Today we Found…

A catbird nest from last year. It’s a flimsy construction, but that seems to be characteristic of catbird architecture. This one is made of loosely bound twigs and bark peels of paper birch, plus the horsetail species Equisetum fluviatile. The nearest E. fluviatile is about 250 meters away, and there are other, more abundant Equisetum species nearer the nest. But it seems that only E. fluviatile would do.

And we also found:

The remains of a snowshoe hare. Probably killed by a lynx, which specialize in hunting rabbits.

Poor rabbits.

In some traditional European cultures, a rabbit’s foot is a luck charm, especially if found on a Friday (it was indeed Friday), and especially-especially if found on a Friday the 13th (we missed that by one day). So we brought home the foot, which is now in the freezer to kill any creepy-crawlies that first claimed the foot. Poor creepy-crawlies. Later, I’ll make an amulet of the foot, and it will bring me good luck.

…which weighs almost nothing, and which has two kinds of fur: the upper side has straight, forward-pointing hairs, and the lower side has fuzzy, downward pointing hairs, which would be good insulation against the winter cold, and which would allow the rabbit to run on snow without sinking in much. The fur on the lower surface is amazingly soft. If you asked a friend to close their eyes, and then you brushed that fur over the palm of their hand, they would hardly be able to tell that anything was touching them. I was reminded of a line from Elizabeth Bishop’s poem The Armadillo, in which she describes a fire-fleeing baby rabbit she caught in Brazil: “So soft! – a handful of intangible ash”.

Poor rabbit.

Here’s a link to the poem, which is a life-long favourite of mine:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57076/the-armadillo

Get the Kong!

The Kongs

Buki and I have several games we play daily. But “Get the Kong!” is more than a game. It’s like a sport. It involves two Kong flying discs. They’re made of rubber, and they have just the right floppiness and weight and aerodynamic-ness to fly superbly. Much better than rigid plastic discs. And they’re easy on a dog’s teeth for catching. Plastic discs yield little shreddings of plastic in a dog’s mouth (terrible!). So rubber is better. We love everything about Kong flying discs, except that they don’t float (guests, please don’t throw our Kongs into the pond).

Here’s how “Get the Kong!” works (refer to map). You don’t have to understand all the elaborate rules, but I will try to describe them clearly:

The layout of “Get the Kong!” The excellent base map is by Jason Hollinger.

1: Buki gets into position on the top of the hump in the driveway, and looks at me with an expression of urgency. No matter how busy I am, that expression says “We gotta play Get the Kong! Right now!” So I get into position 2: From where I throw first one Kong, then the other, with a right handed hook to try to pass the Kongs’ flights between the trees that line the driveway. When thrown well, the Kongs fly right to Buki, who then leaves the Kongs where they lie on the driveway and runs to position 3: To where I then have to throw the two Kongs from position 1, this time with a left-handed hook to clear the trees. I then proceed to position 3 from which I throw first one Kong to position 4: To which Buki runs to be ready to catch the first Kong in the air, before it can touch the ground. I then throw the second Kong to position 5: To where Buki must run to catch that Kong in the air, and from where I then throw that second Kong to position 6: To which Buki must run as fast as she can to catch the Kong in the air. I wait at position 5 until Buki connects with the Kong at position 6, at which point I then take off sprinting as fast as I can and scoop up, in mid-stride, the Kong at position 4 and then sprint to position 7: which is where a cottonwood tree grows. The cottonwood serves as a sort of finish-line to which Buki must sprint from position 6 as fast as she can to try to get there before me. According to the rules, I have to throw the Kong that I picked up at position 4 at the moment when Buki passes me. If I’m too slow, then I must throw in mid-stride before I reach the cottonwood and Buki wins that round. If I sprint fast enough, I get to the cottonwood before Buki, and I win that round, and I can throw from a stationary position, or at least with a more controlled mid-stride throw. In order to win the round, my Kong-throw from position 7 has to be from the road bed, not from a shortcut in the meadow, which often means that I have a longer sprint to the cottonwood. Buki is so much faster than me that I need a run that much shorter than hers for it to be a fair contest. If I throw badly to positions 4, 5, and 6, then Buki’s sprint is usually shortened, and I have a harder time of getting to the cottonwood before her, so my good aim is key to a well-played round of “Get the Kong!” From position 7 toward position 8, I throw the Kong downward, so it bounces up off the ground on a ricochet flight (Kongs will fly after a well-done bounce). If I’m really good, the Kong bounces up off the ground right in front of Buki’s face as she runs, and then she and the Kong travel at almost the same speed, and she tries to accelerate to catch the Kong before it touches the ground again. That is not easy, especially if I’m throwing in mid-stride. But when it works, we both feel especially happy. And so, Buki tries to catch the Kong at position 8: Where I then proceed to retrieve the Kong from her, which at this position always involves play-growling, tug-o’-war, and Buki being propelled through the air, her grip on the Kong fighting against centripetal force as I spin her around in the air, which she loves. Once I gain the Kong from Buki at position 8, I then throw it back to position 5, where Buki tries to catch it in the air. And from position 5, I throw again to position 6, and from position 6, where I retrieve both Kongs, the game begins again with another round from that position to positions 4 & 5. We repeat for the best three out of four rounds. After that, when we return to position 6 on the last round, I then throw the Kongs to position 1, meet with the Kongs there, while Buki runs to be ready to catch the Kongs at position 2, to which I throw with a tight left-handed hook to keep the Kongs from crashing into the trees on the side of the driveway and to keep them from landing on the woodshed roofs. And once again, at position 1, Buki tries to catch the Kongs in the air. The longer Kong flights between the positions are 40–50 meters, so our sprints are fairly long and the exercise we get is intense.

