10/01/2025   The Jungle  (link to here)
The front yard is a jungle. Some people don't like it that way. I do.

10/03/2025   What's Up?  (link to here)
Eufy (perhaps short for Euphelia), our new robot vacuum cleaner, arrived today. Darchelle unpacked them (like God, they're non-binary and prefer the pronoun "they") and turned them loose in the dining room then inspired, went upstairs to do some vacuuming herself. From my parking spot in the middle of the kitchen I heard them snuffling around behind me for a while before they joined me. After bumping my wheels a few times (their equivalent of a handshake, which works for me since neither of us can shake hands the usual way), they wandered off into our sunroom, aka the Jungle Room, whirring softly. A few minutes later I heard a little voice say something but I couldn't make out what, then shortly after that they went silent.
When Darchelle came down I told her what I'd heard but having not hooked our new housemate up to the Wifi, she couldn't ask them where they were located. Eventually she found them hiding under a chair where they had tried to vacuum up the fringe of our oriental rug. I looked through the manual but couldn't see how to tell Eufy the difference between rug fringe and pet hair. Darchelle disentangled Eufy's roller-broom from the carpet and put Eufy back in their little house to recharge but I'm afraid that at this point, their status as a member of the household is a bit up in the air.

10/05/2025   Nisqually  (link to here)
Four days ago the Wednesday morning birdwalk found a Pacific Golden Plover out on the surge plain at the Billy J Frank Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. Yesterday it was reported again, this time with photos confirming the sometimes-tricky ID. Having missed that golden plover at least three times this fall we weren't sure that we wanted to try again, but the day was sunny and it would do us good to get out so we went.
At Nisqually L+ Darchelle packed me into the wheelchair, covered me with a blanket or two then piled camera, binoculars and the scope and tripod onto my lap. That's the way we do it and it works for both of us even if it makes me look a bit like a beast of burden. Darchelle asked me if we should bring the pee bottle too but I didn't think I would need it. We set off with modest hopes. We didn't know exactly where the bird had been seen but it had been photographed on a mudflat with a thin coating of algae and with a patch of short grass nearby. I knew several areas that fit that description, so we had at least a chance of success.
We didn't find the plover, or any other shorebirds, along the north side of the dike between the Twin Barns and the start of the boardwalk. The mudflats north and east of the Twin Barns seemed too distant to be the area where the bird had been photographed so we passed them up. In retrospect, that is probably where the bird spent the day. The plover was not on the mudflats closer to the dike west of Leschi Slough where I had hoped to find it. When we also failed to spot it on the mudflats farther up McAllister Creek we started out the boardwalk.
The mile-long McAllister Creek boardwalk offers great views of the mudflats for everyone willing, and able, to walk out there but for me, the 4x8 pressure-treated railing obstructs the view of all but the closest 30 feet of mud. A few birds hang out that close to the boardwalk but most do not. Though many do fly overhead at some point so I only ended up missing one or two of the species Darchelle recorded during our two hour trip all the way out to the end and back. The breeze picked up on our return trip so I was uncomfortably cold most of the time despite the sunshine.
Darchelle might have seen the plover. On our way back we stopped on the dike near the bridge over Leschi Slough while Darchelle scoped to the northeast. The tide was high and the mudflats were underwater so the shorebirds - Pectoral Sandpipers, Long-billed Dowitchers and Black-bellied Plovers - were roosting in the grass. Another plover, smaller, darker and more brown than the Black-bellieds, was also sleeping in the grass but Darchelle couldn't see it well enough to confirm her suspicion that it was the bird we sought. I couldn't see it at all. We went home once again without a Pacific Golden Plover. It was not my favorite outing of the year, but on the other hand once we were warm at home again, I couldn't say for sure that I would rather have spent the day indoors.

