tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52759530171635807022023-11-16T02:55:16.901-08:00People, Place, Land and Water: Writing by Joanne HedouThis blog is a collection of my essays sinces the 90s. I write about people, place and perception--how we interact with the world and ways we might do it more sensitively.Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-89077376556527355922017-02-14T11:03:00.001-08:002017-03-05T08:32:59.268-08:00<div class="MsoNormal">
January 28, 2017<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSQTMm32tl2uxBbiOWdn2bQjiJ1JykJaA47EbUIIeZs_2lLkkCbAjsXYl8-dFKvlPqCK-hUnRcQarUDceXIMCJPRWrZ8BBvh5t-n4xxoLv-bRZLSDG_hH-rfuoh0gyheP0duhDVICArCAg/s1600/Memorial+Weekend+Methow+Valley+Rodeo+5-29-16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSQTMm32tl2uxBbiOWdn2bQjiJ1JykJaA47EbUIIeZs_2lLkkCbAjsXYl8-dFKvlPqCK-hUnRcQarUDceXIMCJPRWrZ8BBvh5t-n4xxoLv-bRZLSDG_hH-rfuoh0gyheP0duhDVICArCAg/s320/Memorial+Weekend+Methow+Valley+Rodeo+5-29-16.jpg" width="195" /></a></div>
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This letter is a request to protect our future to all politicians, government representatives and employees, businesses and nonprofit
organizations and individuals.</div>
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I want to live to the year 2050. If I live to the year
2050, I will be 98. My son will be 62—three years younger than I am now. If I live to 2050 I will be one of
a projected world population of anywhere from 8.5 billion to 9.7 billion humans living on this planet.
Other than me, who will those people be and where will they be living? If we don’t work to prevent it,
many of them will be migrants without homes who have left behind places devastated by war and
environmental change; some will be trying to settle or will have already settled in the newly warmed north.
These great numbers of people--both migrants and those who have sustained themselves in place in Maine
and throughout the world--will be putting an even larger burden on the ecosystems and social systems
of the world. I can’t imagine any way that their lives will be the same as ours are now if we allow
the current President to continue destroying our government. I <i>can</i> imagine ways their lives could be
better.</div>
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I ask all of you to please vote and work against
destruction of access to healthcare throughout the United States and the world.Please protect our
immigration system. Please work to return viability to the EPA, USDA, The National Parks Service, NOAA, NASA and
all other agencies that have kept the US and the State of Maine among the best places in the world
to live.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Please continue to work for the </b><b>future we can’t yet see and make it the best possible
future.</b></div>
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I want to be able to hope
that my son and his possible children will live in a world of fairness and
beauty in 2050; a world that is better than it is now; not one where 9.7 billion people struggle to survive
in a ruined place where people are devalued.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Please share my hope. Work with and for us all and don’t
ever stop. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Sincerely,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Joanne Hedou<o:p></o:p></div>
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Belfast, Maine<o:p></o:p></div>
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Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695398018832345406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-18303286854434985532015-12-23T15:35:00.000-08:002016-12-16T06:23:03.771-08:00Deer Kill 12-21-15<div class="MsoNormal">
It's not unusual to see something like this in the Methow
Valley. It’s unusual for me and for many other people I know however so I’m
documenting it.</div>
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Today is the last day before the winter solstice, a turning point, and I am at a
turning point as well. In May, I finally just lost my patience with finding the right time to move to the rural place where I could write and contemplate in quiet. I made a spur of the moment decision to rent a house on a hill in Winthrop, WA and moved in in July. It’s December and I’m at the midpoint of my year. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKAoFwSJleqjIjYmL43eXaQ6_OwUD8nO_ZAAZaJmrSM6HTTSVfVTV2hTcJ5F7LSfMq69UiSE2CNE2KWx1kPH9Z1k67balbW6wYknqqIGLITaW8h01N1yUk6Kt2eXtTdK4ceFJjDHQfb_sv/s1600/Pack+Rat+Trapped3+10-17-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKAoFwSJleqjIjYmL43eXaQ6_OwUD8nO_ZAAZaJmrSM6HTTSVfVTV2hTcJ5F7LSfMq69UiSE2CNE2KWx1kPH9Z1k67balbW6wYknqqIGLITaW8h01N1yUk6Kt2eXtTdK4ceFJjDHQfb_sv/s320/Pack+Rat+Trapped3+10-17-15.jpg" width="320" /></a>This morning I went outside to check a live trap in my
garage. I’ve already caught a packrat/woodrat in there and something else is
now living there, tearing into a trash bag, frantically stumbling over loose
wood in the rafters when I go to my car at night, and leaving a trail that looks
like cat prints and scat. It could be a feral cat but checking on the tracks
and scat there’s a slight possibility it’s a fox. Cats don’t usually poop in
the middle of their own trail.</div>
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As I walked to the garage about ten ravens flew up from the
vicinity of an apple tree in a small field next to the driveway. I thought they
might have just rested there for the night. I turned back to look at the trap
in the garage and it was tripped with nothing in it—again. This is a smarter
critter than the woodrat, or perhaps it’s just bigger and can’t get into this
trap. When I returned to the driveway I saw a circle of blood in the snow under
the tree ravens fled. Two more ravens, sentinels, I imagine, flew away when I
got closer. I went into the house and got my phone/camera.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAaGsPyT17UCPL5gUPs7NuMyzvofp1pgBK5x95IRDk3cm1GHV8muos4ifVEuSLKGYSLUEzan8G2iCM4W7iMBqwQJaO1Kyx3EZ-GhGtoDoChq9vIKimjSPU8SiQ3dJS33S3sC5xF_2Vb_sU/s1600/McLean+House+Deerkill+Magpie+Waiting+for+me+to+leave+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAaGsPyT17UCPL5gUPs7NuMyzvofp1pgBK5x95IRDk3cm1GHV8muos4ifVEuSLKGYSLUEzan8G2iCM4W7iMBqwQJaO1Kyx3EZ-GhGtoDoChq9vIKimjSPU8SiQ3dJS33S3sC5xF_2Vb_sU/s400/McLean+House+Deerkill+Magpie+Waiting+for+me+to+leave+12-21-15.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;">The magpies flew back and forth over my head
waiting for me to go. </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
When I got back outside a group of magpies flew off—not so far away as the ravens. They stuck around chattering to each other from a distance.<br />
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I tried to find the start of a blood trail from the the edge of the snow bank, but I couldn’t see one so I followed a deer track from the road. I post-holed to the top of my boots at my knees where the deer track ended and saw what appeared to be the site of a bloody feast. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7YhzwtSkuyWsOnZE9hHNdWh1NOxr8s2RrDlOLymb6gcuouI9tC_hmrAW-Ryk5HY-KdkhIIZ_Fb-M7powhwf_GJMLqpzADjjGC3dOItd7HUQawx_b-tddot-K0-zPXGHlg5KggCNBRlSdz/s1600/Above+West+Chewuch+Road+Deerkill+Circle+of+Blood+and+Fur+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7YhzwtSkuyWsOnZE9hHNdWh1NOxr8s2RrDlOLymb6gcuouI9tC_hmrAW-Ryk5HY-KdkhIIZ_Fb-M7powhwf_GJMLqpzADjjGC3dOItd7HUQawx_b-tddot-K0-zPXGHlg5KggCNBRlSdz/s640/Above+West+Chewuch+Road+Deerkill+Circle+of+Blood+and+Fur+12-21-15.jpg" width="640" /></a>I stood outside the circle with
