Pacific Northwest

Nature’s Gifts

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I am thankful this today for the awesome beauty in nature. All around the world but especially for the beauty I see every morning when I wake.

In this season I have enjoyed the beautiful changing colors of the trees, gorgeous sunrises over Mt Si and a first dusting of snow on its highest peak.

Often in morning the elk are in my yard or I see them grazing in the fields along my four mile route to work. Several times I’ve seen them crossing in the middle of the Snoqualmie River.

It has been raining for days and on that same route I cross two bridges over the river. It is full and pushing the limits of its banks. To see it meandering through the tree lines banks brings a calm and peace to my heart.

The flowers are gone for the season but the birds still visit my patio. From my kitchen window I can see the Anna hummingbird drinking from the bright yellow blown glass feeder.

Last week a small sparrow splashed about in the deep red bird bath. He seemed so full of joy. I was amazed because it was quite chilly out and I know that was an ice cold bath but he didn’t seem to care.

I hung a suet cake for him only to see it ravenously consumed in a day by the regal deep blue Steller Jays with the prominent black crests. They are lovely but quite the naughty rascals.

A few weeks ago the black bear crossed the lawn looking for food in my trash. Sadly he found nothing here to fatten him up before his long winter nap.

Several times in the past few weeks the rain is interrupted by short sun breaks. When they arrive I am guaranteed to be blessed with a rainbow over the mountain.

I often have my camera ready and get photographs of these awesome events (the 4000+ pictures in my iphone are witness to this). However, when I am driving or when my phone is not around, I do something Josh told me once long ago when he was only five. He said to just blink my eyes and “Take a picture with my heart”

“For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why Do the Elk Cross the Road?

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I have lived in the Upper Snoqualmie Valley for 22 years and we see the elk herd often in the fields around the community. I previously wrote a piece about them, “The Elk and Our Complicated Relationship.” (link below)

No matter how much of a pest they can be at times, I have never grown tired of seeing them. They are beautiful and amazing to see them in large numbers. The bulls can weigh between 600-800 pounds and cows weigh between 400-500.

Often in the evening, the large heard can be seen in the fields around Highway 202 between Snoqualmie and North Bend. There is a larger field on the north side of the road with a band of trees, and you can see them in the field then a few minutes later they will just disappear like ghosts into the tree line. Sometimes they can be seen on the south side of the road in a smaller field just grazing. I know they must cross the road many times both in the morning and in the evening, but I have never seen this event.

Once I drove by in the early evening, and they were on the south side of the road, I drove around and around hoping to see them cross but they seemed content grazing in the smaller field.

Last night as Chris and I were headed home they were all queued up at the edge of the road in the south field. We stopped but the cars behind us started honking, so we pulled into a gravel lot. The lot was made recently for safety, because Highway 202 has a very narrow shoulder, and it was dangerous when people pulled off to see the elk.

We got out of the car and walked closer, but keeping a safe distance. It was a process, a few elk would get close to the road and cars would honk, or wiz past and they’d recede a little. The elk at the back kept pushing forward and they looked like people do when they trying to get into a concert… pushing in and looking up ahead to see what is holding up the crowd. Finally a car stopped in each direction. It took them about a minute but the lead elk ventures into the road and they all follow.

It was quite comical when the final two cross the ditch, one stopped to inspect or eat something in the middle of the road and then the other stops there too to check out what is going on. They really seemed to not care that cars were lined up waiting on them. They were going to take their sweet time. Finally driver that had stopped first and had been waiting now for nearly 5 minutes, started moving forward and the elk jump out of the way.

I shared the video with some friends and one of the asked me, “Why are they crossing the road?” Ha! – Of course just to get to the field on the other side and because they can.

To learn more about the history of the elk in the Upper Snoqualmie Valley follow the link below. https://www.meadowbrookfarmpreserve.org/meadowbrook-elk-history.html

The Elk and Our Complicated Relationship

The (Most Favored) Photograph

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For Christmas my niece gifted me a subscription to a service where every week I answer a question that she sends me. The task has been interesting and I find I cannot give short answers! This week’s question was: What is one of the best photographs you’ve ever taken?

Lord knows I take more photographs that any one person can view or admire in one lifetime, but picking the best could prove difficult.

Of course there are hundreds of my friends, family and children. The ones of my sons are ones that will be cherished for a lifetime. These I look through and reminisce about days long gone. One photo can bring a flood of memories and these photos fill my heart with joy and sadness. They bring me to a realization that those days were really the wonderful magical days and how I wish now that I had realized it at the time.

So beyond those and taking many pictures of culinary creations and labels too small read, I take many, many pictures of God’s creation. After all is there really any better subject.

I have been fortunate to travel a bit in my life. Other than living in Texas, Florida, Alaska, Colorado and Washington, I have travel abroad to Korea, Japan, Canada, England, Germany, Switzerland, Mexico, Israel, Belize and Australia. Each one of these places have their own unique beauty and natural wonders. Before the days of digital photos and iPhone cameras, pictures were expensive and did not always come out perfect, as it was a little pricey to buy film, and pay for developing. For that reason there were not a lot of retakes. Still, I enjoy remembering those places even in substandard quality pictures. Unfortunately even today, with digital pictures, the camera is never quite able to capture the beauty of it all.

Once when Josh was in preschool, we were talking about a beautiful scene but we had no camera with us to take a photo. Josh told me that we would just have to take a picture with our hearts. He demonstrated that we look at the scene for a while and blink our eyes several times to capture it. Le sigh… I have so many pictures in my heart now.

