A trip through Utah, 1996

A friend of mine is traveling through the Southwest and posting things to FB.  I was feeling nostalgic, and serendipitously found the journal I wrote in 1996, when I was driving R to Austin.  We camped along the way. The big name places were Bryce, Zion, Grand Canyon, and Carlsbad.  Here's what I had to say about Bryce:

Left Hwy 70, following the Sevier River.  It's a sage-green, tumbling, fast-moving river - seems to have cut through the mountains, and the road we're on is squished in.  There are oval and half-moon-shaped holes in the tops of the mountains - most of it looks river-cut.  It's amazing to think of how long it took to make this canyon.

Bedtime
We're at Kodachrome State Park:  Bryce was full by the time we reached it, but we're just as glad.  This is a lovely site, in a bowl of yellow/white/golden/red cliffs, with streams trickling through, scrub pines at every site, spires, etc.  We're very isolated, yet close to the water and the bathrooms (which have HOT SHOWERS!)  Our fellow campers are quiet - we see their lights, hear some low-voiced comments, a quiet laugh here and there, some rattling dishes - all very peaceful and distant-seeming.  Crickety insects are singing.  This being both desert and mountain, the stars are incredible.

R called RB (her husband, whom we were joining in TX), and then she made a white sauce out of pancake mix, dried milk, mozzarella, and oil.  Some turkey ham and zucchini went in it, and we finished up the pasta.  We pulled out the cheap CA wine and it was pretty good.  So, we took our mugs and went for a walk in the gloaming.  There are rocks here like a miniature version of Ayers Rock - red, smooth, rounded, with oval holes in the base.  Behind them, spires climb into the light-blue, darkening sky.  I wanted to climb, but it was too late and R wouldn't let me anyway.  But it was beautiful.

Then we sat at the table and killed the bottle, while eating Chevalier Noir cookies.  Yummm.

We planned tomorrow a bit, and while R went to the bathrooms, I knit by candle lantern light and watched the stars brighten.  Then, a walk to the restroom myself, head tilted upwards identifying constellations and marveling.  R's already asleep.  I'm using her lantern to warm the tent, write, and read.  But, I'm getting tired.

Sunday
At North Campground.  Just watched the stars come out over East Rim of Bryce Canyon and got totally lost coming back.  For a completely packed campground, this is a pretty quiet one.  Lighted tents, campfires, lighted RV's looking like houses - it was like walking around a small town without street lights.  I made a right downhill when I should have made a left up - and then I began to ramble.  Found RV-land, found a bathroom, on trying to find the road I walked into a campsite with a VERY bright light.  I asked if they knew where the road was, and they pointed 2 feet away.  I got back - candle-lantern lit on table but no R - she'd gone to look for me and ended up at the campfire canyon talk, which she says was pretty hideous.  Anyway, she forgave me - said she'd been blaming herself for letting us split up at dusk.  We'd gone for a post-prandial cliff-sunset walk and ended up at the general store where she called RB and depressed him by telling him the stove was turning black.

Some beautiful hikes today - first at Kodachrome Basin Panorama Loop. (We woke up freezing cold, and everything we'd left out on the table was soaking wet, even my bag of knitting.) The panorama hike was a cross between John Day Fossil beds and Ayers Rock.  At the last we climbed a hill and had the whole basin spread out below us.  R left 1st, and I was alone, high above the earth, an intermittant cool breeze making the only sound.  Perfect peace.  I met 3 German lads on the way down and recommended the climb.

Lots of Germans at Bryce, too.  We're flanked by them.  An elderly couple in a van (which R covets:  "They look so cozy") is directly adjacent.

We mainly drove around to various viewpoints, did a few short hikes.   Wind was very cold.  We had sweatshirts but were still wearing shorts.  Lunched at a viewpoint and shivered.  Tomorrow I hike in slacks, I think.

Mmm, wind roaring in the pines, very nice, time for sleep.