some reverence for what had died. <span style="text-align: center;">All I could see was spots of blood, fur, and a huge kidney shaped organ.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsGX9MGfauWAeGtAdR3y2BpNzVO6wA2IZExnAgTrWyapxCucpkCNFjkkrR3UCOJGCsLw5lxwDbKPlJuCz2rTZXCZtRcyWQvpDC7rHHgfE7DCxwhMR68oRYT3WHoMK8yi-p7OZavFkAYQvy/s1600/McLean+House+Deerkill+More+Fur+on+the+Ground+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsGX9MGfauWAeGtAdR3y2BpNzVO6wA2IZExnAgTrWyapxCucpkCNFjkkrR3UCOJGCsLw5lxwDbKPlJuCz2rTZXCZtRcyWQvpDC7rHHgfE7DCxwhMR68oRYT3WHoMK8yi-p7OZavFkAYQvy/s200/McLean+House+Deerkill+More+Fur+on+the+Ground+12-21-15.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe0OCipitDTIGVCrgrUZ56HllsgfdRMn8HrxlVv1xZnFt7iLDng3RyW4r1HT8u1HZrYvZEZeXIFyvE7fGYZmD5Wi-51traHrC3ocJsa70pZet1Fqale6gE6h9eXMWZlnzk6HYf5_xH7Gj6/s1600/McLean+House+Deerkill+Circle+Blood+and+packed+ground+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe0OCipitDTIGVCrgrUZ56HllsgfdRMn8HrxlVv1xZnFt7iLDng3RyW4r1HT8u1HZrYvZEZeXIFyvE7fGYZmD5Wi-51traHrC3ocJsa70pZet1Fqale6gE6h9eXMWZlnzk6HYf5_xH7Gj6/s200/McLean+House+Deerkill+Circle+Blood+and+packed+ground+12-21-15.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVGItLh_n27-y5su7u8EGQAc85RyyEGwpkdyhCxIVMHGkyWzaoly68d_HokoA_Jvqo8eqF2jJGUqsOauC9B70x3ucq5MPyMsG7mtqzLSbPphA4EDtPvpvW3VXQ5hcdjNQZ9sUCXHHPjU2u/s1600/Above+West+Chewuch+Road+Deerkill+Rumen+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsGX9MGfauWAeGtAdR3y2BpNzVO6wA2IZExnAgTrWyapxCucpkCNFjkkrR3UCOJGCsLw5lxwDbKPlJuCz2rTZXCZtRcyWQvpDC7rHHgfE7DCxwhMR68oRYT3WHoMK8yi-p7OZavFkAYQvy/s1600/McLean+House+Deerkill+More+Fur+on+the+Ground+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsGX9MGfauWAeGtAdR3y2BpNzVO6wA2IZExnAgTrWyapxCucpkCNFjkkrR3UCOJGCsLw5lxwDbKPlJuCz2rTZXCZtRcyWQvpDC7rHHgfE7DCxwhMR68oRYT3WHoMK8yi-p7OZavFkAYQvy/s1600/McLean+House+Deerkill+More+Fur+on+the+Ground+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsGX9MGfauWAeGtAdR3y2BpNzVO6wA2IZExnAgTrWyapxCucpkCNFjkkrR3UCOJGCsLw5lxwDbKPlJuCz2rTZXCZtRcyWQvpDC7rHHgfE7DCxwhMR68oRYT3WHoMK8yi-p7OZavFkAYQvy/s1600/McLean+House+Deerkill+More+Fur+on+the+Ground+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw_ZF6Dqz_FaEno-2Cg8GhSHGAP6aK-R27MCItHq0CqFJ4XxFON6axf6euiHR4Bf9moPZt-omz608mnvWZmENcMtgQ-qa19iOZk-Ig6gAQjPiflWtOKSNtq4h-fBzbQyKljvXm5qJcr00x/s1600/Above+West+Chewuch+Road+Deerkill+Fur+on+the+Ground+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw_ZF6Dqz_FaEno-2Cg8GhSHGAP6aK-R27MCItHq0CqFJ4XxFON6axf6euiHR4Bf9moPZt-omz608mnvWZmENcMtgQ-qa19iOZk-Ig6gAQjPiflWtOKSNtq4h-fBzbQyKljvXm5qJcr00x/s200/Above+West+Chewuch+Road+Deerkill+Fur+on+the+Ground+12-21-15.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVGItLh_n27-y5su7u8EGQAc85RyyEGwpkdyhCxIVMHGkyWzaoly68d_HokoA_Jvqo8eqF2jJGUqsOauC9B70x3ucq5MPyMsG7mtqzLSbPphA4EDtPvpvW3VXQ5hcdjNQZ9sUCXHHPjU2u/s1600/Above+West+Chewuch+Road+Deerkill+Rumen+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVGItLh_n27-y5su7u8EGQAc85RyyEGwpkdyhCxIVMHGkyWzaoly68d_HokoA_Jvqo8eqF2jJGUqsOauC9B70x3ucq5MPyMsG7mtqzLSbPphA4EDtPvpvW3VXQ5hcdjNQZ9sUCXHHPjU2u/s200/Above+West+Chewuch+Road+Deerkill+Rumen+12-21-15.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw_ZF6Dqz_FaEno-2Cg8GhSHGAP6aK-R27MCItHq0CqFJ4XxFON6axf6euiHR4Bf9moPZt-omz608mnvWZmENcMtgQ-qa19iOZk-Ig6gAQjPiflWtOKSNtq4h-fBzbQyKljvXm5qJcr00x/s1600/Above+West+Chewuch+Road+Deerkill+Fur+on+the+Ground+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /></a>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJwNv_MZiXCWAxHfY0g1Q-tlqmwTtIE0PfzoM1iGDSD5Cu8JEhVCZ0FMtPDqgsSX2ohLGZXpLnDNL77-rjeMln6VSQBbWNyXhQs6qWZhFI0EHEYKCUvaPPecUAya9Ys_gd6IWCBRvMcYsR/s1600/Above+West+Chewuch+Road+Deerkill+Place+where+animal+may+have+been+resting++closer+12-21-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJwNv_MZiXCWAxHfY0g1Q-tlqmwTtIE0PfzoM1iGDSD5Cu8JEhVCZ0FMtPDqgsSX2ohLGZXpLnDNL77-rjeMln6VSQBbWNyXhQs6qWZhFI0EHEYKCUvaPPecUAya9Ys_gd6IWCBRvMcYsR/s320/Above+West+Chewuch+Road+Deerkill+Place+where+animal+may+have+been+resting++closer+12-21-15.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
It seemed to me that a pack of coyotes might have surprised a sleeping yearling in a spot outside the circle. If there was any death battle, I wouldn’t have heard it while I was sleeping in the far side of the house.<br />
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The circle of blood told me little more than something had died. I didn’t see any canine tracks just
those of deer and birds. The kidney shaped organ was chewed on one side and
packed with bits of straw like chewed grass. It had to be the rumen of a deer; unlikely
to provide any nourishment to any predator. There were no bones. Ravens
wouldn’t take bones away. What did—coyotes, a wolf, or a cougar? Cougars have been seen around here.<br />
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It was
already snowing for about the twentieth time so far this year and it was
covering everything fast so I just took as many pictures as I could. I've contacted a few local people to see if they would have any thoughts about what happened here and I haven't gotten any answers yet.<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif";"><u>Update
12-31-15</u><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
have had replies from 2 Washington Department of Wildlife (DFW) biologists, a
local naturalist, and a store owner whom I’ve talked to before about
identifying local fauna. All agreed that it’s hard to say what the predator was
without footprints but two of them think it was likely a cougar. Their
reasoning was the similar. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
naturalist said: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“I
would guess it’s a cougar kill. That’s the most common and likely thing
that happened, and from the bits of things I can see in the photo that’s what I
would go with. Cougars are very tidy and usually drag remains off to bury
somewhere more secluded and eat later over the course of a few days. If
it was a deer that was hit on the road and then made it that far and died, and
was getting feasted on by coyotes and birds, the deer would still be
there. (Cougar rarely eat something they didn’t kill). Coyotes
rarely kill full-sized deer, but you’re right it could have been a
yearling. Still, I think you’d see much of the deer still there if a
coyote was involved.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">From
one of the DFW biologists:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“When
coyotes and wolves kill an animal, they generally eat it on site. They
will carry a leg away, scatter the remains but usually there is something still
at the kill site. When a cougar kills an animal, they drag or carry
(depending on the size of the animals) it away. My guess given there is
no body that a cougar killed the deer but that really is just a best guess
without being on site.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The idea that there might have been a cougar hunting less than 100 feet from my door gave me some pause. The night before the kill happened I walked up the hill from my brother's house relishing the cold, the moonlight and the coyotes howling down on the valley floor. Today I looked in the snow for cougar prints on the road as I walked above my house. I thought I saw some until I realized someone had been snowshoeing on the road and the marks were more likely from a ski pole. I don't like to admit it but I'm a little spooked. I like knowing a cougar might be out there but if I ever see one, I hope it will quietly walk away,</div>
Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13695398018832345406noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-51351079505844321282011-11-21T17:30:00.001-08:002017-10-17T11:16:42.527-07:00The Action of Water--The Implications for Long Term Planning for Flooding and Farms in the Era of Climate Change<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The Action of Water</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The action of water is often dangerous. This is something we forget when we receive it in the benign form of tap water every day.</span></div>
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<shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f"><stroke joinstyle="miter"></stroke><formulas><f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"></f><f eqn="sum @0 1 0"></f><f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"></f><f eqn="prod @2 1 2"></f><f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"></f><f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"></f><f eqn="sum @0 0 1"></f><f eqn="prod @6 1 2"></f><f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"></f><f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"></f><f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"></f><f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"></f></formulas><path gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect" o:extrusionok="f"></path><lock aspectratio="t" v:ext="edit"></lock></shapetype><shape alt="Snoqualmie Jubliee Flood w Pumpkins 11-06.jpg" id="Picture_x0020_2" o:spid="_x0000_s1033" style="height: 363.6pt; margin-left: 2pt; margin-top: 16.15pt; mso-position-horizontal-relative: text; mso-position-horizontal: absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative: text; mso-position-vertical: absolute; mso-wrap-distance-bottom: 0; mso-wrap-distance-left: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-right: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-top: 0; mso-wrap-style: square; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 485.8pt; z-index: -8;" type="#_x0000_t75" wrapcoords="-67 0 -67 21475 21609 21475 21609 0 -67 0"><imagedata o:title="Snoqualmie Jubliee Flood w Pumpkins 11-06" src="file:///C:\Users\JOANNE~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.jpg"></imagedata><wrap type="tight"></wrap></shape><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Beautiful Terror</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">, Jubilee Farm, Snoqualmie River, Washington, November 2006<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Photo by Wendy Haakenson</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I am a fluvial Geomorphologist and I love rivers. Every year, from my city home in Seattle I watch the news about winter flooding in rural areas; an increasing problem that has come with heavier rainstorms. I go out and stand on curbs watching misdirected drainage run by me on the street. I listen to the wind and the rain and think about the roof of my top-floor condo which is leaking. I hold it in as long as I can but I can’t help myself. When water moves so fast and powerfully, I am most drawn to it; so I go out to see the rivers.