SILENCE

Sometimes silence can be my best friend.   One of the first things I do in the morning is turn the radio on to get the latest news and weather report.   After about an hour of hearing all the negative things humanity is inflicting upon it's self it's time to turn it off.    Just the sound of the wind, rain, birds and the frogs at night can be enough for me.   A trip to the city with all the traffic, construction, and other noises makes me just want to get back home ASAP.   

I will never forget when Celia and I were in Costco years ago when she was getting a hearing test when an older man left his hearing aids off to have them cleaned.   As he walked off to do some shopping he said out loud--SILENCE AT LAST!

GARDENING 2024

With the recent warm weather and a break from all the rain the urge to dig in the dirt and plant a few seeds takes a hold of me.   Something in my DNA I guess that always kicks in this time of year.   In my younger years I always planned to have the perfect garden or at least better than what I had the year before--weed free, perfect rows and a bumper crop of veggies, which was usually zucchinis.    Not anymore as perfect is no longer in my vocabulary, now I just take a shovel, turn over the muddy ground, weeds and all, put seeds in the ground hoping for the best.   Peas are the first seeds I stick in the ground as the Stellar Jays sit in the nearby tree looking down on me.  I know what they saying to each other, "hay, look at the human down there sticking those seeds in the ground for us to go dig up for our dinner later when he is gone."    Even putting chicken wire over the newly planted seeds for protection is no deterrent as the next day I see it has been removed.    Maybe they get together with their rat friends during the night to help remove the wire and share in the bounty.   One year I noticed something was eating my climbing string beans.  I placed a motion camera out one night to see what varmint was guilty.   The next day it showed a mouse up the bean stock chewing on a green bean.   At the end of the day my back hurts, my hands are dirty, my boots muddy and best of all, I will have the opportunity to do it all again tomorrow if the weather permits.   

CRICKETS AND THE WIND

August can be a real bummer of a month with hot dry weather, yellow jackets buzzing throughout the day and the threat of wildfires.   My biggest outdoor chore is watering plants and some have given up and died not so much for a lack of water, but just too hot.   Eating a hot dinner does not even appeal at the end of a hot day.  Sometimes a bowl of cereal is all that taste good.   After the sun has gone down and the cool evening air brings life back to my old body, I go outside and sit watching the wind blow through the trees with the sound of crickets bringing me comfort before retiring for the night.  

THE DEER ENCOUNTER

 This morning while working on a trail up to the pump house a deer ran by me so fast I did not realize it until it had gone by me.    All I saw was the flash of the deer just a few inches from me.   The deer was being chased by another deer and I believe it did not see me until the last second.    At the speed that deer was going I don't think I would have survived the blow if it had run into me.   It was my lucky day and I still have a hard time thinking about how close it was.

DANGERIOUS WILDLIFE ENCOUNTERS

My only encounter with any dangerous wildlife in the years I worked for the Forest Service was my first summer of 1969 on the Modoc National Forest.    A badger ran along side my pickup truck trying to bite the front tire as I was driving slowly on a forest road.   In all my remaining years until my retirement in 1995 nothing, not even with the bears of Alaska.   

Since living on this forested property for the last 16 years, I've had a close encounter with a cougar and a mad mother hen turkey.   

Sep 22, 2022

TICKS

One of the most worthless insects in this world are ticks along with mosquitos and they are both bad this year.   It must have something to do with the wet spring.  Over the last few weeks I have noticed a few very small ticks crawling over my decrepit old body.    Yesterday morning I discovered one burrowed into my upper left arm.   I tried the alcohol treatment to get it to back out with no success and in the process must have killed it buried under the skin.  This morning I went up to the Peacehealth walk-in clinic at Cottage Grove, where my doctor is located.    After an hour's wait I actually got in to see my doctor who proceeded to dig out some of the tick's body and prescribed some antibiotics.  

Be careful out there, these little b***ards are everywhere.  

GRASS CUTTING TIME

 It is that time of year to start cutting the grass in preparation for fire season.   No doubt it has got ahead of me with all the wet weather and the breakdown of my DR mower.    The new parts arrived Monday and by noon yesterday I had it all back together without much profanity--amazing!    

YOSEMITE

This story is condensed and revised from a 6 page story I wrote  in 1995 that had some humor in it that only the family would understand.  

