Some B. S. from the Valley…

Greg Hensen ( that’s an “EN Hensen, he tells me, not to be confused with the “ON” Henson; that’s The Muppets guy) doesn’t fit the profile of your average birder. He’s wearing a long-sleeved plaid cotton shirt (not of LL. Bean manufacture), faded jeans held up by a braided leather belt, the excess, like a lolling tongue, slops over against his leg. A baseball cap, not one of those Tilley’s sun blocking canvas jobs, struggles to keep his mat of graying hair under wraps. Greg, it appears--like me—prefers to give his razor a couple days’ rest. Oh, and he drives a crew cab 4 x 4 pickup, not a Honda Element. The truck is parked off the shoulder at the end stretch of the Lower Loop Road by the slough. As I roll up, Greg is just storing a fully extended tripod in the cab. At first I think he might be a surveyor, but there’s that plaid shirt, not the customary orange vest….

The wetlands slough that wends its way west by the Fish and Game parking lot is the Valley Mecca for birders. This morning Greg has come to observe and photograph waterfowl. How appropriate, I think, as his lean, lanky frame puts me in mind of the Sleepy Hollow’s character Ichabod Crane. (Stork? Heron? Crane?)  “As soon as I got out of the truck,” he exclaims, “I frightened off a bittern.” I’m familiar with the word and know a bittern is a small, long-legged wading bird, but can’t recall seeing one here in the Valley. He informs me the bird is an American bittern. “I photographed one the other day. It didn’t seem concerned I was nearby. I watched it spear young bullfrogs, tadpoles, sticklebacks, and then preen itself.” Greg tells me he has a 5 something lens with some powerful zeros after it and is well-equipped to photograph birdlife. “What do you do with the photos?” I inquire. “Oh, the good ones I post on Flicker,” he replies. Flicker? An appropriate site for bird pictures, don’t you think?

The birders I have met in the Valley—and there have been several (for one, see “Four and Twenty Blackbirds,” 4/18/2010)—I venture to say know more about the birds in our Valley than the folks who live here. Whenever I meet bird watchers, I make a point to strike up a conversation with them. It’s hard to say just what turns a person into an avid birdwatcher, but I do know they always prove to be interesting people, and I learn something new from them each time we share bird stories. Greg is no exception. He tells me about the ancient maple trees along the trails on the Fish and Game land the other side of the slough. “They make great nesting sites for Great Horned Owls,” I learn.  And the talk goes in that direction. Greg tells me about the Reifel Bird Sanctuary in B.C., a  wildlife preserve on the Fraser River estuary. “Ah, lots of waterfowl there, I imagine?” “No,” Hensen exclaims, “this year Reifel is a good place to observe Snowy owls. Last year was a ‘Boom’ year for snowies because of the peak in the lemming cycle. Most of the owlet brood of the season survived because of the surplus food supply, and the parents drove them from the territory to reduce competition for food. Many flew to the sanctuary in south B.C. for refuge.”

Our conversation proceeds “as the crow flies” to my sharing a story about a snowy owl I saw bullied in town by two or three crows, a scenario that ended with the unfortunate snowy fleeing to Buck Island for safety amid a “murder” of fifty or so of the black marauders. “Crows are smart,” Greg laughs. ( Nothing new for The Ripple in that quarter.) We both were aware of a study on crows and human facial recognition at the U. W. According to the study crows that are intimidated or harassed by certain humans, store the image of the offender’s face and any subsequent intercourse with that individual calls down the wrath of the entire rookery on that unfortunate physiognomy. Greg throws a story back at me. A friend of his, aggravated by the incessant crow ruckus in his backyard, decided to cast stones at the offenders and drive them off. After the initial stoning, whenever the perpetrator appeared on his porch or in the yard, his face became a “wanted” poster and the observant crows would call in their cousins, raise such an outcry the “stoner” had to return indoors to quiet the uproar.

Our bird stories soared on to eagles. I told Greg the story of the two friends who canoed from the headwaters of the Connecticut River to its estuary on the Long Island Sound (Two Coots in a Canoe: the Story of an Unusual Story of Friendship). Along the way the canoeists bed and breakfasted at the home of an avid eagle watcher. She showed them a closed circuit video feed from a bird cam Wildlife officials set up by an eagles’ nest. The strangest response resulted, she told them. Instead of hearing from fascinated viewers, the Wildlife center received angry calls from cat lovers complaining about the detritus in the nest: several cat collars, all of them empty. Greg laughs and now it’s his turn.

Underground drilling happens to be Greg’s line of work. One day his neighbor discovered a hole on his property, and fearing it might be compromising his septic system, he asked Greg to check it out. Inspection showed the hole to be at least fifteen feet long. Greg shined a flashlight into the opening and noticed something glittering deep in the hole. He found a long pole, pounded a couple of nails into the tip, bent them into hooks, and ran the pole toward the glittering object and began to probe. “You know what I snagged? A cat collar!” Further probes yielded more collars. “By the time I finished, I hauled forty-two out of the hole,” Greg exclaims. “The hole was a coyote den and apparently Ma Coyote fed her pups well. Some collars even had names and contact information on them.” “Did you call any of the numbers, bring some welcome closure to the owners?” I joke. “No,” Greg shakes his head, “not a single one.”

Just then I hear the whirr of wings overhead. “Incoming,” Greg says. I look up to see two pair of ducks beginning their descent to the waters of the slough. “I saw a pair of hooded mergansers earlier,” Greg informs me. “And a half dozen pair of wood ducks.”Ah, wood ducks…it’s my turn again.

