1 Sep (Sat) Big day but not a lot to write about. Talked to many visitors, all small groups, some good encounters. The one kinda nifty thing that happened today had to do with a bird’s shadow. A “bird’s shadow”? Hunh!? ◦◦◦◦◦ As a kid I was a pretty serious bird-person (kept lists and records) and, starting when I was ten, frequently walked up into a canyon in the foothills near my home—my first wilderness. One afternoon I was meandering through the coastal sage scrub and scared up a bird. Didn’t even see it but said to myself, “brown towhee.” This is a pretty standard thing with birders—to say a bird’s name in your head whenever you make an ID—and it almost slipped right by me until I noticed that I’d identified this bird by the sound its wing feathers made as they brushed against the chaparral. As it turns out, this innocuous event was somewhat pivotal for me: the first time I truly grokked that we (humans) are capable of amazing perceptivity and, importantly, that we often notice things on a less-than-conscious level. I’d seen and watched literally hundredsof towhees. And, without ever consciously registering the information, knewthe sound their feathers made against the dense brush they inhabit when they light off the ground. And knew, because of the specific habitat, that this was a brown towhee and not its cousin, the rufous-sided, that lived in the slightly more open places along the creek. The lesson was this: We know a lot more than we know we know. ◦◦◦◦◦ Today I had a similar experience. Was just coming out of the fir forest, heading into Porcupine Flats. Up, and to my right, noticed the flickering shadow of a flying bird’s wings cast through layers of tree branches and broken into a thousand pieces. It’s not as if I saw a clearly silhouetted shadow, but had a sense of a strong, rapid wingbeat from a mid-sized bird. Silence. My head-voice said, “Cooper’s hawk,” but then another part of me thought, How the heck can you tell? I rode out of the dense forest just then into the open, scanning but not expecting to see anything. There, overhead, a Cooper’s hawk was circling. And it just happened to be flying around the crown of the grandfather Jeffery pine [largest tree in the West Walker drainage] and just as it disappeared from view a redtail hawk burst out of the top branches. The much smaller accipiter had been harassing it. Had my head tilted way back, watching, holding my hat on my head, mouth gaped open. Neither bird spoke. Neither did I. But was moved by the poetic beauty of the entire event, yet another seemingly staged nature-drama. ◦◦◦◦◦ Rode all the way out to Leavitt Campground then to the trailhead parking lot where I checked the permit books. Chatted with Craig and Dan at the pack station. Craig had a black eye, scrapes, and a visibly swollen jaw. Assumed he’d gotten into a wreck with stock. After a few minutes of smallish talk I finally asked, “Well. What happened to you? Looks like you’ve been in a bar fight.” The bar-fight reference is an old expression used for this exact kinda circumstance: a jive way to pry out the cause of some unexpected, unspecified physical damage to someone’s person. Well, pretty good guess…he hadbeen in a bar fight! Just last night, Craig and a couple of the other packers drove over the hill to Kennedy Meadows Resort. They walked into the tavern right as a brawl commenced and, with the worst kinda luck, Craig strolled right into somebody’s fist. He was knocked out cold (remembered none of this) and came-to at the bottom of a dog pile. Some fun. ◦◦◦◦◦ Headed home. I’d intended to go up to Fremont (talked to five parties, heading there) but spent too much time doling out ranger-lectures today so rode barn-ward instead. This made Red happy. Very clear skies; no smoke.
→ 43 visitors → 500 lbs rock → 12 lbs trash
→ 22 miles → another great moonrise
→ 22 miles → another great moonrise
©2019 Tim Forsell
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