365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Monday, October 16, 2017
Finn River Raven
Day 3: Sound & Fury Morris danced yesterday at Finn River Cidery in Chimacum. After the first set, I happened to notice an old friend in the audience: Raven, carrying his customary bit of the sun's fire, perched on a branch above the plaza. There could have been no better omen for the day.
Chimacum is a long way from home, so I had planned an Expedition to include a little geocaching and botanizing on the way up the Olympic Peninsula. The two go hand-in-hand. Caching often takes me into the woods, and I assumed that the more marine environment along Hood Canal would provide a wealth of lichens. It didn't take me long to figure out that I had entered a lichenological dead zone instead. Even the maples were bare of colonies. Botanically, the only thing worth noting was the presence of a few cascara trees in an area I would have thought was too heavily shaded to support them. At the cidery, I found minor lichenization of maples which included a Xanthoria and a Parmelia. Still, I had managed to get out into nature to experience a different ecological niche even if I hadn't made any amazing discoveries.
Thrifty Scot that I am, I decided that to avoid a $6 toll-bridge crossing at the expense of $3 in gas and 45 minutes of my time, I'd drive home the long way, i.e., down Highway 101 through Shelton and Olympia. It was a good choice. A canopy of green and gold filtered the slanting light of sunset as I drove through the National Forest, a far more pleasant way to end the day than barrelling along a freeway.
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