stupid may.

Today was in the 40s with wind, and some type of precipitation that involved some snow, some rain, some sleet (or hail, whichever), and a whole lot of grumpiness from the two-leggeds in Central Oregon. I mean, it's freaking May. The END of May. I know, I know - it's Central Oregon and if I didn't want to deal with Central Oregon weather I should have moved somewhere tropical.


Horsefeathers.


Last night I was watching this PBS special on hummingbirds and if you don't know already, they are absolutely my favorite animal of all time. Which is tough for a naturalist to say because, well, we like pretty much everything. Did you know that a hummingbird's heart can beat 1200 times per minute? PER MINUTE? And that hummingbirds can flap their wings more than 50 times per second? PER SECOND? They move their wings in a figure-8 pattern, which gifts them lift from both sides, allowing them to hover, fly backwards, and turn in a circle. At night, hummingbirds go into torpor, which means their bodies slow down - metabolism, heartrate, breathing - so they use very little energy. Even the bird's body temperature can drop to nearly match that of the ambient air temperature. Then, the next morning, the air warms and they wake up. 

I know for South American tribes, hummingbirds are warriors. They will aggressively defend their territories and combat each other in the air. Here in North America, they were symbols of joy, rain, and emotional healing. They were perceived as miracles because of their incredibly tiny bodies and fast movement. The Rufous Hummingbird, the most aggressive on this side of the country, will even go after songbirds, squirrels, and buzz humans. They're so tough, they'll even kick females off their flowers! 


I like to see hummingbirds as knowing what's important in life - they live for nectar, the sweetest juice on earth, and track the blooming of flowers like a cougar tracks a deer. They are incredibly fearless, and they are high energy, zooming about their business without even thinking of resting. Hummingbird-type people are doers, go-getters, and prioritize the important things in life, but they can burn out. 

I don't know if this picture is real, but the sizing is right. This is the Bee Hummingbird, the world's smallest, found in Cuba.

One day last summer I went into the Nature Center to prepare for an Owl Prowl, where we lead groups of half-interested tourists around to look for nocturnal animals. Only minutes before people began to arrive, I was walking by an outlet with a cord coming out of it. Sitting on the cord was a tiny, motionless hummingbird. It had been trapped in the building for hours, which can mean certain death for these creatures as their metabolism necessitates constant feeding. I grabbed her up in my hands and she gave no fight - just toppled over and lay there. I was horrified and rushed her outside to the feeders full of sugar water. I dipped my finger repeatedly in the water and moved it across her mouth, prying the delicate beak apart. It took a while, but eventually she started flicking her tongue in and out - hummingbird tongues are CLEAR! She started to come around, slurping sugar water out of my hand, until she was able to sit up. She kept drinking, slowly, and then, all of a sudden - bzzzzz! Off she went, just like that. She sat in a nearby tree until I was forced to leave to run the program, but you can bet your ass I just wanted to sit there and watch her until it was too dark to see. It was such an incredible experience, and I'll never know if I saved her life, but having the chance to connect with a hummingbird like that was something I hope I never forget.


I've been designing a hummingbird tattoo for my right arm, kind of a mix of Egyptian, Art Nouveau, and tribal styles. I don't know if I'll ever get the guts to GET it, but a girl can dream I guess. Until then, I'll just goo over hummingbirds at every opportunity.


Gee, I guess I really like hummingbirds.

things I did today.

Thing #1.

Okay, so I've just lied to you right off the bat. I actually planted this little herb-garden-in-training yesterday, but it felt stupid to say, "things I did today and yesterday." Anyway. Our first herb garden! Now I feel really domestic. Soon I'll be baking meat pies and whole turkeys with stuff crammed in them.

A triangular herb garden built out of scrap wood by a friend. 

Three types of basil, chives, and nasturtiums (edible flowers).

Thing #2.

Duct-taped my credit card up and shoved into a little-used drawer. (This may appear ridiculous but the last time I did it, I didn't use it for two months. Until I needed food.)

Thing #3.

Scored a sweet set of vintage (or, vintage-looking) drinking glasses.