10/08/2025   Nisqually  (link to here)
Shep's prompt report of the Pacific Golden Plover at Nisqually this morning was just the nudge we needed to detour down there and try for it again on our way to Walla Walla. It would add about two hours to our time on the road but if we got the bird it would be well worth it.
We arrived at Nisqually L+ just as Shep and other birders from the Wednesday morning group were returning to the parking lot. Seeing us, Shep came over to say hi and learning that we were looking for the plover, reassured us that the group had just seen it foraging near the dike west of Leschi Slough, almost the same spot were I had thought we might find it on our previous visit. Today it was there, right where Shep had told us to look but even closer to the dike than I had hoped. Success at last, on our fifth attempt this year. Or maybe our sixth.
The golden plover, verified as a Pacific by its relatively long tertials and short primaries in relation to its tail (compare with the shorter tertials and especially, the longer primaries, of the American Golden Plover we saw two weeks ago), was not the only highlight of the day.
Directly across the dike from the Pacific Golden Plover an American Bittern had emerged into an opening in the cattails. After dispatching a smaller prey item, perhaps a tadpole, it moved over a few feet to tackle something closer to its own size - a bullfrog. The Bittern clearly had the upper hand (or bill...) but it was not at all clear that the bird would ever manage to swallow the frog. We never heard how that story ended.

10/10/2025   Fly Season  (link to here)
Yesterday afternoon a fly was buzzing around me as we sat around the table by the kitchen visiting with Darchelle's parents. I hate flies. Few reminders of my condition are more pointed than having a housefly crawling over my hands and being utterly helpless to do anything about it. There was just one fly but it seemed to be particularly and persistently interested in me. It was the kind I call a shit fly, with a yellowish body the color of diarrhea, because they are especially abundant around Tyson's big cattle feeding operation on Dodd Road where we go now and then to look for rare blackbirds and shorebirds. Why a shit fly would be so interested in me, I don't know. I don't know if I want to know.
Anyhow within a few minutes after Darchelle parked me at the table this morning, flies began to gather around me. Lots of them. Before long as many as eight had gathered on the dish towel Darchelle had laid on my lap to keep them off my hands. Half a dozen more were buzzing around her in the kitchen, and we couldn't do much about it. The flyswatter was missing.
When Richard came in he volunteered to run to Walmart and pick one up. He returned with three but even appropriately armed, he and Darchelle were no match for the agile flies. They needed reinforcements and our nieces and nephews were happy to help. Sally and Ben brought their brood by after lunch and as soon as the kids heard we were offering a bounty of twenty-five cents per fly, they joined the battle. Richard sat at the table with a jar full of pocket change and paid out bounties while I tried to keep up with the accounting. A half hour later when Ben and Sally had to be on their way, Richard was out of quarters and the kids were running out of flies. The final tally is listed below:
It was definitely $6.40 well spent. For the rest of the afternoon I spotted only one fly which, as if seeking to escape, rarely ventured away from the windows.

10/11/2025   Home  (link to here)
Not three minutes after we bid goodbye to Darchelle's folks we spotted two buteos kiting above the edge of one of the mesas along Mission Road. I assumed that they were one of the many pairs of adult Red-tailed Hawks that breed in the valley but Darchelle wanted to make sure. Good move! One of them was a light phase juvenile which probably fledged locally last summer but the other was a dark phase Harlan's Hawk, a subspecies of Red-tail which breeds in Alaska and the Yukon and winters in small numbers in Washington. While we may occasionally overlook them among the ubiquitous roadside red-tails, we've noted fewer than a half-dozen others in the past decade.

10/12/2025   Daniel and Dad  (link to here)
Daniel arrived this afternoon and made Chanterelle Risotto flavored with lemon, thyme and khombu seaweed to go with the scallops Darchelle had picked up and the Chanterelle Soup + she made this morning. The soup, more of a stew really, was every bit as good as I remembered it, the lemon, dill and cream introducing and supporting the subtle flavor of the mushrooms.
Daniel bustled in around 5PM laden with hors d'oeuvres and beer. I wasn't wild about the beer, various sour ales from Holy Mountain, but the smoked salmon and soft La Tur cheese were delicious. I filled up on those so didn't have room for much of the risotto but it kept well and was still delicious when I finished the last of it a week later.
We lingered over supper until almost 11. I don't remember much of our conversation though I do recall bringing up my will and briefly explaining its terms and my intentions.
After Darchelle went to bed Daniel and I stayed up talking for another hour or two. He wanted to know about our camping and rockhunting trips together when he and David were young - what I remembered about them, whether I really wanted their company, how we got started on doing separate camping trips. I don't remember what I said, other than that those trips had inspired me to resume journaling after a hiatus of almost 15 years specifically in order to not forget them. I don't know if it even occurred to me to leave the boys home and go by myself. We did separate trips for a couple of years, initially I think because one of the boys was sick and couldn't make it on a trip we had scheduled, so to keep things fair he and I did our own trip when he was feeling better.
I recall only one camping trip with my father; I don't think he was very interested in children, his own or anyone else's. Daniel asked what traits I thought I had acquired from him, both good and bad. Not an easy question to answer. Good - honesty, fairness, passion for physical activity, love of and curiousity about nature, preference for working with my hands. Bad - tendency to be self-centered, to view myself as a victim of my circumstances...well, I think that's enough self-disclosure for now.
Did I like him? Daniel wondered. As an adult, no not much. As a child, I was afraid of him, even after I grew old enough to know better. I was frightened by his harsh demeanor and intimidated by his rants. He was usually angry about something, and he rarely relinquished a grudge. On the other hand through his work as a dentist he helped a lot more people and relieved a lot more suffering than I ever did. If there is a judgement he'll probably fare better than I will, and that very attitude is part of his legacy to me. Thanks, dad! Two things I did not inherit from him - hatred of Jews and Blacks, and love of conspiracy theories, the nuttier the better. Ironically, in the last few days of his life he accepted Jesus as his savior through conversations and prayer with a couple of Seventh Day Adventist friends of the family. My ex-wife used to accuse me of having a hand in that too; I was more devout in those days, so maybe she was right.