By the time we’re done, Buki is panting and in need of a cool-down, so we then go to the pond, into which I throw a stick so she can splash into the water to get the stick and to cool off, which she does with a highly dramatic bowwowing bark. Or if it’s winter and the pond is frozen, Buki eats snow to cool off, and she rolls in the snow for maximum cooling. And then we go have treats and Buki feels satisfied. And I can then get back to work without Buki distracting me.

Anyway…This is one way for both Buki and me to keep very, very, very healthy and happy. We do this once or twice each day. Even in winter, when we have to run through the snowpack, I in gumboots.

I don’t remember how “Get the Kong!” evolved out of our random Kong throw-and-catch games, but its evolution was organic, with elaborations added periodically. I’m not 100% sure that Buki understands “Get the Kong!” as a competitive game as much as I do. But I think there really is a bit of the competitiveness for her in it, at least the part where we sprint to be the first to get to position 7. If there is some degree of competition for her, as there is for me, then I must wonder if there is any other game of competition between two very unrelated species.

Purple and I had a similar, but non-competitive game, which I will describe in a future post. I would love to know of other elaborate games played between humans and dogs, or other species.

Thankyou for reading.

Explorer’s Log: Moonwort Magic

For the previous entry in the Walker series, see my blog post of 6 April.

During this June excursion to the Walker, Shane and I spent some time crawling and crouched, scanning the roadside ground for moonworts. Strange, elusive little plants that had talismanic power in various traditional cultures. Moonworts still possess their magic, but their lore has faded; hardly anyone is even aware of them today. Moonwort hunting is a favourite of northern North American botanists. If you drive along country lanes or forest service roads, and you see one or more people down on their knees & elbows in meadows or old pastures, peering at the ground, stop and ask if they’re hunting for moonworts.

To the Europeans of hundreds of years ago, moonworts had special authority over metals. There were beliefs that moonworts could un-shoe horses. Alchemists used moonworts to catalyze common metals into rare ones. Moonworts could open locks in lieu of a key. Maybe this was because moonworts are vaguely key-like in appearance. Like this:

Botrychium pinnatum

Moonworts are ferns, and ferns are cryptogams. Cryptogam is an old-fashioned term that sprang up in the days when people still placed all things, at the highest level of classification, into “animal, plant, or mineral”. Looking one level down in classification, early botanists didn’t know what to do with those various unrelated plants and plantish things that have no flowers: mosses, mushrooms, lichens, ferns. When scientific botanical classification was just getting underway, plant classification depended foremostly on numbers of flower parts, Linnaeus’ floral formulas. The flowerless had nowhere to go in this schema. So ferns and the rest had to be swept under the rug of crypto – hidden gamy – sexual union, the cryptogams.

Even earlier European naturalists believed that cryptogams really did have flowers, but those flowers were extremely secretive and ephemeral, unobserved except by the blessed or the lucky or the insane. Ferns were said, by master naturalists, to flower only at midnight during a full moon, on St. John’s Eve, or at other such occult moments. How else could they reproduce?

But now we know that ferns make spores, which in turn make male gametophytes that issue free-range sperm, unlike the pollen-bound sperm of flowering plants. And they also make spores that in turn make female gametophytes to receive their male visitors inconspicuously, in moist dark places. No flowers necessary. And no seed. The mature plants arise direct from the secret union of gametes, direct from the wee and seldom seen female fern gametophyte.

The intriguing cryptosex of those never-seen fern flowers, naturally, was an indication of magic power. How could it not be? All powers are impotent if not harnessed by humans, yes? So the power of ‘fern flower’ secrecy had to be classed as a power of human invisibility. Used correctly, ferns could confer the power of going unnoticed.

We have the receipt of the fern seed; we walk invisible — Shakespeare

Moonworts (the genus Botrychium) were especially potent in this regard. Like the rest of the ferns, their “flowers” were never observed. But the ephemeral nature of the moonwort plants themselves piqued more interest yet. Most ferns have a long season of conspicuous growth, or they’re evergreen. The above-ground plants of moonworts are tiny, and short-lived. They may appear for a month or two in early summer, then disappear from sight without a trace. And where seen in one year, they may be unseen again for another ten years before popping up unexpectedly. And they are ecologically unpredictable. Their criteria for good habitat seem to be completely different from the preferences of every other kind of plant.

And so, according to moonwort lore, one could tap the power of Botrychium invisibility and go unnoticed on crime sprees. Moonworts, “more beholden to the night“, were complicit in breaking/entering crimes. But only for those who had the botanical skills to know what a moonwort is and where and when to find one. Don’t worry, though, botanists are beholden to the day and are too busy to go thieving in the night. Botanists are more interested in keys for identification than the keys for unlocking doors and the invisibility needed for successful crime. At the end of this post is my draft key to the moonworts of British Columbia (including Botrypus and Sceptridium, which only recently have been commonly segregated from Botrychium). Give it a try (ask me if you don’t know the terminology). Notice how many species appear in this key. A lot.

Why do we have so many moonwort species in North America, whereas very few occur in Eurasia or beyond? Maybe there’s something special about this continent that is lacking elsewhere. Or maybe it’s because moonworts have never been studied anywhere so superbly as by the American taxonomists and moonwort explorers Herb & Florence Wagner:

The Wagners had the good botanical eye (the capability of visual memory, which is key to the work of a plant taxonomist) that could meticulously sort out bewildering variation into sensible classification. Considering the rarity and here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of moonworts, that was not an easy task. The Wagners left us a legacy of taxonomic clarity. Without them, we would still be moonwort-blind. I wish they were alive today so I could ask them whether they agree with me that some of our North American species are present in Eurasia but overlooked by the botanists there. I’ve mentioned those overlooked moonworts to some European botanists, and so far I’ve received only the correspondence equivalent of a blank stare.

