Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, OR (parts un et deux)

It's taken me a whole month to get around to posting this entry.  This is what happens when you decide to start a blog about your outdoor adventures when it's the beginning of adventure season. Perhaps this will result in a plethora of entries in the coming fall, all documenting my frenzy of spring and summer activities. But I do prefer to get my fingers to the keyboard sooner than later so all the pertinent and humorous details don't slip away. That being said, here's a look back at my time at Haystack Rock in May.

I drove out from Portland the first time on a whim really, on Monday May 4th.  The day was gray and threatened rain any moment; how can that already be a distant memory just six weeks later as we face a 101 degree temperature this weekend?  But I digress..  So, gray and windy and not really a day for photos, but definitely a day for shorebird migration potential at the coast.  I decided to head out highway 30 to Astoria and hit Fort Stevens first, then head south down 101.  

I hit traffic at a dead stop just south of St. Helens.  Highway 30 is just one lane in either direction with very few cross streets to provide alternate routes, and our northbound lane quickly lengthened into an endless convoy of semis and log trucks interspersed with passenger cars.  The fellow in front of me got out and walked up the road a bit to converse with another truck, then came back and reported there had been a fatality and it would be at least an hour if not more.  I didn't know what to do, it was too far to backtrack by going over the hills to 26, and I was determined to get through to Astoria.  These are the times that Google maps online app really shines.  Looked on my phone to see that a little road just a quarter mile up actually hugged the side of the hill and could possibly get me around this accident.  There isn't really a breakdown lane on 30, it's too narrow, so I crept into the empty oncoming lane and scooted up to the side street.  It was a single lane road that wound around the neighborhood hillside and popped out down the highway from the accident.  I was jubilant to be back on the road but somehow felt guilty, as if I had cheated and wasn't honoring the levity of this highway tragedy.  What are you gonna do?  I hit the road.

Heading through Astoria, I took a left and climbed up the crazy hills that comprise the residential part of town, and back down the other side.  Crossing Young River, I took a left on Wireless Rd, which loops through a couple miles of verdant marshy farmland.  A local resident had posted sightings of big numbers of whimbrels in the fields and I had high hopes.  But no luck, only a frenzy of gulls and ravens above a pile of \ industrial farm waste behind a barn.  And nowhere to park and walk as it's all private land.  About a mile down the road there was a pasture of some of the most beautifully marked cattle, and I wanted to stop to snap some pictures but the farmer was right there with them and I was feeling somewhat guilty as an invasive out of town birdwatcher, so kept on trucking. 

I headed out to Fort Stevens to take literally a hundred pictures of a huge flock of dunlin trying to escape me up and down the beach, and a few of the resident flock of caspian terns, then headed out to the jetty to face some pretty sturdy winds.  Not much flying around in that, so decided to head south to Cannon Beach and try my luck with some puffins.  I have been in Oregon for 12 years now and still have not seen a puffin up close, so I was ready to end my losing streak.  As I drove through Cannon Beach, I couldn't help but be reminded of parts of Cape Cod.  The town caters to a similar mentality, but a brown cedar shingled version.  It's a little snooty, but it's also nice to not have the boardwalk crassness to cope with.  So I parked downtown and then marched across the sand towards the goal looming every larger in my binoculars: Haystack Rock, home to thousands of nesting seabirds every spring.  Hundreds of circling common murres filled the sky to the north of the rock, mixed with mostly western gulls, but nary a puffin to be found. What the hell?  I took a bunch of unexciting gray pictures and then the murres headed out to sea, leaving a bunch of gulls in their place.  Can you say whoop dee doo?  There were droves of lovely Velella velella jellyfish pushed to shore with high spring winds, and left behind with the tides. Sad little purple sailors.. By this point the rain had begun in earnest and I had to concede defeat.. This was not my day, but I would have it. Damn you puffins..

                                flock of dunlin

                                caspian terns

                                        Velella vellela jellyfish stranded on the shore


Haystack Rock Part Deux.

After a rather sad first attempt, I decided I needed to be more methodical about my approach, narrow down those extenuating circumstances.  I pulled out a calendar for May and looked at the high and low tides on all the days I could head out.  I was looking for a weekday, with low tide sometime in the AM so the sun would be behind me, and some halfway decent weather.  I settled on Sunday the 31st, which had a 6:52am low tide and crossed my fingers it would be too early in the day to really be overrun with tourists yet.  It's  about an hour and a half  to Cannon Beach from Portland via Hwy 26 west, so I was pretty pleased with myself to be on the road at 5:45 that morning.  Getting up at 4:30am for anything other than a trip to the airport is not a usual event in my life.  I didn't grow up hunting or fishing or feeding farm animals at the crack of dawn; a begrudging appearance at my first class of the day at school was as good as it got.  The road out on this Sunday was wonderfully empty except for a few surfers also racing out to greet the waves.

