Lookout

Isn't it funny how a project changes your outlook?

I have a not very secret fear of bears visiting me at night when I am camping.  But as we crawled up the Sierra foothills behind a sluggish RV on the way to Berkeley Tuolumne Camp I could see a silver lining: we'd get to add black bear to the list of California mammals we've seen.

At camp I sat on the shady deck of our cabin, enjoying the rush of the South Fork of the Tuolumne, and browsed through Mammals of California and A nature guide to Berkeley Tuolumne Camp looking for mammals we might spot. The latter was UCSC alum Phil Coffin's senior project.  We should be so lucky to find such a guide to all the places we go a-mammal-hunting.

With its help we saw the pallid bat and the California myotis.  You see, the Mammals of California book has a handy dichotomous key with which it is simple and pleasant to identify a bat.  Why, first you simply determine whether your bat has one or two pairs of upper incisors.  And then you check whether it has a furred or nude interfemoral membrane.   I don't know about you, but little old rabiesophobic me is not about to check out the number of incisors a bat has even if I could catch one, which actually was pretty likely as one night they were flying all around our heads in clouds.

Woman playing pingpong with cloud of bats around her head:  "Did someone say bats?  Are there bats around here?"  Looks up, screams, clutches head.

Here is my best photo.  Can you make out the incisors?


I'll need to fiddle with my camera or maybe even take a class to improve my night photography.  I was trying to shoot on automatic settings and it wouldn't flash because nothing was in focus.  Darned bats move too fast to focus on.  However, you know what doesn't move fast?  Bat guano!

Under the Hardin Road bridge, as promised in our guide.  How exciting!  There it is again, that way that a project changes your outlook.  As part of a project bat guano=exciting!  After finding the guano we settled down to wait for nightfall.  Well, I settled down.  The kids swung on the rope swing.

The Mammals of California book also suggested we attach cyalume capsules to sleeping bats we might find in caves which would allow us to track their movements after dark.  I wish I could say I had done this. With gloves on.  And a respirator.  Because I do not want to get rabies just because I think it would be a real knee-slapper to watch a bat fly with a glowstick glued to its fur.

But the beloved and practical Nature Guide to Berkeley Tuolumne Camp told us that pallid bats roost under the Hardin street bridge and fly out in the evening to catch insects.

We waited, they flew out.  Check.  The California Myotis, it told us, scoops water from the river.  Stroll out, it says, and watch them after dinner.  Done.

The best tip was this: a ringtail lives in the dining hall and comes out in the evening.  If you are like many people at camp you are saying a ringtail what?  A ringtail lemur?  No, no.  They were once called Ring-tailed cats, but the same folks who took the fish out of starfish took away their cat.  These raccoon cousins are now known simply as ringtails.  Gold miners loved ringtails we are told, because they eat vermin.

Since ringtails are, according to Wikipedia, "nocturnal, solitary, timid, and rarely seen" we expected it to be a challenge to see one.  But the Nature Guide told us, "Some nights in the D-Hall, you may see a shape dart across one of the rafters, and it may even stop and stare at you with huge, curious eyes."  So we began, with great anticipation, to stake out the dining hall in the evenings.

Ok, so this is how we staked out the dining hall.  We would pass through it several times in the evening and look up hopefully.  No luck.  One morning as I made my coffee with my Clever Coffee Dripper (thanks, Moira!)  I overheard people talking about having seen the ringtail the night before.  We realized that we weren't going to catch something that darts along the rafters by passing through from time to time.  We'd have to have a real stakeout.

We entered the dining hall at 9pm.  Here is Evelyn staring up at the rafters.

The rafters, in case you were wondering.

And Clementine, demonstrating that we fueled this stakeout with hot cocoa, hot apple cider and Apples to Apples.

Yes, we set our minds to it this time.  But by 10pm the kids were flopped on the table and moaning, "I'm sooooo tired."  We went to bed.  No ringtail.

The next night was Table Night, aka the camp talent show.  And the night after that would be Bingo Night in the dining hall.  It seemed unlikely that a timid and rarely seen critter would come out on Bingo Night.  I resolved to slip off after the first act (coincidentally my kids' skit) and stake out the D-Hall.

But it turns out that I'm the sort of person who doesn't miss her friend's son's performance on the chance that I might spot a ringtail. 

And wouldn't you know it, after listening to Solomon I even stick around for the staff performance of Stand By Me instead of running straight off to the stakeout.  And Evelyn spots me and says Greta is falling asleep.

I'm about to take her off to bed when I decide to just go by the dining hall.  And I ask the first person I see.  And she says she did see the ringtail.  It was just there not more than three minutes ago.  I slumped onto bench with dejection and self-recrimination.  I could have just skipped the Stand By Me.  I lack the grit required for this project.

