01/01/2019   New Year  
To begin the year, Darchelle and I sat down for an hour or two and decided on a few priorities for 2019. I want to keep writing, including this journal as well as completing Eric's memorial page. I also want to get some of my writings and images into hardcopy, i.e. a book. I want to keep walking. I want to get my Washington state bird list up to 400, from 392 currently. That may take more time than I have left, which is okay; after I die I won't care anyway. Darchelle wants to prioritize communication with family, playing music and self-care. She wants to walk 10,000 steps a day, cook 10 new dishes and arrange for 10 days where she doesn't even have to get out of bed if she doesn't want to. Together we want to intentionally connect with friends, to improve interior lighting in several rooms of the house, to watch another TV series, to do some painting together since I can no longer paint on my own, and to do some traveling, including at least one impromptu little trip as well as perhaps something bigger.

01/03/2019   A dream for the new year  
Well, sort of.

01/08/2019   What else is new  
Trump is going down. Senate Republicans will realize within six months that they cannot afford to continue to have Trump at the helm destroying their prospects for 2020, and that if they dispose of him they can have evangelical, if anodyne, Pence instead. With Fox News on board the Base will acquiesce, though if a recent article I read is correct, they may not prove to be as enthusiastic about righteous Pants as they are about the current autocratic Criminal in Chief. While I have been claiming among friends that Trump will be gone by the end of April I now think it more likely that he has until August.
Note: I was wrong about that..
On a more personal note, I am not trying for a state big year this year. For past four years I have attempted to see as many birds within the state of Washington as I could, resulting in total counts of 331, 352, 338 and 337 for 2015 through 2018 respectively. In the eBird top 100 that put me in second place behind Blair except in 2016 when he helped me take first place, and this past year when I came in third. I tried to refrain from year-birding a year ago but quickly succumbed to the temptation to chase the hard-to-get species and ended up copying Blair's example of attempting to see as many species as possible in January. He got over 200 but I was pretty happy with my 150, and with my year-end total only 12 behind his, I'm again reasonably satisfied with where I ended up.
I am also happy not to be doing it again. Last year, giving up year-birding felt like giving up on life. It felt like it was something forced on me by my inability to drive, to use birding optics and to use a camera. And to add insult to injury, part way through the year I lost the ability to hear high-frequency sounds with my left ear which left me unable to pinpoint the location of singing and calling birds. I was not ready to give up, and with the help of others, I did not have to give up. Spotting as many birds as I did last year would have been impossible without Darchelle's help, and without the assistance of birding friends Ed and Delia, and Andy and Ellen. Birding with them was deeply rewarding but despite its rewards, year-birding in general can be very frustrating. You chase specific individual birds and and when, as is often the case, you do not find them, it can be difficult to remember the other smaller satisfactions - the intimate encounter with a familiar species, the quirk of behavior observed for the first time, the scents of forest or coast or sagebrush steppe, the inconspicuous achievement of incrementing one's checklist count - delivered by an outing in the field.
In other news, I finally got a haircut last Friday from the Iraqi barbershop on 35th Ave. Harir, who grew up in Baghdad and went to secondary school in Damascus, cut my hair short on the sides, a little longer on top, in response to Darchelle's request to make me look younger. I do look younger now, and also less like Frankenstein than I did before. Harir has been to Iraq recently and said that it was not as bad as it sounds, though he has mostly been in the northern part of the country. He even took his mother over there last year.
Darchelle and I, with help from E and her husband J, finally hung the pastel painting which she bought for her office maybe two years ago. It looks good in its intended place and is none the worse for having aged many months under her couch. E and J stayed with us four nights. We talked about relationships, friends, bread, politics and more. J mostly listened. A snack potluck celebration of their marriage downstairs after church drew more than 90 people. Afterwards J commented that it was the most people he had ever talked to in one day. Or maybe it was E who said that for him. In any case the socializing wasn't done yet because Monica put on a Día de los Reyes party Saturday night in our house. We had more than 20 people including kids. Monica provided all the food and it was exceptional. She did not make the Rosca de Reyes, the sweet bread shaped like a racetrack from which everyone at the party cuts a slice. Darchelle found one of the seven Baby Jesus's hidden inside the loaf, obligating her to serve tamales to everyone at the party sometime in the future. The Baby Jesus's looked like little two-inch mummies carved out of Ivory soap. Dania also brought a Rosca, round and more elaborately frosted, which contained only one tiny pink Baby Jesus.
Finally, I broke 90,000 steps on my Fitbit for the first week of the new year, my most weekly steps since the beginning of October. Can you say "New Year's resolution"?

01/15/2019   Sunset and other outings  
Seattle has closed the Alaskan Way Viaduct along the waterfront in order to demolish it and replace it with a tunnel under the city. A few days ago we were downtown for some reason and joined quite a few of our fellow Seattleites in taking advantage of the closure to take a final stroll on the old elevated roadway. The juxtaposition of the sunset with the colorful lights of the piers below us was quite beautiful. After a while a policeman on a bicycle charged out onto the highway and began shouting at people to get off the road or risk being arrested. There was only one of him and many of us so no one paid much attention to him and after a few minutes he gave up.
Silas and David joined us for dinner at the Maple Bar and Grill afterwards.
The boys and I hiked up to Annette Lake this afternoon though when it began to get close to sunset I sent them on ahead to the lake while I started back down. They caught me before too long but had a difficult time on the icy sections. We were all wearing running shoes but I had YakTracks on mine. Susan met us at the trailhead because she wanted us to all pose together for a family photo. It was too dark for that so we stopped in North Bend and posed in the produce department of the Safeway. Daniel was a bit grumpy about the whole affair but I think Susan was happy with the photos. She wanted us to join her for dinner too but that was more togetherness than we were ready to accommodate.

02/03/2019   Anniversary Run  
Ben and Sally and the kids joined us for a few days last week for a belated Christmas celebration before they jetted off to Florida for three weeks. They will spend one of those weeks in a work party fixing up an Adventist summer camp in the Panhandle.
Today was the six year anniversary of Darchelle's and my very first run together - the 2013 West Seattle Fat Ass. I ran the 50K and Darchelle joined me for the second half, an out-and-back from Lincoln Park around Alki almost to the West Seattle Freeway. I had not expected her to show up but she did and we had a leisurely run with lots of walking and lots of conversation. Knowing that she was an elder at Green Lake, I took the opportunity to complain about my difficulties with God, among other things. I think I tried to explain the novel Lolita, which I was reading at the time, to her as well. I think she wondered why someone would want to read something like that. Today we intended to to walk a half marathon but distracted by birdwatching, I missed the half turnaround so we continued to the 25K turnaround. We stopped at Starbucks along Alki Beach to warm up on the way back and finished next to last, after almost everyone had left.