Monday, early pm
Today I'm unable to breathe in the scent of sun-warmed juniper and bristle-cone pine to which I've been growing fondly accustomed.  I woke up to R rushing me from the tent to see the sunrise before the sun got buried in the rain clouds.  There was just a thin line of clear blue before the gray cumulonimbus stuff started.  We reached the rim, too late it seemed.  So, back to the site to take down tents and make breakfast.  As the coffee was brewing, the little weasel of a sun popped up.  The camp host in his little golf cart was driving by picking up expired registration tags and he asked us what we were looking at.  I said, "the sun" and he said "what sun?" like he'd never heard of such a thing.

After breakfast, while Rhonda was changing in her tent, I saw a little puff-chested bird, white and black, with a black mask, dive onto the table inches away from me, peck for the non-existent food, and dart back up to a low branch of the overhanging pine. He did this several times.  No fear of me.

We stopped by the store for a rain poncho for me, and set off down the Queen's Garden Loop.  It was terrific to be down amongst the hoodoos, winding in and out along the valley floor.  We came back via Navajo Loop, a lung-bursting ascent.  The monsoon held off until the very end, when a little fear of heights and slippery trails added to my breathlessness.

Back at the store porch for lunch.  The clerk who sold us ponchos was there with coffee and cigarette.   I said, "Look at this piece of junk you sold me," and pointed out the split hood.  He offered to give me a replacement, and seemed very serious.  The thing only cost $2.99;  one doesn't expect great things from an essentially garbage bag mit hood and snaps.

It's amazing to me that I went through this area close to 20 years ago, and now I'm living here.  It's all still there:  stars, rocks, skies, peace.  Clearly this is what I've wanted for years.

A Citizen Scientist wannabe

Many years ago I joined the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as a Citizen Scientist.  What this meant in real terms was that I set up a bird feeder on my deck and counted the visitors for two months one winter.  While I was diligent in recording my observations, I never got good at the identification piece, nor were my findings anything but pedestrian.  To my chagrin, my lovely jungly yard mainly attracted house sparrows and starlings, both invasive species of the most unattractive kind. Juncos were more fun, and I always enjoyed watching them root through the seeds that fell to the deck.  Real sparrows, finches (mainly house finches), also showed up, with the occasional black-capped chickadee (no more than two) and once in a blue moon, the spotted towhee.  And, of course, squirrels.

The cats mainly left the birds alone, which, considering their springtime predations, surprised me. I do remember coming home from a weekend trip to find the deck totally devoid of avian life.  I was inclined to blame the cats, until I looked towards the large cedar overhanging the deck.  There I saw a Cooper's hawk.

I recognized it from previous visits to Chapman School to watch the annual migration of the Vaux Swifts.  For the last few weeks of September, the Audubon Society sets up binoculars for the crowds of picnickers, who settle on the hill above the school, watching the swifts dine on the last of the evening insects before swirling and funneling into the school's tall chimney for their night's rest.  The neighborhood grudgingly tolerates the parking problem, and a nightly show unfolds, ending in a storm of applause as the last swifts whump into the chimney and leftovers take off for the woods in the surrounding hills.  This show regularly includes the presence of a Cooper's Hawk perched on the side of the chimney, biding its time.  Usually it would pick off a swift and make for the nearby trees, but sometimes the swifts would mob it and drive it away.

So, I knew what a Cooper's hawk looked like, and I knew why the birds had deserted my deck. I hated to think of the carnage that took place in my absence, but that too is part of the deal.  These are wild creatures. Predation is the name of the game. While we humans try to mask that part of existence, it's unavoidable.

Still, we do our best to close our eyes to reality.  And in fact, it's difficult to believe that soaring and swooping and chattering is merely part of the birds' hunting and territory-building activities.  It's easier to enjoy the beauty and the variety. So, we set up feeders and baths in our yards and on our decks, we get out our binoculars, we make pilgrimages to migratory stopping places and sanctuaries, we keep journals, we call ourselves Citizen Scientists.  We are thrilled because they are sharing the world with us, but we put them into a mental zoo.

