Inside Job

Day 152: The last several times I've been here, I've been there: out on the Cispus Arm above Lake Scanewa, paddling my kayak and patrolling for invasives. It made me think that I might not have done a survey for lichens on the faint trail I remembered as following the shoreline bluff eastward for a mile and a half, a perfect route for "social distancing" if ever there was one. I drove over to Scanewa yesterday expecting to find the last mile gated, but it was not. The parking area was empty. I'd gone less than fifty feet into the woods when I encountered the first evidence of winter storms, and the further I went, the more deadfall I found across the trail. Finally, a mere half mile in, I wearied of weaseling through tangled branches, mince-stepping through mazes of fir boughs and dead wood, and when I could no longer see any trace of the trail ahead of me, I said (in no uncertain terms), "Screw this!" I took a short connector on the way back, took photos of a few fungi I figured I'd never be able to identify, and then set off to walk a second trail leading north from the parking area. It too was inaccessible, overgrown with blackberry bushes. My third and last option heading west petered out in deadfall roughly a quarter mile in. Given the few pictures I'd taken and a cheering but disappointing result from searching for invasives (there were none), I wrote the whole trip off as "pointless." At home, I had to revise that opinion. Settling in with the field guides, I managed to identify all four species of fungus and lichen which I'd photographed, including a Cladonia. Not so pointless after all!