Got to Cannon Beach with little fanfare, and headed out the same path towards Haystack Rock.  I looked for circling birds as I approached and saw nothing but a few gulls.  As I got closer I saw that the members and signs of HRAP were out in full effect, as happens every low tide, bless their hearts. Haystack Rock Awareness Program comes out during any low tide that takes place in daylight hours and sets up very polite a-boards asking people to not approach the rock and to tread very carefully in and around the tidal pool/sea gardens.  They're almost all retired folks, and are so nice and full of information.

One HRAP guy kindly showed me the bald eagle on the south side of the rock that had effectively scared all the seabirds away.  He told me he's actually seen the eagles eat all five common species that breed on the rock during spring season:  pelagic cormorant, pigeon guillemot, common murre, tufted puffin and the black oystercatcher.  Do eagles eat western gulls? Probably in a pinch.. I also saw brown pelicans that day, and talked with another photographer who'd been waiting for the exchange of mated oystercatchers. Apparently every 90 minutes the mate would return to the nest and swap out with the roosting oystercatcher. Very diplomatic behavior, and just the best looking birds. Three of the birds I saw that day had an arresting red accessory, either feet or beak.  Very eye-catching, or oystercatching as it would seem.

                                        Pigeon guillemot and those Red legs

                                         American oystercatcher and western gull

                                         Brown pelicans


The photographer finally managed to catch the exchange on film just before he had to flee the rising tide.  I missed it, as I had become obsessed with trying to catch pictures of birds in flight a bit to the north of the rock.  The same bald eagle finally picked a target and set off a swarm of defensive gulls and murres, then flew back over the rock with its breakfast in its talons.  After that, everything seemed to loosen up and the huge flock of murres began to circle and land on the rock for some nest checks, which lasts for maybe a half hour to 45 minutes, then they're back off to sea to sit on the water and fish the waves. I included a photo, one of many I took of common murres landing on the north side of Haystack Rock.  Most true seabirds are not graceful creatures on land and walking is tough for them, but man do those landings make me laugh!  But wait, mixed in with the murres and cormorants, those smaller little black football shapes with wings!  Puffins!  One and then another!  I snapped away desperately, but alas, all the pictures are blurry of my little Sasquatches of the sky.  I've included one or two anyway just to prove I did get to see some.  I was able to get a few other pix of birds and tidal pool joy and more are included on my flickr site which unfortunately I can't get linked to this blog.  I posted some on my facebook page if you want to navigate through there.  The puffins and the murres are at Haystack Rock throughout July usually, tending their young, trying to keep them from gulls and eagles until they're old enough to fly and join their folks out at sea for the rest of the year.  It's pretty fun and a great way to spend a morning at low tide.  I feel so silly for not having gotten to this sooner, but I'm convinced this will happily become one of my spring traditions as long as I'm in Oregon.

                                       Bald eagle and some pissed off western gulls

                                        common murre landing gear hilarity

                                         common murre

my blurry little tufted puffin

               the dizzying tumult of Haystack Rock

I headed north on the way home, reversing the route from my last trip, and stopped by Ft. Stevens. With the sun out, I was happy to spend some quality time with the rowdy gaggle of Caspian Terns at the lagoon beach.  They hang out and fish the lagoon just before before the Columbia River meets the Pacific, and they're noisy and protective and hilarious.  I hid in the tall sea grass right behind them and snapped some pictures, and then noticed I was surrounded by lady bugs crawling up and down the sea grass.  I'm curious about that, they just seemed to crawl to a certain height, then turn around and back down, but hundreds of them around me were doing the same thing.  I must be missing something, maybe they're marking territory somehow?  I love micro moments in nature; helps provide me with perspective, both literally and figuratively.  All in all, a very successful day and a great reprise to my earlier attempt.  Viva the Oregon coast!

                                      Caspian terns - my favorite crew with a call that sounds like cats in the sky

                                      lady bug love

Oh, and you can click on any of the pictures to see them larger..

Palouse Falls, Washington

One of my bosses out at my Beaverton job leaves us these really lovely Oregon and Washington calendars every winter for the following year and this time I took home the Oregon version.  So I didn't see the photo for Palouse Falls, Washington until it was time to flip the calendar to May at work three weeks ago.