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">January 15, 2011</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In western Washington we are in the second series of floods for the 2010-2011 water year (the period between October 1, 2010 to September 30, 2011). We have astounding valleys—the Snoqualmie, Sammamish, Snohomish, Stillaguamish—formed by glaciers, U-shaped, edged by hills or mountains with much of the valley floor largely preserved in farmland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Flooding seems to be intensifying every year. Since 1990, the frequency, depth and intensity of floods have all increased and this year appears to be setting up to be a banner year. Right now farmers, many of whom I know, are moving animals and equipment to higher ground. They’re checking United States Geological Survey (USGS) real-time streamflow data online and listening to National Weather Service and NOAA flood warnings. Towns east of Seattle, like Duvall and Fall City, have been either partially or completely cut off. People are locked into their communities defending the ground floors of their houses and rescuing others who have chosen to challenge road closure signs. Maintaining composure in light of flooded houses already once repaired and rescuing the foolhardy is difficult. It’s only January and it’s early in the winter to have had so much flooding. I picture the farmers tapping their fingers on window sills as they look out to confirm the worst.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">On Saturday, January 15, when I heard the second flood of the water year had started, all I could think of was the awesome and frightening force of water; how it makes us feel small and scares us and that that awe should be teaching us something. I wanted to go to Duvall, in the Snoqualmie River Valley about 30 miles east of Seattle, with my brother and sister to eat at the Grange Café for my brother’s birthday. My brother had asked if we might not reach Duvall because of the flooding. I sent him the link to the data for the USGS water level gage. The river hadn’t reached flood crest yet and we went. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">At night, the Snoqualmie Valley was an eerie, shiny lake reflecting the lights of stranded farms and fully-lit greenhouses. Some roads were already closed. We thought the river might have crested and we might not make it into town but we did. When we finished our dinner, Judy Neldam, the owner of the café, came over and said that Duvall might be cut off soon. The river was within inches of cresting. We were leaving but I wanted to stay and watch the Snoqualmie rushing by. I kept quiet. The crazy attraction to the power of the river that I secretly felt was shared by no one else—at least no one who would admit it—and we went home.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">On Sunday I read on Facebook stories of the farmers I know watching the rivers rise, seeing their houses and barns flood, wondering if they would again have to leave. They elicited information on the rivers as they watched them. I wanted to help them but driving the 30-50 miles to them could just make me another human hazard so I replied to their postings saying that they are documenting the life of their community and to keep it up. That was not said without sincerity. I know they are threatened and we all need to know the dynamics of what they are living—both sides of it—and we need to think about what this means for us. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Perhaps as penance, perhaps as justification for my uncontrollable love of water and its power, since January I h</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">ave been interviewing farmers about the December and January floods and am trying to create an internal balance of my feelings about the needs of those farmers and the action of water. I can’t deny that they suffer but I also can’t condemn the rivers. They are doing what they do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope there can be reconciliation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I have interviewed three farmers directly and talked to many others in passing since then. I managed to catch them in between floods or after a snow storm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mostly, we talked as they worked or, in one case, had the luxury of meeting indoors when a farmer was preparing for a night meeting about flooding. I have helped sort sheep, patted a lot of dogs and cats, gotten very muddy and heard stories that were often similar but many of them unique to their particular river or particular place on that river. </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Luke Woodward and Oxbow Center for Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment—January 31</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Luke Woodward is the farm manager at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oxbow Center for Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment</i> (Oxbow) on the Snoqualmie River about 5 miles south of Duvall and 35 miles east of Seattle. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">When I drove up to meet Luke at the barn at Oxbow he was talking on the phone. He hung up and said to me that he wouldn’t have much time because they were getting ready for another predicted storm. Tractors were out in the fields preparing them for the first spring planting since the January 16-17 floods. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Oxbow was begun in 1999 as a farm and salmon habitat restoration site through a partnership between the landowners and the non-profit <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stewardship Partners</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1999 this type of restoration was innovative. Now, the trees planted 12 years ago are thriving and Stewardship Partners has a program for “Salmon Safe” farms that certifies this and 339 other farms and vineyards throughout Washington Oregon, California and British Columbia.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Since Luke came here in 1999, there have been six major floods ranging in level from 58.79 feet to 62.21 feet. The normal level of the river is about 48 feet so that is ten feet of water that spreads over the Snoqualmie Valley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The USGS’s records show that the Snoqualmie River has reached “flood stage” (the height of the water in the river at the nearby gage in Carnation) of 54 feet fourteen out of the last eighteen years. The naming of flood intervals leads to some confusion however. It is a statistical estimate of probability rather than an established predictor of potential flooding. The term indicates that in any given year the probability of a flood that could occur once in a hundred years, for example, is one in a hundred. So the hundred-year flood can occur in any year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Luke is fairly sure that the increased flooding he has seen since 1999 is directly connected to housing developments built since then on the valley walls of the Snoqualmie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Housing developments increase what are called “impervious surfaces”—roofs, driveways and even lawns. Water that once slowly infiltrated through the soft floor of woodlands now runs much more quickly downhill on smoother, harder surfaces. In addition, in many farmers’ opinions, Puget Sound Energy (PSE), the local electrical utility, and the Army Corps of Engineers have managed the Snoqualmie River to the detriment of the downstream inhabitants of the floodplain. PSE has been allowed by the Corps to widen the Snoqualmie River at Snoqualmie Falls in 2005 and 2009. Now, releases at Snoqualmie Falls, which is upstream from Oxbow, seem to increase the speed and volume of floods.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Regardless of how it happens, what happens when the Snoqualmie floods at the levels it has reached so often in the past twenty years is that everything: barns, animals and one hundred plus year old houses are inundated. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Animals drown if not moved. Tractors and equipment are destroyed by water damage and families living on the river are in a life threatening situation. With more frequent flooding, farmers withstand crop losses more often and they are not always able to financially recover before the next big flood. This is unsustainable and a real threat to food production and the profession of farming in the Snoqualmie Valley.