The First Hatch

I drive my canoe to the lake for the first time in many months, only because today is busy and I do have to chart the bog island motion. Today, I make a careful counter clockwise circuit around the east marsh bay, taking coordinates every 10 meters or so. This way, I will be able to determine where bog stuff has ended up should the bog island break up. There has been more movement in the southern corner where the "land" bridge has formed. The 20 foot wide "bridge" from two days ago is now only 5 feet. Some of the bog edges are quite broken up and bob in the water when the canoe bumps against them.

The big lodge and nest site (just below the shadow)

Done with my map points, I race over to the big lodge and find the nest empty. I get out on the beaver lodge and examine the egg shells and take photographs. The eggs have all hatched - a raided nest would have egg yolk and egg white left behind - and they haven't been gone long. They may have finished hatching yesterday. I don't see the goslings, but there are so many places for them to hide.

This nest has done it's job - note the eggshell at the bottom of the photo

A man calls to me from the nearest dock and I paddle over to explain my project. He has a project also. It turns out that this last bit of land next to the marsh is city property and he heads up a group of volunteers that are restoring it. I get an excellent tour of the strip of land which has had most of the invasive plants removed and replaced with berries and trees. It's a fantastic bit of work and I am thrilled to see it being done so well. We talk for an hour and his wife and some more friends show up. We set plans for a tour of beaver sites by canoe. As I paddle off, back to my put in, I see the goslings (6) closely watched by the parents. With a pair of eagles in the nearby vicinity, it is feather to feather contact as they swim in the lake.

When is an Island not an Island? Today.

I'm up and off, a fairly early start with a portage east to the big lake. Early weekday starts require vigilance and I must be alert for hostile members of the Can People (car drivers). Heavy clouds deck the sky, but the wind is light and some sun filters through sending a shimmering streak across the water from the east. Sometimes, I just want to paddle that glimmering line, paddling into the sun. Turning the point into Union Bay, the east marsh is sunlit and shows a nesting season profile with sky at the top, then new green foliage of so many alders, birch and willows, and new green growth just at the water of cattails, irises and lily pads, and between those two bands of green is the tan almost white line of last years cattails, still standing and reminding us that their job is done.

I stop at the big lodge to check on the goose nest. I hear the whistle of an eagle and the cawing of crows and find that eagle high in an alder that overlooks the nest. The male goose is quite attentive today and watches me until I move back from the lodge. Then, it spots two feeding geese and as one is upended, butt in the air, head underwater, it flies directly to it and stabs its exposed bottom with its bill... before landing.

Red wing blackbird

I turn the next point and find that the bog island that has been moving and spreading over the last two weeks is no longer an island. It has reached the shore with a 20 foot wide "land" bridge. I map the new outline and as I move off, I hear a marsh wren. They make such a variety of strange science-fiction-robot sounds. I sit and listen, just sit and listen. And I find its well disguised nest just 3 feet away...very difficult to find, even with a photo...

Energy Balance

Energy balance comes to mind, for no particular reason, as I make my portage to the west end of the Crossing Over Place. It is a term from the biologists and one that is heard more often in talking about animals that live on the edge of survival and especially those of the arctic. In the barren lands, all species walk a delicate line between fattening up enough in the short summer and making it through a long dark winter. The connection between man and nature is incredibly complex if one sits back in an armchair and tries to take it all in. Those complexities are analogous to the idea of vast wilderness. Just as wilderness loses its vastness when one travels through it, just as it shrinks when one is focused on the details as they come, when one moves one step at a time, the complexities of man and nature become manageable when one focuses on one detail at a time and follows the paths that present themselves. You learn, and the silver bullet solutions, the cure-alls, and the poor progress-driven decisions show their real costs and failings.

I paddle through the Crossing Under Place and duck into the south lagoon exploring the edges of the "wasteland" as I go. Once through the east channel of the burial island, I find that the bog island has moved another 20 feet and that the old canoe channel, a channel that once was 40 or 50 feet wide, is now just a 5 foot gap. I circle and GPS survey the island, and it appears to be collapsing. It may be that the whole island has sagged and split as there are some fissures in the edges that I don't remember. Then, I check on the big lodge nest, which is fine and still a few days from hatching. The workmen there are rebuilding an old dock, so my worries of a monster sized boat slip were unfounded. With such changes in the east marsh, I decide to circle the bay and see how things are. Right away, I notice that the duck population has plummeted since I was last here. Many ducks have just begun their migration. I find that the homeowner near the railroad island has weedwacked all of the cattails and irises and so now I know that that homeowner is a wealthy and stupid shithead. The goose nest in the NE lagoon is precariously close to the water, but still attended. The other nests that I know about are all well. I find a new goose nest on the Rockpile island as I head to the takeout. I've seen no goslings in the bay, yet, although the workmen by the big lodge reported seeing some.

Hiding from the Wind

It's windy today with storm warnings for the evening. Mike I head for the Sammamish River, at the north end of the big lake. But with an almost 20mph wind coming from the south up 15 miles of lake, we decide against my usual put-in on the lake shore. If we started there, we have about a 1/2 mile of open water to cross and while it isn't too bad right now, it could be a wet trip later on... or a portage. We put in at Bothell landing, a few miles up the river where I normally turn around when I start on the big lake. The water is high and the current light and no one else is on the river. We head upstream in winds that swirl around the ends of the hills, one moment a headwind and the next a tailwind. I steer the canoe from shore to shore to take advantage of slow currents or places where the wind is blocked. Other than one short excursion up a tributary, a narrow creek with one portage over a downfall, we stay on the river. There are several sets of geese with goslings. Here the Canada geese seems to have hatched eggs 7 to 10 days earlier than in Union Bay. Past that same tributary creek, the shoreline is well maintained and the invasive blackberry vines give way to more diverse plant life. This part of the river is quieter as it is some distance from the nearest roads. Mike spots two muskrats before we turn around. On the way back Mike spots a beaver as it slips off the right bank into the water and disappears. I had noticed a few small scent mounds nearby and an animal slide track on the mud bank. I decide that I like this stretch of the river better than the mouth. There has been less housing, no golf courses, and none of the reinforced rockwall banks that go with all of that.