Actually, I cannot truly call myself a Citizen Scientist. I cannot describe birds by the proper terms, I cannot recognize delicate variations in plumage, I mix up their calls, I squint through the binocular lenses but can't find them in the trees.  Hawks, buzzards, kestrels and eagles are all lumped into one category (raptors) and identified by one behavior (soaring.)   Herons are solitary, elegant, sticklike outlines at the water's edge.  Red-wing blackbirds are obvious by their red-wings, and obligingly pose on the barb-wire fences by the roads.

I have accompanied birder friends to coastal marshes and watched the gulls holding their wings out to dry.  A few springs ago,  I joined Holly and M on Audubon's Mt Tabor walks to learn how to identify birdsong, and I kept asking, what's that?  (It was usually a robin.)  I went to an outdoor zoo in Sydney, Australia:  who can help but recognize a parrot?  I have visited Malheur Wildlife Refuge to check out the high desert birds.  My sister and I go to the Mississippi at Keokuk to watch the bald eagles soaring above the dam, my friend Karen and I took an Audubon-sponsored hike on Sauvie Island to do the same. When I first moved to Oregon, I remember hiking up to Nesika with S:  he had a key to the Trails Club lodge in the Gorge, and we would take wild-cat trips.  He soaked his red kerchief in sugar water and hung it from chinks in the log walls of the cabin.  We sat in the adirondack chairs, a short distance away and waited:  sure enough, a hummer arrived to sip on the makeshift feeder, and I took its picture.

It was blurry.

Eventually I owned my own feeder, but I never did manage to lure the hummingbirds to it.  I didn't actually need to.  The deck was surrounded by fruit trees and bushes with large pink horn-shaped flowers.  Clematis flowed up and over the wall, and Oregon grape grew in the jungle-yard.  Hummers became frequent visitors, and it was not unusual for me to be reading in the hammock and hear a buzzing sound.  I would look up and see the hummer, inches away.  I had always thought they could not sit for long without food, and that they didn't like people, but this one was amazingly gregarious.

Now, I'm in New Mexico.  While I'm missing certain parts of Oregon, I don't feel bird-lonely. The apartment complex is home to doves, some small brown birds that I haven't identified, and hummingbirds.  As I walk to the pool, I wade through the aptly-named charm of hummingbirds:  one of the patios has a feeder set out for them.  The doves coo in the morning and perch on the chain link fence by the basketball court.  The little brown birds settle on the grass.  And the hummingbirds hover over the pool, then zip over to the junipers.  They are ubiquitous, and I love it.  (L actually found a newly hatched one, the size of a finger-nail, and nursed it continuously for a few days before it flew off.  Since they need constant nourishment, it was not an easy thing to do.)

Although the New Mexico state bird is the road runner, I think it should be the hummer.  Apparently, New Mexico is home to 17 species of Hummingbirds, summering here before returning to Mexico for the winter.  As even experienced birders find it difficult to identify the various species, I feel off the hook regarding a Citizen Scientist role.  I'm just enjoying them.  A lot.

Refer to blog title

So, I get up, groggy with sleep and my ever-escalating cold, just wanting to feed the dog and go back to bed.   My usual ritual is:  feed dog, start coffee, pee, get newspaper, settle in to the crossword.  On automatic pilot, I walk into the studio bathroom.  I'm thinking, oh yeah, we need to clean this place up today for tomorrow's guests.  I glance at the floor to see how dirty it is, and I see....feathers.

Just two of them.  Little gray-brown ones.

Sigh.

I look under the sink cabinet.  No corpse.  I check behind the shower curtain.  Clean as the proverbial whistle.  Hmm.  And then I see my cat, silhouetted against the shoji screens that are pulled against the 3 large front windows, her blackness and skinniness accentuated by the white screens.  She is standing on the sofa back, stretched tall, paws batting at a fluttering soft grey silhouette on the other side of the screen.

Shit.  I almost prefer to find a corpse.   I scoop up the cat (and she is not going quietly) and shut the bird up alone in the studio while I ponder what to do next.

Maybe if I wait long enough E will find it and deal with it.