Justice At Mount Rainier National Park

Day 18: Longmire, WA. A well-known Justice put in an appearance at the Ranger Division's annual "potato feed" today at Mount Rainier National Park's historic Longmire Community Building. The exact nature of her visit was not revealed, although she was seen to keep close company with Park icon P. B. van Trump. Rumour has it that the two spent the early hours of the day behind closed doors and deep in the records of past and present volunteers. Following the gathering, the Justice and Mr. van Trump returned to the offices of the Administration Building and remained closeted for several hours.

Nisqually State Park

Day 17: Between nasty-cold weather and a sore knee, perambulations through Nature's wonders have been at a minimum for the last week or so, and my disposition has taken a turn toward decidedly crabby as a consequence. You hear a lot about Vitamin N these days, and my body demands more of it than most. So, what's to do? Bundle up and head for a relatively flat trail! Nisqually State Park offers a variety of old roads to walk with elevation changes of no more than about 500 feet. That's "flat" in my book, so I headed out with no particular plan in mind except to start at the beginning and go until I was "halfway." That's my criterion for turning around, and I'm a good judge of it, always leaving a little wiggle room for the trip back. I parked in the main parking area and started down the gut. I'd got roughly this far (about a quarter of a mile) before the real Plan surfaced in my mind. It seemed like a good time to explore some of the "bunny trails" which lead vaguely off to either side. The first one headed toward the river, but I was fairly certain it wouldn't descend to it and I was right. It wound in multiple mileage-adding S-curves, occasionally skirting the edge of the bluff but never providing a view of the river, then twisting back into mixed forest with its glades of ferns and thickets of salal. Once, it ventured within twenty feet of the main trail before bending back riverward. I followed it until it forced me back onto the main track. Not satisfied that I'd gone halfway, but not wanting to repeat another recent hike, I headed back toward parking, but then diverged onto a second "bunny trail" just to see where it would wind up. A mile or so later, it dumped me out onto a different road. I recognized the area, and since I knew where the road would take me, I just hoofed it back to the car. Did I find anything interesting? Maybe. I'm waiting for confirmation of an ID.

How To Tame A Pink Elephant

Day 16: How do you tame a pink elephant? That was the question I was asking myself with respect to Mousie's grandma's vintage and pink-heavy flour-sack quilt. We'd already decided that I'd need to cut it apart due to errors in spacing, but I specifically didn't want to undo any of her grandma's stitching, although there were a few places which asked for expert repair. The solution came to me in my sleep several nights ago: frame blocks with "streets and alleys." But what colour? Mouse expressed a preference for blue, so with that in mind, I bought two fabrics. This morning, I dove into the project with a will and when I finally allowed myself a much-needed break from sewing, I had over half of sixteen plates reassembled. Further plans include wide borders of the lighter blue (it's a bit greyer than it looks in the photo, and the muslin is natural, not white). Hand-quilted designs on the borders will allow me to put my skill alongside grandma's, eventually creating an heirloom Mousie can use with joy. She tells the story best in her words of thanks: "I cannot tell you how moved I am that you are undertaking this project - my grandmother died before I was born. She is a face in a picture - your work is making her alive for me." As legacies go, I could do worse.

Two-Ply Corriedale Cross

Day 15: If you were to look around my living space, you'd see multiple projects of various types in different stages of completion. I like to have a variety of crafts going at once because (as I so often say aloud, sometimes in frustration at myself), I have the attention span of a gerbil. A week or two ago, I caught the spinning wheel glaring at me for having ignored it for an unreasonable period of time. I consoled it by completing the two-ply skein of grey yak hair it was holding, and then promptly began a new project of creamy white Corriedale cross wool. One four-ounce skein is finished except for washing and stretching, and the first ply of another is currently in the works. Underneath it, you can see a quilt in progress. It's taking far less long than I expected and I'm only a few weeks away from having it finished, but another quilt has supplanted it and must be completed first.

