where a low-key, nuclear-family-only night is four pizzas and a big night might be eight. We've never gone as high as ten, but I imagine we'll get there some day.

Mizu makes the dough and I make the sauce. My years at Zeek's endowed me with a vision of how it should be done, so I usually do all the rolling, throwing, saucing, cheesing, topping and baking. This year, Opal and Helen have really taken an interest in it, so they usually make their own pizzas as well.

Traditionally, we start off with a plain cheese. It's the classic and it's the classic way to show off your sauce and dough. Also, it's the one pizza all three girls will eat and by the time it comes out they're usually grumpily hungry.

Then we get creative. Mizu and I love pepperoni and pineapple, but Pop and Kaki don't eat the pig and the girls think it's spicy, so we make that one only occasionally. Goat cheese, caramelized onions and roasted peppers is another favorite (made it last night) but most nights we just throw together whatever. The two best pizzas we made this season were Margie's Birthday Leftovers and German Christmas Leftovers from the last two weeks. Here are the recipes.

In General
Use Mizu's Dough. Roll and throw a pizza's worth. Put it on parchment paper and that on the paddle. That'll get it in and out of the oven easily. Use a pastry brush to spread a glistening of olive oil around the edge.

Margie's Leftovers
Take the leftover enchiladas out of the fridge. Eviscerate them and discard the tortillas and cheese. Spread the enchilada filling on the pizza like it was sauce. It'll be quite thick. Sprinkle on a thin layer of grated mozzarella. (Following the Zeek's mantra, I don't use very much cheese. It's just preference, though.) Top with red peppers and jalapenos. Bake. (See below.) Top with fresh chopped cilantro when done.

German Christmas Leftovers
Cook bacon. Drain, dice and set aside. Take leftover Swedish Meatball Gravy from the fridge. Spread on the pizza like sauce. Sprinkle on the mozzarella. Take the German Potato Salad from the fridge. Glop on pizza. Sprinkle bacon on pizza. Bake. (See below.) Top with fresh chopped parsley when done.

Baking
Bake the pizza on a pizza stone in an oven set as hot as possible. At 550, which is the max temp for most ovens, the entire cooking time will be 7-10 minutes depending on how many pizzas you've made, rest time between pizzas and how crispy you like the crust. At 3 or 4 minutes, when the crust has set up a bit, pull out the parch paper so the bottom will brown up. (Don't throw away the paper, you can reuse it 2-3 times.)

Big Deadwood Ditto News!

A front page story in and about the Deadwood Ditto is one of the coolest things I've heard in a while. Our neighbor, Bill, donated his complete collection of Deadwood Dittos dating all the way back to 1976 to the Knight Library's Special Collection at the U of O.

It's amazing that Bill had the foresight and capacity to save thirty-five years of Dittos. I can't believe he willingly gave them up. People in the valley have been lusting after that collection for years and at least one person has offered to watch them "to keep them safe." It's really generous of Bill to give them up. Thanks, Bill! And the Knight Library wanted them. That's might be the coolest part of all.

Below is the first ever electronic edition of the Deadwood Ditto. Enjoy.

11:51

…and two minutes later we were asleep.

It’s a Deadwood New Year’s tradition for the Kinney house (and now the Kinney-Burruss house) to host the Donut Party. There’ve been about 25 of them; the first one was sometime around 1984, but there hasn’t been a donut party every year. We make up some sweet dough, fire up the grease and make a huge cloud of black smoke accompanied by huge platters of donuts. In the past, the donuts have been mainly confined to powered sugar and cinnamon-sugar, but I really love a good glazed donut and there isn’t an American alive who doesn’t have a weakness for some kind of filling, whether it’s lemon curd, custard, chocolate or jam. We did all those this year.