10/13/2025   County Birds  (link to here)
For the past week or more observers at Dune Peninsula in Tacoma, Alki and West Point in Seattle and other location to the west and north have been reporting Short-tailed Shearwaters coursing up and down the Sound. A bird of the open ocean, the shearwaters are rare on inland waters and we don't have them on our lists for either Pierce or King County. We still don't have them for Pierce; since Darchelle is more interested in her King County list, we drove over to West Point L+ today.
We picked the right day. I was able to see several flying past the point without even having to get out of the car and Darchelle was able to get identifying photos. A Beaufort Force 5 (Fresh Breeze) was sweeping whitecaps down the Sound from the north giving the shearwaters something to work with. Most were moving upwind and looking very comfortable. Between shearwaters I estimated the wave height at 3-4 feet with a period of 4 seconds and based on the map, a fetch of 15-20 miles. According to Wikipedia +, with a longer fetch the waves would be twice that height.
Before we left Darchelle walked the beach to find the visiting Rock Wren then returned and moved the car to where I had a chance of seeing it. A timely dogwalker inadvertently flushed it and I caught a glimpse. Species #272 on my King County list.
On the way home we stopped at Commodore Park L+ so Darchelle could see the Lesser Black-backed Gull at Ballard Locks. It would have been a county bird for her but she couldn't find it before her 2PM phone appointment, which she did in the car while I sat under a bright orange maple tree and watched gulls. She joined me after she was done and a few minutes later the gull alighted on the far wall of the locks, strolled back and forth twice then took off to the northwest. We were grateful for its timely appearance; we have friends who've had to try three and four times before it showed up.

10/15/2025   Sekiu  (link to here)
We'd planned to host my college friend David and his friend Tom for a night in Seattle but with Daniel visiting we were short a bedroom so we arranged to meet them in Neah Bay instead. Tom is an active birder in Wyoming but having never birded in the Northwest, was looking forward to our help with seabirds. I was looking for Neah Bay to provide an assortment of those, and maybe a rarity for our year list as well. Neah Bay came through for both of us.
Thanks to helpful ferry personnel we had a front row seat for the crossing to Kingston. Just over halfway across L+ I spotted a small dark gray alcid flying low to the water directly below our bow. The bird appeared short and plump so I immediately looked for the bill. A Rhino would have a long and stout bill giving the bird's head a pointed wedge shape. A Cassin's would have a thin dark bill and a round-looking head. I couldn't pick out the bill, suggesting but not proving that the bird, which had been quartering away from me at that point, was a Cassin's. Darchelle saw it flying away and snapped a few photos as it flew off with a Common Murre. She also didn't think it looked right for a Rhino but her photos weren't clear enough to rule out the larger alcid. At 9", a Cassin's Auklet is about 56% as long as a 16" Common Murre while a Rhinoceros Auklet at 11" is about 69% as long as the murre. Measuring the two birds in the photos, I estimated that the auklet was 70% as long as the murre. I guess I'll have to leave it as Auklet sp.
We were on track to meet David and Tom in Neah Bay but stopped for a quick check of the RV park in Sekiu (pronounced CQ in Washington). Before leaving Sekiu we called David again to confirm where to meet up and he told us "We are in front of the Mason's Resort sign in Seckeeyou". We looked down the street and there they were.
We pointed out birds in Sekiu harbor L+ for an hour and of the 25 species we found, at least a third were new for Tom. Out in Neah Bay L+ we birded for another two hours and found Tom another half dozen life birds before retiring to Bigginz for fish and chips. David pronounced the halibut the best fish and chips he'd ever had. Darchelle and I returned to our AirBnB along Bowman Beach, the Seal and Sail Inn, for supper while David and Tom spent the night in Tom's camper at the base of the jetty. Unfortunately the bracing salt air was tainted with the smell of rotting meat; not until morning did they notice the butchered deer bones next to their parking spot.