“There’s something in the chimney,” is the greeting I hear as soon as I walk in the door. Now after a hard day’s work herding sophomores, that’s a greeting you don’t want to hear. Unless it’s Christmas, a home invasion via the chimney is most unwelcome. But what’s most disconcerting is the implication of: “There’s something in the chimney.” Buried deeply somewhere in the fine print of the marriage contract is this language: “If something moves into the chimney of the house, it is the sole jurisdiction and the responsibility of the male of the household to remove said “something.” (Always read the fine print; how many times have you heard that!) My immediate response, being the male of the household, was to sidestep the news with: “Why do you think that?” The following dialogue ensued:

“Because I heard something moving around in the chimney flue, that’s why.” “Are you sure…?” “Yes, I’m sure.” “What did it sound like?” “Oh, it was a kind of fluttering sound.” “Was it a big fluttering sound or a faint fluttering sound?” “It was just a fluttering sound like I told you; there’s something in the chimney.” “I don’t hear anything now; maybe it was the wind.” “There is something in the chimney, I tell you.” “I don’t hear a thing now.” “Well, I know there’s something in there….” “Then it has to be some sort of bird…and if it flew in there, it’ll most likely fly back out, won’t it?” And with that totally unacceptable reassurance, the wife headed for town on some errand or two, leaving me at home…alone…with “something” in the chimney, “something” that made a fluttering sound.

While she was gone, I made the house as quiet as possible; in the chance the chimney should flutter again, I wanted to hear it. For an hour all I heard was the splatter of raindrops on the skylights. Then the chimney broke its silence. A shuffling sound or a scuffling sound. No denying it now. “There’s something in the chimney,” I thought, and as per the fine print I rushed to investigate. I stuck my head in the fireplace and peered up the flue. Above the firebox where the flue jogs into the chimney was a little ledge to collect ash or divert airflow, I guess. Pacing back and forth on the ledge were two webbed feet just heavy enough to produce a  muffled, fluttering sound. Ah, ha! There’s a duck in the chimney! It must be two, three hours since my wife first heard it, I think, and I know this duck isn’t going anywhere now without assistance. Even though I once retrieved a wayward starling from the firebox of our woodstove, I knew rescuing a duck from the chimney was out of my league. For a fleeting moment I considered laying a fire and smoking the duck from its brick prison, but I didn’t want to harm it, let alone roast it. Besides, I had no recipe for fireplace-roasted duck and was afraid I might under or overcook it. And besides, aren’t migratory waterfowl to some degree a protected species? It’s times like these one rushes to the Yellow Pages for assistance, but the closest help I could find was listed under “chimney sweeps.” And Pasado Safe Haven only respond to abused animals, which, so far, didn’t apply to the duck. It was then I remembered a birder friend, a bona fide card carrying member of the Audubon Society and dialed her up. “Hey, I’ve got a duck in my chimney,” I tell my friend. “What should I do?”

I hang up and call the Pilchuck Audubon Society’s phone number I’ve been given. I tell the voice on the other end, “I have a duck in my chimney and sure could use some help.” “We’ll send someone out right away,” I’m relieved to hear as I give the address. In an hour and the pouring rain two members show up at our door, two duck rescuers, a man and a woman. After a brief orientation, the fellow rests a tall extension ladder against the chimney. The woman prefers to work from within and fishnet in hand, crawls into the fireplace. The man quickly returns inside; not much he can do from the ladder and the top of the chimney in the spring downpour. Soon the soot is flying and the woman is frustrated; the duck evades every swipe of her net. She tries again and again, but the duck will not be rescued. After nearly an hour of fireplace squatting, the lady’s partner suggests he give it a try. His be-sooted partner gladly relinquishes the net and in five minutes he emerges triumphant from the flue with a frightened and very dirty wood duck hen in the belly of the net.We all cheer. The little duck, while frightened, appears unharmed. She’s a nice little duck, with a flat little bill and little sooty webbed feet, and soft brown eyes. She’s a Cinderella of a duck, in fact, and my wife names her “Ashley” accordingly. While Ashley has her video op, we learn something about her. “It’s nesting time for wood ducks,” the Audubon pair tell us. “They’re looking for a hollow tree they can safely nest in. With the dwindling habitat, hollow trees are a scarcity and fireplace chimneys are a last resort.” We told them about the pond across the road and they thought that would be a good release site for Ashley. I remember we wrote them a check in thanks, a donation to their chapter of the Audubon Society, for rescuing little Ashley and bringing peace and quiet to our hearth. We ushered Ashley and her rescuers to the door, pointed in the direction of the pond, and thanked all three again for the evening’s entertainment.

Early the next day I leaned a ladder against the chimney, climbed up and placed a sheet of plywood over the chimney pot and weighted it with a brick. That fall we bought a pellet stove insert, precluding any further wood duck inclination to explore the chimney as a potential nesting site.

Greg chuckles, enjoying the story, but before he can retaliate with another of his own--thus prompting me to up the ante with my tale of the colony of bats we had living behind the chimney flashing, I thank him for his time and tell him I’ll let him get on with his day. And thus the bird stories endeth.

“Bee”wildered in the Valley…

Those who know I’m a beekeeper always ask me, “How are the bees doing?” When I mention to folks I’m a beekeeper, they ask the same question. Most people, it seems, know there’s a problem with honeybee populations worldwide. Since the problem first arose several years ago, the media has given the issue considerable coverage. The honeybee’s crucial importance to the food industry has prompted much research into “Colony Collapse Disorder,”(CCD) a generic, rather benign term for the devastating disease that causes a honeybee colony to decline, dwindle away, and die out entirely. The scientific community has advanced one theory after another, some as bizarre as the cell tower theory in which it was purported the signals from cell towers interfered with the bee’s GPS system: the bee became disoriented, couldn’t find its way back to the hive. A study published just this week in the American  Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science and Technology claims a link between CCD and a “neonicotinoid” insecticide used to infuse corn seed. The chemical is applied during the planting stage by a machine that pneumatically sucks in the seed and coats it with the chemical before it is planted. Airborne residual spray has been linked to mass killing of adjacent honeybee colonies. This is just yet another study, I realize, but in a Valley filled with cornfields, I wonder….