I’ve been working intensively since 2016 to document the flora of the Robson Valley. Throughout those years, I’ve been struck by the relative low diversity and abundance of moonworts. So many habitats in the region seem ideal, but there never was much. Maybe I was just searching in the wrong years, when the moonworts were dormant? Or maybe I just wasn’t “blessed” or “mad” enough to see them. It’s hard not to believe in intentional elusiveness of the moonworts. But the 2023 work, exploring the Walker, brought many more species, many of the long expected ones, into the Robson Valley flora. Maybe I was finally blessed. Or maybe Shane brought good luck. And such moonworts that Shane and I found! Like these (B. alaskense, B. boreale, B. echo, B. lanceolatum):

Thank you Shane. And thank you Florence & Herb Wagner. It was great fun moonworting in the Walker!

                  Key to Botrychium sensu lato of British Columbia
1a Trophophores evergreen, trophophore of previous year present ...Sceptridium
  2a Trophophore stalk 15–30 mm; fertile portion of sporophore 1–2 x long as wide, 
  branches spreading; mostly INT ...S. multifidum
  2b Trophophore stalk 30–140 mm; fertile portion of sporophore 2–5 x long as wide, 
  branches steeply ascending; COAST and COL ...S. silaifolium
1b Trophophores all deciduous, relatively delicate, one per plant ...2
  3a Trophophore 3–4 x pinnate, mostly >100 mm wide, green from late spring through 
  summer ...Botrypus
  3b Trophophore 1–2(-3)x pinnate, <<100 mm wide, ephemeral, usually fading after 1-
  2 months ...Botrychium s. str.

                 Key to Botrychium sensu stricto of British Columbia
1a Trophophore modified into a second sporophore, no expanded blades present ...B. paradoxum
1b Trophophore with expanded blades (though sometimes bearing sporangia) ...2
  2a Terminal pinna of trophophore broadly rounded at apex; common stalk of    
  trophophore and sporophore at or near ground level ...B. simplex
  2b Terminal pinna of trophophore truncate or emarginate at apex; common stalk 
  elevating the trophophore-sporophore attachment above ground level ...3
    3a At least proximal pinnae of trophophore pinnatifid or pinnate ...4
      4a Trophophore proximal pinnae as long as the distal portion, hence 
      trophophore more or less deltate or pentagonal in outline ...5
        5a Pinnules more or less ovate to flabellate, touching or even overlapping  
        ...Botrychium boreale
        5b Pinnules more or less narrowly oblanceolate to linear, well spaced ...6
          6a Trophophore dark green, ultimate segments mostly <2 mm wide ...B.   
          lanceolatum subsp. angustisegmentum
          6b Trophophore medium or yellowish green, ultimate segments mostly >2 mm 
          wide ...B. lanceolatum subsp. lanceolatum
      4b Trophophore proximal pinnae distinctly shorter than distal portion, 
      trophophore of narrower shapes, usually more or less ovate in outline ...7
        7a Trophophore proximal pinnae exaggeratedly long, much longer than the 
        second pinnae ...B. michiganense
        7b Trophophore proximal pinnae <, = or slightly > second pinnae ...8
          8a Trophophore conspicuously stalked ...B. pedunculosum
          8b Trophophore sessile or nearly so ...9
            9a Plants glaucous; trophophore pinnae pinnatifid, often shallowly so 
            ...B. hesperium
            9b Plants not glaucous; trophophore pinnae (except depauperate plants) 
            pinnate or deeply pinnatifid ...10
              10a Trophophore veins relatively inconspicuous; pinnules not 
              overlapping, mostly not contiguous, proximal ones of the proximalmost  
              and/or second basiscopic pinnules more widely spreading than the 
              others (thumb-like) ...B. echo
              10b Trophophore veins conspicuous; pinnules mostly contiguous or  
              overlapping, those of all pinnae having about the same orientation 
              ...11
                11a Trophophore pinnae more or less tapered to the apex; sporophore 
                proximalmost branches often much longer than the adjacent ones, 
                sporophore stalk often so short that the proximalmost branches arise 
                from near the base ...B. alaskense
                11b Trophophore pinnae rounded to the apex; sporophore proximal 
                branches not much longer than the adjacent ones, sporophore stalk 
                consistently elongated ...B. pinnatum
    5b Trophophore 1x pinnate, though some proximal pinnae may be deeply notched 
    downward from the distal margin ...12
      12a Trophophore pinnae more or less square; plants minute, thick, stiff, 
      friable; usually emerging in late summer-autumn ...B. mormo
      12b Trophophore pinnae flabellate, (ob)ovate, elliptic, oblong, spatulate, or 
      suborbicular; plants sometimes leathery or fleshy, but not stiff or friable;  
      usually emerging spring-mid summer ...13
        13a Most or all trophophore pinnae sporangium-bearing along their margins; 
        spores abortive ...B. x watertonense
        13b No or few trophophore pinnae sporangium-bearing, if sporangia present, 
        then only on the basiscopic half proximal pinnae margins; spores mostly well 
        formed ...14
          14a Trophophore pinna apices spanning an angle of 100–220° or more ...15
            15a Trophophore comparatively thin, not leathery, pinnae distal margins 
            consistently crenate and/or erose ...B. crenulatum
            15b Trophophore comparatively thick, leathery, pinnae distal margins 
            entire or slightly and irregularly notched or crenulate ...16
              16a Trophophore pinnae lateral margins separated by an angle of 100- 
              180° ...B. neolunaria
              16b Trophophore pinnae lateral margins separated by an angle of 180-
              220° ...17
                17a Proximal pinnae asymmetric, the basiscopic margin distinctly 
                longer and straighter than the acroscopic margin, often deeply 
                notched (like moose antlers); mature sporophore stalk usually <2x 
                trophophore length ...B. tunux
                17b Proximal pinnae more or less symmetric, the lateral margins 
                roughly equal in length and curvature; mature sporophore stalk 
                usually >2x trophophore length ...B. yaaxudakeit
          14b Trophophore pinnae apices spanning an angle of up to 100° ...18
            18a Trophophore pinnae linear, narrowly oblong or narrowly oblong-
            oblanceolate ...B. lineare
            18b Trophophore pinnae of wider shapes ...19
              19a Trophophore pinna attachment 3–4 mm, basiscopic margin decurrency 
              distinct to the next pinna below; plants glaucous ...B. adnatum
              19b Trophophore pinna attachment <3 mm, basiscopic margin decurrency 
              absent or inconspicuous and usually not reaching the adjacent pinna 
              ...20
                20a Pinnae strongly ascending; distal margins conspicuously dentate-
                lacerate ...B. ascendens
                20b Pinnae perpendicular to the rachis or weakly ascending; distal 
                margins entire or crenate ...21
                  21a Trophophore incurved proximally and distally, up to 40 x 10 
                  mm, pinnae up to 5 pairs; proximalmost pinnae usually with a deep 
                  central cleft; reported based on a poor specimen, needs 
                  confirmation ...[B. campestre]
                  21b Trophophore flat at least distally, up to 100 x 25 mm, pinnae               
                  up to 10 pairs; pinnae usually entire or with numerous shallow 
                  notches ...22
                    22a Proximal sporophore branches usually 1-pinnate; trophophore 
                    usually stalked; proximalmost pinna pair usually = second pair; 
                    common and widespread ...B. minganense
                    22b Proximal sporophore branches usually 2-pinnate; trophophore 
                    sessile; proximalmost pinna pair usually distinctly > second 
                    pair; rare ...B. spathulatum

