Picnicking on Sullivan Lake

The season has pretty much closed the door on my outside playroom now, but going through my photograph albums I realize there are a few explorations which I did not confess to on the nomad.

A gloomy Friday afternoon is a good time to play catchup.

One Sunday in mid September I packed a picnic lunch and headed out over the hill and up the road to introduce Little Yoni to Sullivan Lake.

There were a few stops along the way to explore launch sites on the Pend Oreille River. Written up here.

When I arrive at the boat launch on the north end of the lake I discover a couple doing their ablutions, right at the jetty. In spite of a huge NO BATHING sign. While I do not begrudge them their outdoor experience of camping and all, I was not amused to have to launch Little Yoni through highly scented shampoo suds, toothpaste spit and other body products. It seems that this irritating couple were in their middle years. Yes. I was treated to eyefulls of expanses of exposed flesh which helps with the carbon dating of the specimens. Thus they cannot claim youth as excuse. They have a way to go still with the Leave No Trace curriculum.

Little Yoni and I manage to put the bathers to route, however, with our "we are here to launch at the boat launch we have just paid $5 for the privilege of using" non-negotiable attitude as I unload from the top of Moonlight Escape.

Butterflies applaud.

The lake was all my own after that: deep, reflective and calm.

The whole world was holding its breath, summer pausing for a last over the shoulder glance,  before bowing out to autumn.

I paddle south along the perimeter a way, then take a floating picnic lunch break, keeping an eye out for Sasquatch who proves to be a no show on this occasion.

A lake this size all to myself is not a bad thing.

Batten down the hatches

Coming, ready or not! said winter. First snow on the mountain at the end of my street this morning.

They battened down the hatches
But the hatches wouldn't hold

Bob Dylin Tempest Sept 2012

A Nile all my own: a paean to riverlove

Northward flowing rivers fascinate me. My all time favourite river, the Nile, is north flowing. Similarly the Amazon.

Just over the Flowery Trail from me, in my backyard as it were,  is 50 miles of another north flowing river:  the Pend Oreille.

Like Rudyard Kipling's Limpopo, it is a lovely great, grey, green, greasy body of water with a huge watershed covering western Montana, northern Idaho and north eastern Washington: sparsely populated but dreamingspirit rich geographies. Imagine the stories that water tells.

Like the Nile too, the source of the  Pend Oreille River is in a lake: Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho. The river crosses into Washington at Newport and then flows north into British Columbia, Canada where it joins the Columbia River as the biggest tributary of this mighty river.

I have not yet paddled any stretch of the Pend Oreille River.

On a mid-September (yes I am posting late on some of my activities) trip to paddle Lake Sullivan, I stopped off at Cusick to scout launch sites. At the boat launch near the Calispel Valley Library, where the toilets are locked, there are a lot of poles sticking up from the water, making magnificent rippled reflections and articulating the riverscape interestingly.

There are also signs saying how dangerous and fast flowing the river is. No lifeguard on duty etc. Unfortunately, because the toilets are kept locked, there was some ample evidence of people having used the area around the boat launch for toilet.

Further north, up the road a ways, I found a more peaceful, better smelling launch site.

Paddling this river is likely in my destiny. Though I might have to sit out the ice season. Or acquire some cold weather paddling gear. Ugh. More stuff. It is cumbersome to live in a cold climate, yes?

Turtle Lake drive-by with the old folks: September 2012

I was in Wellpinit for work one Saturday in early September. After the workshop was over, I drove the long way back, through the Spokane Indian Reservation, stopping at Turtle Lake to have a chat with the old folks.

As always this lake was the bluest of blues. There wasn't a living two legged around besides me. Strange on a hot Saturday afternoon, wouldn't you think? So this appointment with the old folks was just for me, and me alone, then?

I admire the clouds, look deep into the water and spy on the mating ceremonies of turquoise and red dragonflies, the sunlight glinting silver spangles on the water. Turquoise and coral silver jewelry on wrists, ears and neck chime in on the conversation.

I read Daisy Abrahamson's Turtle Lake Story again and then carry on along the road. After all, that's all we can do, isn't it? Be present when we are presented. Take leave, let go and carry on along the road. Don't be looking to retrieve the turtle you think you have tied down for your own, though. You will likely find it gone. There are some turtles you can't tie down, nor take home with you.