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Luke described the 2008 King County Task Force of farmers and local government agencies to study the problems and responses to flooding in the Snoqualmie Valley between 1990 and 2008. Among the things the Task Force reviewed were flooding patterns, damage, crop losses and the overall efficacy of regulations from the local level to the national level; one of the most salient being the issues around building “farm pads” or elevated mounds of fill to put animals and equipment on during floods. One would think farm pads would be a simple and elegant solution to decreasing loss and damage to farms during floods. However, if a large number of pads were built in any floodplain the impact during a flood would be similar to putting ice cubes in a full glass of water: flood levels would increase and overtop previous heights. So, to build a pad, a farmer needs to provide “compensatory storage”, or, in more lay terms, put a hole in the floodplain somewhere else. I wondered, in the long-term, how many farm pads could there be? There is a point at which multiple farm pads and compensatory storage in the floodplain will change what is called its “roughness” and that would change river dynamics as well. On the plus side, when the county allowed a pilot program of thirteen farm pads they found that the pads alleviated stress among farmers—an often un-discussed impact of flooding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Overall farm pads seemed like a short term solution to me. Luke said, in any case, for most farmers the price of putting a pad in is prohibitive.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRnyxbyx2ATeb_nj369MmFqG5ZqH07zqokIflh6kkuFt3scvmPc5Y6bNUWFOlj7sH43B6Ao0qVwIgn8FZ0vlh2CTaauyJascu1n6CyNs24LwIB8k2caVX8bMFUKJWVl99J78q3aIypmm5m/s1600/Oxbow+Barn+Raised+Equipment.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" hda="true" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRnyxbyx2ATeb_nj369MmFqG5ZqH07zqokIflh6kkuFt3scvmPc5Y6bNUWFOlj7sH43B6Ao0qVwIgn8FZ0vlh2CTaauyJascu1n6CyNs24LwIB8k2caVX8bMFUKJWVl99J78q3aIypmm5m/s320/Oxbow+Barn+Raised+Equipment.JPG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Federal, state and county regulations seemed to weigh on Luke’s mind quite a bit. He showed me the agricultural building they had constructed in 2005. At that time farm pads and raised buildings weren’t allowed and they built the structure in compliance with county zoning codes on the floodplain. Since then, as a result of much higher subsequent floods, he has had to raise all of their storage off the floors at great expense. He is frustrated that had they built in 2008 after codes changed, they could have saved the thousands of dollars that it took to retrofit the </span><shape alt="IMG_0417.JPG" id="Picture_x0020_1" o:spid="_x0000_s1031" style="height: 218.55pt; margin-left: 1.5pt; margin-top: 44.05pt; mso-position-horizontal-relative: text; mso-position-horizontal: absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative: text; mso-position-vertical: absolute; mso-wrap-distance-bottom: 0; mso-wrap-distance-left: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-right: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-top: 0; mso-wrap-style: square; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 292.9pt; z-index: -3;" type="#_x0000_t75" wrapcoords="-111 0 -111 21496 21571 21496 21571 0 -111 0"><imagedata o:title="IMG_0417" src="file:///C:\Users\JOANNE~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image003.jpg"></imagedata><wrap type="tight"></wrap></shape><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">barn.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Luke told me about a law that has had serious impacts on all farmers since Hurricane Katrina. In Katrina, a lot of the water that broke levees flooded into industrial areas. When it washed back into residential areas and farmland it brought a toxic stew of industrial contaminants with it. As a result, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) passed regulations against selling foods from areas that had been flooded—<u>nationwide</u>. Since most farmers in the Snoqualmie Valley grow root crops and some hardy greens like collards during the winter, when it most often floods, this has cut into their income.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Luke gave me plenty to think about. My primary response was surprise. I hadn’t realized the extent to which the Snoqualmie is a controlled river: with flows manipulated at Snoqualmie Falls and increasing regulations of the floodplain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Snoqualmie, to paraphrase Aldo Leopold, is a river “…confused by so much advice.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5275953017163580702#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s still beautiful but maintaining that beauty as well as a balance among farmers, people living in the hills, Puget Sound Energy and wild fish is not an easy zero-sum equation. To grow food, do it using organic practices and sustain this farm, Luke is pulling a lot of threads in an intricate and fraying weave. Pull too far in one direction and the fabric of the farm is altered. The interplay between this farmer and this natural system is a quest for sustenance in the face of powerful dynamics. The limits of what can be withdrawn as produce will be met at some point but when?</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Linda Neunzig Herding and Sorting Sheep—February 13, 2011</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Linda Neunzig is the Agricultural Coordinator for Snohomish County; one county directly north of King County, where Seattle is located. She is a Chef in the Slow Food community, a highly capable horsewoman, a Certified Veterinary Tech in California and Washington and a sheep and cattle farmer. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Ninety Farms is about 40 miles northeast of Seattle, a half mile from the banks and approximately 5 feet above the floodplain of the Stillaguamish River. This is a different drainage basin with different weather than the Snoqualmie. The “Stilly”, as locals call it, is not dammed upstream nor is it as susceptible to snowmelt flooding as the Snoqualmie. Flooding at Ninety Farms is mostly a result of heavy rain. Floodwaters this year brought a fine silt that covers the ground where Linda grows grass and she is going to have to drag and re-seed the pastures so that the roots can breathe and grass will grow thick again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is culling her herd because this year there will be less food for the sheep. Reducing feed reduces the number of lambs she can sell to her customers and thus her income—putting a dent in one of the few local sources of naturally raised lamb as well. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">On December 12, 2010 Linda’s house and barns were flooded with four feet of water. She and a friend moved the 300 or so sheep, 3 horses and a multitude of cats and dogs to higher ground on his farm. While a farm pad may have helped her avoid the moving, she says it wouldn’t have changed the cleanup. It took three weeks and the volunteer help of many friends to clean up and bring the sheep back. They were lambing when the flooding started and they were still lambing four months later. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">When I showed up early that Sunday morning, Linda was away getting fuel for her tractor. As soon as she got back she started working. She put diesel in the tractor, started preparing the barns for cleaning and let the sheep out of their main barn to the pasture. I asked her questions as she worked but mostly followed along watching what she did and let her comment.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">We started working by moving new lambs. A mother had given birth to two lambs in the last hour. Their umbilical cords were dangling and the mother’s milk bag has a streak of blood from the uterus. We walked them over to the horse barn, set them up so that the mother could bond with them and then took the three horses to their pasture. All the while we were followed by a gaggle of cats and dogs. Tillie, the Corgi Linda uses to herd, was constantly at her heels. One young cat inserted himself into everything she did. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">As Linda cleaned the barns and yard with the tractor, I walked down the road to the Stilly to take pictures.