So there you have it. Moonworts and magic. Plants for non-linear thinking. And why not leave a bit of room for magic in this world? For the inexplicable. If everything everywhere can be explained, including moonworts, and us, then what fun is life? And why not? The universe is capricious.

Take that, Richard Dawkins!

Brown Season

Edgewood in Brown Season

Like many northerners do, we could fly away in winter to gawk at screaming-bright colours sizzling under a blazing tropical sun. But for Trevor and me both, flying is deadly torture. So we stay at home through the cold months thinking dark, drab northern thoughts. We do monk things. We read, we sleep, we walk, we work, we dream deeply. Sombre ascetic pastimes.

But then winter fades away before spring is ready. As anyone in a cold climate knows, the early spring thaw uncovers the moldy brown of poverty. Monks’ robe brown. Post-apocalyptic brown. It’s brown season.

And then, out of the thawing silence of this monastic season of brown, during the high-pitched piccolo-trill song of a varied thrush, the first extravagant glints of colour spurt up, and my writing turns florid.

We survived another apocalypse. Happy Spring!

Breakfast for the Ancestors

And all the deaths I’m heir to/turn a little from their tasks and look at me

–Lorna Crozier, from Whetstone

I had a whopper of a hypoglycemia attack last week. Couldn’t sit up. Couldn’t even lift an arm. Trevor said I turned “ashen”. My pulse was rapid and weak, and I had pins & needles creeping up my arms and starting in my face. I thought I was going to die. The paramedics came.

I’ve recently reduced the fat in my diet. I was told my cholesterol reading was too high. So for the past few weeks, I’ve been trying obediently to function on more carbohydrates and less fat. Doctor’s orders.

My body does not have an easy time making and storing fat. I’m 51 years old now, but I have no paunch, no extra energy reserves. So when my blood glucose goes down, my body has precious little fat to turn to for energy. I eat a lot, throughout the day, to keep my blood sugar steady. I’ve had hypoglycemic attacks so often throughout my adult life that I’ve had plenty of opportunities to learn how to prevent them. But I’ve been working too hard, and my new diet just wasn’t keeping up with the energy expenditures. Too much carbs, too little fat. Even by my standards, this latest hypoglycemic collapse was extreme.

The past month’s outdoor work has been intense as we’ve done so much to limb-up trees and clean up the wood debris from the forest floor to reduce ladder fuel, and to burn the waste, in a hurry, before the pending ban on open burning. We can’t leave the waste sitting on the land all through the fire season. Unless the current drought abates, we could be facing one of our worst fire seasons this summer.

And because the spring thaw was about three weeks early, I have a lot of accelerated work to do in the garden to clean up the beds and to give all the seedlings a good start. Plus firewood chopping. Plus the energy costs of keeping Buki happy and well exercised (4–5 hours per day of walks, and frisbee-chasing, and various high-energy games). Plus contract work, and housekeeping, fire brigade duties, and errands.

And I’ve been going to the gym for weight lifting to build and maintain muscle. The workouts have burned up much of my thin veneer of subcutaneous fat. I’m leaner than ever, without any extra fuel to burn. Spring and summer keep me in such a high state of physical activity that from April to June, I usually lose about 10 pounds of muscle (and whatever fat I started with). And then I have to re-earn the muscle yet again during the next late fall-winter off-season. I’m now in my 50’s. It’s time to think ahead to old age. I don’t want low bone density, and I don’t want to be one of those skinny men who becomes a sadly skeletal old man. Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder, the same one that makes me so slender, thin-boned and tall, can lead to osteoporosis. I want a good sheath of muscle around every bone, and I want to work my limbs and core and pecs to strain the bones to make them stronger.