02/11/2019   Snopocalypse  
They weren't exactly fake news though the breathless forecasts for repeated perfect storms of snow may have been a bit overstated. We were over in Walla Walla for Donna's birthday so we missed the first big one, which dumped about 6 inches on Friday. In Walla Walla they had a couple inches of crusty snow on the the ground when we arrived on Wednesday night.
We picked up Alicia at the airport at 11PM, swaddled her in wrapping paper, hung a tag around her neck and presented her to her mother as a birthday present. Donna was surprised and delighted, and we all enjoyed Alicia's company over the weekend. Sabbath morning brought another inch or so of fluffy snow which packed down slick as snot by the time we drove to church. I had no trouble with my Yak Trax though even I had to be a bit careful on the tile in the church lobby. We spent the rest of the day monitoring weather forecasts and road conditions and debating whether or not we could make it to Portland to visit Claire the next day. Sabbath afternoon a blizzard descended on the Yakima Valley from Ellensburg to Tri-Cities. It was the real deal; 2000 cows perished in the storm while in Walla Walla we just had a few flakes floating around from time to time. On Sunday morning we finally ruled out Portland so Darchelle and I departed for Seattle, hoping to get back over the pass during a brief window between storms. On the way home we admired snowdrifts in Tri-Cities, negotiated ground blizzards in Prosser, drove on sunny pavement most of the way to Ellensburg then hit heavy snow over the pass and on into Seattle but fortunately it had not yet begun to accumulate on the roadway.
By suppertime Ravenna was snowbound. A few cars crept along 65th Street in the falling snow. We walked up to Bryant Corner Café keeping mostly to the center of the street to avoid the deeper soft snow on the sidewalks. We would get out of the way when a car came sliding down the hill towards us. The Bryant Corner Café was full, some fundraising dinner for a local school I think. We decided not to contribute and ate dinner at Zouave instead. The decor there is a bit bleak which is perhaps why both my Oso Buco and Darchelle's Eggplant Parmesan tasted better as leftovers the next day. The food really is quite good there, and the experience very personal; we chatted with the chef for perhaps 15 minutes and felt like we were the only people in the restaurant. Actually we were, until not one but two more parties came in from the cold.
Everything was shut down Monday. In the evening, having not walked all day, we set out on foot for Wedgewood where we hoped to take a look at a dining room table for sale on Craigslist. Another 6 inches or so of snow had fallen during the day and it was still snowing. The accumulated weight of snow clinging to every branch and twig was approaching critical mass. Trees were beginning to fail. Fifteen foot bamboo stalks were bent over nearly to the ground. From time to time a blue-white flash would light up the sky. After one of them the streetlights around us blinked a couple of times then went out. Kids on sleds slid down the snowy streets. An ornamental plum tree in front of a church across 30th Ave from us split in half with a loud crack as we walked by. We trekked onward as far as 35th and 90th. When we called for directions the seller of the table told us they had also lost power and so had gone out to a restaurant for supper and warmth. We turned around to do likewise. This time Bryant Corner Café was only half full and the table right in front of the fireplace was about done. I was thoroughly chilled by the time we sat down, and reasonably comfortable by the time we got up again. Supper was good but the fireplace was the main course.
It was raining by the time we started home. The snow load was already beginning to slip off the overburdened trees but the rain came too late for our Magnolia, which dropped a 20 foot limb into the driveway. It narrowly missed smashing through our neighbor's window. That was the last big storm; over the next several weeks we saw snow in the air half a dozen times and a half inch on the ground once or twice, and ice on the pond almost every morning. The Star Jasmine vines were severely pruned by frost and the Bay is looking pretty unhappy too.

03/10/2019    Making Memories  
We have outlined various priorities for 2019 but I think our real priority is simply making memories together. We both enjoy hanging out around the house, puttering on the computer or playing the piano, discussing the latest alarming news, perusing the neighborhood gardens or considering options for furniture and furnishings at home, picking up a year bird at a local park or lamp at a local consignment shop, but nothing facilitates forming memories like novelty. New places, new scenery, new people - those are the experiences that stay with us, that will stay with Darchelle when I am gone.

03/14/2019   Spring is coming  
As the world turns...
The bright white piles of snow left on lawns and median strips by the storms in early February finally melted last weekend. Daytime high temperatures have finally broken 50F and this weekend are forecast to reach the mid-60s. Snowdrops are yielding to crocuses and a few early daffodils have opened. Magnolia branches in a vase in our kitchen have burst into flower but even the buds outside our bedroom window have begun to swell.
For Darchelle and me though, winter is coming. We sat around the dining room table yesterday evening and talked about what she will do after I die. Will she stay in the house? Will she be able to afford it? How long will it take for to grow her practice to the point where she can support herself after I'm gone? It was easier to talk about the financial arrangements than it would've been to talk about the emotional ones. She cried nonetheless, though I did not. She asked if I thought she could handle it. I know she can (after all, she points out, she has already spent most of her adult life single) but I feel that it will be too much for her to bear.
I followed up our discussion with a dream last night.

03/20/2019   What would you do  
if you knew you only had a year left to live?
Tim and I were halfway around Green Lake yesterday afternoon when a woman right in front of us on the trail asked that question of her walking partner. I did not hear his response but I could not help saying half under my breath, "keep on doing the same things I've been doing". The weather was remarkably warm and the path around the lake was crowded with walkers and runners squinting in the late afternoon sunshine. I was wearing shorts for the first time since we returned from Africa last November. As long as I walked on the pavement rather than in the gravel I was almost able to carry on the conversation with Tim without becoming too breathless. We talked about his ex Yuliya and how she has a baby now, having married a mutual friend on the rebound, and other things too. But not about the question.
Just as well that, because I don't have what I would consider to be a good answer. I want to take care of the people I'm leaving behind - financially, emotionally - however I can. Make memories, honestly express my love to them, simplify my estate, try not to leave too big a mess. Taking care of the people I love is a priority, but unfortunately I don't always act in accordance with what I prioritize. Another priority is to do something about the things I'm leaving behind, tangible things I've created or acquired as well as more ephemeral things such as photographs and writings online. I don't know what to do with the things though, and even if I did I doubt I have the energy to do anything about it. A book, a biography of sorts, might be nice but doesn't look like it's going to happen. So the answer ends up being keep on doing the things I've been doing as best I can, subject to the increasing effort I find myself having to devote to the basics - breathing, swallowing, balancing, talking, staying upright.

03/24/2019   Cupcake Half Marathon  
The Cupcake run is an informal little marathon on a paved trail trail mostly through the woods near Arlington. I have run the full marathon twice (2014, 2015) but am now only able to walk the half marathon so that is what we did today. We saw a few familiar maniacs including Monte with whom I ran many marathons and ultras back in the day.

