Christmas 2013

I was walking my dog Skyeball Christmas morning on our usual route by Diobsud (Die-ohb-sud) Creek when, several hundred yards from the creek I saw a salmon egg in the trail that we usually take through an old pasture. This egg was several hundred yards from the creek. A few feet further there was another and another and then several together and then a spot of dark red blood.

The blood spots and eggs continued along the trail for maybe 200 feet and then there was a big patch of blood. And then more small spots of blood and eggs. At first I thought the eggs and blood might have been from an eagle but then the trail continued under the cover of the woods where it was unlikely that an eagle would have been traveling in a manner that left a clear trail of eggs and blood. This, and the fact that the blood and egg trail followed the walking trail exactly pointed to another animal, the most likely would be a coyote.

Though there was snow on the ground, I couldn’t make out any definite tracks. There were several previous day’s worth of tracks, both Skyeball’s, which are within the size range of a coyote, and coyote tracks. In addition, there was a hard crust on the snow when the blood and egg trail was made and this prevented lighter animals like coyotes from leaving a well defined track. About all I could be sure of is that it wasn’t a bear and it probably wasn’t an eagle or other bird which probably wouldn’t have followed the exact line of the walking trail in flight.

Finding salmon eggs and carcasses so far from the water isn’t at all unusual. There have been a number of studies over the last 20 years or more that have shown that trees and other vegetation near streams derive a significant amount of nitrogen from salmon carcasses. This was done by tracking ¹⁵N or Nitrogen 15, an isotope that is most commonly found in seawater. The logic is that this nitrogen isotope is in the flesh of the salmon which carry it upstream, far from the sea, when they come back to spawn.

The nutrients in the salmon are spread by predators and scavengers in the form of carcasses and the feces of the predators and scavengers. In this way, salmon actually fertilize forests far from the sea. Nitrogen 15 has been found 500 feet or even more from salmon spawning streams.

That trail in the snow on Christmas morning told that story quite vividly with the salmon pink eggs and dark red blood on the white snow. I could have followed it and maybe picked up some clues as to what predator or scavenger was carrying the carcass but I didn’t. It would have been nice to get some pictures of this story in the snow to illustrate the process by which nitrogen 15 moves from the Pacific Ocean upstream to a valley in the North Cascades but I didn’t do that either because I didn’t have a camera. The snow was gone by the next day and, while the eggs were still there, the effect wasn’t nearly as dramatic.

You see, I was not out on a photographic expedition. In fact, I was running way late for a brunch date at Sacha’s mom’s. By the time I ran across that trail, it was a little after 9:00 a.m. We were supposed to be at Sacha’s mom’s, over an hour’s travel away, at 10:00 a.m. Obviously we were late.

The cause for the tardiness on Christmas morning started several weeks before, shortly after Thanksgiving. Vashti caught a cold, which my mom and myself both soon caught. This cold lingered on and on. With Vashti the cold eventually allowed pinkeye and a nasty ear and sinus infection to take hold. With my mom it became pneumonia. I seem to have mostly recovered.

The plan for Christmas Eve was to have dinner after I got home from work and attend a service at church. I walked through the door to the smell of a delicious dinner and the news that we had to go to the Emergency Room because Vashti was running a high fever and was developing a rash. I had just taken my mom to the Emergency Room several days before and she was still in the hospital. In addition, our heating stove needed to be cleaned because it had quit working.

So down the road we went. It is about an hour to the nearest hospital from where we live. An hour or two later it was determined that Vashti is allergic to amoxicillin. She had been started on this antibiotic about a week before to combat her ear infection.  We were given a substitute for the amoxicillin and a Vashti got a grape popsicle. We also got to see mom who was recovering from pneumonia in a nearby room. It was 11:30 p.m. by the time we got back home.

Christmas morning we got up early, about 6:00 a.m. not because Vashti was eagerly waiting to open presents, she was still asleep, but because we had a sink full of dirty dishes from dinner the night before to deal with and the stove to get cleaned. In addition, it was discovered that a package of hamburger, shoved in haste into the refrigerator, had leaked all over the bottom shelf and blood had gotten into a number of cracks and crevices. To clean this up, we had to empty and disassembly the lower shelves of the refrigerator and clean or throw away the produce.

We got everything done at about 8:00 a.m. but I still had to go to mom’s and feed and water the cows and walk Skyeball. I also still had a few presents to wrap. Which brings us back to the trail in the snow, why I didn’t take any photos of it while it was fresh and at its peak for dramatic effect and why we were late to Christmas brunch.