Upon seeing the photo, I literally gasped and ran into the office, thrusting the page in my boss's face demanding, "Where is this?  Palouse Falls? Have you ever heard of this place? "  She looked at the image and then turned back to the computer, "No, but let's find it."  We both typed quickly and brought up dozens of almost identical images.  Most were of the 200 ft falls shot from the same angle, a panoramic including the pool below and the river extending into the canyon, as well as a generous portion of dramatic skyline.  Most were at sunset, and a few under the stars, all looking like they'd been taken by Ansel Adams and then rendered impossible in Photoshop. This was apparently the money shot, or simply where the viewing platform was located.   My head was spinning with the possibilities,  Not only was it gorgeous and out in the desert, but I'd never heard of it, which is very exciting for me as I tend to extrapolate that if I havn't heard of it, then perhaps no one else has.  I could conceivably drive to this desert Shangri-La, say on a Monday, and probably have the whole place to myself!  Look how many times I've sat and stared at the Painted Hills with no one else around.   And this was a five hour drive from Portland, and that weeds out a good deal of the chaff right off the bat.  I chose the next available Monday and Tuesday I had off and made my plans to go.

Jeez, was I wrong.. I need to pay attention not to a place's distance from Portland or Seattle, but it's proximity to other medium sized towns, like Spokane, for example.  I left Portland at ten am and rolled up to the falls at three, keeping exactly to my projected driving schedule.  The bummer was the number of people already there as I pulled in, the number of people that stayed to camp, and the sheer number of photographers that were there.  Tripods for everybody!  As usual, I was sleeping in the back of my pick up truck's canopy, which is cozy and self contained with a lot less fuss then setting up a tent site. But as with many desert campgrounds, there's little to no privacy, and I girded myself for a night of up close and personal.  I sat down at the nearest picnic table, ate a snack and got my bearings.  Talked to a fellow who had arrived just after me in a jeep pulling a pop-up camper because I wanted to see how the mechanism worked.  When he came over to tell me he was setting up, he saw my camera and asked what it was, I begrudgingly told him an old Nikon. He asked if I was here to take pictures of the falls, and I said that and birds, whatever crops up.  He perked up and asked what birds?  Wondering of course if I had the skinny on something unusual sighted nearby.
"Oh, whatever is around, any desert birds that I don't get to see at home".
I then quickly back pedaled and clarified,
"Look, I'm not a professional birder or photographer."
He replied that neither was he nor his friends. But I suspect his idea of amateur and mine still tend to vary in definition.  I'm just defensive because I'm not a particularly good birdwatcher or photographer.  Bit of a fair weather hobbyist at both.  I consider myself a naturalist, happier outdoors than in, happier far away from town than in a crowd.

At this point I gathered my insecurities about my skill set and put them in my back pocket along with my lens cap, put my tripod over my shoulder, and went to see what I could see.  I never did find the path down to the river that keeps being alluded to in all the online blurbs, and nor did the camp map refer to it.  However, a nice older gentleman in overalls ambled over and let me know where he thought the best vantage point of the falls was, and I have to say he was right.  I became acquainted with the local residents, mostly robins on the ground, gold finches, and Bullock's Orioles chasing each other through the trees at top speeds.  There was also a whole community of yellow bellied marmoset's lurking around the grounds, and they were pretty amusing.

I hiked all the close in trails, took pics of what I could, then called it a day.  Went back to set up camp in my truck and eat some dinner.  Turns out a fellow next to me was also sleeping in the back of his truck, and there were a few more tents up, and a couple small RV's were there.  The park wasn't at capacity, but I thought it was pretty full for a Monday night.  I did go back out to take some sunset pics and then I had a drink and sat in my camp chair at the back of my truck and read until the light began to fade.  I crawled into the canopy and changed into pjs under the blankets and contentedly read my book as twilight fell and my neighbors campfire crackled and filled the air with that wonderful smell of wood smoke.  I turned in relatively early, noting that some of the campers were heading out to set up tripods for star shots as it was a new moon, and the desert is the place to take those beautiful long exposures of the Milky Way.

I fell asleep and as always on my first nights anywhere, camping or in a hotel it doesn't matter, I slept fitfully, having to creep out to the bathroom twice.. I'd finally gotten back to sleep when at 11:30 pm, a sedan pulled in a few spaces over from me, and proceeded to set up their tent.  To their credit they were pretty quiet, except that the parking lot was gravel, so each foot step was a proclamation of sound, and the number of times the the car doors were opened and then closed was bordering on an excessiveness usually reserved for OCD behaviors.  Honestly, after this night, I've come up with a new ruling for all late night campground arrivals:  upon parking, get out of your vehicle and immediately open all doors as well as the trunk.  Then you can flit about like a crazed moth as you remember that this absolutely essential thing that you must have with you in your tent is where? Hmm, was it in this bag, or in this crate, or maybe in the dashboard? Where could it be, oh silly me, I already set it on top of the car!  Ha ha, so amusing, I think I'll accentuate the humor by slamming the car door ten more times and then shuffling some more of this lovely gravel around. Everyone awake yet??  Grrrr..

