Pretty good weekend, considering

Ray's going away party was held at King Gillette Ranch (yes, the razor guy). A spectacular setting for a hell of a party.

Considering the fact that Josie is sick with a cold and maybe also a kidney infection and woke us up at least every two hours every night this weekend. And considering that Mitch and Seth and Elise continued to work on the house on Saturday and Sunday. And considering that today was too damn windy (Tiffany, can I hear an "amen"). Considering all that, it was still a pretty darn good weekend. Mitch and I took the girls to the zoo on Friday and then went to Ray's going away party. Ray's party was amazing. He has accomplished so much in his 8 million years (it's really something like 16 or 14 or 12) at the park and he has built an incredible number of friendships and strong professional relationships over that time. The turn out for his party was crazy with about 12 different land management agencies represented, at least two different universities, local politicians, etc. The setting was great too - outside at King Gillette Ranch. There were tons of kids there and the weather was great so Lucy and Josie had a blast running all over the inside and outside for two hours. Despite Lena's hard work with the caterers, BBQ still totally SUCKS for vegetarians - the lettuce wraps were carrots and iceberg lettuce - where is the protein for the love beef/pig/chicken???

Saturday I wrangled the girls while cleaning the house and then took them to the park, naps, and thrift stores. Sunday we all went to the swimming pool and then Mitch and Seth and Elise started up on the house again while the girls and I went to the mall to play. Not too shabby overall.

Hopefully Josie will feel better soon so we can all get some sleep.

Going to my happy place

This week has been tough. I have suffered some disappointments, worry has been knocking on my door, my body is betraying me on the dental front, and Josie has been keeping us up nights with a 102 fever. As I was driving home from work tonight, feeling depressed and sorry for myself, I was suddenly reminded of some happier moments. So I took a short mental stroll to some of my happy places. Here, for your enjoyment, are three of my happy places from some different times in my life.

Childhood: Sunday's at the vertebrate zoology museum
On the WSU campus they used to have (and maybe still do) an amazing old school museum of vertebrate zoology. It was used by undergraduate zoology and biology students to learn about animals. It was an amazing, wonderful, and mysterious place full of fish and amphibians in jars, butterflies, bird feathers, insects - all lined up on shelf and after shelf in case after case. But the best part were the stuffed vertebrate specimens - some just arrayed in cases, others in life-like poses, and still others in actual dioramas. When I was in late elementary school and middle school my best friend Mara Duncan and I would often walk from our houses the few blocks up to the tree-lined campus. Then on a hot summer day, there was nothing better than to enter the old brick building and go down into the lower floor and the basement where the museum was housed. It was always open and there were often no other humans in the place. Our imaginations really ran wild and we were so intrigued and inspired by all the animals we saw in that place. We would spend several hours walking from case to case, reading and speculating about these strange animals and what they were like alive. We spent lots of time choosing which animal would be the best to have as a pet or imagining which one was our secret imaginary friend. It may sound nutty but it was magical to be unsupervised in a place so rich with so many of the biological mysteries of the life and the world. Needless to say, both Mara and I went on to become biologists, Mara a molecular biologist and me a plant ecologist. It was pretty nice in there. I would go back any time, especially if it was like the old days and I could run through the halls unfettered, yelling and looking, and talking and imagining.

College: friends, music, carpeting.
Sometimes during my undergrad days I would get overwhelmed by some crappy day to day happening - overwhelmed by homework, too much rain, some crappy interpersonal interaction. And in those days there were two things guaranteed to make me feel better: walking from my house down the big hill to downtown Olympia for a salmon burger, fries, and a shake, then a movie with my friends Sarah and John OR laying on the carpet in our small apartment, eyes closed, face burrowed into the short nap of our all purpose carpeting, listening to some music that was commiserating with me (maybe Chris Whitley, maybe John Prine, maybe Tracy Chapman, who knows), while my friends Sarah and John either laid on the floor with me or puttered around the apartment. There was something so comforting and grounding about laying on the floor and just letting myself do absolutely nothing except listen to the music. I wouldn't dwell, I wouldn't obsess, I would just lay there and let my mind go blank as I listened to the music. Maybe not true happiness but certainly a lot of comfort was to be found in the carpet/music combo.

Graduate School: a relaxing walk-off after an interesting but totally do-able multi-pitch climb.
The rock is granite, gray with crystals of quartz or some other mineral. The face is a ways from the car but not too far, maybe a twenty to forty minute walk (picture Lovers Leap or some formations at Donner summit). I am with friends, maybe Mitch and Anthony, or Tiffany or Vicki. Probably Mitch and maybe one other person. The walk to the face is enjoyable (although Mitch always walks a little bit fast, forcing me to hurry), through trees with boulders and shrubbery. But that isn't the happy moment. For me, the happy moment isn't even typically on the climb (although the climb is for sure fun in parts and full of exhilaration). On the climb the feeling is concentration, some anxiety, a lovely feeling of intensely paying attention. The feeling of happiness is at the top, enjoying the view, feeling like I am at home in my body, like I am a competent person who looked for a way into and up the rock and found it. The happy moment is being outside, in the sun, in an interesting place, with people I like, having done something interesting. The air is cool, the sun feels warm, I am secure on the top, not perched on some ledge or in a hanging belay. It smells of pine trees or mountain misery. And the walk back to the car is a nice hike through the woods.

I may not be in any of those places right now but I once was and some day, I will be again.

Tapestry Woven Out of Spider Silk - Insane!