03/28/2019   Road Trip  
Darchelle and I flew back to Jacksonville to meet Mom and John and drive them north to Jackson. We did not go for the first day, only to Saint Simons Island Georgia where we walked East Beach, enjoyed a nice dinner and got a good nights sleep at The King and Prince. We all walked the beach. I was particularly excited to find Piping and Wilson's Plovers at a shallow puddle back away from the water but I also enjoyed the variety of land birds in and around Massengale Park. On the way out of town we visited a famous old church where John Wesley once preached. Thanks to our late start we took two days to get to our next destination, colonial Williamsburg. I forget where we stayed but it was right near the historic village. We toured some old buildings and ate dinner at a period restaurant where the food was quite good despite its authentic colonial character. In the morning we visited the site of the Jamestown colony where as usual I was as interested in the birds (a flock of 23 White-throated Sparrows!) as in the history. We spent the next night in Washington DC where Bridget took us to one of her favorite restaurants. Unfortunately we did not have time to visit her bar.
We arrived in Jackson Tuesday afternoon, where the snowbanks around the house were so tall we could not even see out the windows.
Fortunately the roads were clear so we were able to get out walking. Sarah and Roger were in Sweden so their sugarhouse was quiet but John and I stopped by the Benson's up on Carter Notch Road while they were boiling. Dense fog from the boiling sap in their garage hung in the air just over our heads while we visited with Peter and Emily and their daughter who was home from college with her boyfriend.

04/23/2019   Status Report  
I'm not writing much these days, I thought I would include an email from Darchelle to my folks on the news from our most recent ALS clinic last Thursday.

05/08/2019   Spain and Portugal  
Sometime early this year Darchelle and I talked about a trip to Spain and Portugal while I would still be able to travel. Thinking that we would not actually go, I acknowledged that it might be a good idea. When the good idea actually began to gain traction my anxiety about traveling grew accordingly but by then the plans had begun to develop so sometime in late March or more likely early April I booked flights to Barcelona and a rental car to drive through Portugal.
Here's an account of our trip.

06/04/2019   Home again  
Silas came to visit right after we got back from Spain. We ate breakfast at Portage Bay and dinner in the backyard. Darchelle is back at watering the garden. Tim and Mary came over for dinner. It is nice to be home again.
Darchelle and I finally heard a Bobwhite at Muck Creek, the burned-out corner of a firing range on JBLM next to Roy. That was the only grouse/quail that we missed last year in our attempt to see every gallinaceous species in Washington. The summer birds moved in while we were in Portugal so I am plotting how to get out and see them all while they are still singing and easier to find. I picked up eight of them at Muck Creek.

06/07/2019   Walla Walla  
We drove over to Walla Walla for the weekend to visit family, and of course to find some birds. On the way over we stopped at the Selah Cliffs natural area shortly before sunset. When the sun slipped out from behind the clouds the light was glorious. We walked a ways up the valley but did not pick up the Prairie Falcons which nest there. The next day we drove up into the Blue Mountains with Ben and Sally and the kids. We hiked along a short section of the Ridge trail near the top of Biscuit Ridge and found a morel. And beautiful views. We did not find any Green-tailed Towhees on Biscuit Ridge.
On the way home we spent the night at Andy and Ellen's and birded with Ellen the next morning before continuing back to Seattle.

06/12/2019   Black Swifts  
Sunny warm days. The garden is flowering; the deck is inviting. We made our annual early June trip to North Bend to look for Black Swifts at Snoqualmie Falls. They apparently nest at the falls, forage out over the Snoqualmie Valley and return only at dusk in order to avoid the Peregrines which also nest there. We walked up to the overlook and joined the sparse crowd gazing over at the falls and down at the turbulent plunge pool below. After admiring the view, Darchelle sat down on a bench to do email on her phone while I waited a few minutes in hopes that the swifts would make an early appearance. To my surprise they did. Several of them suddenly flew by right about at eye level, sailing up over the falls and back down the canyon, flickering wing beats alternating with long twisting glides the way Black Swifts do.

06/29/2019   News and Musings  
Excerpted from an email to David in Taiwan...
I have been doing something normal for me the past few days, editing photos. Well it used to be normal anyway. I haven't been doing it much recently because it is more difficult than it was back when I had hands and because editing my photos feels a bit pointless. Perhaps because they aren't really my photos; Darchelle takes them for me. I haven't been journaling much either, another activity that is almost always difficult and also often feels pointless. It is easier to read the news then to write my own news and thoughts. Anyhow, I have been editing photos from our trip to Spain and Portugal. Darchelle managed to get some good bird photos with the G3X, along with lots of regular travel photos taken both with my phone and hers. I have been working on the bird photos, of course. If I keep it up I will soon have at least a slideshow on my phone, and perhaps something posted online as well.
It is Sabbath morning and I am up before Darchelle, sitting at the kitchen counter gazing into into the sunlit foliage of the young cherry tree outside the window. A sudden moment of shade, as brief as a wingbeat of a crow, calls my attention to the unseen bird that just flew over. Perhaps God is like that. Perhaps It flies randomly over the sunlit earth and when Its path intersects with a human, it is possible to momentarily infer Its presence from the flicker of shadow It casts into ones life. Something unusual happens - an unexpected parking spot just when it is needed, a dollar bill lying on the sidewalk, a head cold averted - and the unseen God makes Its presence known, at least to those who as Jesus famously said, "have eyes to see". On the other hand, God might be like the sun, flooding the earth with creative energy to build and sustain this vast edifice of life. It is so obvious that It is hard to see, but if you really look into It you sear your retinas and will never again see anything else. Okay, maybe were reaching the limits of this metaphor, but it is Sabbath morning and therefore not inappropriate to consider that God might actually be a Thing.
Darchelle's sister Claire and I talked a lot about God last weekend. Actually Claire did most of the talking. She has a view of God in which he is very active in the world, communicating frequently (albeit sometimes ambiguously) with people who will listen. Picture not just a single crow flying over, but a whole flock of them overhead throwing shade almost randomly onto us all. They do that, the crows, not God, on winter evenings when they converge from all over the city and chase the sun out over the Sound to their nocturnal roost on Bainbridge Island. We followed the sun out to the Oregon coast with Claire and her four boys and rode a scenic railroad to Rockaway Beach. It was a beautiful day, cool but sunny, and we all had a good time but unfortunately three of the boys, as well as Claire herself, had a bad cold and after five hours cooped up in a car with them, I caught it.
After my fever on Sunday night subsided I developed a bad cough, or at least it would've been a bad cough if I could actually cough. What I had to do instead, over and over again, was to gulp enough air to inflate my chest then blow it out all at once and hope that the phlegm would come with it. Exhausting, but it worked. For a few days I was worried that it might turn into pneumonia, which at this point could be fatal, but it didn't. One consequence of my cold was that we did not get to hike up Silverstar Mountain near Vancouver as we had planned to do on the way home from Salem. We drove up to the trailhead on Monday morning but I wasn't up for the hike.
We returned to the trailhead a week later and this time succeeded in hiking to the summit despite Darchelle now having caught the cold. Darchelle and I ran a big 50K on Silver Star Mountain on the summer solstice in 2013 so this hike was an anniversary of sorts. The trail was more beautiful than I remembered, 3 miles up through second growth Douglas Fir forest and steep flower meadows to a bald summit with views of the Columbia River all the way from Eastern Oregon through the gorge and past Portland to Longview. The summit was shrouded in clouds when I was last there and we descended much of the trail in the dark that time. Something else I noticed this time - Hermit Warblers, Washington state year bird number 233, not that I'm counting. Okay so I am counting, even though I told myself I wouldn't do that this year. It is hard to get an old birder to let go of his tricks. I found the hike very strenuous and actually developed IT band soreness in my left knee in the last mile of the descent, but since then it's been okay. 2000 feet up and down, 6 miles, 7 1/2 hours. Last time the whole 50K only took us five hours longer than that. I enjoyed the flowers more this time though. And the Hermit Warblers.