Moving Islands

I'm a curmudgeon today and I put in on the big lake and just want to go. I've just finished a new paddle for the Skagit River, but I dip another new paddle on this trip, one that I've made for the Elwha River. It looks like a ransom note, the legacy of a former senator from this state that held restoration of the Elwha hostage while making political deals.

The big lodge goose nest

The barge next to the big lodge is dredging lake bottom today. I think that it might be building a large boat slip for the landowner. I don't have anything polite to say about that. The goose nest on the south side of the lodge is doing well. (check the April 7th post for more details on this nest - the eggs should hatch about one week from now - about 26-28 days for Canada goose eggs)

I find a dead beaver floating in the water just north of the east marsh. It might be a 20 pounder, and I get a good look at the paws and tail.

As I turn the point towards the east channel of the burial island, I find my view partially blocked. Part of the marsh island has moved a good 30 or 40 feet out into the normal canoe channel. I circle the island and GPS the corners, but it is hard to see exactly what and how it has moved. Most of the shore edges seem to be about where they should be. It might be that the southern tip has split off and rotated out. The water is very high right now, apparently high enough to float the bog free of the lake bottom. It should be a fairly permanent change and it will be interested to see if where it all ends up.

I hear voices in the brushy shoreline of the burial island, and investigating find two guys on a geocache hunt. We chat a bit, but they aren't interested in anything except finding the little box. They have completely reinforced my opinion that it is a pointlessly weird activity. It doesn't teach navigation skills and the competition of finding the little boxes... aw, I told you, I am a curmudgeon today. I head through the Crossing Under Place and take out in Portage Bay. This weekend is opening boating day here, and the plastic toy ship mai-tai drinking fancy pants cigar smoking where's-the-brake-on-this-god-damned-thing "yachtsmen" are crudding up the place.
... told you, I am a curmudgeon today.

Where the Garden Gnomes are

Portage Bay - before I can even get seated at my kneeling thwart, a young bald eagle sweeps by pursued by a blackbird. The eagle is just newly mature with brown feathers still mixed in with the white tail that is the signature of maturity. The wind bumps me up against the beaver lodge and I watch until the eagle decides to soar high over the 'Crossing Over Place'.
There are clouds today and it is windy. I believe it will rain later. The blue that shows between the clouds is a single color that we see when the weather blows the ocean moisture away. It is a blue that hurts ones eyes to look at too much, like a pure musical note that bears on the ear when held too long. If one makes a landscape painting with the sky done in this color, it might be judged to be a poor painting because no one ever remembers the sky being this pure color. Today, the clouds save me from madness, but at the cost of a couple downpours.

I find three pairs of northern shovelers near the west lodge. I usually only see one pair in any one place, so they may be preparing for migration. They do not seem to nest here.

With the very high water, I head up Ravenna Creek and find that I can go all of the way to "Where the Water Reappears", the name I have for the end of the culvert where this creek resurfaces after passing under a shopping center. It is lots of twisting, ducking and nudging to pass through low branches and fallen trees, but it is not especially difficult. It begins to rain hard and on the way out, two cinnamon teal are flushed and the male is truly the color of cinnamon. Another pair of northern shovelers wait at the mouth of the creek.

Garden Gnomes

It is straight across the bay to the north end of the east marsh. This area will be totally destroyed by a new bridge with an obsolete and unimaginative design, a bridge that will not only be obsolete twenty years from now, but will be obsolete on the day it is finished. So, I drag my canoe over the 30 feet of floating bog to one of the beaver canals that is just inches wider than my boat. Then, I pole and nudge the canoe into the center where I just sit and soak it all in for awhile. There are dozens of rounded tree stumps, little sculptures left by the beaver and they remind me of garden gnomes. I want to remember this place. No one else ever comes in here, they look at the little channels and can't imagine that they go anywhere, but they do, they go here and I sense something special in this place. It is mine, for now.

Earth Day

My portage begins without aim and I walk a hundred yards or two before deciding to head west instead of north or east. Either way the canoe will go in the water and I will go in the canoe. If all goes well, if I wonder at the beauty of it all in spite of man's mistakes, I may move another inch towards becoming a child of nature. It seems as good of a path as any, perhaps a path to some sort of enlightenment, but certainly better than many of the directions that one could take.
And some people think that I am just canoeing.

I cross Lake Union and paddle north into the wind until working across into and through the top of Portage Bay, through the Crossing Under Place and into Union Bay, the pearl. At Broken Island, the goose nest is all well and there is even a second nest on the west edge. The west lodge nest is totally abandoned now with all of the eggs gone. I spot a northern shoveler nearby and the first blossoms of the lily pads. I edge the north shore and the north marsh sneaking into the NE lagoon where a northern flicker sits in a willow tree that overlooks the goose nest that I found here earlier. It is fine although it is only 3 inches above water. It is calm in the lagoon and the trees that enclose the area are leafing out, enclosing the area even more.

I cut straight south across the bay, finding a new goose nest at the top of the east marsh. This is probably about the peak of goose nesting right now, there are few un-nested geese anywhere. It is a beautiful paddle in brilliant sunlit green as I finish up through the east channel of the burial island.