My friend Anna Hosick posted about this NPR story on facebook. I didn't hear the story but read about it on-line. This is an insane story that I don't fully understand. But somehow over 4 years these guys orchestrated this project in Madagascar to harvest spider silk from wild spiders without hurting them and then weave this amazing golden tapestry. It is gonzo. These are big spiders that bite. No way, no how. Check it out. It cost these guys $500,000 of their own money. Who are they? why did they do it? If you know, tell me.

Here is the link to the story

Another Day Another Jog

This is a photo of the portion of the trail I have been jogging on. The Strait of Juan de Fuca is to the left of the photo. One last run here tomorrow morning before I head to the airport.

This is the Olympic Discovery Trail and gives the feeling of where I've been jogging the past couple of days although I did not run along this exact stretch, nor does this show the superfund site.


After finishing up our weed awareness workshop and a quick drive up to Hurricane Ridge, I went for another jog today on the lovely seaside jogging trail just outside the Red Lion in Port Angeles, WA. This wonderfully flat trail runs for seventeen miles between PA and Sequim. Of course I only jogged about 1.25 miles away from the hotel and 1.25 miles back but they were lovely. It was another unusually sunny day here, although I did learn that PA is actually in the rainshadow of the Olympics and only gets about 20 inches of rain a year which is pretty similar to Davis (19 inches) and Los Angeles (15 inches). Apparently there are, however, a lot of cloudy days here.

My most alarming discovery of the day: the barren area that I jogged past that looks like a superfund site, is, in fact a state run superfund site - an old Rayonier pulp mill. And not only that, but the site is a state historic site because it used to be the site of an old Clallam village. That's great, from Native American village to superfund site, now that's what I call progress.

Tomorrow we leave the land of too many trees (yes, I love the Pacific Northwest, but all those trees do make a person feel a bit hemmed in) and fly in the metal beast back to LAX --> electric vehicle ----> congested route 405 ----> Thousand Oaks/Ford Focus ----> HOME!A close up of the superfund site, the area where fuel tank #2 was. Lots of nasties here, furan, arsenic, lead, fuel oils...

An aerial of the superfund site. The mill wasn't closed until 1997. Rayonnier claimed it was safe until the end... not so much it turns out.

On the Olympic Peninsula

Today I drove to LAX in the park's electric RAV 4 and then flew to Seattle. From Seattle I drove a rental car through Tacoma and up to the Olympic Peninsula. I'm only here for a day and a half to give a workshop at Olympic National Park with my compatriot Jennifer Gibson. We'll be talking with park staff about how they can change their daily practices in order to prevent spreading weeds within the park. This will be the third of these workshops that I have presented. They are fun, interesting, and exhausting!

It is strange to be on the Olympic Peninsula again when I haven't been here in over ten years. I think the last time I was out here was in 1993 when I worked for the University of Washington as a summer field tech in Forks, WA. It is a bummer to come all this way and not get to spend any real time in the park or on the beautiful beaches of the Peninsula. I probably won't even have time to have lunch with my brother in Seattle or see friends in Seattle. This is going to be a very quick trip.

It is nice to at least see the Peninsula again. It is still beautiful with all the trees and the ocean and the mountains. It does seem quite economically depressed though and random strangers in the empty Indian restaurant that we ate at and in the grocery store commented to us on how hard things are around here right now.

It is always odd to travel without Mitch and the girls. While the odd adult freedoms are nice (yay - Indian food, yay running on the beach) and it is certainly easier to fly and travel without the little people, being away from them leaves me feeling anchorless. Very strange.

Well I should get to bed. It is a big day tomorrow.

Celebrating JB's Birthday

Josie on her first birthday eating her first ever cupcake.

Josie one year later on her second birthday, enjoying her cupcake.

Did I mention that she liked her cupcake?

Cupcake number two of the birthday, at her park party.

Mmm, cupcakes!

She really loves one present at a time. Seen here carrying around her new doll while surrounded by her admiring friends.

Serenading baby Luca with her new harmonica.

Sharing her new coloring book and animal crayons with Lucy and Lara.

We celebrated Josie Bean's birthday twice last week. On Wednesday we celebrated her actual birthday by eating cupcakes that Lucy and I made and letting her open all of her family presents. She loved all of her birthday gifts. I think she would have been happy with just one present although Lucy loved "helping" to open all the gifts. Lucy also loved her big sister presents and spent the whole night lugging around her princess purse and singing into her Ariel microphone.

On Friday we had a great low key birthday party at our neighborhood park. We invited all of the little people friends and held the party at the time that everyone typically goes to the park anyway. We brought along another batch of cupcakes, plus fruit and cheese, pretzels and popcorn, plus the requisite juice boxes. A great time was had by all.

I've posted a few photos of the event so you can see the highlights. I can't believe she is two years old already! What will she look like and be like by age 3?

Crazy Sarah in Italia

One of my best friends from undergrad, Sarah Cree, fell in love with Italy during her Art history doctoral research at Yale and has up and moved there. Sarah is now living a sort of original farmer european type lifestyle in the hills of Italy. I now know two phds who moved to Italy for love and now do nutty things like harvest their own olive oil and hunt for truffles. I have several close friends who are very into the local food movement (Tiff and Allie to name two) and I thought they might want to check out Sarah's current set-up. I'm not sure exactly what Sarah is up to since she doesn't post very often and never e-mails directly, but there are BEAUTIFUL photos of all of the amazing produce she is picking and cooking in Italy.

Check it out here

I also added her blog to my blog roll so we can all check up on her periodically. Maybe one day she will answer questions like, is she still doing art history research? Is she in Italy for good? And do they have chickens (if so I want to see pictures).