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I set out into the big lake with light winds from the NW and clouds. Here, in the lee of the hills the water is quite calm while a cool breeze washes through me.This is church, more than any other that I've experienced. I don't know if there is a god and, if so, I certainly don't believe that any god cares much about whether or not I believe. But, as I move ever closer to becoming a child of nature, a job title that I will never be qualified for, the presence of something greater is never more apparent than it is here in my canoe.
And here, in these altered waters, and if one just sees, they will witness how brutally altered they are, I still know that all of our constructions, destructions and improvements are temporary. Nature will undo them eventually, and eventually is little more than a breath for nature. So many of these alterations and so much of the progress only denies us from the wonder and pleasure of the creation.The water is higher today, the highest that I've seen. I find a construction barge moored near the big lodge, but the lodge and goose nest are just fine. With this high water, I work my way a hundred yards farther into the east marsh than ever before. It is the stunted swamp forest of the beaver, a tangle of misshapen trees, rarely bigger than 4 or 5 inches in diameter, and it requires twisting, ducking and nudging to make headway. I hear the whistle of a bald eagle, but never see it.On the west side of the east marsh, I find a new goose nest in construction. The female sitting firm and grabbing cattail spears from around her and tucking them under. The mate watches from 20 yards out. In the small circle lagoon, I find a pair of northern shovelers. I thought they had gone north, but here they are.
Okay, I made that up. I get to the big lake after noon and set out in sunny sixty something degree weather with a very light wind. I don't particularly like days like this because it means that I will have to share the lake soon. All winter long, in the rain, cold and wind, I have had the lake to myself. In Union Bay, I find one of the eagles high in an evergreen on the east shore. I am now aware that there are fewer ducks on the bay, although I'm not sure who exactly is missing, yet. The buffleheads are here with some scaups and widgeons. Coots are still around, but not as many as I remember. Common Mergansers are just beginning to group together. They will be the last to leave the bay, but not until they join up as a flock.
new nest in the NE lagoon
I set out from the south side of Elliot Bay in calm and sunny weather. The Salish Sea is big water and often too windy for an open canoe, so this day is a treat. The tide is falling and most of the trip will be in six feet of water or less. Two harlequin ducks, the most beautiful ducks of all, escort me almost to four mile rock, where the first goldeneye ducks take over. When I reach the shallow sand flats off of Discovery Park, I beach the canoe and make a quick walk-over to look for animal tracks. I've seen otter here before, but the tracks were poor on that day. It has to be a quick walk though, as with the falling tide my beached canoe rapidly moves away from the water.
Finding little, I wade with my canoe out into the sea until, about 200 yards from shore, I spot a river otter coming in. It has a small flat fish in its mouth and in the shallows it walks with its front legs only, letting the tail and hind legs float limply behind. 
Suddenly, it reverses direction and just as suddenly, an immature bald eagle sweeps in and makes a grab at the fish. So, the eagle harries the otter, but seagulls and crows harry the eagle, and soon the otter escapes with its catch into water deep enough to submerge. When that is done, it is time to drop the pencil and take the paddle as two more inches of water have left and the canoe is almost dragging bottom. I wade on to deeper water.
As I near West Point, I spot a wake in the water behind me, and soon, the head of the otter pops up. It passes me and I follow it, passing within 15 yards of 3 kayakers who are so busy chatting a storm that they don't see what I am so intensely following. It is not hard to follow as it leaves a trail of small bubbles even when there is no wake on the surface. Just on the north side of the point, the otter takes to the beach and clambers up into the rocks under the lighthouse and, disappears. I beach the canoe and find a nice set of tracks to cast in plaster. 
Nearby, I find a second, slightly smaller set and I make casts of them also.
Lontra canadensis - the North American river otter.
I have no inclination to return the way I came, so I continue north and then into the ship canal, passing through the locks and then portaging across Interbay from Fishermen's Terminal to Elliot Bay. I run into a newspaper reporter as I beach, and I tell him what I am up to, of course, and invite him to come out in the canoe - because only then is nothing lost in the translation.