There are three of us, sisters-of-the-heart for lo, these many years. One lives in New Hampshire, one in New York, and then there's me, out here in the Pacific Northwe't. We haven't all been together for a decade or more, but our multiple daily emails are always shared. Very recently, the New York member of the contingent asked if I would be willing to do a huge favour for her: make a quilt using a top her grandmother had sewn by hand. I was inspired by the "heirloom" aspect of the project and agreed, somewhat along the principle of buying a pig in a poke. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. Alison understood that, and assured me that I could back out of the commitment if I so desired once I'd seen the quilt. It came in the mail ten days ago. I gave it a preliminary assessment, hatched a few ideas, ran them by Alison and we came up with a Plan. But, as plans of mice and men are wont to do (or I should say "of a Mouse and a needlewoman"), it went a-gley. There were problems with grandma's spacing (four inches between some appliqued plates and seven between others), and my designs just weren't working. I gave the project a serious chunk of think, and proposed a daring idea to my heart's dear sister. I would cut up grandma's quilt and reassemble it with coloured strips in between and a wide border to bring it up to king-size.

Needless to say, this has become a much larger project than initially anticipated, but with Mouse's approval, I went to town today and bought the additional fabric. I also bought some more Corriedale wool because I'm going to need a lot of breaks over the next two or more years.

Varied Thrush, Ixoreus Naevius

Day 14: Varied Thrush (two of them, actually) was doing an astonishingly good job of blending into the rich fall of Japanese maple leaves, and hopping about on a bug hunt which made the bird very difficult to track through the lens. Soon, his diet will shift from insects to berries, notably snowberry and mountain ash, both of which are present in my yard. I seldom saw Thrush here until the mountain ash reached maturity and began to bear fruit, and now I count them among my "regulars." The female of the species (shown here) is slightly browner than the male and wears a washed-out breast band as opposed to the male's distinctive black cummerbund. Young birds may be easily mistaken for females, but can be separated by a lighter "eyebrow" and a greyer breast. Like the American Robin to which they are related, Thrush may rebuild their nests in the same location each year, often stacking new material on top of the old base. Regrettably, this very preference has led to the species being listed as in steep decline as the old-growth forests which have provided suitable habitat are being logged off. If I can see the benefits of conservation right here in my own front yard in just the space of a few years, what makes it so hard for others to understand?

Bisporella Citrina, Lemon Discos

Day 13: Hiking in deciduous forest affords opportunities to find things you wouldn't see among conifers. I can't say what prompted me to stop at this particular point on the trail, but had I not done so I wouldn't have noticed teeny-tiny little orange spots on a piece of decaying wood. Moving in for a closer look, I discovered that they weren't closely attached to the substrate as I had initially thought. Each little disk was supported on a stalk (stipe). The largest cap was no more than 3 mm and a smaller branch to the side was freckled with even more in the 1 mm range. "Cute!" says I, thinking that they probably wouldn't be listed in any of my mushroom/fungus field guides, but they were: Bisporella citrina, commonly called "Yellow Discos." Discos? I thought it was a misprint, the "o" having slipped in with a fumble of fingers. I checked. No, it really is Discos. Alternately, they're called Yellow Fairy Cups. They can be found growing on decaying hardwood which has lost its bark.

Cladonia Fimbriata

Day 12: The Cladonias are particularly difficult to differentiate, to the extent that experts will often disagree even as they're standing over the results of chemical testing and microscopic analysis. That said, I hope my readers will understand when I say that I am going out on a very long and wobbly limb to identify these specimens as Cladonia fimbriata based solely on their morphological features. Specifically, I refer to the powdery surface, limited number of squamules and shape/height. Had they been fruiting, I might have had another clue. Since the tests for lichen substances in Cladonia are not something I can do at home, I did not take a sample. While the term "Pixie Cups" is generally accepted as the common name of C. pyxidata, the generic uncapitalized form "pixie cups" can be used to refer to any golf-tee shaped Cladonia.