Half-Warped

Day 89: Between participating in the Park's winter fitness challenge and trying to keep up with daily tasks and obligations, personal time is at a premium. Today, I managed to get the warping of the loom halfway finished.

Here you see the warp wound onto the back beam and the 288 ends threaded through the heddles. Next up, I will mount the reed in the beater bar (disassembled to facilitate the threading process) and will bring each end through a single dent (slot). When that task is finished, the warp will be tied to the cloth beam and I will be ready to start weaving (hopefully tomorrow).

Sculptor's Studio

Day 22: Dan Klennert's studio is easy to spot if you're driving up to Mount Rainier National Park's Nisqually entrance. Two miles out of Elbe, you'll see a lifesize metal giraffe standing by the side of the road. It's not the kind of thing you could drive past without noticing, and that's just your introduction to "Recycled Spirits of Iron." Dan is a man of considerable talent. He has the ability to visualize the shapes of things out of their normal context, and to assemble them into very recognizable forms. He works primarily in recycled metal and "found" driftwood (of which there is no shortage in Alder Lake).

Dan and I have known each other for something like twenty-five years. I stopped by his studio today, stuck my head in the door and yelled, "You home?" A faint voice answered me from somewhere deep among shelves of nails, bolts, rake heads, gears, pipes, chain, wrenches, fittings and whatnots (strangely including a tiered crystal candelabrum). I ventured further in, peering into nooks and crannies in the hopes of catching the sculptor in a creative pose. When I finally found him, I was somewhat disappointed. He was working on an ATV, engaged in the purely mundane mechanics of repair. When I asked if he'd mind if I took a few shots inside the studio, he apologized for the chaos. He'd been bringing the more delicate pieces indoors for the winter.

He went back to his work and left me to prowl around at my leisure. I had taken quite a few photos and was getting ready to leave when I noticed the light on this driftwood horse where it stood in a darkened corner. For once, I had my tripod with me, so I was able to capture the moment in HDR.

South Bridge

Day 28: After putting in a couple of unscheduled hours in the office this morning, I donned my other hat, drove the opposite direction and went to my second task happy to be out of doors one more time before the weather changes. I took advantage of relatively dry grass to make a patrol for invasive weeds in a part of the Nisqually Land Trust's Ohop Valley property I'd not explored fully, and took the camera and tripod with me in order to make an HDR shot of the southernmost bridge. The northern bridge spans a small backwater, as opposed to the south bridge which crosses the stream itself. In a flood, Ohop Creek leaps from its banks here and sometimes rises high enough to flow across the road. The creek below the bridge has been restored to a natural meander, and the section above the bridge is slated for rehabilitation in the next few years.

Ohop Homestead

Day 206: As I understand it, the old house associated with the farm in the Nisqually Land Trust's Ohop Valley property is on the Federal register as an historical building. There's not much left of it but the footprint, any wood having long since been removed or consumed by bugs. Made of granite which must surely have been brought in from another part of the state, the walls encompass a single-room floorplan about twelve feet square. If there had been a ceiling in the building at some time, it might have been low enough to make a person of my five-foot height bow their head.

It humbles me to think what the pioneer generations must have endured. Truly, these would be considered cramped quarters for a single occupant these days, and no doubt a large family was raised in this very building, lacking in amenities such as running water and possibly even a wintertime heat source. There is no evidence of a chimney or hearth in this enclosure, only bare and rocky ground. Yet knowing no other way of life, the people who lived here had great dreams of turning Ohop Valley into an agricultural triumph. They defeated themselves by straightening the meanders of the creek in an attempt to drain the wetland, only to find that the substrate was clayey and unworkable. Their venture failed for the most part.

Today, the meanders of Ohop Creek have been restored, the valley replanted with native shrubs and trees. It is well on its way to rediscovering itself as habitat for wildlife, as evidenced by the rich numbers of bird species I have observed here over the years. Ohop Valley's success lies not in farming, but in being a wetland, per its original job description.