Manke Mt. Morning

Day 33: It is rare that I hike with a companion other than when botanizing, so when my friend Yonit suggested a local non-Park hike, I almost told her I'd pass, more out of reflex than for any other reason. After a few minutes' consideration, I accepted her offer and we began discussing possibilities. Pack Forest was her initial suggestion, but they have done so much logging as part of their experimental forestry program that scenic hiking opportunities have dwindled so far as to be almost nonexistent. I suggested Nisqually State Park, and since Yonit had never been there, she left the selection of the route to me. I laid out a five-mile loop with a side trip up Manke Mt. The frost was still firmly on the pumpkin when we met at the parking area and geared up in our winter woollies, and by the time we'd gone two miles, we were both ready to shed a few layers before starting the uphill climb to this very minor summit. At 908' (276 meters), Manke hardly merits a dot on the map, but some years ago, someone nailed a carved sign to a tree to mark what they believed was the high point. Maps might disagree with that assessment by a few feet, but for us, the unofficial summit of Manke (as indicated by the sign) and halfway point of our adventure suggested a lunch of cookies before descending on a trail littered with maple leaves still frost-covered and crunching beneath our boots.

Menegazzia Terebrata, Tree Flute

Day 82: Oh, let's start the New Year off right with finding a "life list" lichen on January 1! We weren't ten feet away from the actual trailhead at Grass Lake before I checked up short to investigate the bark of a young alder. Yonit understood...you can't take Crow into the woods with any expectation of going directly from Point A to Point B...and she was very patient as I checked multiple specimens of an unknown lichen for characteristics I could use in making an identification. The object of my curiosity looked superficially like a Hypogymnia, but several macroscopic features spoke against that genus. First of all, it was growing in neat rosettes. Hypogymniae tend to sprawl. Secondly, although the lobes were puffy like a Hypogymnia, the upper surface was perforated, almost every lobe having at least one small hole in evidence. Muttering to myself, "Nope, not Hypogymnia...no, not Parmeliopsis...this one's going to take some diggin'..." I rejoined Yonit and we continued down the trail after I'd taken photos. Fully expecting it to either present multiple options for an ID or to defeat me entirely, I settled in first with McCune's "Macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest" and turned almost immediately to the correct page. OMG! The perforations defined it as Menegazzia, going on to explain that those holes made the genus easy to identify, even for novices. Further delving into the books to find its range narrowed the options to M. terebrata, otherwise known as "Treeflute" or "Hole-punch Lichen." A similar species (M. subsimilis) grows in a narrow band along the Washington coast. Wikipedia says that the genus was described by Veronese Abramo Massalongo in 1854. He named it for his friend, naturalist Luigi Menegazzi. "Menegazzia!" What a marvelous word! And that said, something which is "terebrate" (the second half of the binomial) exhibits punch-like holes or bore holes...you know, like a flute. I can almost imagine faerie chamber music drifting through the woods at Grass Lake on a warm summer night. Mozart on a lichen flute! I'll hear it in my dreams: breathy, delicate, and the frogs will dance.

Schizophyllum Commune, Split-Gill Fungus

Day 81: Park colleague and friend Yonit invited me to join her for dinner and a show to celebrate the New Year, and appropriate to the occasion, we first took a walk on the Grass Lake Nature Trail near her home in Olympia. True to form, I was stopping at every tree to look at lichens, scanning the surrounding woods for invasives, and carrying on with my typical running commentary along the one-mile loop. As we came back into the clearing at the trailhead, Yonit pointed out where a local group has been working on restoration. My eyes were immediately drawn to a white bracket fungus on a short alder stump, certain I knew what it was even from a distance of fifty feet. Sure enough, it was Schizophyllum commune, Split-Gill Fungus. The colony was well-established, so I broke off on bracket in order to show Yonit the split gills, a reproductive mechanism which I believe is peculiar to this genus. The gills open or close depending on humidity levels, thus husbanding the spores inside until enough moisture is available for them to thrive. Some experts believe that the species was introduced into Washington when infected wood was transported commercially, however the Schizophyllaceae are known world-wide with S. commune being one of the more common species. To me, this raises the question of "introduction" versus "range expansion," and I am more inclined to side with the latter option, particularly where it concerns a very prolific and adaptable fungus. But where do we draw a line, scientifically speaking? How many Scrub Jays must appear in an area previously populated only by Steller's and Greys before they are considered to have expanded their range for whatever reason (habitat loss, new food sources, etc.)? The biosphere is not a static place; it is a living laboratory. As such, it was addressed somewhat superficially in "Fantastic Fungi," the film we saw later in the day.