I got up to pee yet a third time and did my best to convey my irritation by huffing by their car in disdain.  In the dark.  Well, they finally got settled, and so did I.  I got back to sleep and had gotten apparently three and half whole hours of it, when another car pulled in next to me at 3:45 am.  I stared at the time on my phone in disbelief; what kind of nuts and bolts get to a waterfall at this time of night?  Apparently this person was having some decision making problems himself, as he took a tour of the parking lot, then came back, loaded up his gear, slammed the car doors a bit just to give my night some continuity, and then finally, as dawn started to lighten the sky, headed off towards the falls.  I know this because I was awake the whole time.  Resigned, I gave up pretending to sleep at 5 am.  I got up and packed, put the truck back together, and made some tea.  I took some sunrise shots with the sun coming up behind the falls, but they didn't turn out very well.  Had more luck taking pictures of birds.  I said goodbye to Jim, my pop up camper acquaintance, and then hit the road at 6:30 am.  This time of day is not a typical travel time for me, so it was a little surreal. The sky grew dark and ominous and as I headed south on 395 through Pasco, it started raining pretty heavily.  My plan to stop by the Umatilla NWR got squashed because of it and honestly at that point I was so weary from sleep deprivation that I wouldn't have gotten much out of it.  I did stop in two of the pullouts in Irrigon, OR which are both good birding spots and had a look around in the rain.  Saw some yellow headed blackbirds and mourning doves, not much else.  Took some photos, got some gas and a big cup of coffee and hit 84 West headed back to Portland.

And on the drive home, I saw the same group of big horned sheep I'd seen on the way out, in the exact same spot.  Mile 118 to 119, there were maybe three or four on an outcropping looking right over the eastbound side of the highway.  Then maybe a quarter mile farther east there was a larger group grazing on the incredibly steep hillside, about 150 feet up.  I never see these guys this close up, they're always on that ridge, way over there, a half mile away, still tiny even with your binoculars. But I was too chicken to pull over in the emergency lane and take pictures.  What if a cop drove by right then and gave me a ticket?  Boy, was it tempting though.. The serene and majestic manner of that foremost sheep as it gazed out at the highway and the river; wow.  It didn't give a fig about the highway and all of us speeding by.  Maybe they just wanted to get to the Columbia River for water. But that would entail crossing four lanes of traffic, a center divider, the train track and probably an electric fence in front of it down by the water.  Sigh, what an impossible task; kamikazi big horned sheep.

Made it home in good time and spent the rest of the day in a mild delirium from lack of sleep.  I'm glad I saw Palouse Falls and it's definitely worth stopping by if you're in that neck of the sagebrush, but the camping sitch and the sheer number of photographers vying for cliff top property rights make it less appealing as a place to go out of my way to visit.  You never know if you don't try though and I always enjoy the drive.  Chalk this one up to experience and Happy Trails!

History is repeating

What's on my mind today:                                                                             

Time is a concept that has constraints from my perspective.  It's not the strange and magical dimension often discussed in science fiction and fantasy with such loose ambiguity, a dimension to be toyed with like a piece of salt water taffy on a stretcher bar.  I see it in it's unfortunate corset of limitations, a finite destination.  We start, we continue, we are finished. What you learn along the way can only be applied now and in the future.  And the regrets you have over things past must be reconciled, as that is all she wrote. The upside is that this linear causality gives us a chance to better ourselves, and to look forward to the changes we must embrace as necessary for thriving.  

Knowing this to be true and yet wanting to go back in time and unsay things said, choose a different path, is the struggle I am in the grips of now.  It mirrors the struggle that almost always gets me in this situation in the first place, the epic battle between head and heart, reason and passion.  What a drag.
I want to not regret, to chalk it all up to experiential learning, but I'd be lying.  Hindsight is so cruelly clear, although it sometimes takes a long time for the layers to peel away and the truth of the situation to come to light for me.  I'm still discovering bits and pieces about my past that inform me today, so maybe time is less linear than cyclical.  I heard recently that time is a flat circle, with events doomed to repeat themselves.  Let's hope that's not true..

When this kind of thinking gets to be overwhelming, I get in the truck, drive out to Sauvie Island and stare at views like this one to give myself some perspective. It reminds me of a phrase I read this morning in a road guide to Mt. St. Helens:  that nature always bats last.  Thank god for that.