10/16/2025   Neah Bay  (link to here)
Having stayed up too late we slept in an extra hour and didn't start birding Neah Bay L+ until an hour after we'd arranged to meet David and Tom out on the jetty. If they minded they didn't mention it; David had a phone appointment or two for work and Tom went birding. Yesterday's sunshine had been displaced by a low overcast and intermittent drizzle, arguably offering them a more authentic Neah Bay experience. They didn't seem to mind that either.
White-winged Scoters, regular winter residents in Neah Bay, were new for Tom, as were Western (not pictured) and Iceland Gulls, though perhaps because he felt a bit overwhelmed by the difficulty of identifying them, Tom seemed less interested in the gulls than in the ducks and turnstones. We tried but failed to find him the Kittiwake he was hoping for.
We heard the Marsh Wren when we met up with David and Tom out on the jetty. We had been heading out there a half an hour earlier when Jordan Gunn reported on the What's App chat that he had just found a Dickcissel in the patch of beach brush (Dune Grass, Coast Willows, blackberry brambles and young spruces and alders) just east of the Warmhouse Restaurant. The Dickcissel was in the same flock of Golden-crowned Sparrows which Darchelle had just been studying an hour earlier. "Why does Jordan find the Dickcissel when I do not?" she wondered aloud. I didn't have an answer for that but the rare bird was sitting in a bare bush when we pulled up three minutes later. Alec and Izzie pointed it out to us immediately, forty seconds before it flew into the bushes and disappeared. I noticed white outer tail feathers when it flew. Tom wasn't interested in the Dickcissel; he'd seen lots of them in Kansas.
David and Tom were temporarily more interested in lunch than in birds so we caravaned over to Native Grounds. The BLT panini was delicious. I worked on it for both lunch and supper and still managed to eat only half of it. Fearful that the aioli had been too long at room temperature, we threw the other half away when we returned to Seattle. I grieved the loss of that half sandwich more than I ought to have.
After lunch Tom and David presented me with a gift, a poster displaying all, or at least most, of the breeding birds of North America. It was kind of them, and I look forward to seeing how many I can recognize.
After lunch we escorted David and Tom out to the Cape Flattery trailhead, where they apparently waited for us to get out of our car and join them before starting down the trail. I would have needed four porters and a litter to get out to Cape Flattery and it might actually have been worth the expense, but not this time. I'd practically promised Tom that he would see puffins and he did. Though his views were distant and brief he was pleased. So was I.
We met up again at Bigginz. They were headed back to Port Angeles and we, despite the allure of the first-state-record Yellow-green Vireo which Liam relocated this afternoon in Hoquiam, were staying put at our already-paid-for AirBnB four miles east of Neah Bay. It was spacious and clean, with a functional wall heater, a full-sized fridge and an accessible toilet for only $170 per night. The tall bed scared me even though Darchelle had managed to get me up onto it without mishap the night before. Whether from anxiety about the bed, or lack of sleep or something else, I had succumbed to another dark mood which even the vireo the next day failed to fully allay, though it certainly helped. Dark mood or not, we found Tom one more life bird on the way out of town, a Cackling Goose.