 In September of 1995 two of my sisters and I, along with my son and daughter went on a backpacking trip from Tuolumne Meadows down to Yosemite Valley.   This was about a 28 mile hike.  We were over packed with enough food for a month, not well organized and behind schedule.   By 3 pm we approached the wilderness permit booth at Tuolumne Meadows and  noticed a sign saying, "all trails full for the day".  The ranger on duty took pity on us noticing how unprepared and overloaded we looked.   We were given a permit with the stipulation to be at least four miles from Tuolumne Meadows before setting up camp for the night.  In short, they wanted this motley looking bunch out of sight of the general public ASAP.   We found a place to camp before dark, ate our dinner and hung our six food bags, estimated at 75 pounds in a nearby tree in order to keep the bears away.   The next morning we were up with the sun, taking our time preparing breakfast, drinking much coffee and getting an early start by 11 am.   The plan for the day was to push ourselves another five miles to Emeric Lake.   After hiking up hill over Tuolumne Pass, it was all downhill in the Merced River drainage on trails carved out of the granite.   At our camp near Emeric Lake we dug through our 75 pounds of food, ate dinner, hung the bags up and retired for the night.   During the night some of us were awaken by the howling of coyotes.  The next morning was another early start, maybe 10:30 am. after another big breakfast and much coffee.  Our destination for this day was another 5 miles to Merced Lake.   The elevation drop on this day was 2200 feet, mostly in the last two miles.   We arrived at Merced Lake exhausted.   We were required to stay in a designated camp site and we were one of the last groups into the camp leaving us little choice of picking a secluded site.    Some of our neighbors were interesting to watch and I'm sure we were entertaining to them.  There was a man traveling by himself and had the perfect camp with all his equipment laid out just right compared to our camp with everything scattered all over the place.   After eating  dinner we were too tired to wash dishes, so we placed them in metal bear box provided near our camp along with our food bags.  During the night we were aroused by a bear banging on the metal box, probably our box with the dirty dishes.   The next morning some of our neighbors did not look upon us favorably.   Our hike for this day was short with about a 800 foot drop in elevation.   By 2 pm we asked a passing ranger where the nearest camp site might be.  He pointed to to a clump of trees across the river, which was easy to access by walking across the river on a rock out cropping.   This was the best camp site of the trip with a place to swim and good seclusion.    The next day we had a pleasant hike on mostly level trail into Little Yosemite Valley, which is 5 miles by trail from the main valley.   Here there were many people since it was a fairly easy hike up from the big Yosemite Valley, where the lodge, parking lots, and other park tourist facilities are located.   Here again camping was restricted to designated camp sites with bear boxes.   No camp fires were permitted, except at two community sites.  As night settled in, so did the multitudes of people.   The posted rule in this camp was no noise after 10 pm.   We no sooner settled in our tents and sleep started to take hold when people started banging on their pots and pans yelling BEARS!   I looked out of my tent to see flash lights moving through the trees within the camp.   This went on for most the night and I even saw a cub bear run through our camp site.   It was total madness and there were very few early risers in camp the next morning.    After getting our stuff packed up we made the final descent in to the big valley to my sister's car in a parking lot.   We drove back up to Tuolumne Meadows to retrieve my car.   I think we still had 20 pounds of food we never consumed.

It was a trip we would never forget.  

THE BIRDS and the BEES

 No, not those birds and bees.  The is about the real birds and bees, sorry.   This time of year the air is filled with birds and bees.    As I get distracted from what I should be doing, which is not hard to do, I wander off to watch all the bees in the flowering trees.  All kinds of bees, small black ones, white ones, multi colored ones and many honey bees.   Even the Mason bees are coming out of their nest boxes.  

The birds start singing as soon as the sun appears in the morning.  The Stellar Jays sit in an oak tree by the house in the early morning and talk to one another before they go off to harass other birds.  Even the buzzards are back.

Maybe a story another day about the other Birds and the Bees, the ones most of us learned about in the public library when we got distracted from our studies by those books in the reproductive health section.  

Me and the Birds

 Bird feeding is a habit I started a few years back.    My thinking was that if I supplemental feed the birds maybe they will hang around and eat some of the insects damaging our trees.   During the spring I do notice more birds in the woods when the insects are active.  I go through 40 pounds of sunflower seeds a month.    The Tractor Supply Store just down the highway has a good supply, plus it gives me a good excuse to look at things I don't need.  During these winter months I fill the feeders every other day.   In the afternoons when the feeders are empty many of the birds, mostly Nuthatches gather on the grape arbor and stare into the nearby window of the house trying to tell me, " you better feed us or we are going elsewhere."  

Just wishful thinking or am I losing it?

BEARS

 This is about my close encounter with bears while working for the Forest Service.   It does include the encounter with  the unknown creature, which was probably a bear, that ran me out of the East Fork of Bluff Creek in my story titled--IN SEARCH OF BIG FOOT.   

The quickest way back to the truck was to go straight up through an old clear cut unit from the bottom of the East Fork of Blue Creek after a day of locating proposed clear-cut boundaries on the Orleans Ranger District.     It was the spring of 1972 as I made my way up to the old hand fire line running along the bottom of the unit.   Then I noticed the fresh carcass of a cub bear.    In the world of bears it is common for the big male bears to attack and eat young cub bears.   Not really sure why, but might have something to do with the cub not being their offspring or downright hungry after hibernation.   As I started the steep climb from the bottom of the unit I saw a large black figure walking on the road about thousand feet above.    It was a large black bear looking down into the unit and sniffing the air.   Bears have bad eye sight, but can smell and hear things from a far distance depending on the wind.   It must have heard me as it was straining to see what was making noise down slope.    I stayed put for a while sitting behind as large stump waiting for the bear to leave as they can be aggressive if disturbed.    Finally I made it to the road on top of the unit.    As I walked along the road back to the Forest Service truck at the end of the road I saw large bear droppings going in my direction.    Luckily I made it back to the truck with no problems.