Sure, I managed to spot this ground squirrel living up to his new genus name Spermophilus (seed lover). But anyone can see a ground squirrel.   In fact you have to drive them off.  One ate Clementine's deodorant.  And my chocolate stash.

It is going to take persistence and dedication to see a lot of these mammals.  Do we have it?  I missed the ringtail by three minutes and the kids opted not to try at all and stay at Table Night.  Greta is here only because I dragged her here when she wanted to go to bed.

But, I told myself, at least our trip did not pass without some sign of a black bear.  Scat!  Not only did we examine the scat twice but we went back to photograph it later.  Lots of manzanita berries in there and a 

long piece of plastic wrap twisting through and holding the whole thing together.

I cheered myself up a little bit with the memory of the bats and the bear scat and the ground squirrel.   And then I looked up.  To see a ringtail staring down with huge, curious eyes.

Greta was thrilled.  It was the cutest thing ever.  I left her in the hall and ran to the amphitheater for Ev and Clem.  

When I got back the ringtail was hiding in the firewood by the huge stone fireplace.  Everyone gave it a little space and it escaped the firewood stack and streaked to the cup racks near the dishwashing station.  It hid in there, peeping out from time to time.  It was acting cornered, so I moved some trashcans to give it space to slip behind them and up the cupboard that it had descended from.

We all backed up.  But to our surprise it struck out straight across the floor.  It paused at Evelyn's foot and looked up at her.   I thought it might run up her leg.  Then it scampered beneath the tables and benches and squeezed into a bench seat at the far side.  

We decided to leave it alone and retreated.  Table Night had ended and the dining room was flooding with people.  We sat down to talk over the unbearable cuteness of the ringtail and the possibility of owning a pet ringtail.  Clementine decreed that the ringtail had been 100 times better than any of the Table Night acts.  And then he was spotted climbing up the stacks of games in a corner cupboard, over the stereo, and up to the rafters.

He darted along the rafters, and back to his hole.  I got to have my cake and eat it, too.  I got to watch Solomon, sway to Stand By Me, and see the ringtail.  And all my kids got to see it and so did Solomon and his siblings and parents.  Life is good.

Another thrill from camp was Evelyn's first fish.  A 13 inch rainbow trout.  She caught it, she killed it.

Back home she gutted it, she cooked it (with some help), and she ate it.

Clem made the owl that perches in the pic below on the railing above our cabin number.

Greta was seldom without face paint.

I hoped the owl would scare away the squirrels.

It didn't.  They must have heard me vowing to spend less time on the computer when we got back to civilization and decided to help.  Because when I was packing up look what I found.

My laptop power cord chewed into 4 pieces.  I was annoyed at first, but I perked up when I realized I could view it as a sign of mammalian life.

Coming soon:  We have a trail camera.  We plan to set it up in the backyard and see what's there when we are not.

Off Path Paradise

Last week while tramping around in the woods with her nature class Evelyn forgot her backpack at Off Path Paradise, her backpack with her knives in it, the ones she uses for whittling, the ones she treasures.  Off Path Paradise lies off the Ridge Trail which is a mile long hike straight uphill (which is only a wee exaggeration) from Canyon Meadow. I'm not given to whining about one mile hikes of any verticality, but every single one of us was sick.

Since burglars (which Greta calls "gurglers") got into our house last fall...during the day, minutes after we left the house...I worry about leaving the kids home alone.  So, oh poor me, I had to strap on the Ergo baby carrier I haven't used in a year and carry Greta up the mile long hill while sick.  You can pin my medal right over my heart, thanks.

Off Path Paradise is a true child's paradise.  It is marked by a forked branch leaned up against a tree.  Its chief appeal is that few know it is there.  The kids found it by searching a topo map for flat areas.

It is home to dented and rusted and broken things dating from my childhood.

Nearby lies "Glass Valley". 

The kids have made it their own in ways that are familiar to me from my own, much more free, childhood.

Sweet-smelling, medicinal yerba buena grows there.

And Ev's backpack was there, safe and sound if slightly damp and covered by a few windblown leaves.

On the way up I didn't look past my own two trudging feet.  On the way down I saw the sluggish me had missed a few things.

Down was such easy going that the kids even broke into a run.

Here's where I'm supposed to say we were all invigorated and even healed by our foray into nature.  But it just wasn't so.  Still I was glad to have had a glimpse at the kids' Off Path Paradise.

Rain

This was the scene out my window this morning.  It was the sort of day that conjures up images of soup and tea.  Maybe a fire.

But the girls' nature class meets in any weather.  By the time we pulled out of the driveway it was raining hard.