10/17/2025   Hoquiam  (link to here)
When Darchelle woke me up at 5AM to chase the vireo four hours away, I was already dubious about our chances of seeing it. Confident that we would never find the bird in the vast expanse of willows and alders at the Grays Harbor NWR L+, I persisted in my pessimism all the way from Neah Bay to the parking lot at the Hoquiam Airport. At that point, 10 minutes via paved path and wheelchair-friendly boardwalk from the spot where the bird was according to both Maxine and Janine foraging within 10 feet of the trail, the rationale for my pessimism was getting a little thin. It got thinner yet when Keith, who was just returning to his car after watching the bird for the previous hour or so, offered to escort us back there.
Other birders were photographing it when we arrived and we spotted it immediately, a flash of sunlit yellow among the scabrous leaves of the stunted alders overhanging the trail. We followed it up and down the first 40 yards of the boardwalk for the next two hours. Darchelle and a handful of other birders took photos and even I enjoyed good views when I happened to be aimed in the bird's direction. The vireo was larger and more deliberate than the kinglets and chickadees in its vicinity, demonstrating in its pursuit of insect prey an economy of movement, and a measure of success, which appeared to elude the smaller birds.
I wondered if it realized anything was amiss, or is a bug just another bug whether it's in the rainforests of the upper Amazon or the scrubby willow groves of the Washington coast. "Turn around", I wanted to tell it, before the weather turns cold and miserable and those bugs vanish. Maybe it did depart because it was seen for only one more day. Then again maybe it didn't leave; maybe it just wandered 50 yards deeper into that vast expanse of willows and alders in which it could have remained undiscovered right from the start. We, along with at least 90 other birdwatchers, were glad it hadn't.

10/24/2025   Chickadees  (link to here)
They're back! Darchelle filled the back yard feeders a few days ago after a hiatus of a month or two to encourage the rats to take a vacation. Now they're back again, the birds I mean, not the rats. I don't think the rats ever left, judging by how swiftly the windthrows under the apple tree seem to disappear. The chickadees are back, and the juncos and a token Yellow-rumped Warbler. The chickadees, both Chestnut-backed and Black-capped, visited our feeders L+ almost continuously all afternoon in spite of, or perhaps because of, the rain. One of the chickadees was unusually dark above with a grayish brown back, a black or nearly black cap and dark gray flight feathers. We wondered if it might be a hybrid of our two common species but we'll need better looks to be sure.

10/27/2025   Little Blue Heron  (link to here)
We didn't feel like chasing this bird yesterday so we stayed home, went to bed early (that is, before midnight), slept in until Liam and other had already been there and seen it then raced through our morning routine and headed down to Home Valley Park in the Columbia Gorge to see the Little Blue Heron for ourselves. Darchelle checked with Liam and Andy, who both assured us that she would be able to wheel me past the gate and down to the water's edge where I would be able to see the bird too. It would be a new state bird for both of us.
We reached Home Valley Park L+ around 2PM and the heron was still present, stepping through, and sometimes onto, the mats of algae floating in the shallow water of the cove. Occasionally stabbing the water with its beak, the heron seemed to get something every few minutes; Darchelle's photos revealed its prey to be small fish. It seemed to spend about half its time fishing and half its time roosting and preening.
We spent about an hour watching it and another half hour getting me in and out of the car and visiting with John Davis and his wife Mary. John was the one who found the bird two days ago; he also found the Blackburnian Warbler in the park four years ago in November. I had less success with that bird than with the heron today. Today I enjoyed talking with John while Darchelle tried for photos. John and I speculated that the heron might be the same individual that was seen on Bateman Island back on 10/04, and that it might be deliberately stepping on and sinking pads of algae in order to flush out any fish hiding underneath them.
John helped Darchelle haul me back up the Sailboarder Beach trail to the parking area. The day was yet youngish so we pursued a couple of county birds before hitting the road for home. We missed the Surf Scoters at the park but found a Cackling Goose among the Canadas at the Bonneville Dam HQ parking lot and had no trouble spotting the 33 Great Egrets at the Skamania Landing estuary. Together with the Heron, they upped my Skamania total to 130 and my position to 35th place in the lifetime ranking of birders by number of species seen in Skamania County.
The views in the Gorge were not as gorgeous as they had been a few hours earlier so we didn't stop for photos. On our trip down the autumn sunlight catching in the yellow foliage of the Big-leaf Maples had set them on fire but by afternoon the morning's fluffy cumulus had dissolved into brownish haze, subduing both light and color. Buoyed by the successful pursuit and satisfying visit with the heron, we didn't mind.