It seems inadequate to label this time of year, Spring. The astronomical three months from the day of equal dark and light to the lightest day of the year is too broad for what occurs now. Now is a time of rapid change in the marsh. (photo - the mouth of a beaver canal that leads into the marsh forest)
14 days ago, the first two nests were started by the Canada geese and 5 days ago, I spotted the first eggs in the big beaver lodge nest. 18 days ago, the first swallow returned to the bay, followed just a few days later by many more. Irises, cattails and lily pads are all coming up and today I saw the first two skunk cabbages with their big broad green leaves and yellow cores. I haven't seen northern shovelers for some time now, but they are the last to arrive in fall and the first to leave for parts north and I think they are long gone. Even the eagles have shifted their hunting patterns from coots to who knows what, and the scattering of ducks and coots all around the bay shows that they have little to worry about. Far too much happens in this 4 to 6 weeks for it to simply be a part of spring. Cultures that are more in tune with nature have different definitions for seasons. The reindeer peoples count eight seasons based on the behavior of the herds that they rely on. Their seasons are unequal in length with winter being five months long and the calving season a mere ten days. No, I don't have name for this season, but it is here none the less.
The prediction of great wind and rain didn't come through and today there are heavy gray clouds above as I portage to Lake Union. I walk in a sun break, then I walk in a sun shower, and then the rain changes to sleet and back to rain again. So it goes all of the way to the lake and then some. But, it is a fresh day and it reminds me of the beginning of spring in the midwest with bright sun, wind, and a bit of snow that everyone knows is just a farewell for winter. Hardly a bird to be seen in Lake Union, the shoreline entirely dead at the hand of marinas, houseboats and shipyards. The worst runoff in the lake isn't pollutants anymore, it is people that have built there houses on water, and the effect is no different than paving a wetland. Only the deep water birds and swallows find sustenance here. Portage Bay is no different, but ah, Union Bay, the garden. And I paddle into the garden with many herons today, with the west lodge goose nest in good order, with a snipe trying unsuccessfully to hide from me. I circle the bay just to breath it all in, dry cattails, ducks, geese, but no eagles. It has been two weeks since I've seen them hunting and with the coots scattered carelessly about, it is likely that the eagles are eating something other than coot for the time being. 
I stop and examine the four scent mounds (photo) in the burial island channel. The castoreum of the beaver is clear on two of them and while it is not an unpleasant smell, it does not drive me mad with passion.
It has been windy for several days and I am anxious to be back in my canoe. I start my portage to the big lake, think better of the wind, decide to head to the south lagoon, and decide to put in on the big lake after all. A good wind is blowing from the SSE, and while there are waves, I don't feel much of the wind once I'm on the water, but I can hear it singing in the trees. Once I leave the shallow cove where I put in, the waves grow to be one to two feet high. I stay within 100 yards of shore and while the wave echo from the fortified beach walls makes the paddling more difficult, the risk of a swim from here, in cold water, is more palatable. The bay is relatively calm and I head first to the big lodge to check on the goose nest. 
They have finally settled on a good protected spot high on the south side of the beaver lodge and the female is working some down into the structure as I approach. This spot will take in the warmth of the sun while the brush overhead and on either side will provide some shelter. The missing male comes honking from behind my shoulder as two geese fly into the area. He tags one on the butt in mid-flight and resumes his watch on me. OH! the female has just got up - she has eggs already - and she moves them around a bit and sits back down.I head over to the railroad islands to check for nests, but find none and instead tow a drifting buoy out of the marsh and over to my preferred illegal dump site where it will be easily and properly disposed of. The west beaver lodge nest looks fine, although I can't see eggs and while I am there, a large otter swims by. It's quite likely the same that I have been seeing over the past couple weeks.
I paddle off from the west end of the 'crossing over place'. Paddling the same waters as often as I do, I notice that new meanings become attached to familiar places, meanings that are often only temporary. Today, the 'crossing under place', the unfortunate 1916 creation that drained ten feet of lake takes on a new meaning with its angled concrete walls and what is the most handsome of our local drawbridges. A strong wind propels me through the cut, as it is commonly called, and I feel that I am paddling through a doorway, crawling through an opening in the hedge, or tumbling down a rabbit hole. And I leave the stagnate Portage Bay, its life choked by houseboats, marinas and fortified lake shore... and I enter the garden
with all its birds and cattail islandsand beaver and the stunted tangled forests they createand otters and eaglesand the places that have names that only I know.
And here, in these altered waters, and if one just sees, they will witness how brutally altered they are, I still know that all of our constructions, destructions and improvements are temporary. Nature will undo them eventually, and eventually is little more than a breath for nature. So many of these alterations and so much of the progress only denies us from the wonder and pleasure of the creation.