This morning’s article in The Guardian gives the right idea:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/07/the-muscle-miracle-can-i-build-enough-in-my-60s-to-make-it-to-100-even-though-ive-never-weight-trained

And, I might add, the body building is making me look pretty good. Some might even say “sexy”…(?). Not bad for 51 years old, anyway.

For the body-building to work, along with all the rest of the hard physical work in my daily life, I need a high-fat diet. My doctor is not wrong to be concerned about my cholesterol. But from the menu of maladies, I’d rather order death by cholesterol-caused massive stroke than an osteoporosis-caused broken bones and a depressingly sedentary life.

My ancestors were mostly northern Europeans. Dairy people. Consumers of whole milk and cream. Lean, tall, hard working, cold-climate people who understood that fatty foods get you through the winter and dairy and meat are what you need to get the job done. Those ancestors’ genes still live on, inside of me, in all my tissues. They tell me what to do, on a cellular level. They say “Eat fat.” They also say “Reproduce.”, but that’s not my job. I am a genetic dead-end, and I’m content with that. I’d rather leave a legacy of knowledge and ideas. The ancestors seem satisfied with my explanation.

Severe bouts of hypoglycemia come with the risk of a progressive damage to the pancreas and eventual onset of type-II diabetes. So I decided to resume my usual high-fat, high-protein diet. Carbs don’t do it for me; they just raise my insulin to levels that cause my glucose to collapse. I might dine differently if I lived a sitter’s life, staring all day at a television machine, or if I had different ancestors murmuring genetically inside my cells. But given my lifestyle and my peculiar genetics. I’m going to revel in the diet that my ancestors tell me I need. Like this:

A heap of potatoes, mashed with heavy (36%) cream, fried in a lot of butter, with five fried eggs, roasted tomatoes and tomatillo sauce. All home-grown or local except the butter, salt, and pepper. I would die without such a high-fat, high-calorie diet. In a famine, I’d be one of the first to perish.

This is the sort of breakfast it takes to feed my ancestors’ genes. This is the sort of breakfast I need to face all the hard work of helping to keep Edgewood going. Trevor and I are immersed in the vital, high-energy world of these ten acres, with all its demands for hard physical work. It’s kind of like a farmer’s life. Kind of like what I imagine my ancestors did to survive and thrive. I want to have enough harvest from the garden and enough gathered from the wild each year to support our annual dietary needs. After a lot of intense work to develop the gardens and learning how to preserve the harvests, we’re nearly there. It’s better than a starvation diet, anyway.

But all that work takes a lot of energy. It requires dietary fat, and muscle, and strong bones. Though the main fat and protein sources in my diet don’t come from Edgewood, most of the rest does. This is the land of Edgewood incorporated into my body, and returning to the land again. This is a human life intricately and intimately tied to the land and visa versa. A more sustainable way of living than grocery shopping and dining out. I have my hands in the soil of these gardens, and their harvests are inside of me. It isn’t easy, but it’s a delicious life.

When I finished the last bites of my breakfast, I was sorry there wasn’t more. I commented to myself: “Mmm, that was good.” And so I fed my ancestors, to their satisfaction. And then I went out and chopped wood, thinking thoughts about how I’ve not produced any descendants to feed my genes after I’m dead.

Bony apetite!

P.S., Trevor and I want to thank our good neighbour Chris Nowak for his first-aid help during my medical emergency. Thank you Chris & Amber for being such excellent people!

A morning walk, 6 April 2024

Setting out for our morning walk, we checked on the trail-side beaver lodge. The beavers, at least two, survived the winter. Their tail-slapping has resumed.

It’s “Brown Season” in the Clearwater Valley. The retreating snow reveals a lot of dead, squashed, moldy things. The green-up won’t start for a few more weeks. That distant late-lingering snow patch corresponds to the Pucker Bog, the only true bog within walking distance of the house. There’s a reason why the snow leaves the bog last. And that is the reason for the bog’s presence there. Bogs like it cold. Sadly, Pucker Bog is evolving into a Spiraea stand. The local climate’s gotten too warm for bogs in the southern Clearwater Valley. The fens are OK, but the bogs are doomed.

Moose poops. We used to see dozens of moose poop piles along our usual trails. But now we’re now lucky if we see one. I suspect the main problem is all the crisscrossing jiggle-jaggle of blown-over drought-dead trees in the forest. It’s hard to get around now, even for the moose despite their powerful long legs. They’ve had to move on to where they aren’t so restricted. The wolves can more easily pass through all the wreckage of dead trees. So for them it’s good hunting, and for the moose it’s a catastrophe.

In all our waking hours it never ends, the game of “Can’t Have My Stick”.

Four rattly birch bark cylinders strung along the stick, and the whole assembly perched on saplings beyond jumping height. Buki’s doing “push-push” to knock the stick down. She’s had a lot of practice at this, and she usually handles the task expertly. This game of push-push was difficult at first. It’s not a natural canine action. But once she mastered it, we transferred push-push to more applications, such as opening and closing doors.

In this photo is one of the nearby forest patches (which we call “Whisper Wood”) that remains in relatively good condition, without so many dead and fallen trees. It’s in a moist hollow, so the trees are somewhat buffered from the effects of the drought years. It’s become a favourite place for us to visit. A reminder of how healthy our local forests used to be before the climate started accelerating in its warming/drying. Buki knows this forest by name. She’ll lead us there if we ask her to take us to Whisper Wood.