Years ago the only challenge this beekeeper faced in the Valley—if you can call it a problem—was dealing with colony strength, not dwindling: keeping your bees from swarming. As spring progresses, the queen of a healthy, overwintered colony begins laying eggs as the days get longer and the daily temperatures rise. A common spring management technique is to feed colonies sugar syrup, simulating a false honey flow, thereby encouraging the queen to increase her egg laying activity. By mid-April, just in time for the big leaf maple bloom, the colonies will be booming with bees, and weather permitting, gather a surplus of maple honey. Then spring management focused on swarm control so when the wild blackberries, the Valley’s main honey flow, bloomed, the colonies would be at maximum strength for nectar gathering. When a colony becomes brood-bound (no room for the queen to lay more eggs), it shifts into “swarm mode.” It’s by spinning off swarms the honeybee insures the species’ survival. During this time certain larvae are selected to be new queens. Just before the new queens emerge (only one will be allowed to live and replace the old queen), up to half the field force and the old queen swarm out. If the beekeeper doesn’t practice good swarm management and allows his bees to swarm at will, his hives will not be at optimum strength for the main honey flow.Then for certain the season’s honey crop is in jeopardy. Even the best beekeeper cannot prevent some colonies from swarming; once a colony shifts into the swarm mindset, it’s nearly impossible to stop it. As a beekeeper, you want to keep swarms at a minimum. It’s all a matter of whether you want to raise bees or collect a honey crop. Good management aside, it was not uncommon for me to experience eight or ten swarms a season. Sometimes I ran out of equipment to hive them and just let the swarms escape into the wilds.

But those years of swarm management are long gone, and nowadays swarms from my colonies are rare. All that remains is the difficult challenge of wintering over the bees. I used to tell people our Valley was the best place to overwinter bees. When they can’t go on regular cleansing flights and are cooped up for weeks on end as they are in the mid-west or eastern Washington, honeybees are subject to a dysentery-like disease called nosema. There’s scarcely a month out of the year here in the Valley bees can’t get out and fly around a bit. Some years I’ve seen bees foraging in my heather bed on Christmas Day. The last several years, however, if my beehives do survive the winter, only one or two survive into spring. Instead of a colony’s increasing in strength as was the case years ago, now it dwindles down until just a handful of bees remain. A few days later, nothing but two empty boxes. Of the five colonies I had last fall, only two survive now, both in weakened condition. Two of the three deadouts didn’t survive until January. Last year I lost three of my four overwintered colonies. One forms an emotional bond with the livestock he raises. The loss of a honey crop is a disappointment, surely, but to devote all that time and energy to proper management and then have your bees die each spring is much more frustrating than having no honey to bottle. It’s like losing a devoted pet every year. Believe me, there’s nothing more frustrating to a beekeeper than opening a hive as I did three years ago only to find less than a dozen bees remaining. A day or two later I removed the hive cover and found three survivors: the queen and two attendants, faithful to the very end. Sad--and for this longtime beekeeper heartbreaking, indeed!

I’m no scientist, but I believe the CCD epidemic (or pandemic) is far too complex a problem to have a single cause. What I do know is once the parasitic Varroa mite arrived in Washington State and the Valley, beekeeping changed radically. All the trade journals warned of the spread of Varroa. News of the pest’s northward progress state by state did not much concern me, and I wrote off the alarms as a kind of media-induced hysteria in much the same way as the Africanized bee scare. Then one October my four colonies, alive and strong just two months before, all suddenly died. The mites had arrived with a vengeance and are now an on-going issue.

The very nature of commercial beekeeping compounds the CCD problem. By financial necessity the industry is migratory: commercial beekeepers make a good deal of money by providing pollination services to farmers. They transport their colonies interstate from one flowering crop to the next, usually starting in the southern states and follow the spring northward. The agro-industry is largely monoculture and when honeybees are brought to an area where needed, as is the case with the almond groves in Oregon State, suddenly you’ll have tens of thousands of honeybee colonies where there were previously none. The vast number of honeybee hives increases the chances of mite infestation or the spread of disease from a handful of infected colonies to scores of others. When crops are set, the bees are removed from the area and relocated in their summer yards for the summer honey flows. And thus the pestilence spreads.

The environment is no longer organic. Years ago I read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the seminal expose’ of DDT and other pesticides. Among the many disturbing facts Carson’s book presented was this one: each year chemicals that never existed before are created and introduced into the environment. Silent Spring was written in 1962, fifty years ago this year. I know for a fact pesticides are devastating to honeybees. Years ago a crop dusting plane sprayed a pea field south of here. By the end of the day piles of dying and newly killed bees were heaped at the entrances of my hives. Before a catastrophic bee kill can occur, however, pesticides have to be applied to crops on which the bees are foraging. Wind drift can also spread the chemicals to bee pasturage and cause widespread colony losses.

But chemicals have an insidious effect, too: they tend to accumulate in the soil and plant tissue and continue to be ever present in the environment. Bees, in their daily foraging for pollen and nectar, bring small amounts of the residual back to the hive where it’s stored in honeycomb and accumulates in the beeswax cells. While the dosages are too mild to kill the adult bees, the eggs and larvae can be slowly poisoned in much the same way as humans are harmed by the long term use of lead-painted plates and cups or drinking tap water from lead pipes. Beekeepers, themselves resorting to chemical miticides to control the Varroa and pharyngeal mites, have created a similar problem because these chemicals, also to the detriment of baby bees, have built up in the wax of the brood combs.