<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a beautiful river with gravel bars on alternating sides of each meander and piles of debris—trees and logs—piled on the banks. <span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"><shape alt="IMG_0459.JPG" id="Picture_x0020_22" o:spid="_x0000_i1025" style="height: 342.85pt; mso-wrap-style: square; visibility: visible; width: 457.7pt;" type="#_x0000_t75"><imagedata o:title="IMG_0459" src="file:///C:\Users\JOANNE~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image006.jpg"></imagedata></shape></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In its quiet non-flood state I could picture just standing by it or fishing but what I was seeing was a water flow that was down closer to average. The gage closest to Ninety Farms does not measure flood height but volume. On this day it was approximately 2,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) but on December 12, 2010 the flow was 37,200 cfs.<span style="mso-no-proof: yes;"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">On my way back I saw a farmer whom Linda had told me would be coming to buy pregnant ewes. Linda had set aside about 23 and now had to identify them by age for the buyer. I was recruited to make a list on a receipt pad: 1 yr, 2yr, 3yr, 4yr and full mouth and put hash marks by each as she looked in their mouths and checked to make sure each has two-bag udders. She then released pregnant ones one-by-one to a fenced off part of the barn from the pen in the back where they had been held. One, she called “Coyote” wasn’t supposed to be in there. This one had been attacked by a Coyote when it was young. Its throat was so torn that when it swallowed food it came out of the side of its neck. Linda said, “We fixed it. We didn’t know if she would recover but she’s fine now.” After a while I realized that when Linda said “we” it was mostly an understated way of saying she did something. As she checked the sheep “Coyote” got out. Linda said, "Oh you can have her for free in case there are some that are not carrying babies." In the process of selecting she added in another two just in case.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">When she was almost done Linda asked me to count the sheep she had already released. I needed to ascertain whether twenty or nineteen sheep had already been released. The penned sheep moved constantly but together; head to tail, head to head, tail to head. I tried to count by head but they moved up and down, disappearing behind and over each other. When Tillie got them fairly tightly into a corner they still shifted like jello. Finally, I determined that there were twenty. The idea that counting sheep is restful is a complete misrepresentation of anything that happens. No more images of the fluffy white ruminants jumping over logs for me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">When the trailerful of sheep was gone, we moved out to the fields to bring back the herd and sort about 20 more for butchering on the coming Thursday. Linda went out ahead of me. I kept my distance watching what she did. Linda and Tillie actualized a lot of the imagined herding I did when I owned a Border Collie. They turned the sheep towards the buildings and herded them together with an occasional bark and arm waving. They passed me at a distance as I moved further out past them to look at a large nest in the poplars along the river. </span></div>
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<shape alt="IMG_0432.JPG" id="Picture_x0020_18" o:spid="_x0000_s1028" style="height: 239.1pt; margin-left: 136.35pt; margin-top: 4.75pt; mso-position-horizontal-relative: text; mso-position-horizontal: absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative: text; mso-position-vertical: absolute; mso-wrap-distance-bottom: 0; mso-wrap-distance-left: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-right: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-top: 0; mso-wrap-style: square; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 318.7pt; z-index: -6;" type="#_x0000_t75" wrapcoords="-102 0 -102 21410 21553 21410 21553 0 -102 0"><imagedata o:title="IMG_0432" src="file:///C:\Users\JOANNE~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image007.jpg"></imagedata><wrap type="tight"></wrap></shape><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">As I got back towards the farmyard, Linda had the sheep almost to the gate and they started to turn back. I stood in the way. Up until then, I think she might have thought I was pretty useless. She said, “Good, wave your arms at them and keep coming.” We together got them into the barn and moved some portable fence pieces to pack them together. Among 200, she wanted to get about 20. Linda looked for cropped tails and something she didn’t quite explain to pick them out. For about 45 minutes, it seemed, she walked slowly through the herd. When she saw one she wanted to check, she grabbed it by the neck and pulled it toward the back pen. When she was sure she wanted to put it in the back pen she straddled the sheep to free her hands and opened the gate and shoved it in. The large rams and ewes kept pushing the herd generally away from Linda. When they got crowded in one place, lambs ended up standing steadily on all fours on the backs of the adults. One got out then constantly bleated for its mother.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Linda said, “OK, that’s good. Let’s put these guys back in the field.” We moved the portable fence and she lead the main group out with Tillie. I stood guard to keep the sheep from going back into the barn. To the right I saw sheep coming from the back pen down a chute. I was watching them and thinking there was a gate blocking the chute but all at once they ran out of the barn and joined the main group! I ran out to Linda just as she was ready to open the gate and yelled to her that they got out. “What? Dammit!” She stopped, silent, then turned around and said, “OK we have to do it again.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This time in the barn the herd was quieter, panting more, moving more slowly. Linda was quieter too. In another 15 minutes or so the sheep to be butchered were penned again. I watched for them to escape. They rammed the pen in the same spot but no luck. The main herd was let go out to the fields. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">At one point in the sheep moving and gate opening I told Linda that it reminded me of the dots and squares game I used to play as a kid where you put dots on a paper in a grid then compete with someone to close the squares. It seems that at some point in the past this pencil and paper game would be good training for what we had been doing because if you don’t close the square you lose. Is it just coincidence or is there some agricultural heritage being passed down by this game?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I was ready to wrap up the day and Linda had been invited to dinner by a chef friend so I wanted to give her time to get ready. A couple of times during the day she had stopped and looked at me with her intense blue eyes and said, “You must think I’m crazy.” What I was thinking was not that she was crazy but how incompetent I was as I watched her move and guide and handle the cats and horses, lambs and dogs and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tractor</i> while answering the phone and the occasional question from me. She didn’t lose a beat moving quietly from one thing to another. Perhaps when no one is around she might get frustrated and show it but she had only shown that once in five hours of steady work. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I don’t believe Linda would or could do this work unless she was deeply connected to the rhythms, the air, the water, the animals and the land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It all matches a power within her that needs to be matched—that visceral connection with the natural world that some people can’t ignore. For her the river either makes this possible or impossible and I saw her on a day when she was not fighting the river. It was incredibly peaceful just to watch her manage her piece of the universe. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">This peace ultimately was transitory. While I was there I asked Linda about a nest out in a windrow of poplars along the river beyond the pasture. She asserted that it was a hawk’s nest but I wasn’t so sure. Later in the winter, between the second and third floods, she had to confront bald eagles and coyotes taking lambs. The eagles were flying into her barn to get them. To ward off the coyotes, Linda purchased three Llamas; but for the eagles she had no solutions. In addition she suffered through two snowstorms that didn’t affect farmers further south. The storms were late in the year and that was difficult enough but on the question of why the eagles were so aggressive, it seems that the cumulative systemic impacts of such a harsh winter had affected food sources for the wild animals. Her challenges with eagles and coyotes continued through the Spring.</span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Erick and Wendy Haakenson, Jubilee Farm, Snoqualmie River—February 14</span></b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Jubilee Farm</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> is on the west side of the Snoqualmie Valley about 10 miles south of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oxbow Center</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I visited many of the fields were still wet from the January flood. </span><br />