10/29/2025   King Eider  (link to here)
Inspired to chase another year bird or two we considered our options and settled on Westport. The King Eider was still present and should be easy to spot, though I'd be unlikely to see more than a distant dot. Neah Bay on the other hand was offering both an Orchard Oriole and a Tropical Kingbird but at the price of an extra five hours of travel time. Clinching the deal for Westport was the pospect of a drive on the beach and several meals of delicious yearling oysters from Brady's.
I saw the dot from the overlook L+ east of the jetty and enjoyed watching big swells rolling in from beyond the bar. Darchelle got distant but identifying photos of the Eider and enjoyed counting Snowy Plovers (49!) along the south end of Midway Beach. We searched for a Glaucous Gull in the marina and a Tropical Kingbird in town, neither reported recently. We brought home a pint of shucked yearling oysters and the seven Darchelle fixed for me for supper, browned in butter and deglazed with cream after we got home, were delectable. Leftover Even More Jesus (the blackest of Stouts) paired with them perfectly.

10/30/2025   Tropical Kingbird  (link to here)
The Tropical Kingbird reported in a private yard near the ferry terminal in Clinton over a week ago was reported again two days ago so I looked up the location and realized that the residence was next door to a public parking lot from which the bird could almost certainly be seen and heard. Better yet, even with the ferry ride it was less than an hour from home. Someone else came to the same conclusion and reported the kingbird from that parkng lot yesterday. A different someone else reported it again this morning. Given that we would have to put on pants today anyhow for our dinner out at The Corson Building this evening, it was an easy decision to try for the Tropical Kingbird this afternoon.
As we were preparing to leave, Darchelle called Kellie to see if by chance she wanted meet us out there and she was already in the ferry line. By the time we caught up to her we'd all seen the kingbird. She had seen it as she had driven into the lot and had called us to report that it was hanging out in a Madrone and on the utility pole behind the tree. An hour later it was in the adjacent yard flycatching over the blackberry thickets but we didn't spot it until it flew back up into the Madrone L+. It never perched low enough for good photos but I had no trouble identifying it without optics. We met Kellie at a a nearby pond L+ where we added two more birds to our Island County list and I gave Kellie a can of Even More Jesus for Travis.
We were the first customers in the door at The Corson Building. Our 6PM reservation was outside but the staff suggested we sit indoors, offering us a two-top conveniently located near the front door. It was too tight for Darchelle to sit by me so we switched to a round table in a corner of the outdoor patio instead. Enclosed by curtains of clear plastic and warmed by propane heaters, the patio seemed comfortable though swaddled as I was in four layers of blankets, I really couldn't say. I was nervous that my burden of blankets might interfere with my swallowing but I didn't have any trouble.
The food was delicious, the service casual but attentive. I ordered steamed clams, basically a warm salad, instead of one of the cold salads, and they were delicious with lightly pickled vegetables over crispy toast softened with broth. For the main course I passed over the smoked salmon and the pork belly in favor of the steamed halibut. Finding it boring, I rarely order halibut but I was curious to see what they could do with it. Served with roasted corn and baby Brussels Sprouts under wilted greens, the subtly flavored fish was still underwhelming. Perhaps I was by that point getting full, because the next day as leftovers it was much more interesting. I didn't try Darchelle's vegetable entree but her cauliflower soup was subtly smoky and her pear tart also just right. Despite the excellent food and the company of the woman I love, eating in an unfamiliar environment felt like a barely manageable challenge and I was relieved to get through it unscathed.

10/31/2025   October  (link to here)
We spent all or part of 9 days in the field, submitted 24 complete checklists (410 ytd) and saw or heard 123 species of which 6 were new for the year and 2 were new for the state. Our ytd count of 356 species is 8 ahead of last year and 12 behind 2022.

11/01/2025   Walla Walla  (link to here)
A new month, a new bird list, a new birding goal. Nothing special, I'd just like to get to at least 100 species by the end of the month. By the end of the day today, we'd already seen 25.
We drove over Snoqualmie Pass and down the Yakima valley to Walla Walla for the weekend. A storm was moving in as we left Seattle; we were fortunate to get out our back door, down the wheelchair ramp and into the car before it started. Blustery winds swept orange leaves back and forth across the surface streets and rain and road spray obscured visibility on the freeway from Bellevue east to Cle Elum. Despite the rain and fog the foliage was spectacular all the way, yellow cottonwoods glowing like torches among the dark conifers and illuminating the dark waters of the river.
We filled up in Benton City for $4.19/gallon, picked up a blonde tumbleweed in Richland for a hood ornament and made a brief detour out Dodd Road L+ to look for birds en route to Walla Walla, where I did another bird list L+ looking out the living room windows with Donna before supper. After Sabbath we all watched game 7 of the World Series. The Blue Jays, for whom we were rooting, lost in the 11th inning though it could easily have gone the other way. The USA has been such an ugly player on the international playground under the current administration that I hated to see them beat Canada, even if only by proxy.