The Valley is a different place these days. Landscaping nurseries now occupy considerable acreage. Who knows what new chemicals are being applied to their nursery stock? Just the other day I saw a nursery worker spraying trees in the back of our place, less than a hundred feet away from my bees. Two or three times a year the DOT sprays the right-of-way. I’m not saying herbicides and pesticides are solely responsible for CCD. (Unless wind drift was involved, I doubt spraying corn seed with pesticide as it’s planted was responsible for those “massive” bee kills: it’s not the way CCD manifests itself). And mites, too, deliver a double dose of trouble to honeybees: not only do they parasitize bee larvae but along with their parasitic ways bring a host of diseases into a honeybee colony. Factor in also the additional stressor of a virulent, medication-resistant dysentery (Nosema ceranae), which thrives in damp conditions--herbicides, pesticides, mites and miticides, dysentery—a perfect storm of stressors and the honeybee is caught dead on in their crosshairs.

It’s a new era of beekeeping here in the Valley. Sad, but true. Every spring the past few years most of my bees are dead and I have to replace them. Not only is this an expensive proposition ($100 per hive) but for one who has kept bees for most of his life, it grates on the emotions, too. There’s something in the Valley that doesn’t like bees. It’s a fact. When you bring new bees to Tualco these days, you feel as if you’re transporting them to the Valley of Death.

Going Au Naturel in the Valley…

“…all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

*            *           *            *

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in a sprightly dance.

William Wordsworth

Years ago during the Christmas season we took a trip to southern California to visit my wife’s relatives for a week or so. My wife’s cousin’s husband decided I needed a day away from socializing and volunteered to drive me to Mexico. Those were the days when Mexico was still a third world country, before the culture of drugs and violence were commonplace exports. We passed easily through customs at Tijuana, drove through a few side streets to view the seedier side of town (even in those days, we didn’t dare stray far from the main thoroughfares), and then drove south to the tiny seaside town of Rosarita. We purchased a few trinkets at the “tourista” shops (carved “comedy” and “tragedy” masks and a wooden statue of a gaunt lance-brandishing Don Quixote: “Quantas? Quantas?”) and headed back north where we cleared U.S. customs just as easily as we did Mexico’s a few hours before. I’m glad I had the experience, but I remember the rush of relief when we crossed the border and were back home in the good old U.S.A.

To this day I remember the pastel tombstones and plastic flowers in a Tijuana cemetery, the hillside community of cardboard houses teetering precariously on both sides of the canyon, perched just above a ravine filled with communal garbage…these contrasted with the blue Pacific and the gentle surf breaking on long stretches of deserted beach. But it wasn’t Mexico that impressed me the most. On the return trip the cousin sidetracked to the old Spanish mission of San Juan Capistrano, and, no, I didn’t see swallows in December, but I did see poinsettias—the Christmas flower—growing wild and in full bloom. Strange to see them flowering in the mission gardens, the delicate leaves splashing scarlet against the earthy adobe walls--so out of context from the scores of potted plants displayed in ponds of color in local stores during the Christmas season. (Strange, too, for this country boy from a small town in Eastern Washington to see Christmas lights strung on palm trees….) It had never crossed my mind that many greenhouse plants flourish in the wild in other climates.

The Wordsworth poem bears this out. You usually think spring bulbs like crocus and daffodils are purchased by mail order or in store garden departments and then planted by design in our landscapes. That they flower in the wild like poinsettias in the English countryside year after year and elsewhere is a fact. You see their blossoms in the strangest places this time of the year and wonder how they got there in the first place. Every spring I notice three or four daffodils blooming in the right-of-way just north of Kurt’s vegetable stand. One lone crocus bloomed last spring just up the road from Tony Broers’ mailbox.

After months of winter gray we could all use a little color in our gardens, our lives, but you have to plan ahead, hedge your bets. One fall a few years ago I placed my money on spring, went out and bought two hundred daffodil and jonquil bulbs so when March and April arrived I could see the cheerful flowers “dancing in the breeze,” on my own place, not in Wordsworth’s Jolly Olde England.

“Naturalizing,” I think, is the word for it. Plant the bulbs in the woods, pasture, the lawn and year after year you’ll be rewarded by spring color (see “Planting Spring Hope in the Valley…,” 10/28/2010) popping out in the “wilds” of your property. Carrying my “spring in a bag,”out I went to our back “forty,” the quarter acre of property that is tended only by the riding mower. It seemed the best way to create the “natural” effect was to plant the bulbs randomly, without design. To accomplish my flowering wilderness, I reached into the bag, grabbed a handful of bulbs and tossed them into the air. I sought them out in the grass and planted them where they lay. After wandering and tossing for an hour or so, I had all two hundred bulbs in the ground.

Fast forward to spring. The bulbs sprouted and the back forty was sprinkled here and there with solitary dots of forlorn yellow. Where was my “host” of golden daffodils? Random loneliness was what I got. What a disappointment! Except for the slugs, that is. It was a good spring feast for them.

And I had another problem, too. If you are a cultivator of flower bulbs, I’m sure you’re aware that the leaves which sprout along with flower and stalk, are nourishment pipelines. They do their photosynthesis thing and return nutrition to the bulb, thus recharging it for next year’s flower. If you remove these leaves too soon, you nip next year’s blossom in the bud; the bulb repays you for this service by yielding up only leaves the following spring. Any good gardener knows this; I did, but the grass needed mowing. (I have this fear the grass will get too tall for my mower, and there I’ll be with a hayfield instead of a lawn.) I gave in to fear and mowed the field. Sure enough, next spring I had plenty of green for St. Patrick’s Day and just the occasional daffodil. The following spring not a single bulb bloomed.

What I learned from all this, I’ll pass along. If you wish to naturalize but have to mow, plant the bulbs around the edges of things or close to the base of a tree or shrub—anywhere you can leave the bulb undisturbed to replenish itself. My crocus lawn is a success because the lawn is small, and secondly, crocus are early bloomers and by the time the lawn’s ready to mow, the bulbs have recycled themselves. (As a precaution, for the first mowing, I always use the highest blade setting.) Furthermore, if it’s a “host”of color you want, plant the bulbs in clumps—a dozen or so at least: the blossoms won’t look so lonely and there’s safety in numbers where slugs are concerned. A note of caution, too: even if the flowers and the leaves have died back entirely, don’t spray Round Up anywhere near the bulb plantings or you’ll have nothing to show for spring color but the season’s crop of weeds.

