Coming Up for Air

What a whirlwind over the past six months. I’m happy to provide an update from my last post: Dave Upthegrove won the election for Washington State Commission or Public Lands. This is good news for our state forests and possibly good news for the endangered Marbled Murrelet. Dave’s first action in office was to place a six-month moratorium on logging of certain structurally complex mature forests—the kind these seabirds typically nest in.

Speaking of seabirds, I’ve just finished writing a book on the Pigeon Guillemot, the wild-and-crazy cousin of the shy Marbled Murrelet. My book takes a deep dive into the natural history of the guillemot (pronounced gill-uh-mott) and the work of the Salish Sea Guillemot Network. Since 2013, I’ve been a part of this network, which runs a community-science program focussing on the guillemots during their summer breeding season in the Salish Sea. I’m one of some 250 volunteers in the network who spend an hour each week watching the guillemots at their breeding sites in the bluffs, on the beach, and in the nearshore waters.

Over many summers, I’ve learned so much about the guillemot and discovered a deeply satisfying way of birding. I’ve never been drawn to checklisting, but love birding with a group of enthusiastic, curious, and dedicated Guillemoteers. My book is being published in April 2016 by the wonderful Mountaineers Books.

Yes, Pigeon Guillemots is a detour from my plan to write a book on lakes and lake swimming in Washington. But the guilllemots were calling.

Pigeon Guillemots on high alert. (Photo courtesy of Hillary Smith)

CAST YOUR VOTE for UPTHEGROVE

Washingtonians! Join me (left) in voting for Dave Upthegrove (right) for our next Commissioner of Public Lands. Ballots are out and are due by August 6th. Don’t sit this primary out!

The Department of Natural Resources needs a strong leader who works with but is not bought by the timber industry. Dave is the ONLY candidate in the race who is not taking money from the timber industry, their corporate executives and lobbyists. He is the ONLY candidate who is seriously addressing the need to protect Washington’s 77,000 acres of legacy forests. His grassroots campaign has the sole endorsement of the Sierra Club and the Washington Conservation Action. He is the ONLY candidate backed by the environmental community.

Why am I voting for Dave Upthegrove? I spent several years attending meetings conducted by the Board of Natural Resources under current CPL Hilary Franz when the board was making important decisions about the managing the state lands for endangered species, including a seabird known as the Marbled Murrelet. I wrote a book about this endangered murrelet and the coastal forests where it nests. Despite the documented precipitous decline of the murrelet population, the conservation plan the board ultimately adopted in 2019 revealed a "business as usual" approach to forest management. The plan resulted in no meaningful protections for the Marbled Murrelet and no meaningful assurances of jobs and revenue for the timber industry or trust beneficiaries. No one was happy with the decision. Dave Upthegrove would not have let this happen.

Dave is squarely in the 21st century with creative, progressive, workable ideas for shifting the business-as-usual approach to land management. Dave is a well-spoken, well-informed, thoughtful candidate who—judging from his comments at a recent campaign talk—has a solid grip on the role and responsibilities of the CPL. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he’d already taken office. Dave is looking out for the trees, the wildlife, the timber-dependent counties, and all the people of Washington State—not just the narrowly defined trust beneficiaries.  Please join Dave’s grassroots campaign to shift the paradigm so our “working forests” need to work optimally for all Washingtonians. For more information go to https://upthegrove.org/

Good News for One Marbled Murrelet

Though it’s been nearly a decade since my 2005 book, Rare Bird, was reissued by Mountaineers Books—I still follow news of the Marbled Murrelet and will always have a soft spot for this endearing little seabird.

I was thrilled to receive news that a recently grounded Marbled Murrelet chick had taken flight. This was extraordinary because from what I had learned, a murrelet’s webbed feet never touch the ground. If accidentally grounded (by falling out of their nesting tree, for instance) they are unable to get airborne. Typically, they become a meal for another animal before they are found and rescued. But, as luck would have it, a murrelet chick that had fallen from its nest in Oregon’s Siuslaw National Forest was discovered by a team of Oregon Marbled Murrelet Project field researchers who just happened to be in the forest monitoring murrelet nests and noticed an empty nest.

This. Never. Happens.

But it did and the researchers transported the chick to the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport where staff there transported it to the Wildlife Center of the North Coast in Astoria for rehabilitation. The chick was growing its juvenal plumage—flight feathers and all—but still had much of its downy coat intact. The staff at the Wildlife Center took great care to hydrate, warm, wash, and feed the chick. And thank heavens they fed it slivers of herring—and not cream with chopped up clams. Which is what well-meaning rehabilitates did in 1974 when a murrelet chick was removed from its nest in a tree to save it from the tree surgeon’s saw (Chapter 10 of Rare Bird). No one new what murrelet chicks ate then, but we do now: fish!

The Wildlife Center staff was kind enough to give me permission to post the photos below of the team caring for the murrelet and giving it a second lease on its precious and precarious life.