I am not relating this course of events in an effort to evoke sympathy. I have had a few Christmases worse than this one. And I know that there are many in this world who have had Christmases that are unimaginably worse. All in all things weren’t so bad. The prognosis is good for everyone who is not feeling well. We got to see mom on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and we got some really good family visits.

I have dragged this post on for several pages in order to make a point. I have heard, more than once, that, we locals who live in this beautiful place, don’t appreciate it. The above anecdote is an example of what it means to actually live somewhere. When live in the same place day after day and year after year you have the many of the same worries, cares and obligations that anyone else living anywhere else does. The setting doesn’t change this. When you are just trying to get through the day, trying to make sure everyone is fed and cared for, worrying about sick loved ones or battling some illness yourself and worrying about how you are going to earn enough money to make ends meet in an economically depressed area, you don’t often spend a lot of time pondering, in deep thought about how lucky you are to live in such a beautiful place. You certainly might notice that it is pretty out but you have to keep going. The last few lines of Robert Frost’s poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening seem to sum this up nicely:

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep.

And miles to go before I sleep.

And miles to go before I sleep.” 

There are a lot of days like that for me. My apologies if the reader feels that the quoted lines are slightly out of context.

Someone observing my actions on Christmas Day might have thought me quite oblivious to what was going on around me. It would have appeared that I drove blindly by many quite stunning views of the mountains with the clouds just clearing off freshly fallen snow that morning. I bombed through the popular eagle watching spots without a second glance, merely keeping a sharp eye out for eagle watchers who have a tendency to be standing in the highway which has a speed limit of 50 m.p.h. There weren’t any eagle watchers out that morning and the traffic was very light and appeared to be mostly local. I suspect that most of the folks who would have ordinarily been out on such a beautiful morning were somewhere else with their families for the holiday.  

So I didn’t follow that trail in the snow on Christmas Day. I also didn’t bring my camera when I went to do chores. I had to meet certain obligations to my family that involved a certain time line and taking photographs is very distracting and time consuming. If I had stopped to soak in the scenery and take pictures we wouldn’t have gotten to Christmas brunch until sometime in the late afternoon.

When I go on vacation, I tend to leave my everyday worries and obligations behind and thus have more energy and attention to devote to things other than maintaining my daily existence. I also have more time to just stop and experience things because, for me, essentially, that is the purpose for taking a vacation. I assume most other people are the same way. So, I feel it is quite unfair for someone who is vacationing here, just up visiting for a day or a week or even a few months to judge those of us who live here and are trying to make a living here. When you actually live full time somewhere, you can’t be on vacation all the time.

I was probably about 12 years old the first time I ever rode in an elevator. That first ride was quite a thrill. What a cool labor saving device. And, if you think about it, an elevator is a marvelous concept. However, I wouldn’t expect someone who grew up in the city and had been riding elevators since infancy to feel the same way. To folks who live and work in tall buildings every day, an elevator ride is most likely quite unremarkable. And I am quite sure that these good folks would object to me quite strenuously if I were to stand in everyone's way to gawk at elevators the way I see a lot of people blocking roads here to gawk at eagles or scenery. 

I grew up in the North Cascades. I have seen these mountains in a lot of different conditions and I have seen a lot of wildlife. I am sure there are things here that, to me, are every day, unremarkable things that are nothing less than spectacular to someone who has never seen these things before or only sees them every once in a while. This is not to say that these things are not spectacular or worthy of marveling at, but, at some point, you have to ignore the everyday things in your life to some extent in order to function. Imagine how hard it would be to get anything done in the city if, every time you used and elevator, you stopped and marveled at it for hours.

When you live in a place like this, there is much more to it than just beautiful scenery and wildlife. Among other things, you are a long way from help if you have a serious medical problem and you have to do a lot of things for yourself, including a lot of things that are publicly funded services in more populated areas. So, just because I, or any of the other folks who live here full time, don’t stop to look at eagles or mountains or forests all the time doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate them. We are more than likely busy trying to meet our daily obligations and deal with our problems and don’t have the time to stop and take an extra long look at things we see every day.

 

Salmon egg in pasture on wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) plant. Most of these photos don't have a lot to do with the majority of this post and they are only somewhat illustrative of the first part of the post but I thought I would include them so the reader would know that I wasn't just making up the story of the trail of eggs and blood. 