The days get longer; the grass starts to grow; frogs begin their chorusing from the pond across the road; daylight savings time resumes, but nothing quite announces spring as flowering bulbs. This fall summon up some leftover energy from the summer’s gardening and plant some yourself. Bring the spring dance to your wilderness places.

No, Folks, This Isn’t Kansas or Those Other States…Thank Goodness…

We live in a windswept Valley. Storms cruise in from the southwest during the winter months.The winds unfurl, sweep down the hills and rake the open fields of Tualco with a vengeance. At night we may be awakened by a crescendo of wind chimes, house creak, shrubs rattling against the siding, a branch or two thumping on the roof (a bit more percussive if your roof is metal…), but you go back to sleep and when you awake, your roof is still intact. Some families can’t say that, especially after the latest spate of vicious tornadoes that ravaged towns in five states. Perhaps you’ve looked at the photos of the destruction and like me were overwhelmed by such incredible scenes as cars thrust into homes, school buses crushed and flung on top of buildings, residences shredded to pieces and scattered—excuse the expression—to the four winds. That folks could be warm, safe and secure in their home of many years one minute and in one circuit of the minute hand be homeless, perhaps climb out of their cellar to find themselves standing exposed to the elements…roof gone, walls gone, furniture… everything…all gone…is simply unfathomable to me. I read about one fellow whose house was tornado-struck less than a year ago and last week another twister returned and this time around finished the job, leaving his home beyond repair. And then the terrible toll on human life…a fourteen month old child, critically injured, found in a field, her home destroyed, parents and two siblings killed. She herself died later. In the twinkling of an eye and horrendous crush of wind an entire family gone….

Whether because of shifts in the jet stream, temperature variations in the Gulf stream currents, global warming or what, the midsection of the country has been plagued by extreme weather the last couple of years. Record setting numbers of twisters (what’s the difference between a “tornado” and a “cyclone?”A cyclone is a tornado that stars in the movies…) have been tallied in Tornado Alley in a twenty-four hour period the last two seasons. These storm systems have been so severe the U.S. National Weather Service had to recalibrate its Fujita scale, the rating used to measure a tornado’s intensity.The Service has added a category 5 designation for tornados whose core wind velocity is 200 mph plus (“strong frame houses lifted off foundations, carried considerable distances to disintegrate; car-sized missiles blown distances of 109 yards; bark stripped from trees, concrete-reinforced structures severally damaged…”). Our Valley winds-- gusts of fifty to sixty miles an hour—that’s kite flying weather compared to a Category 5 twister.

When I worked in the apple orchards of Eastern Washington my teenage years, I worked alongside “an old feller” from Arkansas. I remember one summer day when the air was absolutely still, not a single leaf quivered, the humidity stifling and it was difficult to breathe, and the old Arkie leaned on his hoe, looked at the sky, and drawled, “Days like this yer liable to have a tornader.” “Not happening,” I scoffed. “In Washington?” thinking about our state’s mountains, hills, and broken landscape sure to deflect any funnel cloud if one ever developed, “nahhhh, not here.” The old man shot me a glance that said, “Yer a fool, young feller.”

Now when you’re young, of course you know it all, so I set out to prove my case, show the old man the error of his ways. During the lunch hour the first thing I did before I sat down to lunch was rush to our set of World Book Encyclopedias--the “T”volume--to arm myself with the truth. Turns out, I wasn’t ready for the truth: “Tornados have been recorded in every state of the Union,” I was astonished to learn. I can’t remember what my companion and I talked about that afternoon, but most likely the topic of weather never came up.

Tornadoes in Washington State? Twisters in Snohomish County? Funnel clouds in the Valley? Hold onto your hat and don’t spit into the wind. Last spring, less than one year ago, my environmentally friend Nancy L took the following photo up valley towards north High Rock: a classic funnel cloud spiraling down toward the Valley floor…(dangerously close to our roof?)

I complain a lot about our winter weather here in the Valley. And November I spend a few sleepless nights during flood events. Curious, isn’t it, that to escape a tornado, you head for the basement and if flood waters do fill your basement, at least you still have a roof left to climb up on.

If I Had a Hammer…

I heard a rumor the other day, a rumor that grew out of fact: the fact being Kelly Bolles had a “For Sale” sign on his green pickup truck. Those who frequent the Valley recognize Kelly’s truck, usually with trailer in tow, as a Valley regular. More often than not both vehicles pass me when I’m afoot or cruising along on Gladys. When I saw the truck parked roadside of the fruit stand at the corner of Tualco with a “For Sale” sign conspicuously displayed on a window, I thought I’d ask Michael at Tropical Blends Espresso if he knew what was going on. “Yeah,” I’m told, “Kelly’s going to North Dakota.” “What’s up with that?” I asked. “I don’t know…guess he’s going there to drive truck.” The Ripple, of course, does not give voice to rumor, so I set out to learn more.

Just the next day I was wheeling by Kelly’s perpetual renovation high rise and there was his truck, trailer attached, and Kelly himself hauling stuff from his airy basement to the trailer. Here’s the opportunity to do some rumor busting, I thought, and headed up Kelly’s driveway toward the truth.