All in all, a good day.

pressure.

It's silly how when you start a blog for a specific purpose and then don't quite follow that purpose perfectly, there's suddenly pressure. "What can I write about sustainability today?" I think to myself, and when I come up with nothing because my boss has been a dick at work, or the dog just threw up on the floor, I get frustrated and don't write at all. Does this happen to you, bloggers who read my pitiful ramblings?


The very reason I love to read people's blogs (the same reason, I will ashamedly admit, that I also love to read people's private journals) is because they're just telling stories. They interpret their lives so that others may understand them. Blogs like An Apple a Day and She Has My Eyes aren't teaching me how to build greenhouses but I love them. I love to know people's stories and experiences. I guess that's what I hope for my own writings here - that people read them because they're interested in my stories. Hm. That sounds awfully vain now that I've said (typed) it out loud. When I share my journal-reading secret with people (only ones that I've never read the journals of), they're usually horrified. Justifiably so. But I can't help it. Most people can't talk about their innermost thoughts and feelings with many people, and so they write them down in little secret books. I want to know people, and I want to know the things they think are so scary and horrible and embarrassing that no one should know about them. If that makes me a terrible person, I understand, but I can't apologize for wanting to know people on a deeper level. Clearly, that's why I blog and read blogs. It's kind of like journaling for some people - they can be completely anonymous and say what they want, so the innermost parts of them can come through. 


And, for those of you I know, don't worry - I never read any of your journals. But I really freaking wanted to.

you decide.

    or  

morels.

Today was a most excellent day. My friend Sarah and I left Bend bright and early for the uplands of the Deschutes National Forest. Our goal? To collect morels, goo over wildflowers, and geek out on plants. Mission accomplished.

The Deschutes is a predominantly ponderosa pine forest and in its northern sectors, other species of conifer peek in, such as Doug Fir. Chinquapin and snowbrush dominate the understory, chinquapin with its sharp, cactus-like seed pods and snowbrush with its thick spicy scent. The ponderosa forest is a dry forest, much unlike the beech, tulip poplar, and walnut forests of my childhood. Wildflowers here are fleeting, as are the mysterious morels, in the spring months when the snow has melted but there are still heavy rains. 

Morels are prized for their taste and the hunt that one must partake in to find them. They are small, brownish-gray mushrooms with a "honeycomb" look to them. They have a white stalk and come in a variety of sizes, though a 4-5 inch morel is a biggie. Morels, so far, cannot be propagated by humans and so if you want them, you'll either pay an exorbitant amount of money ($30 per pound, here) or you'll go morel hunting. 

Now, morel hunting may sound easy, but I'll remind you that they are the exact color of a forest floor covered in pine needles and they tend to be found where Doug Firs are. At first I thought nothing of 8 million Doug Fir pinecones lying all around, but the fact is that it's unbelievably easy for the eye to mistake the pinecones (especially if they happen to be half-buried in the duff) for a morel. I found that my eyes needed to look for a conical, soft shape, and that scanning for hours means you almost never take your eyes off the ground. They like a little sun, though not too much (based on where we found them), and definitely more moisture than a summer forest would see. 

After about four hours we had only collected a few pounds, and we had fun. It's tedious, exhausting, sometimes frustrating, but rewarding and gratifying at the same time. In fact, I've essentially just described my experience huckleberry picking last year. It seems that this is the case for a fair amount of wild harvesting, but at the end of the day, you've worked hard and earned some food. Some food, I'll remind you, that you only had to pay gas and time for. I'm really loving this learning process of wild foraging - not only do you get to eat "free" and "organic" foods right out of the forest, but you get to see so much more. Below you will find some incredibly beautiful wildflowers that I've never had the pleasure of seeing in the wild before. 

Trillium

Calypso Orchid

Gooseberry (Ribes genus)

Trillium

Crab spider with hot pink stripes, hanging out on trillium leaf

More shrooms.

A False Morel, toxic

mother's day.