Our process for making donuts is strange combination of baking bread, working at McDonald’s and tending bar. Mizu made the dough in the afternoon and set it in covered bowls by the stove to rise. At 630, she started cutting them out and laying them on boards for a second rising. Each batch (and we made eight) turns out about twenty donuts. There is a slight difference depending on the ratio of holes, rings and filled you make. While the first donuts were rising, I put four gallons of oil on the stove and sent it off toward 375 degrees. Once the oil was hot, we started dropping the plumped donuts in. They sank for the barest second and then rose again quickly to the surface where they floated palely, surrounded by a corona of bubbles and waited to be flipped. Flipped and then quickly out onto towels to dry. Once they’d cooled enough to handle, it was time to get them dressed up to serve. Easiest and fastest was to drop them into sacks of sugar (powered or cinnamon) and shake them up. Filling was easy, but slower and messier. I started by filling a cake-decorator-icing-piper-bag-thing with the lemon curd (or vanilla custard or raspberry jam or chocolate sauce) and then Van Helsing it into the donut. A quick squeeze on the bag and the donuts was ready to eat. Messiest and funnest are glazed donuts. To make those, I dumped the donuts into a tub of glaze and then set them aside to drip for a bare minute. Then I shook rainbow nibs or coconut or sesame seeds over the whole run of donuts. Last step for all of these was to dump them all onto a tray and send Opal trundling around giving them away.

At 1030, the donuts and most of the guests were gone. Helen, thenLucie and finally Opal had collapsed into bed leaving Mizu and myself with one small thing left to do…wash the dog.

One of the coolest things about living out here is seeing the salmon in the creek each fall. They’re huge and powerful and fill up our tiny creek with their thrashing and fighting and spawning. If you know anything about the salmon life cycle, you know that after they spawn, they die. After they die, they rot. Yesterday morning Panther’s friend Shadow appeared from way up creek. Like usual, they ran around, fought, played and explored. There was a special treat today, though. The creeks have been running crazy high for two weeks and a couple cold rainless days shrank them a good two feet. When the creek falls, it leaves things behind…things like dead salmon. Maybe someone, somewhere knows why dogs like to roll in dead things, but I don’t.

So Mizu and I took turns holding Panther down and pouring stuff on her while she writhed and fought. First water, then V8, then some scrubbing, then more water, then dish soap, then scrubbing, then more water, then more water. Did I mention it was raining and 34 degrees? Good times.

Finally showered and in bed, I looked at the clock. 11:51. “Mizu. Look at the clock.” “Yeah.” Pause. “I love ya, good night.” “Love you, too. Good night.”

Here’s the recipe:
2 packages yeast (2 Tsp)
¾ C milk
⅓ C sugar
¼ C shortening - room temp (Mizu used butter)
1 tsp salt
2 eggs – room temp
3 to 3½ C flour

Dissolve the yeast in warm milk and a bit of the sugar. After the blossoming, add the remaining sugar, the eggs and the butter. Mix mostly and then add 2 cups of the flour and the salt. As you beat, gradually add flour until you get to moderately soft dough. Turn out and knead until smooth. Shape the dough into a ball, grease and return to bowl for rising. After it has risen, punch it down and roll it out to ½ inch thickness. Cut with donut cutter and set on a floured board to rise again. (A real donut cutter is really nice. You can fake it, but it’s a pain in the ass.) Heat oil (the more the better so it doesn’t lose heat as you drop in the much colder dough) to 375 degrees. Drop the donuts in a few at a time and fry on each side until golden brown. Drain on paper and dress them up.

Snow Day and Run Around Screaming

It snowed last week as everyone knows. We did this

which was pretty much awesome. Helen and Lucie (who were sick) got cold and went inside, but Opal sledded by herself for an hour while I fired up the hot tub.

Helen came back out and sat in the yard chair while I tended the fire. Finally, it was ready and me and the girls all squeezed in the tub while it snowed. Pretty much awesome.















Also, the circular floor plan is as spectacular as expected. Opal tried to do 100 laps the other day, but petered out at 86. Mizu and I tried to explain the concept of only 14 more, but it wasn't sinking into tired 5-year-old brain.

Anyway, here's our new favorite game: Run Around Screaming.