The trail through the old pasture is evident by the flattened grass. There is a salmon egg just to the left of, and below center frame. 

Salmon eggs and the few small remnant patches of snow left. Though it was frosty Christmas morning, the weather warmed up significantly and it rained. Consequently, most of the snow was gone by the time I could get back to the trail with my camera on the day after Christmas. Many eggs remained but there was no trace of any of the blood spots, either large or small. 

P.S. Friday the 27^th , the day after I wrote most of the text for this post when I stopped at mom’s on the way to work to feed and water Skyeball I heard something big in the brush outside the fence line of our pasture. It was dark so I couldn’t see what was making the noise.

Ironically, I had just been reading a book skeptical about much of the evidence one sees for the existence of Bigfoot or Sasquatch. I was thinking about what the book had been saying when I heard the first branch break in the pitch black. Despite myself, I was a little freaked out. With a little effort, I reined in my imagination which was getting set to run away full tilt and reasoned that the most likely explanation for something large breaking brush in the dark just outside the pasture was that one of the cows had gotten out.

I went into the house and got the headlamp and started looking in the woods along the fence line. Sure enough there was a set of eyes, at cow height off the ground, not sasquatch height. It was Flopsy, one of our little bulls. Flopsy exhibits much of his Black Angus heritage and is solid black. Solid black creatures are really hard to see at night. I was half tempted to wait until after work to put him back in when I had a little daylight to work with. However, I couldn’t count on him not wandering out into the highway. A large, solid black animal, in the dark, on a black highway with the speed limit set at 50 m.p.h. is a very bad thing.

It would be truly awful if a total stranger happened to hit him and be injured or killed not to mention massive damage to their vehicle but at this time of year, with the pass closed, and at this time of day, early in the morning, most of the people who would be going by on the road would be my friends and neighbors. So it was obvious that I needed to get him back into the pasture.

I got through the fence and started herding him along the fence line toward an open gate behind the house. The salmonberry brush in this area is very thick and well over my head in height. Flopsy ran into a clump of brush that he couldn’t push through and backed up. I was right behind him and I slipped and fell flat on my back off a small log I was standing on. The sky was clear and there was frost on the ground. That, and small remnant patches of snow, made the footing on the log extremely treacherous.

When I hit the ground, my light blinked out. All I could see was Flopsy’s bulk blotting out the stars overhead like some black mass of doom. Getting a several hundred pounds worth of beef, all concentrated in hard hooves stomped into my chest or abdomen is not how I like to start my day. As I struggled to avoid hooves, Flopsy found a hole through the brush and went that way rather than back over the top of me. So I escaped with only a few salmonberry thorns in my hands.

After I got Flopsy back in the pasture, I stopped to think about things. This could have been a very serious situation for me. Assuming a hoof to the chest or abdomen wasn’t fatal, if I was injured too badly to move no one would have probably looked for me for most of the day and probably well into the evening.

Mom was in the hospital and I had told everyone at work of this situation and that I might need to take some time off to get mom from the hospital so they would have assumed that is why I wasn’t at work. In addition, it was payday Friday when it is my habit to not go straight home but go to the bank first. So I would normally be running later than usual getting home. Finally, mom was released from the hospital that evening and Sacha called work and had a message relayed to me. Conceivably, if I wasn’t at work, things might have gotten confused to the point that Sacha would have assumed I was picking up mom and wouldn’t know to look for me until mom called wondering where her ride was, probably later in the evening. To top it all off, the brush where this all happened is very thick and it would have been hard to see someone lying in it. I have the habit of wearing my wool blend long underwear and extra layers of clothes this time of year but I don’t know if I could have staved off hypothermia for most of a day and night, especially if I was hurt.  

Dying or getting killed in such a manner seems kind of strange, almost unbelievable, ironic or even silly but one hears about people “buying the farm”, to use a bad pun, in such incredible ways all the time.

P.P.S. That evening I needed to get down to pick up mom so I didn’t have a chance to check the fence line after work to see where Flopsy got out. I did stop in to feed and water Skyeball and the cows after work and everyone was in the pasture at that time. Saturday morning when I came up to feed and water everyone one of the heifers was out. Time was limited for me on this day as well but I did have a chance to check the fence, figure out where the cows were getting through and make a temporary patch. The permanent fix will hopefully be done on Sunday, along with trying to get the throttle linkage for the tractor fixed and many other items on an endless to-do list.

I have gotten to this point in one piece and everyone around me seems to be on the mend. So Merry Christmas! And Happy New Year!