Up along Lake Roosevelt the air is hazy, thick with smoke from the wildfires burning across the region. I contemplate paddling, but the smoke is hanging so low over the water it is scary: would be like paddling in fog. I also know they use the lake as a water reservoir for firefighting. Don't want to be capsized by a firefighter's helicopter bucket.

Later Daisy comes back to speak with me again along the drowned Columbia River. Wash, rinse, repeat. Daisy Daisy Daisy give me your answer do. Oh you did. I just had to ask.

Investing

In early September I was honoured to be part of a State Library workshop at the Wellpinit Early Learning Centre on the Spokane Indian Reservation about 50 miles down the road.

The Pauline Stearns Early Learning Centre is a beautiful solar powered facility which was opened in May 2011. Another example of the way the American Indian Tribes invest in the youth. 

From the outside the design is reminiscent of a plankhouse, with a moden edge to it. Down one side of the parking lot one can see the bank of solar panels. The Spokane Tribe are also known as People of the Sun. Fitting that they use solar power.

Interior walls have relief clay/plaster moulded imagery and lots of lovely art work by children. 

There's a beautiful vitality in the atmosphere at this centre, even if many of the teachers seemed, on the day I was there,  to be struggling with head cold, flu type of sickness. 

Ama in ayurveda  - seems to indicate too much mucus in their systems. I find myself wondering whether this relates to diet/nutrition: too much sugar and refined flour maybe? The traditional foods are no longer being hunted and foraged for as staples. Smallpox isn't the only killer disease given to native peoples by the western world. Everywhere I drive on the reservation I see fast food containers, beer and fizzy carbonated drink cans, and cigarette packets discarded alongside the road. 

I wonder how the CEO's of the fast food companies, which destroy the health of the (economically)poor of the nation, sleep at night. Yeah I know I am on a roll. Last week it was drugs at Barter fair, this week fast food. Humpfh. Must be election season rhetoric getting to me.

Cognitive dissonance

So there I was on a hot day in early September, driving along Hwy 231 going to a Chamber of Commerce meeting in a small western town in the (back)woods, USA.

Wait! What was that? Where am I? Back up!

Yes. An emu. In a field. Daring me to see it differently. That swagger, that over the shoulder look.

The meeting place has changed and the sign outside the vacated bar which used to be the venue for my meeting is somehow apt for the shape shifting world. Gerinomo(s)! no more.

At home Saturday: my first murmuration

At last! there is moisture in the air. Combined with autumn falling fast, it is making for a beautiful moodiness of mutability in the light and colour department.

A stormy Saturday sunrise.

Some graupel (ice pellets) come hailing down on me while I potter in the gone-to-seed garden, removing some things, collecting seed, cutting back and putting to bed for the winter. I am perhaps not doing as much as others who speak of having rototilled this week.

I see gatherings of little birds feeding off the seeds in what was my food garden and I think: why pull these up and put them on the compost heap now, when they are still feeding critters, providing homes for critters? The compost heap is only going to turn into an frozen pile of vegetable matter for the next 5 to 6 months anyway, not do much composting. Maybe I will regret  this rebel unwinterization in spring. If I am tilling this same piece of earth. I know there will probably be a lot of self sown arugula. Something in me likes inviting chaos with the partnership with the wild that way.

As I am admiring a bit of a rainbow in the wake of the graupel shower, a soft whoosh of wings draws my attention up. My first murmuration of starlings!

I have seen this phenomenon on videos posted online but never experience it for myself. A dance of flying birds forming shapes, swirling, separating. It was so sudden and unexpected. I only had the small p&s camera in my hands at the time so this is the best I could do. The science behind murmuration, as well as a link to a video, is explained here. There are rewards for staying home and pausing to look up.

The backyard tree is glowing golden, laying down a lovely soft carpet to warm and feed the roots.

 The blueberry bushes have fire in their leaves. I do hope they root down this winter and produce some fruit next season. I fear they were a little neglected as far as water goes in the hot, dry last few months. Mea culpa!

In this northern place of four seasons, nature's consolation prize for the coming big freeze and long, cold, dark lockdown is colour. I revel in it. Change is a nomadic element.