My next encounter with bears was in Alaska when I volunteered for a work detail on the Tongass National Forest in September of 1993.    Four of us were assigned to the Forest Service work center at the Rowan Bay logging camp that was operated by the Alaskan Pulp Corporation on Kuiu Island.    The black bear population was greater than the human population on this island and they were everywhere as the Salmon were going up all the streams to spawn.    Working in the woods locating clear-cut unit boundaries and spur roads, we were required to carry canisters of pepper spray to deter any attack from the bears.    The bears were so intent on catching salmon they could care less on what we humans were doing.   Driving back to camp at the end of the day we had to stop at times to allow bears to cross the road as they were chasing salmon up the many streams.    There was even a sign that said ‘Bear Crossing’ just before getting to the camp.  The camp was comprised of single wide trailers for living quarters.   Garbage containers had to be kept within the enclosed front porches to keep the bears from getting in it.   Garbage was collected and incinerated here, no open dump for bears to feast in.   They roamed the small streets of the camp with a population of about 100 people as if they owned the place.    There were penalties for leaving garbage out in the open or goodies in the vehicles.    In many ways the bears ruled this place. 

 

Seagulls

 In the Fall of 1965 I was disking a plowed field a mile west of the Sacramento River, near the small community of Ordbend in northern California.   It was one of those pleasant days, the soil was moist and breaking up into a nice seed bed for planting barley after being plowed a few weeks earlier.   It was a day I should have been in class at Chico State College, but preferred being outside sitting on the seat of a D7 Caterpillar tractor pulling a John Deere 16 foot wide disc and making $1.75/hour.  

On the back gang of discs there were a dozen or more Seagulls sitting on the frame with their backs toward me.   They would jump off the frame as worms and other bugs appeared in the newly turned up soil then jump back up on the frame.   At times I would stop the tractor to see their reaction.   They would turn their heads and look directly at me as if they were asking, " why are you stopping?"  

About four months later life abruptly changed after being drafted into the Army after losing my school deferment.

This happened 55 years ago, seems like yesterday.

Pileated Woodpecker

 This guy making much noise this morning.

Wildlife Encounters

 Some of you may have seen the story of my encounter with the cougar.

The encounter with the turkey is a new addition.

Stay safe out there

Happy 4th!

COUGAR ENCOUNTER

 

Living in the forest of southwest Oregon it is common to see wild animals on a daily basis, mostly deer, birds of all kinds and occasionally a few other critters.   There is a system of trials on our property we utilize for recreational hiking and taking inventory of our trees.   One trail has a foot bridge crossing a seasonal creek and leads uphill to our house from the lower 10 acres.  A few years back while hiking this trail on a pleasant spring day, looking at trees and just slowly taking my time I approached the foot bridge and noticed a deer laying down on the other side of the bridge.   I was about 15 feet from crossing the bridge when I noticed the deer had long tail.    Deer do not have long tails.  Then to my shock I realized it was a cougar.  I had no weapon, except a Swiss Army knife in my pocket.  I looked around for a big stick, there was nothing.  I could not see the cougar’s head as it seem to be busy chewing on something.  I slowly backed away thinking it must have heard me and I will probably have to fight for my life using my Swiss Army knife.    After getting some distance away without being attacked I made it home by another route and called the neighbor down the road.   We both returned with weapons, but the cougar was gone and we could see it had killed a deer.  Another neighbor informed us that he had been working near his house a few days before my encounter and a cougar was sitting about 20 feet from him just watching what he was doing.   We all came to the conclusion that this cougar or cougars were too familiar with us humans in their habitat.   A government hunter with dogs was called in and a cougar scent was picked up and the dogs chased it out of our area.   No harm came to the cougar.  

Cougars usually avoid humans and when they do kill a deer they will bury portions of it and return over time to indulge in a meal.   When hiking the trails now, I keep an eye out for them and carry a tool or run power equipment, such as my DR power wagon down the trial to let them knows I’m coming.  

TURKEY ENCOUNTER

 

A year or two after the encounter with the cougar I went down the trail below the house to check on some trees I had planted the past winter with a shovel to clear away any brush that might be growing near the newly planted trees.   As I made my way off the trail through the tall grass and blackberries a hen turkey jumped out at me.   She was not happy with my presence and began coming at me.   I used the shovel to keep her at bay as I made my way back to the trail.  She was jumping up toward my face as I was swinging the shovel in self-defense.    In between swings she would try again to get my face with her claws, it was hand to hand combat.  At times I could not swing the shovel fast enough to keep her away.  Once on the trail I tried to out run her, but she was hot on my heals as I had to turn and swing the shovel to get her away.   She jumped up above the trail to overtake me, but the brush slowed her down and I was able to escape in one piece. 

Thinking back, I wonder how it would have turned out if I did not have that shovel, purely hand to hand combat.