Home again to an afternoon’s worth of maul-work, chopping aspen rounds. Or in other measures, this is one tree worth of aspen rounds. Poor tree. Yet another of our loved old aspens reached its fungal and ant-chambered end. I admired this tree for 20 years. Today, I saw its interior in each cross-section from base to tip. I smelled the perfume scent of its polypore fungal infection and examined the dark sinewy borders between the fungal territories mapped out within the trunk. It’s a scent that will alter to something less pleasant as the wood dries, but today, it was a scent I wouldn’t mind having in bottled form. I chopped each of those sections and felt the grain and knots resist or give with each strike of the maul. I set aside the rotten portions from the trunk base for campfires, and retained the less punky portions to burn two or three winters from now in the woodstove for winter heat.

Except the twigs, this whole tall tree will pass, log by log, through our house, transforming into heat and ash, and smoke that will drift out the chimney. A strange thought.

Before today, I knew this tree only from the outside. Its standing glory is only a memory. But now I know something of its anatomy. Poor tree. But at its roots, it remains alive. New stems will grow, but I won’t live long enough to see them as tall and glorious as the stem I chopped today.

Explorer’s Log, 9 June 2023

This entry continues the story of the Walker explorations, following the one posted on March 21.

The free-flowing Fraser

Nature is never ugly. If human economy leaves it all alone.

I have preferences for one landscape over another, but all wild places are delightful if you really open your eyes. Deserts, arctic tundra, coastal bogs, aspen parkland, alpine pinnacles, canyon walls, rain forest, savanna. It’s what this planet has given us. It’s all we have, and we should treasure it as it is.

The accounts of European explorers and settlers to western Canada found beauty in landscapes that they found familiar, that are similar to their origins. The oaks and meadows of southern Vancouver Island, so England-like. And the rest they found “gloomy”, or “desolate”, or “savage”. The error of cultural reference. In this case, the error of cultural landscape reference. The colonizers weren’t really seeing the landscapes they were conquering and settling. They were only looking for familiarity, wealth, comfort, and safety. The criteria for what, to them, was “beautiful”. Not much has changed. The European implant cultures are tenacious and still haven’t put down the tools of colonization. Still haven’t let go of European ideals. Still haven’t learned to live here.

Now that I live in the north and have few chances to return to my old botanical stomping grounds, in the inland northwestern U.S., I miss (and sometimes really long for) the Scablands, the Oregon High Desert, the Challis Valley, the Lemhi. But now, I face north. I arrived desiring and expecting the familiar, but I had to learn that my points of reference were left behind and that I had to learn to be truly present in my new landscape.

I came to Canada with a prejudice against northern biota. I expected utter boredom in the vascular plants. The lichens seemed pretty OK. But they felt like a consolation prize for having to turn my back on the more southern vascular plant flora that was my botanical first love. Wells Gray isn’t quite boreal. It’s a south-facing valley that takes in a milder southern climate compared to other drainages at this latitude, so it’s essentially at the northernmost limits of the inland temperate. It is, in fact, the location of the northernmost lizards in the New World. Many temperate-climate plants reach their northern limits here, and not so many boreal species reach their southern limits here. So I can keep some of my points of reference in the Wells Gray Country, but I had to learn to be receptive to what the north actually offers. That took some time.

My first job going north from Edgewood into the true boreal left me feeling reluctant to go. I thought it would be a waste of time. “Oh, the boring boreal, there’ll be nothing interesting, just the same species you could see right across northern North America”. That’s what most western North American botanists would think. But it’s only a prejudice. It’s only botanical points of reference. I even expected the boreal plains to be “ugly”. But not at all. That land is beautiful.

Now I know there is much for a botanist to discover in the north, at least because it’s so neglected. And since I track my daily catch of plant and lichen species, I have informal data that show that there is a lot more to see in a day’s work in the north than in the south, even in areas known for high floristic diversity (Oregon, California, for example). My average in the botanically famous Siskiyou-Klamath region of California and Oregon was around 250 species per day. My average in the Peace Valley of boreal northeast British Columbia was over 400 (sometimes topping 500) species per day

The Walker was certainly not anyone’s botanical Mecca. Prior to the 2023 fieldwork, only eight specimens of lichens and plants from the study area had been databased in herbaria (archives of scientific plant specimens). All of those were from the easily accessed fringes. And none of those eight species were anything a botanist would find unusual. Much could be expected from the Walker, but essentially nothing was known.

On these early days of the Walker project, I was justified often in commenting “Wow!”. There is so much diversity packed into that landscape that it’s overwhelming, even for me after 30+ years of botanical inventories. Even if it weren’t so diverse, it would still delight me. It’s wild. And, despite my expectation of boreal ugliness, I know now that wild places are never ugly, no matter the climate, no matter whether the landscape is steep or flat. Even the highest arctic latitudes, with precious little plant diversity, would still be spectacular for any botanist, as well as dazzling to the eye. The Walker certainly does not disappoint. It is spectacular.

Rosa engelmannii nothosubsp. britannicae-columbiae, a regional specialty, growing along the Morkill River.

Puppetry for dogs

Rooster & Quack in the garden

Buki has a pair of stuffies named “Rooster & Quack” Quack is a sort of duck. And Rooster is a rooster. Rooster was Buki’s first toy. Buki came from Saskatchewan, along with Rooster, both accompanied by Daria & family (Toby Spribille & Viktoria Wagner), who very kindly found Buki in an on-line listing. Daria and her family drove all the way from Alberta to Saskatchewan (Daria didn’t drive, she was only 7). They picked up Buki and Rooster, and then drove from Saskatchewan to British Columbia to bring Buki home to us. Quack came from Washington State, with postage, thanks to our friend Susan Stuart. Both Rooster and Quack contain squeaky devices in place of vital organs. Despite their high-pitched vocality, they were inanimate, just a part of Buki’s toy collection. Until one evening, for some unknown reason (I turned them into puppets), they came alive.