07/01/2019   Wandering Washington  
Last year in June we looped counterclockwise around Washington from the Blue Mountains to Curlew, then out of time, drove all the way home to Seattle via Highway 20 through the Methow. This time we reversed our route and drove across the northern tier of counties to Salmo Pass then down to Spokane and home. Our objectives included hiking and sightseeing but we mostly did birding. From a birding point of view, we were quite successful. We only missed a few of my target birds, notably Black-backed Woodpecker and Forster's Tern, and we picked up 25 new species for the year along with one species of mammal, a deer mouse which crawled into our car on our first evening out and traveled with us for the rest of the trip.
We named her Forest because she wouldn't leave her new home in our Forester until we evicted her after we returned to Seattle. Forest apparently hopped aboard the car while Darchelle was unpacking in the dark at our AirB&B in Winthrop and promptly began shredding paper towels and toilet paper to pad her several nests. Although Darchelle thought she heard some rustling in the back seat the next day, we didn't really get confirmation of her presence until we set out a trail of cheese overnight in Republic to try to lure her out of the car. She ate the cheese and pooped all over the center console between the front seats but declined to depart. When we got home to Seattle we set out one live trap and one snap trap, both baited with peanut butter, and presented her a choice between life or death. She tempted death by nibbling all of the peanut butter out of the snap trap before getting herself caught in the little tubular live trap. Released into daylight, she darted into the next door neighbor's yard and we never saw her again.
On our first day we did a little hike which I've been meaning to do for several years, on the Bridge Creek trail near Rainy Pass. I thought we might find a Three-toed Woodpecker there, or at the overlook above Washington Pass, but no luck. We ate dinner on the patio by the river at the Old Schoolhouse Brewery. In the morning we again found a Dusky Grouse at the tennis courts at Sun Mountain Lodge and Calliope Hummingbirds down by the lake, but no photos this year. Heading to Conconully via Tiffany Mountain we ran into rain which frustrated our plans for both birding and hiking but the sun came out as we crossed Lone Frank Pass so we stopped and stumbled into our first Three-toed Woodpecker. Down the hill from Conconully we stopped at Hess Lake and found lots of Chukars but only a glimpse of my only Hun for the year. Dinner at the Breadline Café in Omak was disappointing for a change.
We discovered a Grasshopper Sparrow in a new location for us along the Cameron Lake-Omak Lake Road and a Clay-colored Sparrow in an old location (2016 with Andy and Ellen) along Fields Road. On the way up there I got the briefest glimpse of my only Northern Pygmy Owl of the year. We spent several hours wandering the Highlands roads between Havillah, Chesaw and Bodie looking for a Great Gray Owl but of course without success. We spent the night at David's and my favorite cheap motel, the Klondike in Republic. In the morning we drove north through Curlew to search unsuccessfully for a Black-backed Woodpecker in the Stickpin Burn where we have seen them the past two years. Perhaps that burn is too old for them now. Despite not reaching the Westside Calispell Road until rather late in the afternoon we found the two species I needed there, Bobolink and Northern Waterthrush. We ate tacos at the bare-bones Block Bar and spent the night at the reliable Riverview Motel.
A birding big year in Washington is incomplete without a pilgrimage to Salmo Pass in the far northeast corner of the state in search of Spruce Grouses, Boreal Chickadees and Boreal Owls. We were too early in the year for the owls but we found the other two, plus a beautiful male Pine Grosbeak as a bonus, and possible White-winged Crossbills too. About 30 of the crossbills flew over and didn't stop. Their calls, high-pitched and rapid, sounded to me more like White-winged than like Red Crossbills but I don't know them well enough to be sure. The grosbeak perched at eye level across the road from us but we didn't have the camera out yet so we didn't get a photo. I had planned to hike the Shedroof Mountain trail but a crowd of hikers with a couple of dogs had just set out that way so we started down the Salmo Basin trail instead. When the forest composition changed from spruce to hemlock, indicating that we were dropping below Boreal Chickadee habitat, we turned around empty-handed.
After a little lunch we started up the road towards the Shedroof Mountain trail. Shortly before the start of the trail we encountered the hikers with the dogs. "Yes", they responded to our inquiry, "we did see Spruce Grouse. The dogs flushed one a couple of hours ago, not far up the trail." Not exactly good news, so where another trail branches off to the right, we took it in hopes of finding ground the dogs hadn't covered. Right away we ran into a flock of Boreal Chickadees. Check! They were too quick for photos though. Back on the main trail we continued until it was time to turn around, and then kept going anyway until I heard the drumming of a Three-toed Woodpecker. We stopped to listen and Darchelle thought she heard the guttural clucking of a grouse. She insisted we look for it, a pursuit I considered pointless until she spotted the female on a fir branch about 100 feet downslope. We bushwhacked down through the waist-high understory to get a closer view and flushed two or three baby grouse up into nearby trees. Mama clucked in alarm. Darchelle took pictures. Before turning back we took a few minutes to get photos of the Three-toed Woodpecker, which turned out to be a pair at a nest. I think it was the first time that I have ever found both the grouse and the chickadees in the same outing at Salmo Pass. Just for good measure we spotted more chickadees and another Spruce Grouse with chicks as we were driving back down the pass.
We spent the night in Spokane at Dan and Catherine's new home, which they generously offered to us for the night even though they were out of town. On the way back to Seattle we chased birds, a Black Tern at Turnbull (much harder to find than in previous years, perhaps because we were a few weeks later than usual), Wilson's Phalaropes at Sprague, Clark's Grebe at Lind Coulee and Forster's Tern at Potholes reservoir (which we missed). Overall though, it was a great trip. Perhaps it was also a farewell to some of my favorite birding spots in the state; I don't know.

07/10/2019   New Hampshire visit  
A few days after Wandering Washington we flew back to New Hampshire to visit my parents for most of a week. Sarah and Roger are spending the summer in Sweden but we had a good visit with Mom and John - leisurely breakfasts on the front porch and lunches on the patio, dinners out at local restaurants, walks on local roads. They are both a bit shaky on their feet but still able to get out walking. Ali, Donna and Stacy drove up for a night at the Eagle and joined all of us for breakfast there; it was good to see them too. I wasn't able to get out hiking but did some incidental birding, either from the house or nearby roads, and found 37 species.