Brought back for another run at the Capitol Theater, "Fantastic Fungi" drew full-house crowds when it was first shown, and I have to say that the packed theater seats yesterday surprised me. It wasn't until we were about a third of the way into the film that I realized the draw was not so much curiosity about the fungal network (although that was covered rudimentarily by the film) but an interest in a specific genus, the Psilocybes. Almost a third of the documentary was devoted to the use of psilocybin, both recreationally and medically. Other "medicinal mushrooms" were covered as well, notably Turkey-tail and Lion's-mane. While the latter is easy to identify, it is relatively uncommon and I was saddened to see it being promoted as a healthful collectible. Turkey-tail, on the other hand, is not so easy to identify reliably, and while no one is likely to poison themselves by making teas of its look-alikes, the popularity of it as an alternative medicine could lead to over-collection of other shelf fungi as well as Turkey-tail itself. Based on the comments overheard from the row behind us, I got the impression that very few people in the audience had come to learn more about the fungal Kingdom and in fact probably couldn't have told a Chanterelle from a Morel if they'd been presented them side-by-side. That said, the time-lapse photography was beautiful if repetitive, and showed a range of things including fungi, sprouting seeds and flowers opening from bud. However, I was profoundly annoyed when in the middle of a sequence about mushrooms, the cinematographer had elected to include a time-lapse of a slime mold in its plasmodial form. There were no captions, so the uninformed might have assumed it was mycelium. Mycelial connections were only superficially explained, but magnificently illustrated in animated graphics. That said, I could have done without some fifteen minutes or so which were devoted to the hippie-style kaleidoscopic mandalas which were supposed to demonstrate the high attained from psilocybin. Both Yonit and I had expected the film to be more scientific and although some interesting points were made about the interconnectedness of all things via fungi, it struck me as being largely a promotion for one man's business venture. Still, the visuals were beautiful, and if I didn't learn anything in particular, at least I was entertained.

Today's Event

Day 304: This is one of my favourite maps. It was published by the USGS in 1973 and is entitled, "Potential Hazards from Future Eruptions of Mount Rainier, Washington" and covers all the possibilities from flood, mudflow, avalanche and/or tephra (airborne volcanic rock debris). The whole of the upper Nisqually Valley lies in the red and orange zones (areas of highest risk). That's why we get a little nervous around here when the earth shakes, or we hear rumblings on the Mountain.

There's a reason I selected this particular section of the map. Tahoma Creek (labelled just above the more obvious "Satulick Mountain") has turned loose a number of small "outburst floods" over the years, including one which wiped out a large section of the Tahoma Creek Trail and portions of the Westside Road. For this and other reasons, the Park decided to close Westside Road three miles in at Dry Creek. The road is still passable, and official vehicles are allowed beyond the closure, although they must be high-clearance rigs in order to navigate a number of rough washouts and a side stream.

Today, there was an "event" in Tahoma Creek. An outburst flood occurred somewhere up-valley, and the first we heard of it was when a report of a mudflow crossing Westside Road came over the radio. The person reporting the event was on the far side, and took the sensible precaution of moving to higher ground, roughly somewhere between the first W in "Mount Wow" and the M in "Satulick Mountain." She reported a noise like "a couple of helicopters" growing louder and louder as the river swelled and blustered its way over rocks and through forest. By the time the rumbling had subsided, rangers and geologists were on the way to investigate, and to try to locate any hikers who might have been in the area at the time.

I did not find out until a few hours later that the person reporting the event was our intern, Yonit. When she showed up at the office, she was rather visibly shaken but excited to relate the circumstances to us. Later, she showed photos she had taken with her phone of the water and mud breaching the road, and how it had undermined the pavement. She had been escorted to safety by the rangers even as the geologists went up in a helicopter to study the site.

When Kevin and I drove out tonight, Tahoma Creek was still flowing with some ferocity, and as thick as whipping cream with silt and mud. Westside Road has been gated off at the entrance. As outburst floods go, this was minor in terms of resource damage, but as temperatures remain in the 80s and glacial ice melts, the potential is there for more or larger events to occur. The red zone is real. I'm in it, and with full realization of the fact.