Rooster & Quack in the rafters

Rooster & Quack are delinquents. They are without inhibitions. They get into trouble a lot. They’re thugs, just like Punch & Judy (pre-television era cultural reference). They fight with each other and have to be told that they are bad. And some nights, they attack poor Curtis, who has to fight back and then reprimand them even more severely, pointing the finger of shame and applying the same low-voice puppy-discipline language she used to hear when she did anything that needed serious correcting back in her puppy (imp) age. 

Rooster & Quack were caught raiding the tool shed

Every night at bed time, we enjoy a Rooster & Quack show. There’s a different story each time. And there’s always a fight. Sometimes it’s all one-sided, and so then the innocent one is rewarded with pity while the other sits facing the wall, in disgrace. But usually Rooster and Quack conspire together, like breaking into the hall closet to raid Buki’s kibbles:

Rooster & Quack where they ought not to be

All the Rooster & Quack stories have a moral. The overarching moral theme is one of punishment for bad behavior. But as an adult dog Buki is now so well behaved (I don’t mean obedient, I mean cooperative, there is a difference), she gets to enjoy the feeling of moral superiority over Rooster & Quack. And who doesn’t indulge in at least a little bit of schadenfreude over the punishment of others?

Buki watches these puppet shows wide-eyed, vocalizing a kind of canine astonishment. And then she falls over in breathy dog laughter. The first time Rooster & Quack came to life, she was literally jaw-dropped, eyes popping, and then she fell over sideways in a puddle of dog giggles. 

And now we know: Dogs understand puppetry. They have imagination. And humour. And schadenfreude.

Good night.

Rooster & Quack in jail

Explorer’s Log, 8 June 2023

This entry continues the story of the Walker explorations, following the one posted on March 13

The Walker

Stitched up. Somehow in 50 years of living, these were my first stitches. I’ve had plenty of bruises and scrapes, and a few minor bone fractures. But no previous major lacerations. Maybe this means I’ve been too cautious and should fling myself harder at life.

Buki is safely back at home, bleary-eyed and sad this early hour of the morning as I depart again for the Walker. It’s always difficult for a dog to be left at home. To Buki, it means she’s rejected while the rest of the pack (me, solo in this case) heads out for the excitement of exploring and (to a dog’s understanding of the world) the hunt. But in this case, after Buki’s intense experiences in the Walker over the previous two days, I’m sure she feels especially devastated to be left out of the trip. But it just wasn’t going to work out between her and the big, rambunctious, intimidating dogs at the accommodations.

Now the rest of this trip is a hobbling job on my cut and patched-up foot. It hurts, but there’s a job to do, and it doesn’t matter very much how I feel. I won’t remember the pain after the wound heals.

After four hours of driving, I meet Shane in the town of Mcbride for breakfast at the Beanery 2 Bistro, a favourite of mine. It’s a cafe in a historic train station, filled with train lore, paintings, knick-knacks, potted plants, and antiques. The ultimate reason why I became a botanist is because I’m drawn to the dazzling variety of the world’s plants, and this cafe, with its packed yet tidy decor appeals to that same sense of fascination I have in all arrays of variation. There’s a lot for the eye to explore all along the walls. The proprietors are kind people, the food and coffee are good, and it’s where you can sit back and chat with the locals. The diners at the table next to Shane and me strike up a conversation with us, first about fire fighting (that’s another story). And then they express curiosity about what we’re up to. I mention the Walker project, and they lean in to the conversation, eager to express their admiration for that nearby wilderness. They hunt, they explore. They know the wilds. I like this town.

It’s time to go. There’s work to do. We drive up the Walker Forest Service Road to get our first look at the western edge of the study area. There’s a lot for my eye to take note of, as always on these summer days in the wilds. If you take most people and place them where I’m standing, and then ask them to look at what I’m seeing and describe it all, they would report “trees”. Asked what else they see, “um…mountains?”. What else? “Aaah, a butterfly!”. And that’s all good. Great, in fact. But they will never see much more than that. But if you bring in a birder, they’ll rattle off the names of warblers, sparrows, flycatchers, raptors, ducks, all kinds of species I can’t even identify, let alone notice. I have a botanist’s senses. It does my work no good to notice the mobile beings. For me, motion is distracting, so I filter it out. When the wind blows through the grasses, I have to see only the grasses, not the grasses in motion. I have to filter out the flights and songs of birds; they’re distracting. But I’m happy to complement the work of birders.

Ever heard of the “Invisible Gorilla Experiment”? It’s a psychological demonstration of selective attention. The subjects are asked to watch a video showing several crowded basketball players passing two balls. Half the players are wearing black shirts, and half wear white shirts. The experimental subjects are asked to count how many times white-shirts pass a ball by the end of the video. In this short video, someone in a gorilla suit walks into the middle of the crowd, looks right at the camera, drums their chest, and then walks onward out of view. When asked if there was anything odd about the video, only half reported the gorilla. The rest were too focused on the action to see the ridiculously obvious. Even when told that there would be a gorilla in the video, many did not see the gorilla. I quickly lost count of how many times white-shirts passed the ball; I found that boring and couldn’t force myself to concentrate on all that commotion. I was more interested in the players’ hair, their slouched posture, the colours of their pants, their frumpy shirts, the letter S scrawled on the wall behind them, the scuffed floor, the ugly portals (elevator doors?), and then, obviously, the gorilla. I noticed nothing about the two balls, who had them, who passed to whom how many times.

This describes how I see the world. My selective attention goes for the colours, the patterns, the lines, the shapes, the variation. And so I see the grasses as if they were stationary, even in a stiff wind. A botanist with a trained eye scarcely notices the bird’s flight across the view of the grasses. A good birder sees the bird’s flight and ignores the grasses and all else that is affixed to the ground. I see the gorilla. The passing of the basketballs is irrelevant and uninteresting. I never could get interested in basketball–it’s all motion, dozens of arms and legs and elbows and knees all in non-stop motion, and I find it exhausting to watch.

