24 Hours

The Art Walk (note click on pictures to enlarge)

   Friday afternoon, David and I ate salmon dinners at Randy's Pier 61 before hitting the streets for Anacortes's First Friday Art Walk. The plein air stuff was nice, and so was the jewelry, but I have to admit, I need a lot more umph to my art. Luckily we did find two galleries that fit our bill. First was Al I-Make-Stuff Smith's  cave, who, cross my heart, makes .064 inch-long stuff and floats it in acrylic for inspection. Crazy cool.

   Lastly and fortunately, we found, and will return to, the Anchor Art Space,  down by the waterfront. Can't help it, but I'd always rather spend an hour staring at some conceptual art piece than a perfectly-composed lavender field painting. We were so thrilled we had a drink from their fire hydrant out front and went home to watch the sun set.
   I digress. (Sorry)
   David and I have yet to get over PNW sunsets. They have all SoCal's pink, red, orange, and purple jewel tones, but they also have precious metals. Accompanying most sunsets is a sunlight so vivid it renders the Sound a bathtub of blinding silver, platinum, or gold. We have to shut the blinds. It's so all-at-once awful and wonderful.

 Back to the 24 hours.
The Forest Walk
   Despite the gooey mess the path was after weeks of rain, this morning David and I took a Friends-of-the-Forest Hike around Big Beaver Pond off Cranberry Lake. Fidalgo Island has lots of lakes and forests, and the community works to take great care of these lands, while also making them multipurposely available to the population (hiking, horsebackriding, dirt biking). Denise Crowe ( her picture's at the bottom) led the way, which meant we got to see the forest through her eyes. Good thing, because she knew EVERYTHING! What a trip!
   She knew bird sounds and stopped every now and then to identify who was chirpping.
In my eyes, the winner for the Best Sounds Display was the winter wren, who, with only one tiny lung, makes a long, loud series of chirps. Really! Listen! Click the link. One microscopic lung, and we could hear it from a hundred yards away, or maybe fifty, I forgot to bring my measuring tape. She then told us that winter wren men make a bunch of nests, to which they then invite the winter wren women. If a wren woman likes a nest, he fixes it all up for her, and she lays eggs, along with the other wren women who liked his other nests.
   We learned about forest oderifics, such as Herb Robert (locally known as Stinky Bob) and the ginormous and aptly-named skunk cabbage.
   We ate salmonberries and learned that they come in the same three colors salmon eggs come in (if you don't buy the phlorescent kind); hence the name.
   And lastly, we learned that nurse logs (not to be confused with hospital protocol) can be really old, like fifteen, and can provide a platform for new growth above the fray, so to speak. BTW, brand new knowledge here: if a PNW forest floor is covered with ferns, the trees are probably cedars, but if the floor is covered with salal, which I'd never heard of, it's probably a fir forest.
   My own observation of the forest we visited today is that it had hardly any madrone (madrona?). Very odd for up here. But the forest we visited today also surrounds the ancient city dump, so who knows what else won't grow. And why.  

   I was hoping to see some beaver and otter running around, but we only saw signs of their dams and mounds.  According to Denise, the beaver do a stupendous job enlarging and maintaining the lake so the city doesn't flood. Very symbiotic. (Actually, now that I remember it, she said the beaver built the lake! Kudos!)    
   Unexpectedly, and most likely a sign that great fortune is coming our way, we saw Lisa's college mascot (UCSC's banana slug) partaking of a local nurse log's oyster mushroom crop. (BTW, all of you who embrace the fairy mushroom myth, like moi, Denise said that the fungus covers the inside of the big circle, and the mushrooms are the flowering lei around its edges. I did not know that before!) 
   At trail's end, the sun was shining, setting the forest all aglitter, and warming the air enough to make the dragon and damsel flies willing to come out of their coccoons after three years underwater. But that's another story! Another forest walk. Another 24 hours. life is good.