I've been thinking a lot about family today. And yesterday. And a little bit the day before that. I've been reading Terry Tempest Williams' classic, Refuge, which is a portrait of two things simultaneously: the rising and falling of Great Salt Lake in Utah in the 1980s, and the death of her mother. In it, her family is brought together in a heart-wrenching way to support her mother - and each other - as her mother slowly passes from cancer. They sit around the table at Christmas dinner. Terry and her grandmother take trips into the desert together. The father and sons hunt together.


There is all this togetherness, and lately I've just been reflecting on my family in my own life. My mother raised me as a single mom on a modest paycheck and we have an extraordinarily strong bond. We talk every few days, a continent apart, and get to see each other once or twice a year. I don't feel the way about my mother the way some people feel about theirs: that they'd rather be separated by a strong distance, that they'd rather not share everything with her, that she's a person to see on holidays and birthdays. My mother is a piece of my soul and, indeed, a piece of my very own body. When she's sad, my heart collapses, and when she's happy, my heart soars. Although we don't connect on politics, religion, or even my own choice of partner, she stands by me no matter what. Like most mothers, she's been my biggest fan throughout my life, rejoicing in my accomplishments and dragging me out of the mire of my failures. She accepts me for everything I am, even if what I am isn't what she had hoped I'd be. She's done her best for me. That's all any child can ask for. 


When I moved away to the West Coast, my grandparents stopped talking to me. I don't know why; we'd all been very close. My granddad had been the closest thing to a father I'd ever had and an extremely influential figure in my life. In the chaos of a Sicilian extended family, he'd been the quiet figure in the background, observing and measuring. He is rational, intelligent,  and curious. If he doesn't know something, he won't pretend to know; he'll seek out the answer, though, so that he knows for future reference. His honesty and simplicity in life was in strong contrast to the know-it-all attitude of most of the rest of the family. He was an inspiration to how I shaped my life as an adult. He played ball with me in the back yard. He built snowmen with me when it snowed. He drove me, my mother, and my grandmother to college and helped to unpack my belongings. He took every boy I ever dated into the basement to show them the things he had built and the careful craftsmanship that he used not only in building, but in the rest of his life. At least, that's what I'd always hoped he was doing. In truth, he could have just been threatening the life of every boy I ever brought to Christmas dinner. I'll never know. 


I don't know if they found out that I was dating someone of the same gender, or if they were just devastated that I chose to move to Oregon. All I know is that they stopped talking to me, and when my grandfather did choose to speak or write to me, it was always with contempt, the sharpness of hurt, and the accusatory nature of a grown man that cannot conquer his emotion. His letters crushed me. I had already been abandoned by a mentally unfit father, and now the closest thing to a father I'd ever had shut down as well. As you can imagine, I don't have much faith in the ability of men to love unconditionally. I thought they'd at least try to be happy for me, to make it an excuse to come West and travel. I was wrong.


And so I ponder family. I think of Terry's family, tightly knit and always there. I think that if I never have children, I may never have anyone to gather around my dinner table when I'm old. I think that if I don't convince my mother to move out here soon, I may lose her entirely one day. And then, what family will I have? Ours is not a family where uncles and aunts are particularly close to nieces and nephews. Out of nearly ten cousins, there is only one that I stay in regular contact with, that I am even sure is alive. So without my mother, I will be, for the most part, alone in this world. In Refuge, Terry says something like, "When my mother dies, I will no longer be a child." Perhaps it's morbid to be so worried at 26 about losing my mother, but we are connected in a way that I will never, ever have with another human being so long as I live.