So, after nearly a month of care and feeding, the healthy juvenile Marbled Murrelet was transported to a research vessel at Yaquina Head, Oregon, and released.

Read the full story with more photos and a VIDEO of the release by the Oregon Marbled Murrelet Project here. Go little, MAMU, go!

A Marbled Murrelet juvenile with a few bits of its downy plumage after nearly a month in rehab. Photo courtesy Wildlife Center of the North Coast (WCNC)

Wildlife Center staff feeding the Marbled Murrelet slivers of herring. Photo courtesy Wildlife Center of the North Coast (WCNC)

Rehabilitators remove debris and contaminants from the murrelet’s feathers until it is able to preen itself. Photo courtesy Wildlife Center of the North Coast (WCNC)

The grounded murrelet spent nearly a month in the loving care of wildlife rehabilitates. Photo courtesy Wildlife Center of the North Coast (WCNC)

Swimming Becomes Breathing

After several years of lake swimming in summer and a few years of swimming through the winter, I stopped writing about my swims. I haven’t posted a blog since January, my notes on my swims since then are cryptic, and the only record of most swims is solely the name of the lake in a square in my monthly planner or a photo somewhere on my cell phone.

This was the point at which wild swimming had, after several years, had become so integrated into my life that I spent more time swimming and less time considering each swim as material for my book. I stopped evaluating or rating each and every swim. Anytime anyone asked how the water was, I never hesitated in answering “Perfect, as always” even though the conditions varied greatly across the seasons. Every swim was different, every swim was perfect. And I meant it.

I am so grateful to live in a place where I can swim in clean, fresh water. Where swimming costs nothing. Where people gather happily to enjoy the simple pleasure of swimming, dipping, wading, or just gazing at the water. I had begun to take all this for granted, even though I know it is a rare privilege to live in a place where fresh water is abundant, clean, and accessible. Often taking something for granted, often through lack of attention or lack of appreciation, can precede that something disappearing or being taken away. Therefore, a few words of appreciation for two of my favorite lakes in Washington State.

Ross Lake during calm waters with a beautiful anvil of a cumulonimbus cloud in the distance. (Photo by M.D. Ruth)

A late-August canoe-camping trip to Ross Lake was one of the most glorious swimming trips I’ve ever taken. The water color beautiful blue-green, clear, refreshing but warm enough (75-ish) to lure in the cold-water adverse swimmers. My husband and I swam three to four times a day—sometimes a quick dip from a place along the shore where we could tie up our canoe to a log, other times a longer swim into a ferny grotto to a waterfall, or across a side inlet. Because this is a drowned river valley, there are no beaches gravel bars per se. The water gets deep very quickly once you are offshore—a delight if you like swimming close to the trees and rocky bases of the peaks that rise steeply on either side of the lake.

The quality of the water was idea, but it was our physical proximity to the water and the ease of access that made this “swim-cation” so perfect. When we weren’t on the lake canoeing, we were next to the lake out our campsite. Our four campites were all immaculate and all equipped with a dock, groomed tent site, capacious bear locker, picnic table, fire ring, and privy (supplied with toilet paper!!!). Though considered “primitive,” these campsites rated as “luxurious” for me: we had views of the lake, the forest, the glacier-topped peaks, the skies—including spectacular viewing of the Milky Way and Jupiter.

Ross Lake is the Ross Lake National Recreation Area adjacent to North Cascades Park in Washington State. It is not a natural lake, but the result of the damming of the Skagit River in 1949 by Seattle City Light to generate hydroelectric power for Seattle. The lake is 540 feet deep (max) and stretches 23 miles into British Columbia. The lake is remote and access is boat-in or hike-in only (boaters can have their boats and gear shuttled by truck over the dam from Diablo Lake in North Cascades National Park). It’s work to get to Ross Lake and paddling can be challenging when the winds kick up in the afternoon. The reward for the work is some of the Pacific Northwest’s most stunning scenery and a gorgeous body of water you’re never more than thirty seconds from getting in.

Lake plus clouds=paradise. (Photo by M.M Ruth)

After my trip to Ross Lake, I thought my next swim in Ward lake (my local neighborhood lake) would be a disappointment. This morning’s swim proved otherwise. I put on my bathing suit, sweat pants, sweater, and sneakers and walked an easy 20 minutes to the lake. There were a few people fishing from small boats but no other swimmers. I swam to the center of the lake and turned to float on my back just as an osprey appeared overhead, shaking the water off its wings in midair. It had a fish in its talons. Naturally, a bald eagle soon appeared. For a good twenty minutes, the kleptoparasitic eagle pursued the osprey across the lake and around the perimeter of the lake. The deft osprey—a hawk considerably smaller than an eagle—outmaneuvered the eagle with every turn. Ultimately the exhausted eagle gave up and flew off. I lost sight of the osprey but hope that fish was delicious. It certainly was well earned.

I swam back to the dock, dried off in the sun, and walked home.

Another perfect swim. As always.