07/18/2019   ALS clinic  
On the 18th Darchelle and I paid our quarterly visit to the ALS clinic. During the pre-clinic interview with the nurse the day before our visit I told the nurse I wanted to discuss what my dying might look like. Anticipating that discussion, I found myself quite out of sorts as we walked into the hospital. "Today I find out how I'm going to die", I told Darchelle.
My numbers were, as expected, somewhat worse than last time. My MIP dropped to -35 after holding steady in the low 40s on the previous three visits. My FVC was about the same at 32%. I think the MIP more accurately reflects my increasing struggle to breathe when walking uphill. My FRS added up to only 26. I thought that was low so we went through the questions again and came up with the same number. I think the increasing shortness of breath was primarily responsible for the drop from 29 last time.
We discussed three end-of-life scenarios. Falling is the least common but a constant risk nonetheless. Aspiration pneumonia happens but significantly less frequently than the third scenario - hypercarbia. As my chest muscles and diaphragm become weaker, I will spend more and more of each day on the ventilator. At some point even ventilator-assisted breathing will become inadequate and carbon dioxide levels in my blood will increase. That induces sleepiness followed by respiratory failure and death. It is reportedly an easy way to go, but as Dr. Elliott pointed out, my plane isn't quite ready to leave the runway. The ALS clinic typically recommends that patients initiate hospice care while they still have six months or so left to live, and my impression from Dr. Elliott was that I wasn't nearly ready for hospice yet. Prior to the clinic, I had been thinking that I had only six to nine months left so I left the clinic feeling considerably lighter than when I entered.

07/22/2019   Sunrise hike  
Darchelle and I talked her folks into hiking up to Frozen Lake in Mount Rainier National Park. We had to wait in traffic for about 20 minutes before we could get through the entrance gate, then again to find a parking place at Sunrise. When we got to the lake though, we were rewarded by the sight of a mother bear with her cub walking and sliding down the snowfield right below the saddle. Donna and I were about equally matched in our pace hiking uphill.
In other news, Ellen is visiting us while she arranges for new renters in her apartment. We all, along with Monica, Marco and Marc, met Ken at University Village for supper at the California burger place. They have a good beer selection so I ordered a flight, prompting Ken to do likewise. When we were done I discovered that he had paid for my flight as well as his. I protested but he replied that he was simply paying for my expertise.

07/24/2019   From Darkness into Light  
The night before last I remembered a dream + in which I began in Auburn and ended up in Jackson. Although I couldn't quite recall the actual beginning of the dream, itpincorporated elements of previous dreams about God as well as images suggesting a resurrection of sorts.

08/02/2019   Hudsonian Godwit (photos by Daniel)  
This is not a common bird in Washington. It breeds in the Canadian Arctic (particularly around Hudson Bay) and migrates mostly east of the Rockies. When it does stop in Washington it generally lingers for only a day or two. At least three times in the past five years I have arrived one day too late to find it. Silas and Daniel joined us to search for the bird at Crockett Lake today. I scoped the mud flats for an hour or so without finding the bird. Daniel and Silas humored themselves by dreaming up various mostly obscene variations of the bird's name.
We noticed several photographers traipsing out across the salt marsh and kept track of them. When they returned to the road Darchelle drove down to meet them and got the story on our quarry. It was in a little slough, a woman confided, and please stay on the already trampled path through the marsh so as to avoid causing further damage, and to avoid alarming the bird. We followed the path and it led to a relatively distant view of my first ever Hudsonian Godwit. No problem, we had the scope and got great looks. Daniel offered to take photos with my camera so I gave it to him. He and Silas immediately left the trail and made an elaborate show of stalking across the (mostly) untrampled Salicornia until they were right at the edge of the slough across from the bird. A nearby Greater Yellowlegs flushed in alarm but the godwit fortunately stayed put. Two other photographers, apparently part of the original party, had been watching us from some distance away in the salt marsh. To my relief they stayed put also, so as far as I know my reputation survived our encounter with the godwit.

08/03/2019   First Burroughs  
Gabriel wanted to take his girlfriend Emily up to Grand Park before joining the family on Orcas so we dropped them off at the Lake Eleanor trailhead then continued up to Sunrise, though we had to wait more than half an hour at the entrance station because the Sunrise parking lot was full. Despite the delay we had time to hike up to the top of First Burroughs and look for Ptarmigan before meeting Gabriel and Emily at Frozen Lake. No Ptarmigan, but the ground squirrels were adorable. The flowers were nice too, especially the brilliant scarlet paintbrush.

08/04/2019   Orcas Island  
As we have every August since our wedding in 2016, we spent a week on Orcas Island with as many members of Darchelle's family as could make it. This year that included Richard and Donna, Alicia and Ricardo and their boys along with Gabriel's girlfriend Emily, and Sally and Ben and their kids. Monica, Marco and Marc came up for a weekend as well.
Alicia and the boys share their talents with us - Gabriel and Emily on the piano, Daniel on the violin and Alicia with her hands giving us all (well at least Richard, Ben and me) MFR treatments.
Naturally we devoted one of our days on the island to hiking Mount Constitution. Ricardo and the boys started at Cascade Lake. Alicia, Darchelle and I hiked up the ridge from Mountain Lake. Richard and Donna drove up then hiked down from the summit to meet us. After ice cream at the top some of us rode down while Richard ran down the road.
We met Sally and Ben and the kids at the Mountain Lake dam and hiked down to the falls. Willie and Tommy ran ahead and Willie crashed, twice. His enthusiasm was only briefly dampened. That same afternoon I think we lost Daniel on the trails somewhere, but we found him again.
We had other adventures too. Alicia made her posole for everyone for dinner. We visited a bakery or two in town and picked plums in a park. We trekked out to the pebbly beach at Obstruction Pass State Park. We ate picnic suppers on the lawn by the lake at Moran State Park. We caught the late ferry home.

08/16/2019   Home, inside and out  
Our gardens have lapsed into their midsummer lull, where the spring flowers have gone by and the summer flowers haven't really come on yet. Except on the back deck where the Bougainvillea is at its most glorious.
Inside, home feels very homey. The two new (to us) chairs in the family room echo the ribs in the banana leaves and the slab table just fits the wild theme established by the plants. The new (to us) rectangular table in the dining room will seat a dozen friends and family in only three different styles of chairs. The new (to us) gray chair matches the gray in the kitchen; it is not as blue as it appears here. It is also fairly comfortable.