I have thousands of photos of the ocean waves, mountains, sunsets, sunrises, clouds, peaceful scenes of freshly fallen snow, rivers, waterfalls, the moon at midnight, palm trees, the gorgeous colors of changing leaves in fall, plants, flowers and wildlife. One of my favorite things to do is take photos of the minutia in nature; close-ups of ice crystals, red berries, moss, weeds, the inner parts of flowers, spider webs, shells and the tiniest of insects. I am in awe of the detail in even the smallest of God’s creation.

So what is my best photo? I don’t know what scale defines best, but a favorite one that was a gift from God was a scene so rich and powerful it set me singing, “How Great is Our God” all day. It was January 4, 2012, I was driving to work and the sun was rising over Mt Si. The sky looked like it was on fire and the sun hitting the clouds looked like huge flames. We don’t get a lot of vivid colorful sunrises and sunsets here and this was the most stunning and vibrant I had ever seen anywhere. It was a gift. I stopped my car and took several pictures (with the camera on my iPhone 4, so the quality was not great) but my heart remembers the beauty. I recently heard someone say we overuse the word awesome. Dictionary.com says, “causing or inducing awe; inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration…”

Yes, that morning, that sunrise was awesome.

Field of Free Foxglove

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I came home Thursday evening and as it had not rained in the past three hours and no rain was expected for another three, I took the opportunity to mow the grass. The next rain break could be more than a week away and the grass would be two feet tall by then.

As I cruise around my 3.5 acres of lawn (moss and grass) I am in awe that almost the entire yard is flanked by fields of digitalis purperea commonly known as foxglove. It is not native to the Pacific Northwest; originally from Europe and Turkey it grows well with our cool temperatures and rain.

Digitalis purpurea is poisonous to both wildlife and humans but it is the source of the medication digitalis that is prescribed by doctors to strengthen the heart and regulate its beat.

I have over the years encouraged the spread of these tall beauties but never really managed more than a few patches scattered around the yard. Until this year, when several large fields appeared all around the edge of the forest. As I mowed, I stopped to admire them and took several photographs but none really captured their awesome beauty. After years of hoping for such a full display, seeing them brought joy to my mowing task.

I find mowing therapeutic, it doesn’t take a lot of thought and it is satisfying to watch the wild overgrown sections turn into an organized evenly trimmed lawn. Often when I mow, I use the time to sort out my thoughts and try to put to rest things that are troubling my heart. This week there was a lot on my heart. My ‘Old Friend’ who I wrote about a few weeks back, had lost her son in a tragic way just two days prior.

The pain and heartbreak is overwhelming. We can’t understand why but I want to see these beautiful large fields of foxglove as a sign that God cares for our hearts even in the most difficult times. I want to believe that even though our hearts are weak and broken right now, these free fields of foxgloves standing tall are a sign that even though it may take time, our hearts will be strong and the irregular beat that this sorrow, pain and grief has caused, will in time, return to a normal beat. It may never fully heal, the scar will remain, but we will go on and find beauty in life again.

The Mountain

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I once lived 15 miles from this mountain on the outskirts of Redmond, WA. To reach our home we would drive down Union Hill Road and as we approached our turn we could see the mountain. It looked as if it was sitting right in middle of the road and even at that distance it appeared majestic. When my youngest son was just a toddler and he saw the mountain on the road, he would say, “There’s the mountain of my home.”

This mountain is Mount Si. It is located on the edge of Cascade foothills near the towns of North Bend and Snoqualmie and now I live in its shadow.

It rises 4167 ft and was named after a homesteader Josiah Merritt known locally as Uncle Si who in 1862 built a cabin at its base.

In the early 1990’s, the mountain, along with with the smaller peak Little Si, and the community were made famous by the quirky David Lynch TV drama, Twin Peaks. In the summer the community is filled with fans of the series following self guided tours of the landmarks around the area and taking pictures of the mountain.

Yes Si is famous, however, most of us locals just think of Mount Si as our treasure. We have photographs upon photographs of this magnificent mountain and it’s ever changing faces; sometimes shrouded in the clouds, frosted with snow or bathe in the evening sunlight.

That’s the way it was tonight. There was a colorful sunset and the light hit Mount Si and covered it in a golden glow.

So for about the 4000th time in the last 35 years, I captured another face of “the mountain of my home.”

Life Will Find a Way

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I came across this photo I took on this day three years ago. It is a picture of a tiny fern growing underneath a concrete ledge.

The amazing thing about this fern is that the ledge where it is growing is on the 47th floor of the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle, 449 ft above the city.

At the time I took this photo, I was struck by the ability of such a small plant to take root and grow in a thin crack of concrete. How far and how high did the spores need to travel to reach this lofty height and settle in? No fertilizer, no special care or tending just sun and rain. I know rain seems to be in abundance in Seattle but this fern had most likely rooted during the warm summer. Did it sustain itself from the fog and warm moist ocean air that came in from the Puget Sound? How exactly did it find that “one spot” to lodge itself, take root and hold on in the winds that blow in off the water that are aided and strengthened by the effects of the Olympic Mountains? The answer, only my conclusion and insight here; Life and the will to survive is strong and even a fern finds a way to carry on.

It is a promising sign that even in the harshest circumstances life will find a way to thrive. Living in this time of lockdowns and corona virus where many are afraid for the future. Take heart because just like this little fern, growing under the ledge on the 47th floor of the Westin Hotel in downtown Seattle, we will find a way to adapt and persevere even though it’s not always easy.