There were lots of puddles, Clementine told me. There was a live newt and a dead newt.  The dead newt's head was crushed by a car and its brains were spilling out.  The live newt was in a stream by the road.  They put it in a puddle to observe it for a while.  It half swam half walked in the shallow puddle for a while and then they released it into the stream where it swam under a log.

Unlike me, at home, they did have a fire.  A big fire.  The counselors brought some logs.  And Evelyn, who is knife certified and Clementine, who is newly hatchet certified, helped make kindling.  The kids took turns with the hand drill to start the fire.  One started at the top of the stick, running her hands back and forth, moving from top to the bottom.  When she had reached the bottom the next person started at the top of the stick.

Running down a slick muddy hill Evelyn slipped and slid 12 feet along the ground.  She had mud in her hair.  She took off her shoes to climb a tree (it was too slippery to climb with shoes on) and got her feet muddy.  She ended up with more mud on the inside of her socks than on the outside.

I inferred from the fine freckling of mud on Clem's cheeks that someone near her had been stomping in puddles.

They spent six hours outside on a rainy day and came home tired, muddy and happy.

No cabin fever here today.

And how about you? Are you cozying up and watching the rain and snow or venturing out?

Pride and Prejudice and Mussels

The California Coast looked as English as it ever does: green hillsides with purple flowers, that if you squinted, and looked directly into the sunlight and swayed a little, could be mistaken for foxglove...if only you swatted away the clouds of hummingbirds, of which Europe is entirely devoid.

 The conditions were suitably early 19th century.  Smoke curled out of the chimneys, smoke from our wood stoves, the only source of heat in our little cabins.  And light came from our candles and lanterns.  We ran outside to fetch the cooking water.
 
And were not great 19th century themes evoked when we set out with pocket knives and a Trader Joe's bag to harvest mussels?  There was Dickensian child labor in perilous conditions. 

There was child against nature.

The theme of children's downfall due to bad parenting, prominent in Pride and Prejudice, was conspicuously absent.  Ahem.  Even though there was blood

and sweat and (almost) tears when a wave nearly swept away the harvest in its bag. 

Oh dear, scratch the blood, sweat and tears.  Wrong century.

There was success through hard work and perseverance.  Getting barnacles off mussels is as arduous as running any cotton loom,

but in the California sunshine, less likely to cause rickets.

The pride of the harvesters spurred them on to sample their harvest.

But the prejudice of those who had been too young to participate in the harvest

held sway and they would not partake in the feast.

All in all it was a trip worthy of a novel.

But all it gets is a blog post.

Wild Magic

Someone found my blog by googling psilocybin. I'm scratching my head about it because I talk a lot about magic and about mushrooms, but I have never (up to now) talked about magic mushrooms.


On a recent camping trip the girls got to explore a wide area on their own. I love to see their growing independence. One morning when most of the adults were still asleep a group of kids walked up a mountain to see the sun rise.

They came down happy, covered in dew, having seen the fog nestled in valleys and ready for breakfast.

They enjoyed unhurried time with friends.

Back at home we've been trying to make some magic in our garden.
We planted sunflower and morning glory seeds in a big oval to make a sunflower house and have been faithfully watering it every day, but I think the birds got most of the sunflower seeds. See the ratio below: one sunflower per 10 morning glories!

While packing for our camping trip I came across a bag of xylophone tubes and keys. I had planned to make a kinetic sculpture with them one day. But a few branches lying about suggested a frame. Evelyn and I built one and found a nice spot for the xylophone.

We nailed the xylophone keys to the fence.

Clementine's sculpture inspired by Andy Goldsworthy graced the garden for a short time before Greta, tempted by the cracking clay around the stones, crumbled and peeled it. It was meant to be ephemeral, but not quite that ephemeral!

I'd like the garden to be a place with a surprise around every corner. These are smaller, more intimate surprises than fog in the valley or the sun peeking over the far mountain, but I hope they will give the sense of place there to explore.

No Fossils, Plenty of Agate

This is the view from a hill just outside Lovelock, NV where we went to collect fossils and agate. Rains had made the jeep road to Fossil Hill harrowingly slippery so we drove out of town past signs inviting or perhaps importuning "Lock Your Love in Lovelock", took a short paved road past the freshwater diatomaceous earth mines, and then a dirt road to this spot where agate boulders and rubble litter the ground.

Clementine held a conversation with the welcoming committee, this horned lizard. The pronghorn antelope left calling cards, but declined to say hello.

We usually follow the motto take only photographs leave only footprints, so it was a rare treat for the kids to be allowed to wail on boulders with hammers and take the resulting fragments home.

I snuck off to get photos of birds I could hear calling down the hill. The birds eluded me, but I found a rare sense of solitude in a wide open place.