08/17/2019   Another Birthday, another hike  
I have now had six birthdays, and six full years, since I correctly diagnosed myself with ALS shortly after my birthday in 2013. Back then I assumed that I had no more than three years to live, and that they would be miserable years of grief and decline. I was wrong. Of course it has not been easy, but in many ways the past six years have been the happiest and most satisfying years of my life. It seems highly unlikely that I have another six years left, or even another two years. My world is shrinking around me as my muscles wither within me. Nonetheless I keep doing everything that I can do until I can no longer do it, and I generally experience more joy in what I can do than sadness about what I can't. Today's hike was a pretty good example of that.
Darchelle and I spent the night at Blue T Lodge so as to get an early start. We met Tim and Mary at the Wake 'n Bakery in the morning. Tim hiked Heliotrope Ridge while Mary joined us for the Table Mountain hike. Tim actually saw Mount Baker in the sunshine during his hike but although we were only a few miles from him, we were in the fog all day. Perhaps that was good - we could not see how far we would fall if we slipped off the trail where it climbs the cliff. Once we got up on top, we took our time. We stopped and talked, we tried to identify flowers, we looked for Ptarmigan. I wandered around so as to inspect more ground while Darchelle and Mary mostly stuck to the trail. When Mary's knees began to get sore we stopped for lunch and Darchelle and I left her and wandered around the upper end of the ridge, rejoining the trail for the descent. That's when I ran into trouble. My legs, already shaky, cramped up when I squatted to drop my legs over a step that was too tall to take standing up. The cramp wasn't too bad but left my legs in danger of collapse which made the descent down the cliff pretty scary. I had Darchelle get in position to catch me in a couple of the trickier spots but I made it okay. I felt like I had just finished a Marathon by the time we reached the car. It took almost a week for my DOMS to clear up.
Five years ago on my birthday I did Kaleetan Peak (12m, 4500') with Tim. My arms were still able to handle the straightforward scrambling on that hike. Four years ago Darchelle and I hiked up to the base of the Sahale Glacier above Sahale Arm (11m, 4000'). No scrambling, but still a big hike. Three years ago I did Vesper Peak (8m, 4200') with J, who had to drive us to the trailhead because I stopped driving that April. Two years ago I hiked up to Gothic basin (9m, 3100') with Daniel and David. That was a very tough day; I was extremely tired all day. Last year Daniel and I did an afternoon hike up to Heliotrope Ridge (5m, 1400') a few days before my birthday. Table Mountain today was about 4m, 800'. This trend is not my friend.

08/22/2019   Year birds  
Leaving town last Friday afternoon we detoured out to Lake Sammamish State Park to look for the Franklin's Gull which we failed to find earlier with Ed and Delia. Franklin's Gulls wander over to the west side of the Cascades in August and September giving year birders like me who missed them in Eastern Washington earlier in the summer a second opportunity. This time the Franklin's had been joined by a second one and they were both hanging out on the beach with the other gulls. While Darchelle went back to the car to get the camera I guarded the small gull flock against a five-year-old boy running over to flush them. He was quite startled when I intercepted him but he agreed not to disturb the birds.
Delayed by traffic we didn't reach Channel Drive in the Skagit until shortly before sunset, by which time the previously reported Stilt Sandpiper was no longer present. Stilt Sandpipers arrived in the Skagit Flats about 10 days ago, around the same time as the Franklin's Gulls. Having missed them last weekend I was happy that Ed called and suggested trying for the bird which was seen all day yesterday down in Kent. It was still there this morning, a brightly colored juvenile foraging on and around a sandbar in the Green River just north of the South 200th St bridge.

09/09/2019   Grayland Beach  (photos by Ali)
Ali, Donna and Diana arrived about a week ago, though Diana had a cold so she quarantined herself in a hostel downtown for the first few days. We didn't do any big trips; we just hung around home, drank coffee, went out to eat (Bryant Corner Café, Harvest Vine, La Rustica), watched the documentary film Maiden again, did a little shopping. Ali pruned the Apple tree at the corner of the deck and helped me harden the top part of the stream against the raccoons which keep digging it up. We also stopped by REI and bought a climbing harness, then butchered it and attached the leg loops to the bottom of my brace. We are still fine-tuning it but the leg loops keep the brace for riding up my back more effectively than the bungee cord I had been using. Diana gave us massage and Reiki treatments; Donna fixed fine food and entertained us with stories. They all helped feed me.
I had arranged for us to do a pelagic trip tomorrow so we drove down to Westport with a little birding today. We didn't find much of interest at Bottle Beach but Donna had a blast driving on the beach at Grayland. We drove south a couple of miles then north almost all the way to the jetty, finding the usual gulls and crows but also a half dozen Turkey Vultures, a juvenile Parasitic Jaeger and a small crowd of Snowy Plovers. Darchelle had to work so did not come with us. Ali took photos for me and they all took turns helping me in the bathroom and such.

09/10/2019   Pelagic Trip  (photos by Ali)
All three of the women have spent a lot of time on the water so I figured they would enjoy an outing on the Pacific, which was uncharacteristically pacific with very little wind and relatively low swells. Marine mammals put on an excellent show. We had Humpback Whales spyhopping and both Northern Right Whale Dolphins and Pacific White-sided Dolphins riding our bow wave. At one point Risso's and Pacific White-sided Dolphins were surfacing and breaching all around us. Closer to shore we had Steller's and California sea lions, Dall Porpoises and Harbor Seals. The trip was good for birds too. Here is another list from our trip.

09/11/2019   Kalaloch Beach  (photos by Ali)
The forecast was favorable and we had a spare day to kill so we decided to drive around the Olympic Peninsula before returning to Seattle. I had hoped that we might stay in one of the lodges but even midweek they were very expensive. We found the Lake Quinault Inn in Amanda Park instead with a comfortable three room suite including three queen beds for under $100 (I think). In the morning I planned out a full agenda for us - possible breakfast at Kalaloch Lodge, a stop at the Big Cedar tree, a walk among the big mossy maples at the park headquarters and a stroll on Second Beach, concluding with a dip in Crescent Lake for Ali if she was up for it. Maybe we would eat dinner in Sequim on the way home. We missed Second beach and skipped the dip but enjoyed everything else and did our beach walk, such as it was, on Kalaloch Beach. It was a good day.
Breakfast at Kalaloch Lodge was amazing, and with the senior discount for all four of us, a real steal. The Big Cedar tree did not disappoint, and it turns out that there are several more along trail beyond the big one. We marveled at the moss and glimpsed a cow elk placidly chewing her cud behind a vine maple thicket, but more impressive was the mysterious high-pitched squeal (reminiscent of squeaky brakes) of one or two bugling bulls somewhere back in the forest, given that all we could see of the cow was her ears.

09/12/2019   Paradise  (photos by Ali)
Stacey arrived yesterday afternoon a few hours before we returned home from the peninsula. She joined us on our hike at Paradise today. It was a glorious day but my pace was very slow so we did not make it all the way up to Panorama Point as I had hoped. Nonetheless we did get to the Golden Gate and even a half-mile beyond it, well into Ptarmigan territory but despite discreetly playing recordings, we did not see any. Lots of Sharp-shinned Hawks though. Twice we missed seeing the bear that was apparently hanging out along the Golden Gate trail before we finally caught a glimpse of it in the distance. Too far away for a photo.

10/07/2019   Portland Marathon  
It was a multipurpose trip. I had a myofascial release treatment from Elizabeth in Vancouver, a therapist whom Alicia recommended. We stayed with Darchelle's folks in an AirB&B in North Portland and watched Richard run the marathon on Sunday morning. He came in around 6 1/2 hours, not bad for not having run more than 12 miles at once in the year since he last ran Portland.
On Monday we visited Ridgefield and discovered that the auto loop road was closed. We regrouped at a coffee shop and drove a circuitous detour to the Carty unit where we did a brief walk and succeeded in finding a handsome adult Red-shouldered Hawk. That substantially made up for not finding any Sandhill Cranes down in Woodland Bottoms. No cranes but lots of Red-tails and Northern Harriers.

