Friday, August 31, 2012

The girls safe at Dryad's Rest

The girls are all at home at Dryad's Rest, JoAnne Kirley's farm in Pe Ell, Washington State.

Dryad's Rest has a big, beautiful rooster, Tiberius. Our big black hen, Black, seemed to decide he had disappeared her tiny black companion, Inky. She went for Tiberius, and was pulling feathers out of him before I could make her stop. When Inky finally reappeared, Black calmed down. I knew she was top hen, but didn't know a hen would beat up a rooster twice her size. Bad girl!

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Flowers and Roots





Slip point beach. One of our neighbors was "sold" a beach. Nature redecorates.














Salt Air road; the neighbor that tries to keep things cheerful. During the winter, they keep Christmas lights on day and night. it's pretty.









Underground flowers. Or Potato Monsters.



Summer 2012 Festivals with the Makah.

First, Fourth of July fireworks in Neah Bay, on the town beach.

Fire balloon over Neah Bay
Photosynthesis Festival, in July. Hobuck Beach.

Techno-lightshow tent. Good dancing.
Outside the tent, the bonfire.
All-night dancing and drinking tea, and zoning out in the Snake Temple. It rained down like out of buckets, but who cared?

We could all get dried off around the bonfire. The light from the tent colored the smoke and the mizzle rain, out into the night. Beautiful.




Bicycle jousting at Castle Camp.



ToorCamp! Geeks, Nerds and Bacon Science. July daytime.










War Dance in Neah Bay
Makah Days, right downtown, August. The War Dance; other Makah villages (back before we dragged them into one) representing other tribes, for example, visitors from Alaska. They're very much a greeting/party/festival people, the Makah. They do it right.

That young man in the foreground is a powerful dancer.




Metal Washes Out

Old metal "ribs(?)" at mouth of the Clallam River ("old" being a relative term).

The river is washing back into the old camping area by the highway, chewing the roots out out of the bank below the trees; that big electrical pylon may be next to go after the trees.

Could be spectacular.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Pillar Point Rape

Up here, historically, rumor wanders of the logging companies HATING the Pillar Point recreational area's trees because it was a knot in their rope of clear-cuts on Highway 112.

Well, a logging company managed to get it. This formerly beautiful tunnel of maples and conifers - a refuge to locals needing a break and shellfish and a growing number of tourists on their way to spend money on the west end - is just a crumble of stumps.

When the Scenic Route was launched, one of the logging company officials said to me, "We're going to use this to show people what a working forest looks like." As a reasonable person, I assumed he might mean that a compromise had been reached, in which some of the forest was worked while other parts were allowed for scenic - that is, tourism dollar - value.

112 was subjected to a full-blown clearcut attack. It looks like the Taliban has been here.

Note: The signs going up here are not only expensive, but they contain that phrase. This kind of print run - and others appearing on the peninsula - cost money. Whose?



The ripping down of Pillar Point's trees: Theft? State park staff collusion? What? Is it an attempt to damage the growing and sustainable tourist industry (or, as resource industries die - and they always do - the desperate historical urge to get the last bit squeezed out before the collapse?)?

Is this even in the local papers yet? Will it ever be?

Note: An Elwha tribal member reported that there are survivors of a logging company bulldozing of the river - making it unnavigable - and the homes of the Elwha river tribal community, while members were "in Port Angeles to go to a party." When asked why such a thing would have been done, the reply was, "To get rid of Indians."

Them's the reports, or at least the un-detailed and unatributed version I'm releasing now. Put 'em together as may be needed, and ask the pertinent parties the relevant questions.

Monday, August 06, 2012

Cabezon

This is a big old Cabezon, dead on the beach. Why didn't anything eat him/her? About as long as my arm. Old age? Disease? Swallowed a hook?










Now something has begun chowing down.

Nothing left but the backbone.












Finally, the jawbones float loose and end up farther down the beach. Someone else made a nice circle of red stones, to which could be added the bones.