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.