I wait until the Truffle King reappears from his vaulted basement carrying the odds and ends to be trailered away. “So you’re selling the truck?” I ask, pointing to the sign on the canopy window. “Yes,” Kelly replies. “I have an apartment rented in North Dakota and need to raise the money to travel there.” “It’s difficult to spread the word when you’re still using the rig, isn’t it?”I joke. Kelly laughs and says he needed to haul some stuff, do a little cleaning up around the place. I laugh,“I guess you do get a wider audience driving around the area than you would leaving it parked on the corner.” So the rumor is true: Kelly Bolles is off to North Dakota. “I have to do something,” he says and nods towards the lofty house. “It’s pretty much tapped me out.” I’ve discussed Kelly’s perpetual renovation with him before, learned the remodel and proprietor are caught up in an inescapable snare. As is the case with many serious home upgrades, the homeowner does one project at a time and then waits for the bank account to recover before he tackles the next. Just when Kelly has set aside the money to move forward, his County permits expire or the codes change and he has to use his reserves to acquire new permits. Kelly’s household seems mired in the classic Catch-22 conundrum.

“So are you selling out, then?” I asked, thinking about the mycological experiment Kelly began last spring (“Trifling with Truffles or There’s Fungus Among Us in the Valley,” 5/29/2011). Kelly shakes his head. “Who’ll be watching after the berries—and those truffles?” I learn Paul Bischoff will be superintending the place while Kelly browses the greener pastures of North Dakota. Besides, the first truffle is three years distant. Why North Dakota, I wonder. “There’s plenty of work there,” Kelly’s replies. I guess “work” means driving truck. I don’t know if I could tolerate those harsh North Dakota winters myself and share my concern with Kelly. As so often happens in idle conversation, at this point the topics leapfrog, turn random. “Mexico,” laughs Kelly. “I wouldn’t go there for anything,”referencing the drug cartels that have turned many areas of siesta land into war zones. My rebuttal surprises Kelly. “Alaska,” I reply. “Wouldn’t want to go there.” That puzzles him and he wants to know why. “Bears,” I tell him, “I’m afraid of the bears.” He replies, “Bears?…I’m more afraid of the Rottweilers and German Shepherds I meet than bears.” He has a point. If you’ve read The Ripple, you know I’ve posted a few Valley dog stories myself. But I’m always up for another good dog story—especially if I’m not personally involved in the storyline. At this point we leave North Dakota, Mexico and Alaska for the geography class, and courtesy of Kelly’s caninophobia I’ll share this story he told me.    

One of Kelly’s contractors in the perpetual renovation loop was a cement finisher. Noting that Kelly’s farm had plenty of open space, the contractor asked him if he could bring his dog to work with him during the day while he went about his work. “What kind of a dog is it?” Kelly asked cautiously. A mastiff was the answer. Now a mastiff is no small animal and right away Kelly was apprehensive. “Is it friendly…like people?” The answer predictably was “yes,”(Have you ever met a dog owner whose dog wasn’t?) “Does it like cats?” Kelly asked, thinking of the numerous felines that call Bolles’ Organic Farms their home. “Oh, he kills cats,” was the candid answer. Now as far as I’m concerned, that should have been a red flag, but Kelly Bolles is the easiest going type of character you’ll ever meet and after some hesitation gave the cement man permission, stipulating, “Ok, but you’ll have to keep him tied up then.” 

So to work the mastiff came and spent the days tethered to his master’s truck by a stout rope. Then came a day when the contractor decided he was going to knock off and head to town for lunch. Perhaps he didn’t want to share his meal with the mastiff--I not sure--but riddle me this: how many Happy Meals could a mastiff put away? Whatever his reason, the contractor re-tethered the dog, left it behind, and drove off to seek his lunch.

I’ll take a break from the story myself in order to relate some mastiff facts guaranteed to add more punch to Kelly’s story. When I think of “mastiff,” the word immediately associates with “massive.”A pack of chihuahuas could loll comfortably in the shade of one mastiff—if each weren’t afraid of becoming a doggie snack. Although there are different varieties of mastiff, the English mastiff is touted as being “the world’s largest dog.” Bred to be a guard dog, (the Romans called the mastiff a “war dog”), this canine behemoth has a set of jaws that could crush a Smart Car. Come to think of it, I wonder if Kelly asked the cement guy just how his dog “liked” people….

While the mastiff’s master was in town sampling the local fast food fare, Kelly had some visitors. Dog people, too, it turned out. The visitors exited their vehicle and brought their dog with them. The visitors’ breed of choice, according to Kelly, was a whippet style dog. If you’re not up on your dog breeds or a fancier of dog racing, the whippet is a medium-sized dog, a smaller version of the greyhound, and like the larger dog, genetically engineered for speed, especially bred to run things down, not grind them up. The shorthaired whippet’s streamlined body is held aloft by small-boned, ballerina type legs. Apparently, too, the visiting whippet had an amiable nature, and spotting its mountain-sized cousin tethered nearby, sauntered over for a friendly “Howja do.” The mastiff responded to the offer of friendship by grabbing a mouthful of whippet, chomping down hard, and locking its jaws on the unfortunate well-wisher. Yips and howls of distress quickly brought Kelly and the whippet’s masters to the rescue. However, nothing seemed to phase the giant and try as the rescuers might, every attempt to free the whippet from the jaws of death failed; all frantic efforts to relax the canine vice-grip were to no avail.

It so happened that also in the loop of perpetual renovation and on site for the day was a carpenter. Hearing the ruckus below, he ran to the nearest window, and assessing the gravity of the situation, quickly rushed to the scene shouting, “I know what to do!” To Kelly’s surprise, the carpenter, wielding the tool of his trade, bypassed the massive jaws, ran to the stern of the brute and…. At this point Kelly demonstrated what happened next. In a smooth, sideways motion as if he were using both hands to chunk a stick of wood into a woodstove, Kelly mimed what the carpenter did next with his hammer. Either surprised by the assault on its backside or the sensation it caused, the mastiff’s jaws sprung open as if someone pushed a magic button. Released from those champing jaws, the freed whippet quickly used its graceful legs to distance itself from the slobbering massive maw. As he finished his story, a gleeful grin flashed across Kelly’s face.