10/10/2019   New Hampshire  
Darchelle and I took the redeye, could not find any rental cars when we arrived in Boston so bought tickets for North Conway then missed the bus. We took Uber instead, $200 including tip to get dropped off at Frontside Coffee Roasters shortly after noon. David and KC did not miss the bus and arrived in North Conway about an hour behind us. Our visit was brief but colorful. We hung out with Mom and John and Sarah and Roger, went on walks, marveled at the trees and flew home on Monday.
John limits his walking to paved roads so we did Wilson Road and the Carter Notch Road, including a two-mile outing on the latter. Mom was more willing to venture off road so we walked Alice's Alley one day and down to the lower fields another day. I looked for sparrows but didn't find many, though did enjoy views of both White-throated and Swamp. We ended up at Eric's recently erected memorial bench at the fourth tee on the Eagle Mountain House golf course. We still miss him.
David and KC brought a cold with them from New York City. Darchelle did not catch it but I did, and wrestled with phlegm for the next ten days during Sarah and Roger's visit. They actually flew out to Seattle with us and stayed for two weeks, in part so that Sarah could play fiddle at Tim and Mary's wedding.

11/04/2019   Bobcat dream  
David N visited us last weekend and his visit may May have inspired me to dream about a Bobcat. Or maybe not.

11/05/2019   Looking for breakfast dream  
Unlike yesterday's dream, this one did not yield much in the way of meaning but I remembered it clearly so I wrote it down.

11/10/2019   Sharp-tailed Sandpiper  
We succeeded in finding this bird on our third try, though arguably we didn't try very hard the first time. That was two weeks ago when Sarah and Roger were visiting us. Returning from Neah Bay, we spent the night in Sequim and the morning up on Hurricane Ridge before stopping at the Rainshadow Café for a light lunch. I considered heading down to Three Crabs to look for the Sharp-tailed but Sarah and Roger were eager to return to Seattle and moreover there were no reports of the bird that morning, so I decided not to take the time to look for it. Later I learned that it was seen while we were sitting in the café.
Last weekend we returned to Sequim with David N. He and I walked out to the beach at Three Crabs but did not bother to set up the scope. With my naked eye I could pick out at least one Killdeer foraging on the beach where this time we spotted (thanks to Carol Riddell) the bird. Given how difficult it was to see, I think it likely that it was present last weekend as well. That's okay; we had a nice outing with Ed and Delia today and got good views of the Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, only my second one ever. Darchelle took photos for me after I returned to the car to wake her up from her nap. I almost didn't, but am very happy to have the photos, which she was happy to take for me.
As I was returning to the car a Glaucous-winged Gull sitting on the sand about 50 yards from me took off and headed straight for me. When I realized it was going to pass directly overhead I thought, "If that bird poops it will hit me." Immediately a juicy dollop of greenish-brown gull poop landed with a splat on my chest. Darchelle and Delia wiped the evidence off my coat but the fishy smell of mud flats at low tide accompanied me for the rest of the afternoon.

11/23/2019   Walla Walla weekend  
First, the ALS clinic on Thursday morning offered no guarantees but implied that I might be able to keep going for longer than the year or less that I had been assuming. The strength of my swallowing indicates that I will probably be able to use the ventilator for a year or more despite my declining lung capacity. Actually, it's not lung capacity that is declining but rather my diaphragm and chest muscles. My seated FVC was down from 32% to 28% at 1.23L; prone was a little better at 33% (1.50L). MIP was unchanged at -38. With glossopharyngeal breathing (GPB), which I learned is the correct term for what I've been calling "breath stacking", I was able to increase my seated and prone FVC numbers to 65% (2.99L) and 74% (3.39L ) respectively, which works out to about 70CC per gulp. The respiratory therapist was impressed that I discovered GPB on my own; according to one study only about 10% of respiratorially-challenged patients figure that out. When I got home I read about it online and discovered that my technique can probably use some improvement. Some people get so good at it that they can go off the ventilator for an hour or more at a time even if they normally require it day and night.
From the clinic we drove directly to Vancouver, picked up Sandhill Cranes (year bird #308) at Vancouver Lake then stopped by Elizabeth's for my final MFR session. She did an MFR intensive on me during the first two weeks of this month but we were short one session. MFR (myofascial release) is a type of massage and "energy" treatment which involves mostly static pressure, stretching and rocking actions on different parts of the body, with each action sustained for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. The treatment is intended to facilitate energy and blood flow throughout the body and thus promote optimal functioning of organs, muscles and nerves. Among the possible effects Darchelle and I have noticed from the treatment are a modest opening up of my chest and shoulders, diminished back pain, stronger voice and healthier overall appearance. On the other hand my neck muscles seem weaker so my head hangs down more, and I've been noticing more frequent difficulty breathing when at rest. Legs seem weaker as well. Although the treatments were not painful or unpleasant, I am glad that they are over.
We spent the night at the thoroughly Victorian Lyle Hotel, arriving just in time to be the only guests for dinner. We were also the only ones spending the night so we had our pick of rooms; we chose the king bedroom because it had the softest bed. Our waitress was a twin whose sister was a model. She showed us pictures of her on Facebook. I forget what we ate but I think it was good. Sometime after we had turned out the lights I woke up to someone pounding on the door and saying "Sheriff! May I come in? I would like to talk to you." I told him to come on in. He asked again and I invited him in again. He opened the door and came in a few feet, a big burly guy dressed like a sheriff in an olive green uniform. He asked us if we had heard anything. I told him that we had not. He asked again, as if he didn't believe us. We repeated that we had not heard anything, but that we had been asleep. I could've explained that with my ventilator on I could barely even hear the trains go by. He told us that the woman downstairs had fallen and had a cut on the back of her head but that she was being treated and was going to be okay. We were only somewhat relieved to find thdt out. Darchelle recalled that during dinner the proprietor, behind the ornate bar, had mentioned that he had a wife in the basement. We surmised that it was she who had been hurt. In the morning we heard voices in the bar while we were eating overly-sweetened granola in the breakfast room but we weren't up for learning anything more about our nighttime visit from the sheriff so we left without talking to anyone.
Balch Road in Lyle, in the Columbia River Gorge, is the go-to spot in Washington for Acorn Woodpecker but recently they have been reported more frequently along Catherine Creek, where hiking trails traverse open slopes and wooded canyons above the river. After birding along Catherine Lake (where a Yellow-shafted Flicker, uncommon in the state, flew over the car then refused to be relocated for a photo) and along Balch Road by the lake (where we flushed an uncommon number of Wood Ducks which refused to pause for photos), we parked at the trailhead and hiked up trails along the west rim of the Catherine Creek canyon. When we were across from the prominent arch in the east wall of the canyon, we heard our target birds chattering somewhat farther up the valley. Eventually we spotted at least five Acorn Woodpeckers flying around a couple of dead ponderosa pines about a tenth of a mile upstream from the arch. Photos revealed one of the dead pines to be a new granary tree well-stocked with acorns. By the way, Lewis's Woodpeckers were abundant in the area; we saw perhaps as many as 100 between Catherine Lake and the east end of Balch Road.
We continued east to Walla Walla to visit Darchelle's folks and sister for the weekend. Donna fed us a tasty vegetarian curry and my favorite Greek salad for dinner when we arrived. Saturday morning we didn't quite make it to church to join her folks for the service. In the afternoon Darchelle hung out with Sally and the kids while I visited Lee and Nancy M, friends and coleaders at the Academy church whom I had not seen for perhaps 15 years. I shared my story of finding ALS and letting go of God. We talked about faith and love and our kids. It was good to see them again, and to find them in good health. Back at home again we watched a football game then sat around the gas fireplace while Darchelle napped and Donna and I discussed Universalism.
On Sunday afternoon Sally and Darchelle and I went birding. It was cloudy and chilly in town where we strolled the streets around SE Chestnut playing recordings of Blue Jay calls until the previously-reported Blue Jay called twice and flew overhead, affording us a very unsatisfactory silhouetted view, barely adequate to confirm the ID. We had another couple of hours so we drove up to Prescott and found Long-eared Owls in the same Russian Olive thicket by Barger Road where we found them two years ago. Probably some of the same owls as well, though as Daniel would say, "Hard saying not knowing." We continued west to Fish Hook Park along the Snake River where we searched unsuccessfully for Saw-whet Owls. I was chilled, and felt clumsy walking around the park so wasn't able to devote as much energy as usual to the search. I didn't even do a checklist.
We drove home on Monday afternoon, ran into some heavy snow on the west side of Snoqualmie Pass but not enough accumulation to impair the driving, and made it down to Renton just in time to look for the Lesser Black-backed Gull which had showed up on the same afternoon that we had left. Dusk fell before we could find it.

