June 19, 2009

The forest begins to bear fruit.

Salmonberries hang at picking height along the damp trails. I take a handful, surprised this year at their flavor. Their color too often belies a watery suggestion of sweetness, but today I am delighted by a tart burst of juice when I crush one against the roof of my mouth. I tease the flesh from the seeds with my tongue as I walk, savoring the first wild fruit of the season. Underfoot there are more seeds, clotted red in bird droppings. The robins eat many more than I do.

Photo: Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis)






Later there will be Thimbleberries, the wild raspberry of the forest. I will fight the robins for them when they ripen.

Photo: Green Thimbleberries (Rubus parviflorus)

Osoberry. Indian Plum. Bird Cherry. The first deciduous January green. Flowers unfurling in February, pale against winter grey. I am greedy for their fragrance. Cat piss and skunk, the promise of light.

Now they ripen, yellow-pink and orange and violet orbs dangling from bright red stems. I will wait, knowing their taste, knowing their texture. Wait until each berry turns a deep purple. This is the taste of the forest: a gamy and almost unbearable bitterness, redolent of salmon, of bees, of sweet decay.

Photo: Osoberry (Oemlaria cerasiformis)

All photos copyright 2009, C. M. Alexander

June 18, 2009

No rain for 29 days. Oregon Grape berries shrivel as they ripen.

June 17, 2009

One adult barred owl, eyes closed, perched low in a thicket of hazelnut branches. One crow perched nearby, scolding.

Crow scolds, arching its whole body with each bright caw. Owl opens its eyes. Crow leaps into the air, dashes itself towards the owl, flips up at the last minute to perch just a foot away, yells out a challenge.

Caw!

Owl closes its eyes. Sits, silent.

Crow shifts its weight from foot to foot, voice pitched higher now. Fluffs itself up to double size.

Caw!

Owl sits.

Crow rises up again, and again. Swoops down on the passive owl in close tight arcs, screaming.

Caw! Caw!

Owl sits.

Crow perches. Rocks back and forth, takes a twig in its beak and tears it from a branch. Throws it down.

Caw!

Tears another twig from the branch. Throws it.

Caw! Caw!

Crow grabs a branch, twists, pulls off a chunk, tosses it into the air.

Caw! CAW!

Stabs at the branch with its beak. Bark splinters off in all directions. Crow stabs again, and again.

The branch shatters.

CAW! CAW! CAW!

Crow chisels out a splinter of pale wood and shakes it, tosses it into the air and watches it fall. Looks at the owl.

CAW!!

Owl sits. Owl does not open its eyes.

June 5, 2009

Rick works in the park, is the first to arrive every morning.

He calls us over. Tells us about tidying the beach at dawn after a hot and crowded weekend. Tells us how he heard a high querulous bark behind him:

Coyote, sitting on the hillside, calling.

Tells us how he watched. How Coyote called; a bark and a warbling howl.

Tells us how a second voice responded from across the beach and to the west. How a third voice warbled back from the well-kept neighborhoods.

Tells us how two coyotes appeared, one from a carefully tended yard, the other down an asphalt street. How they trotted over to the one who first called. How they danced their greetings and how they sang. Yodle and whine.

And how they turned into the shadows, silent.

June 2, 2009

The canopy is complete. Trails that provided bright winter light are shadowed now, Osoberry and Hazelnut branches meeting just above my head. I can touch them if I reach up on tiptoe. Above them Big-leaf Maple and Red Alder and Dogwood in layers among the spaces left by conifers and evergreens. Cool here now.

I depend on my eyes in the winter. Watch Eagles flying above the tops of bare Big-leaf Maple and Cottonwood, delight in the identification puzzle of a huge mixed flock of little birds working the bare hazenut branches, find the occasional Douglas Squirrel scolding me from across a clearing. Now I rely on my other senses.

Late afternoon and the breeze picks up off the lake, rustles the leaves deep in the forest, brings with it the smells from the shoreline. Nootka roses bloom down there, where the forest thins to brush and grass. Here, a hundred yards up, the air is filled with their fragrance. Farther along the trail something has died, or been killed and left for later. Death and roses.

The summer birds have been arriving for a month or so but I rarely see them. Rufous Hummingbirds race through the salmonberries around the upper wetland like vintage VW bugs. Deeper in the conifers Western Wood Peewees call from the mid canopy:

"Tu-weet?" .............. "Tu-weet?"

and are sometimes answered by Pacific Slope Flycatchers:

"Tu-weet? Chuck. Tik?"

And I stop to listen with enormous care when the Hoarse Robins (Western Tanagers) and the Robins-on-speed (Red-headed Grosbeaks) sing alongside the Real Robins. When asked, I shake my head and admit that these three songs are really too close for me to call with confidence. Perhaps next year my ear will be better.