Unless they’re a carpenter, not many go about their daily lives carrying a tool belt or a hammer, nor would it be practical for me to carry either while out in the Valley astride Gladys. I’ll continue to pack the much lighter pepper spray canister when I venture out there. The Ripple relates Kelly’s story as a public service, a tip or helpful hint, if you will, that should a reader some day find himself in a similar circumstance, there’s a very good way to get a handle on—or in--the situation.

Another Valley Birthday: The Ripple Leaves the Terrible Twos Behind…

February 27. The Ripple is two years old today. No one is more surprised than I. “One year,” I told myself, “is sufficient time to cover the Valley happenings; there’ll be no need to recycle old news, so I’ll give it a year.”And I was ready to quiet the presses, too, had the final post all written and ready to print. I don’t know what happened, whether it was breaking news or what, but here we are one a year later and The Ripple is still bringing it.

Two years ago I posted The Ripple’s mission statement including the following comments about the Valley: “There is always something new, something changed, something else to see if you look closely.” Nothing’s changed in this regard, thus The Ripple’s staying power. Just about the time you think the well’s run dry, once more the Valley delivers. And then either when I’m afoot or touring on Gladys, there’s that random thought, a cyber text message from the Valley’s muse that blossoms into a full blown post. Look closely… there’s a story; think closely…there’s a story, too.

Let me share, though, that for me this blogging business is a lonely, time consuming task. A post doesn’t just happen. Once the idea’s conceived, the post takes on a life of its own. It is a restless muse that nags you—sometimes even at night—to see it through to conclusion; however, it shares the effort by suggesting more appropriate turns of phrase, better word choices here and there, and even tossing you the occasional bone of inspiration from time to time. Then there’s pictorial content to be gathered, previewed and formatted. Some writers are able to translate thoughts into words as easily as they speak, but not this writer. My jumble of thoughts has to be composed, revised again and again, then edited…and edited some more. Also, thirty-one years teaching English in the public schools hold me to the same standards of language precision to which I held my students.

Being a “bloggrapher” is to know performance anxiety, too; one feels pressured to come up with regular posts (I heard most blogs don’t survive the first year; many last only a month or two, if that). If I don’t post at least once a week, I start feeling guilty—as if The Ripple is grumbling behind my back. The pressure is on, as well, to create one quality post after another, insure each is on par with its predecessor. So why do it, you say? Blogging keeps me writing for one thing, something I’ve always wanted to do, and whenever I sit down to work on a post, I set myself a goal of 250 words per day minimum. Good discipline…good routine…good for me…?

Unless you are a “diarist,” you write for an audience, but in the case of The Ripple, each post is launched into cyberspace to fend for itself. You take an idea, build on it word by word, tweak it here, revise it there, reread it a half dozen times, click a certain icon and off it goes into the void. Unless someone comments on the post, for all you know no one reads it. I realize The Ripple is far from a cosmopolitan blog, unlike one that covers the celebrity scene, posts an opinion about a certain celeb’s dress, hair, makeup, and so forth and elicits four thousand comments. I try to keep things in perspective, though, the ego in check; in the words of one seasoned blogger: “Your blog is about you. You write it for yourself. You do it for your own satisfaction, not glorification.” Still, a comment or two once in a while wouldn’t hurt….

Some time ago I had a chance to give The Ripple a larger audience after I sent my post “Sense of Community…Going, Going…” (1/2/2011)  to Polly Keary, editor of The Monroe Monitor. (When the Monroe City Council voted to allow the construction of a Wal-Mart on North Kelsey Street, I stepped out of the Valley to share my opinion of Sam’s Club’s intrusion on small town Monroe.) Ms. Keary responded with a “Maybe  The Monitor could use the post as a guest editorial” and would I be interested in doing any freelance stuff? I sent her the link to my blog with an invitation to read a few posts to see if any of the Valley news might be suitable for the newspaper. Polly thought the Valley deserved coverage and requested I send her something from The Ripple: “Six hundred words or so,” she said. “Just email it to me.” 600 words? What about the REST of the post, I wondered? 600 words? If you’ve read The Ripple, you know that at 600 words a Ripple post is just gathering steam. I responded to her invitation—politely, of course—by telling her that word count is a concern only in the conventional world of the press, not the blogosphere. The fact of it is The Ripple likes the freedom to roam about, and the spaciousness of the cyber world gives it free rein to ramble. That’s where our dialogue ended; I haven’t heard from Ms. Keary since, but the clarion words of The Ripple still give voice to the Valley news.

182 posts later, two years to the day, this day, February 27, The Ripple, the Valley’s only Free Press—blathers on. Those of you who continue to wave when the press is on the prowl in the Valley, thank you; those who have patiently tolerated the musings of an old man on a bicycle, thanks; to those of you who have stopped to talk, share your news, thanks, too--please continue to do so; and for those out there in the void who read The Ripple, thanks for your support. Post a comment now and then when you have a moment. The Ripple thanks you again.

The Missile-aires Come to the Valley…

Today a bit of spring sunshine has managed to seep through the cracks of winter. As Gladys and I glide past the Decks’ Dairy, we notice a fresh batch of cats—a fat half dozen--jockeying for the sunniest spot on the porch overhang of the old house. Cats are phototropic (or should that be “thermotropic?”) and stalk the sun much the same way as sunflowers.

Earlier as I pedaled the ‘tween curves stretch of road east of Swiss Hall, I noticed a trio of people in the middle of the field guarded by the two ancient maples. They were engaged in activity of some sort, and like those sunbathing cats I was to see later, The Ripple is likewise curious. “If those folks are there when I return,” I promised, “I’ll just have to see what they’re up to.”