11/03/2025   Walla Walla  (link to here)

11/04/2025   Dependent  (link to here)
There are times when living in a state of total dependence on someone else, even someone who loves me as Darchelle does, is deeply distasteful; it is only because she is my caregiver that it is tolerable. When it is just the two of us I can almost forget my helplessness. When we are with other people though, it is more difficult. I am not the sole focus of her attention. Whether I need to pee, or blow my nose, or relieve a painful pressure point on my backside, or spit out a mouthful of mucous, or simply just look over my shoulder, I often have to wait. I can't pull out my phone or read a magazine (remember those?) while I wait either; I just have to sit. and. wait.
I can usually deal with the waiting but I don't like constantly having to interrupt her, especially at night. According to Dr Google, most people change position 10 to 30 times during the night. Even though I tend towards the low end of that range, that still means I wake Darchelle up close to a dozen times to roll me over. To keep it simpler for her, I alternate between two positions. On my right side I'm usually good for an hour before my hip or thigh begins to ache and wakes me up. On my back I usually also wake up after an hour but can sometimes ride out the discomfort and get back to sleep for another hour. Last night was atypical in that I only had to ask for her help four times. Last night was more typical in that of the eight hours we were in bed, I slept less than six.

11/5/2025   Hope  (link to here)
"'Hope' is the thing with feathers", Emily Dickinson wrote in her famous poem of that name. Focusing on other things with feathers, I haven't given much thought to hope other than to notice now and then, usually under cover of darkness, that it has been in short supply recently. More frequent shortness of breath and increasing difficulty with swallowing have been whispering in my ear that the party is almost over, and something without feathers has been suggesting that once it's over, it's all over. Last night in a dream my unconcious proposed, in its characteristically obfuscated fashion, that it is time to reconsider hope.
The poet concludes her poem + with the observation that hope, for all the benefits it confers, asks for nothing in return. I don't agree with her; in my experience hope demands courage, and I don't always have what it takes.

11/7/2025   Anniversary  (link to here)
Today is the twelth anniversary of my death sentence; twelve years ago today I was officially diagnosed with ALS. I didn't expect to live for another twelve years, or even another five. Yet here I am. Immobilized to be sure, in a wheelchair and on a ventilator for the past four years, but still breathing, still swallowing, still talking, still birding. Still swimming, snowboarding, cycling, climbing, hiking, running, even riding horseback too - in my dreams.
I don't dream of riding a horse very often; a dream a few nights ago is the only time that I can recall. In waking life the last time I rode a horse was 45 years ago while I was hunting above Ridgeway Colorado with Roy and his buddies from Texas. I borrowed one of their horses and rode in with them to retrieve the cow elk we'd shot the previous afternoon. Afterwards, sitting in his trailer swapping hunting tales, Roy told us he didn't expect to return; his doctor had told him not to make the trip to Colorado but he'd come anyhow, bringing friends with him so they could pack his body back to Texas if didn't make it. Roy was a vetrinarian from Beaumont who'd hunted up there for years; I'd met him two years earlier when a snowstorm stranded us the morning after I shot my first elk. For the next three days we sat in his trailer, ate elk steak and drank beer (me) and whiskey (Roy) while we waited for the snow to melt. Two years later, the morning after our horseback ride, I drove off and never saw Roy again.
In my dream I was riding with my adopted father John Pepper, who died four years ago having never ridden a horse in his entire life as far as I know. He preferred skiing and did so almost every day all winter after he retired. We were riding on the lower slopes of a ski area where I started up across a smooth sloping ledge then concerned that it might be too steep, guided my horse around it instead. At that point my horse became more interested in munching on the moss and forbs underfoot than in carrying me up the hill so I let it wander off, content to let it go.
I think in the dream I identify with Roy and John. Not only am I about to join them in death, but also that during our lives we were privileged to pursue activities that we loved, activities determined more by our circumstances and surroundings than by our agency, as important as that was, but which left us in the end with a sense that what we'd been given was enough.

11/14/2025   2026 Calendar  (link to here)