Sisyrinchium montanum

Standing on the side of the Walker Road, looking at what’s growing in forest clearings or at the epiphytes on the conifer twigs, or in the sedge fringe around a beaver pond, I have to see (not just look at, but see) dozens of species at once. I have to filter out the ones I’ve already recorded and notice only the novelties. Sometimes they’re stand-outs, not at all hard to notice, like the paintbrushes (Castilleja), or blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium montanum, a new find for the Robson Valley). But most are inconspicuous, the mosses, liverworts, crust lichens, or the smaller grasses and sedges. Searching like this for a species inventory is like the “Where’s Waldo” books in which you scan across the complicated illustrations to look for the amiable-looking fellow named Waldo in his characteristic coke bottle glasses and red-striped shirt & cap. Except you’re also at the same time having to recognize and name everyone of the hundreds of beings in the illustration. And you can’t turn the page to the next illustration until you’ve accounted for everyone. It’s exhausting. I have little leftover attention for the bird that flies across my view, so I fail to notice most of the avifauna on my jobs. And I fail to notice much else. Like the caribou that moved out of the corner of my view. I saw the motion, but I zoned it out. If Shane hadn’t said something, I would have missed it altogether.

This was only the second caribou of the deep-snow subspecies that I had ever seen. We saw their tracks in our first days in the Walker, so I’d hoped to get to see one of the animals live, but didn’t hold out much hope. This subspecies is rare and has been in fast decline for decades. They used to be common, but the widespread industrialization of the BC landscape, done with the blessing of government, has nearly wiped them out, and the remaining herds are reduced to such small population sizes that they’re bottlenecked into vanishingly small chances of continuation. The local subpopulation is one of the larger ones, but how much longer can they last as the province condemns more and more wilderness to the devourings of the feller-buncher machines? So to see this caribou, loping down the road, is a splendid treat. Shane took off his hat and gave the animal a deep bow. We were charmed by the caribou’s gait. Such a beautiful, dignified looking deer, and yet we couldn’t help but to laugh at the way it trots: each leg swiveling wide in an outward semi-circle. The bureaucrats in the “Ministry of Silly Walks” would have a special file on deep-snow caribou.

Rhinanthus sp.

Rattlebox (Rhinanthus) is blooming early. Not surprising in such a hot year. This is one of the genera whose species in North America can be identified only with a “who-knows?” It’s taxonomic terra incognita. A few names are given to the various North American species, both native and non-native, but in reality, the taxonomic certainty stops at “who knows?”. The taxonomic work is lacking. It’s a difficult genus to study in the herbarium, which is where most botanical taxonomic heavy-lifting happens. No matter how carefully the plants are pressed and dried, the resulting specimens are always blackened, looking as if they rotted in the press. So the characteristics become obscured. The genus must be learned “in the field”, as botanists say of the study of live plants in situ.

The least satisfying plant taxonomies in North America apply to those genera that make poor specimens (Lupinus, Taraxacum), or for which specimens don’t really capture the key characteristics of growth form or seasonal variation (Artemisia, Huperzia), or that grow mostly in remote, hard-to-access regions (Oxytropis). Rhinanthus is a triple-whammy in all these regards, so it doesn’t surprise me that the existing taxonomies are unrealistic. Most of the native species grow at high latitudes and/or elevations. You need time, energy, and funding to get from home to the field see them in their living state. I’m one of the few botanists who is paid to explore the North American northern wilderness, so I’m in as good a position as anyone to study this genus; it feels like a responsibility. Slowly, slowly, I’m trying to piece together a taxonomy that works. But there’s a long way to go. Neither of the two roadside Robson Valley Rhinanthus species are clearly identifiable.

I’m not even certain whether those two Rhinanthus are introduced European species, or native species that benefit from the disturbed habitats of roadsides. Most road fringe plants in British Columbia are European invasives. Landscape industrialization comes with a lot of road-building. Roads, including the astonishing total length of logging roads in British Columbia, are conduits of weed invasions. The weed populations spread along roads and establish new colonies like metastasizing cancer cells spreading along the veins of a body. The weeds follow the roads, then go off-road. It’s a progressing ecological catastrophe that almost no one knows about (due mostly to selective attention).

Whole horizon-to-horizon landscapes in western North America have become nothing but ugly European invasive weeds. And the locals end up feeling ashamed of where they live, because it’s ugly, though they may not understand why they see it as ugly. Most people are blind to plant diversity, but no one can be blind to the ugliness of a landscape that is nothing but cheatgrass or tumble-mustard or Halogeton as far as the eye can see. Landscape industrialization comes with such dire costs. If the Walker Wilderness is logged, wherever roads are cut in, the vegetation will be invaded by weeds. All those clearcuts in surrounding landscapes, and their feeder roads, and their weeds, are ugly, and that’s not how I want the Walker to end up. But for now, it’s beautiful, at least where you look away from the clearcuts around its fringes. And Rhinanthus, native or not, is harmless. It grows with a light touch. And in fact, it can help to reduce the potency of spreading invasive grasses, on which it is parasitic.

As I’m writing this, months later, I realize that today is the first day of spring. There’s much to be done in the garden. No time for blog posts or reminiscing. So I’ll close, abruptly, with a glimpse of the sundew patch Shane and I admired in the calcareous fen where we ended our day. So much more could be written about all we saw. But enough is enough.

Thanks, Shane, for being such a good field assistant and for seeing the caribou. Cheers, my friend!

Drosera anglica