Upon my return, as luck would have it, they were still in the field but had apparently finished what they’d been doing, were done for the day and making their way back through the field to the road. I reined in Gladys in order to roll up on them just as they reached the shoulder. A young man with a boy and girl in tow stop in surprise as I roll up on them. “What are you up to?” I asked in the best journalistic tone I could muster. Finding himself suddenly confronted by an old fellow on a girl’s bicycle immediately puts the young man on the defensive and as if I’m some sort of a threat, the children edge closer to his side. The young man gestures toward Decks’ compound and in near apology answers my question with: “I asked the fellow over there if he’d mind if we used his field, and he said it was ok.” To put them at ease, I smile and say I’m not the Valley police, just a reporter out gathering the news. When the fellow learns I’m not a bicycle cop, his guard drops immediately. The kids relax, too, and stop looking around for weapons.

Father Bill, son Austin, and daughter Hallee  (“Is that Haley with an EY?” Of course not, I learn…make that a double EE if you please; these days no young lady would settle for the commonplace) have come to the Valley to launch Austin’s Christmas present, a miniature Redstone rocket. That’s what the three were up to way out in the middle of that wide open field on this sunny day. “We need lots of open space to fly this thing,” Bill laughs.Three countdowns later they were finished with rocketry for the day. When I asked if the flights were successful, Bill grinned and replied that on one flight the missile “went way up there nearly out of sight.” But something went awry during reentry I’m told. The rocket was so engineered that at the end of the engine burn, a small explosion was supposed to pop the nose cone from the rocket tube and release a small parachute. Then both components would float gently back to earth where they could easily be retrieved and readied for the next flight. A glitch in the system, however, caused the tether connecting the nose cone to the rocket to pop loose from the tube: the nose cone drifted down gracefully according to plan, but the tube went into free fall and had to be searched for. With a little ingenuity from Mission Control (Dad) and a couple drops of glue, the problem was solved. On the third launch both nose cone and rocket returned to earth in tandem.

Kids love things that explode and fly into the air. Dads, who after all were once kids themselves, love things that explode and fly into the air. (If it weren’t for dads and dads-to-be, there would be no fireworks stands in the middle of the summer. ) I asked Bill if he and his kids had seen the movie October Sky (they hadn’t). The film was based on a true story about an Appalachian boy named Homer Hickam and friends growing up in a coalmining town in the 1950s. Hickam, inspired by the Russians’ launch of Sputnik, studied trajectories, rocket fuels and nozzles from a book about rocket engineering brought to his attention by his high school science teacher. Three friends, one a math whiz, and Hickam built their own rockets, launching pad, and firing system, and after many failed attempts, finally succeeded in launching a rocket that reached an altitude of 30,000 feet. “There’s a bit more to the plot than that,” I explain, “but I think you and the kids would enjoy the film.”

I, too, as a boy loved things that exploded and flew into the air. I remember, also, standing on the boss’s lawn on a clear October night, my neck craned skyward until I finally saw it: a speck of light tracking resolutely in a straight line across the sky among the stationary night stars until it was swallowed up by the sable void. “Ever make a matchbook rocket?”I asked Bill. Austin, bored with this adult chit chat and the while has been fiddling with his box of rocket parts, suddenly becomes attentive. “No, how’s that work?” All you need, I tell him, is a book of matches, a paper clip, and some aluminum foil. Note: At this point if your ‘tween or teenage son is reading this post, you’re well advised to have him skip the next paragraph.

Yes, matchbook rockets—or ICBMs—we called them: Inner Cafeteria Ballistic Missiles. Why cafeteria? Because that’s where we put our matchbook rocketry to the test: the high school cafeteria. Our window of time: lunch hour. Because we launched indoors, the vagaries of weather were not an issue; however, certain conditions had to exist before lunch time countdown. Our rocket fuel and igniter contained a certain amount of sulfur, so it was best to choose a school day when the lunchroom cookery was especially pungent. Barbecued hamburgers on the day’s menu, for example, was excellent cover for indoor rocketry. (Heavy on the onions….) We’d make short work of lunch and then from our pockets fetch out the rocket components we’d brought from the home missile silo: a fully loaded matchbook (the kind that states above the strike strip “Keep out of the hands of children,”a regular paperclip (the launch ramp), and a square of folded aluminum foil (combustion chamber). Then one of us would prepare the match for launch while another kept a weather eye out for the teacher assigned lunchroom duty. We’d tear a strip of foil from the square, detach a match stick from the pack, place the head and half the shaft in the middle of the foil square and wrap the foil round and round the shaft as tightly as possible, folding the excess over the match head. The launch ramp we prepared by bending the inner curve of a standard paperclip upwards, leaving the larger outer curve for the ramp base. A forty-five degree bend was sufficient for most flights; however, if downrange included the adjoining lunchroom table where Jimmy Schrable, the tallest kid in class, took his lunch, an angle of fifty-three degrees, twenty minutes, and 18 seconds was necessary to clear his Brylcreemed hair.

Once the missile was cradled on the launch ramp and the nose cone pointed downrange, it was countdown time and Mission Control took over. A nod from Control tells me the lunchroom supervisor is chatting up the teacher’s pet. It’s time to “light this candle.” I strike a match, hold it under the match head, a brief whiff of sulfur and then“ignition”: pffttt…the gas from the exploding match escapes down the shaft of the match. “We have liftoff.” A light plume of smoke trails from the missile as it sails downrange, ten maybe fifteen feet and lands in the aisle beyond the next table. It was a textbook flight. No spectators hurt and none the wiser even though the rocket’s downward trajectory barely cleared their heads. Another successful launch under the nose of the enemy and better yet, undetected. And there you have it, school cafeteria rocketry—in a capsule.

The U.S. space program has stalled. The tired space shuttles are moldering in museums, but because of Bill, Austin, and Hallee the Tualco Valley has its own space program. I thank them for their time and tolerance and allow the three to wander off toward the Swiss Hall parking lot, Austin, the young rocket engineer, carrying his box of rocket dreams, sister Hallee toting the launch tower.

I spur Gladys into motion and as I wheel past the rocketeers, I call out to Bill, “I like to see dads spending time with their kids.” Bill turns, gives me a smile, and replies, “They grow up so fast.” So true…I know…I’ve been there myself.