11/28/2019   Friendsgiving  
We didn't celebrate Thanksgiving with Darchelle's folks in Walla Walla this year because they were on their way to Michigan. Instead, Claire drove up from Salem and spent most of the day with us then we joined Daniel at his house for dinner. Doug had the kids so Claire came up alone and represented family for us. We stayed up late and slept in. Darchelle fixed Shakshuka for breakfast and we ate it for lunch then, tired of talking, we watched "Leap Year" on Netflix.
I had texted Daniel Wednesday evening to ask about his plans and he had replied (comments in italics are mine):
We signed up immediately! The other three turned out to be Daniel's housemate N, a friend of hers named J, and Daniel's friend M. M prepared the oysters and the cod; Daniel prepared the steaks and onions and provided and served the wine. N fixed the other sides, homestyle cooking. J brought a partially-completed "No Fuss" Apple pie for which the apples were marinating with sugar and spices in a 1 gallon Ziploc bag which had to be flipped every 30 minutes while the crust chilled for two hours outdoors. J fretted that he might've used an incorrect amount of salt in the crust, perhaps only 0.1gm instead of the recommended 0.2gm, or was it the other way around? In the baking the crust was charred but it otherwise turned out well, suitably salty despite the fuss. The apples on the other hand were undercooked and tasteless. We were all stuffed with creamy Basque cheesecake by the time we got to the pie because it had to cool for two hours after coming out of the oven. N on guitar and J on ukulele sang Christmas carols for us while we waited then N transitioned to blues. The guys (including M) increasingly salted the conversation with penis jokes as we progressed through the wine. I felt a bit like an anthropologist studying Millennials but enjoyed both the company and the dinner, and of course the wine, especially the orange wine and the Syrah. Between the sides and the desserts Darchelle found enough to eat too despite the absence of a vegetarian entrée.
That night I remembered another apparent God dream.

12/01/2019   Mountain Plover  
A new state bird for me! They are a rare late fall visitor to Washington. This one was discovered two days ago at Griffiths Priday State Park out on the coast north of Ocean Shores. Saturday was sunny but Darchelle and I thought we would go to church so we didn't chase the bird. Today was rainy with even a little snow in the forecast but the bird might not stick around so we went for it. Ed and Delia joined us, and graciously drove. Griffiths Priday is a wild spit of sandy beach, dune grass and successional brush yielding to Spruce woods where Connor Creek meanders into the ocean. It was overcast and cold when we got there but at least it was not raining. We found the bird right away at the mouth of the creek, foraging along the high tide line with a few Semipalmated Plovers. While Darchelle was photographing it I noticed that one of the gulls squabbling at the waters edge was unusually pale. Was it a Glaucous? It was! Another unusual visitor, another year bird. It was a hatch year individual, larger than any other gull on the beach with bright pink legs and a pink bill with a black tip. As first year gulls sometimes are, it proved to be quite tame and Darchelle took hundreds of photos. One of the Semipalmated Plovers also looked unusually pale, and it turned out to be a much less common Snowy Plover. What a day - three rare birds in one spot!
We felt a little less lucky when we learned that while we were out at the coast, an extremely rare Ross's Gull was discovered just 3 miles from home, was seen by about a dozen birders, and then was caught and eaten by a Bald Eagle. The only consolation was that I probably would not have learned about it before it was gone.

12/08/2019   Okanogan Highlands  
Seeking to augment my year bird total, we recruited Andy and Ellen to help us out with a trip to the Okanogan. Our high hopes for half a dozen or more species were only encouraged by our first afternoon in the field when we found three new species quite easily - Prairie Falcon, Snow Bunting and American Tree Sparrow - on the Waterville Plateau. We might have missed the Snow Buntings except that Ellen suggested we drive the 5 miles out of our way to Atkins Lake. The flock that flew overhead while we were scoping geese on the far side of the frozen lake were the only ones we saw all weekend. We found the Tree Sparrows at one of their usual spots at L Rd NE and 13th Rd NE. After spending an hour or so bouncing through the sagebrush on J Rd NE we got back on pavement and flushed a big grouse out of the sagebrush on Darchelle's side of the car but she was the only one who saw it as it rocketed out of sight over the brow of the hill. We could not relocate it.
We stayed at the Omak Inn and ate at the Breadline Café both Friday and Saturday night and spent all day Saturday and Sunday searching the Okanogan Highlands and Cameron Lakes plateau for winter birds, the valley around Bridgeport for Bohemian Waxwings and Bridgeport Hill Road for Sharp-tailed Grouse. Unsuccessfully. We did find a few birds, mostly in the valley, and enjoyed lots of beautiful scenery. Barring an unanticipated outing, that will leave my total for the state for the year at 317.

12/12/2019   Rat Dream  
I woke up last night from quite a vivid dream about a rat.
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12/15/2019   Tsunami Dream  
I woke up tingling with fear from a dream last night and it took me a while to settle down.