I think, though, that I may be getting into her head with the constant nagging for her to move West. We can buy a little property with two houses, I say. We can have dinner together all the time again, I think to myself. We can watch the birds on the feeders together, throw balls for the dogs together. We can be near each other again, I think. The way it's supposed to be. The way it's always been for our species until so recently: caring for one another. A mother spends her whole young life caring for a child; it is the child's duty to then care for the mother when the time comes. I recognize that as my duty, and also as my desire. I know my mother's heart lies in the West; when she was my age, she traveled extensively with her lover at the time. They hiked through Yellowstone, visited the great Sequoias, and, once, she even had to drag her partner out of the woods after he became ill from ingesting some poisonous plant. She's a lot more like me than anyone knows. Her heart longs for open spaces, for quiet places, for broad blue skies and the howl of coyotes, whether or not she can articulate it. Her heart, like mine, longs for the unknown, for the exploration of new forests and the sight of mountain ridges. And I see us, traveling to those forests and breathing the deep crisp air of a mountain backlit with sunset. I see us on a little farm, feeding chickens and chickadees, with my family and hers (should she ever choose another partner). I try to see these things as hard as I can, so that one day they'll be real. 


I love you, Mom. Happy Mother's Day. And, thanks.

American Farmland Trust: No Farms No Food - 7 Ways To Save Farmland

American Farmland Trust: No Farms No Food - 7 Ways To Save Farmland

Check out this list of simple things you can do to support local food!

the beach.

I realized I forgot to upload some of the awesome photos from our vacation (which was, erm, a month and a half ago or something) to the Oregon coast. I don't have anything interesting to say, just wanted an excuse to put up some more photos as I learn to use my camera. :) The Oregon coast is so beautiful with its craggy rock formations, giant bull kelp, and turbulent waters. 

The Oregon coast.

What is it about the ocean that calls to humans? I know it's not just me. Granted, I grew up in Maryland where I was a stone's throw from one of the largest estuaries in the U.S., unknown-square-acres of vital wetlands, and the Atlantic Ocean. I worked at a state park situated on the "fall line," an area where the Appalachian, western side of the state drops down towards the nearly sea-level Eastern Shore. This meant lots of gorgeous streams and tiny rivers flowing and water-falling through forests made up of beech, walnut, and tulip poplar. It's a forest full of birdsong, the green of fresh leaves, berries, and the movement of wildlife. It's a forest that sustains life. And so I am tied integrally, at my deepest level, to water. Without it, life fails. With only little of it, only the hardiest of life survives. It becomes harder for lifeforms up the chain to survive.

A patch of bluebells in the Maryland forest.

I miss the East Coast for its lush greenery and how life just hums along for most of the year. Here in the "high desert," (a misnomer since we actually get 2 inches more precip per year than a real desert), there's a great big river and the earth is soaked with snow in the winter, but it's different. It's not green here, so much as grey and brown. Only the wildflowers remind me of my previous life on the green side, and even they are fleeting. Interestingly, there is enough vegetation to support a rodent population that can support a coyote and raptor population. Mule deer thrive and even elk, and here and there are cougar. Somehow, this stark, vast landscape of monotonous colors and plant type support life.

Smith Rock State Park, Central Oregon.

And so, in a way, I think something primal within me - and within us all, as humans - draws me towards water. The ocean calls to everyone, but why I couldn't say. Perhaps it's some ancient knowledge inside that once, a small amphibious life-form crawled forth from the foam and became our collective ancestor. Perhaps it's because the oceans are the only thing that separates our species, or that the water is so vast and so powerful that it challenges some primitive notions of eternity in our mind's eye. Someone once told me that, really, it's because the ocean air is full of negative ions, which makes us feel good when we're exposed to them. I can't imagine though that there's only one reason. The ocean is like a siphon that sucks away my troubles, churning them into bubbles and fish food. The vastness of the horizon and the intimate connection of that horizon to the setting (or, in the case of Maryland's coast, the rising) of the sun slows time. Then, as if the ocean hasn't given enough, it regurgitates treasures along its shore. Shells, agates, even glass float balls all the way from Japan are left in the wake of this great beast. 

The Oregon coast.

Let's not forget to mention the myriad creatures who manage to thrive in an ever-changing, sometimes violent, always saline environment. 

Anemones in a tide pool.

Gooseneck Barnacles and some clams.

A sneaky shore crab.

A sponge from deeper waters, washed up on shore.

Starfish.

Thanks for sharing my rambling rants on the ocean. Hope you enjoy the photos. If you're up to it, leave me a comment about what draws you to the ocean, if anything.