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<shape alt="Erick and Wendy" id="Picture_x0020_8" o:spid="_x0000_s1027" style="height: 173.55pt; margin-left: 1.5pt; margin-top: 0.3pt; mso-position-horizontal-relative: text; mso-position-horizontal: absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative: text; mso-position-vertical: absolute; mso-wrap-distance-bottom: 0; mso-wrap-distance-left: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-right: 9pt; mso-wrap-distance-top: 0; mso-wrap-style: square; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 167.2pt; z-index: -1;" type="#_x0000_t75" wrapcoords="-194 0 -194 21469 21510 21469 21510 0 -194 0"><imagedata o:title="Erick and Wendy" src="file:///C:\Users\JOANNE~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image008.jpg"></imagedata><wrap type="tight"></wrap></shape><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Erick Haakenson and his wife Wendy have built this farm over the last 20 years from an organic vegetable farm to its current status as a biodynamic farm. I found them in their brand new plantation-style house with a wraparound porch and Erick invited me to talk indoors. We immediately started off with a broad philosophical discussion on world population, the capacity to produce food for more people and how the Haakensons evolved from being more conventional organically certified farmers to using biodynamic practices. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Erick feels that a lot of “organic agriculture” is going the way of industrial agriculture which disconnects people from a place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Biodynamic farming is place-based and looks at people as part of the ecological system. For it to be successful, natural processes need to be respected and it includes animals—specifically ruminants—as a necessity in maintaining soil health.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Erick seemed somewhat inured to the flooding as a fact of life he has dealt with for years. He and Wendy lived for five years in a manufactured home across the road from the new house. On November 7th of 2006, in the middle of the night, their home was inundated by floodwaters that rose four feet up the walls. That older home has since been raised and become the residence for farm hands. </span><shape alt="The barn at Jubilee Farm" id="Picture_x0020_10" o:allowoverlap="f" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 142.4pt; margin-left: 262.1pt; margin-top: -24.85pt; mso-position-horizontal-relative: text; mso-position-horizontal: absolute; mso-position-vertical-relative: line; mso-position-vertical: absolute; mso-wrap-distance-bottom: 0; mso-wrap-distance-left: 0; mso-wrap-distance-right: 0; mso-wrap-distance-top: 0; mso-wrap-style: square; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 189.9pt; z-index: 5;" type="#_x0000_t75"><imagedata o:title="The barn at Jubilee Farm" src="file:///C:\Users\JOANNE~1\AppData\Local\Temp\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image009.jpg"></imagedata><wrap anchory="line" type="square"></wrap></shape><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Their old gambrel-roofed barn still stands near the old residence however it is being replaced by a model barn on a ten-foot-high pad being funded by a USDA Pilot Project grant.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Erick’s concerns with the flooding were not completely with the erratic and unpredictable patterns of the recent past but with the ultimate impacts of climate change and the future <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">scarcity</i> of water. The signal through the noise in hydrologic disruption is the steady rise in temperature that has been occurring for 50 to 100 years depending on what sources you cite. Glaciers have been shrinking more than growing for at least 100 years. If temperatures do continue to rise, the predicted scenario is that water now stored in the mountains in snow and glaciers will all be released during the winter instead of during the summer growing season. This is a problem for all of western North America from British Columbia to southern California where metropolitan water systems are designed around winter storage in snow and ice reservoirs. An adaptive approach that Erick considers a serious one is the idea of building small reservoirs in the mountains to supply winter storage and summer water for farming and water supplies. This idea is so fraught with repercussions on potential environmental impacts that Erick acknowledges he has to qualify any discussion of it very carefully. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Since 2009 Erick and the Snoqualmie Valley Preservation Alliance (SVPA) have been working on a lawsuit against US Army Corps of Engineers in relation to the widening at Snoqualmie Falls that Luke had mentioned. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the permit process, the EIS reported a determination of non-significance, or DNS, for downstream impacts. Erick and other farmers are appealing this decision in Federal court. PSE petitioned the court of be included as co-defendants, and that petition was granted. The SVPA argues that no downstream impact studies were done to determine what the impact of up-river flood alleviation would be and no public review was allowed. They are also pointing out that this project is not a good solution for native fish. Increased flows over Snoqualmie Falls seem to increase downstream flow velocity significantly during floods. This might serve the upper valley well by reducing flood heights but increased downstream speed and flows will potentially cut into stream banks, flood more fields and also scour the river bottom eradicating salmon spawning beds. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Erick is an eloquent speaker, deeply philosophical and clearly connected to the piece of land he’s sees himself as being privileged to steward. He and Wendy have a somewhat unique Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share program in which people come out to Jubilee Farm to pick up their food. This does not, like many CSAs, defray the travel cost but intentionally brings people to the farm so that they can have a direct connection to the production of their food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their practices emulate a basic tenet of the local food movement of the noted local food activists in Seattle, Viki Sonntag, who often says, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“It’s about relationships.”<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5275953017163580702#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">What is the Future we can see?</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Erick and the other farmers welcomed me back at any time and I went back to see Erick and Luke. In March and May the Snoqualmie River rose again delaying planting. An unusually cold Spring further delayed planting as far out as June for some farmers. Fields were still muddy in some spots when I was there on June 4. I am in touch with Linda by email and the last time she posted on Facebook, she had 150 lambs sequestered in her barn to protect them from the eagles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I have reflected a great deal on the implications that the experiences of these three farmers have for the food system and for the world. The thoughts from Luke about the current control of the Snoqualmie were a caution to me, the example of Linda and her absolute fierceness in engaging with every piece of the natural world that she can were an inspiration, and the small hint at what could be if we build the small reservoirs in the Cascades that Erick talked about lead me to a vision of a future that I and many others try to avoid thinking about. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The current strength of the local food movement throughout the US has increased the appreciation of farms and farmers. Many in Seattle hope that the city and region can be sustained on local food in the future; with much of it being produced in the Snoqualmie Valley. But the climate and the dynamics of rivers are changing. We are dealing with much more variable variability and the making of any predictions over the long-term is something we should be cautious about. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I may be wrong in many people’s eyes to be excited by the powers that natural systems have but our loss of respect for those systems is pretty incontrovertible. We are living the reality humans created. Population, pollution or just the now-unstable, varying patterns of precipitation around the earth are challenging us everywhere and I don’t think we’re able to say that people will always win. While I also hope that we can create a local food system I wonder how that will actually happen. We want healthy, locally grown for everyone. We want high quality farmland to be preserved for both practical and aesthetic reasons. We all, to some degree, idolize Wendell Berry and envision ourselves being connected to place like he and Aldo Leopold. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I felt myself being niggled at the ear by devils.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A specific point in all of these interviews that fed my devils was Erick’s discussion about the reservoirs in the mountains. If we honestly think about world population as projected on the exponential trajectory it’s now on, there will be an estimated nine billion people on earth in 2050. This presents challenges I’m afraid most food activists are unwilling or unable to visualize or confront.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t even grasp the real possibility of it myself and I wonder how many of us can.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In 2050 my son could be a grandfather. Given population growth and the technical development and environmental destruction that have occurred since I was a four-year-old child playing by streams in New England woods, I think in that future, if we have built a few small reservoirs such as those Erick mentioned, it would be a minor alteration among many more technical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, while we love the idyll of returning to a pastoral life, it seems more likely to me that current responses to food scarcity will be on the path of primarily infrastructural solutions like those reservoirs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Water conserving and permaculture farming practices will help but simply based on the potential demand for food, they may not be enough.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Of most concern to me is that this future won’t include ways to meet the real human need for a raw connection to the natural world. I can’t see the world where we give this up and I refuse to conclude that I am an evolutionary throwback with too many atavistic urges. I would rather say that I represent the true realities of human existence and that Luke, Linda, Erick and all those who yearn to grow their own food, live on a farm or just wander in the woods do as well. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There are those who might reply that evolution in response to increased population and immense technological change will lead to the diminishment of atavistic urges in the favor of a species much more accommodating of things like brain implanted communication devices and real time connections to almost everywhere in the world. I don’t want to buy into that idea but when I read an article in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Wired Magazine</b> Joel Johnson wrote something that seems to support it, </span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">“…I believe that humankind made a subconscious collective bargain at the dawn of the industrial age to trade the resources of our planet for the chance to escape it. We live in the transitional age between that decision and its conclusion.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5275953017163580702#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></b></span></span></span></a></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Many of us in the developed world are indeed escaping to the colorful electronic worlds and the internet. I participate too, often like it, and wonder at it but I don’t think that obviates my real human nature. Despite the long-ago description by Aristotle of a world made of atoms and the 18<sup>th</sup> century theorists who changed views of the world to see it as a part of a mechanical universe, I don’t think<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>there has ever been a time when people did not search out the unreconstructed natural world nor do I believe there ever will be so I stand my ground. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">These three farmers are a small cross section of those in Western Washington. That they and others like them are surviving at all is remarkable but when people choose to make their living in the path of the constantly changing dynamics of water and other natural systems they have to be instilled with qualities that many don’t have: incredible perseverance and the ability to work almost continuously in heat, cold and wet. And they also fulfill the aspirations of many of us who want to be back on land, touching it, breathing in the living smell of earth; and they will not give those things up. I won’t either! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I worry about the farmers. I worry about food. I worry about the once-again threat of extinction of the bald eagles that play outside my window. When the rivers come up, my blood roils and in my heart meanders to those places where the powerful water is flowing. I must go there and stand by the river to touch it and remember who I really am. I can work with these forces within me. I trust the farmers I know can too. For those in doubt or in need of direction about what we should do, I say first, “Go find your river.” I’ll be standing by mine and from those places; be they metaphorical or real, we can all look forward and back and envision the world in all its complexity as a place where we create something better for not just us and our children but every living ounce of it.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5275953017163580702#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-small;"> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A Sand County Almanac</b>, Aldo Leopold, Oxford University Press, 1949. Pg. 119.</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5275953017163580702#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "calibri";"> Sonntag, Viki, <b>Why Local Linkages Matter: Findings from the Local Food Economy Study</b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">, Sustainable Seattle, 2008.</span></span></span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5275953017163580702#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[3]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: x-small;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Gadget Guilt</i>, Joel Johnson, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Wired Magazine</b>, March 2011, pp 96-103. (quote on 103)</span></div>
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Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-31296358075347747592011-11-20T11:37:00.000-08:002017-09-21T08:03:21.464-07:00Another Way to Say I'm Learning When to Talk<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Me: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I spend a lot of time translating my life when I talk to people. My lower income background didn’t give me the skills to talk to wealthier people or the middle class. The conversations in my head go between saying what I’m thinking and figuring out how to say it in a way that won’t offend someone or won’t clue them in to the fact that I am not middle class.”</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Reply: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“You are creating a user interface.” (A UI to those not from the tech world.)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My shoulder and arm hurt and I want to type this before I lose capability to type. I want to be responsible to the people who are caring for me and helping me to get better. I will get better but I have to write this now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Last night I went to a “Rent Party” after going to that dinner. My friend, who works in the Seattle area to help people and bring people up in so many ways, can’t pay rent this month. The friend invited me at the last minute. The friend knows I’m hurting too so thought it wasn’t right to ask. The person’s friends said, “Ask those who know what it’s like.”, and I do know what it’s like. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m falling down on my desk. I can hardly get up. I just had a discussion with another friend who is on the edge and wondering what to do—how to pay the rent. My UI is trying to kick in but I’m suppressing it a bit. I had a tiny bit to drink yesterday and I’m a little hung over. That opens the doors and lets me through the UI door a bit. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am tired of placards with 1-paragraph statements about the 99%. I’m tired of “supporters” who for whatever reason think that their words will help this movement. It will help some. Personally I’m ambivalent. The demonstrations and placards are a good start but these are real people not to be objectified and turned into symbols for a movement. Invite them to your house and sit down with them. Learn how you can really help—not how you can help them stand in the street longer—how you can help get them off that street be it real or metaphorical; forever. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m white. I can tell you what it’s like to be poor from childhood; that’s all. It’s hard enough to be honest about my own experience because I know that when I am in a room full of people, be they activists or potential donors, it makes me awkward and them uncomfortable. People think I’m hostile. That’s because of the UI I’m always focusing on creating in my head so I can talk to them "politely". I do tell the truth where I see inconsistency and delusion. But when I talk about difficulty with my injury or my finances, it makes them more uncomfortable. What I’m trying to do, trying to say is that they once accepted me, called me friend as long as I could screen out what my true life experiences were. Now, I stand beside them and it’s too much. Poverty and financial stress are an analytical problem to them. I become no longer a person but something to solve. I’m invisible. I make them feel powerless even though they aren’t. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>That’s not what I’m trying to do.</u> I’ve thought about this a lot this year. I have grey hair. I have a nice car. I sort of own a condo. I look successful but I’m not and I’m not the only person out there who is in this situation. I’m trying to say to them, I am the ”they” you want to help. I’m not over the edge yet. I’m have not completely fallen down yet. I still want to be your friend but I’m not alone and I understand that if you stay friends with me it opens doors you’re scared to go through. Because I am not the only person you know in this place. The 99% are there right behind me. They’re creating the collective UI of the Occupy movements. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Two people, three if you include me, are right in front of you falling down.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m still falling down on my desk. I have to stop. This is how I write when I’m crying. It’s unedited. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I don’t want to make you uncomfortable but I want to be able to stand in front of you and tell the truth. If you allow yourself to cry, you will write this way too. You will do more than you think you could.</span></div>
Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-82690494796242269152011-09-15T16:06:00.000-07:002011-09-15T16:06:48.903-07:00Fishing for Pink Salmon in Puget Sound<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"> <div class="post-headline"><h1><span style="font-size: large;">Is it boring? It's not Provence.</span></h1><a href="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2011/09/is-it-boring-its-not-provence/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2011/09/is-it-boring-its-not-provence/</span></a></div><div class="post-byline"> </div><div class="post-byline"><a href="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/author/joannehedou/" title="Posts by Joanne Hedou"><span style="color: #317527; font-size: x-small;"><strong>Joanne Hedou</strong></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>, September 15th, 2011</strong></span></div><div class="post-bodycopy clearfix" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div class="wp-caption alignright" id="attachment_10468" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; width: 250px;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-10468 " height="300" src="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Lincoln-Park-Fishing-8-31-11-300x225.jpg" title="Pole Fishing at Lincoln Park" width="400" /> <div class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Pole Fishing at Lincoln Park</span></div></div><div style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="color: #317527;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>“The question—’Is it boring?’—is not one that people would ask about local eating in Provence or Thailand or Cajun Country, Louisiana.”</strong></span></em></span></div><div style="padding-left: 30px; text-align: right;"><span style="color: #317527;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small;"><strong>Plenty, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, pg. 89.</strong></span></em></span></div><div style="padding-left: 30px; text-align: right;"><br />
</div>Plenty is the diary of two Vancouverites (B.C.) who spent a year living on a diet from within a 100-mile radius of downtown Vancouver. Having been published in 2007, the book is relatively old among food books but it’s one of my favorites. The authors, I think, have long ago moved up to their farm in northern BC but in their year they showed that with commitment and resourcefulness, people could survive quite well on local food.<br />
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I think most people—even those committed to local food—look for retail stores and farmers markets where they can buy food. Growing, foraging, gleaning, trading, and organizing or shopping through cooperatives seem to take more time than trips to the grocery store. But I found something that looked so easy and it was so immediate that I wondered if more people should give it a try.<br />
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In late August, I went for a walk on the beach side of Lincoln Park in West Seattle. Accessed by a short residential road, a rocky beach and paved walkway sitting at the base of the bluff; this beach is usually peopled by few. Walking in, I passed a man leaving with a fishing pole and a rolling rack full of gear. I didn’t think much of it until I saw at the far end of the beach about forty people casting right off the shore. I know that people occasionally fish for perch this way but I was astounded to see so many people fishing in a recreational park I had first visited thirty years ago—when there were no fishermen.<br />
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I quickly concluded they were fishing for food for their tables but that may have been too quick of a judgment. I stepped off the walkway to see what they were catching. As I passed them, the few fishermen who were willing to turn their heads away from the water and answer questions said there was a run of six million pink salmon coming through Puget Sound on their biannual spawning run.<br />
<div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_10469" style="width: 250px;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-10469" height="180" src="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/photo2-300x225.jpg" title="Women were a bit unusual in this crowd. " width="240" /> <div class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Women were a bit unusual in this crowd. </span></div></div><br />
Some of the people appeared to be immigrants and it was clear that they spoke English as a second language but when I asked them, most said it was for the sake of fishing and that sport fishing <em>was</em> for food when it came to these salmon. I asked one of the two women there how she had learned to fish and she cheerfully said that at first the men taught her the basics of fishing then she just figured things out. The fishing looked great. In any case, all the ramifications of finding a source of quality seafood 2 miles from my home came to mind.<br />
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I called Kurt Beardslee, who heads <a href="http://wildfishconservancy.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #317527;">The Wild Fish Conservancy</span></a>, a non-profit fish advocacy group in Duvall, to get some of the background on pinks. His comments were careful. He said that while the pinks are one of the larger runs, he was concerned that if too many were caught before they got back to the rivers, the fishery couldn’t be sustainable.<br />
<div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_10471" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; height: 41px; width: 255px;"><div class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Cleaning Fish in the surf.</span></div></div><a href="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Lincoln-Park-Fish-Only-edit-300x292.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" class="size-medium wp-image-10471 " height="234" src="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Lincoln-Park-Fish-Only-edit-300x292.png" title="Lincoln Park Fish" width="240" /></a><br />
Pink salmon, he said, had a simpler life cycle than other species like Chinook and were more adaptive in finding spawning habitat. (He used the biological term “escapement” to describe the numbers that did succeed in passing into the river and I thought that was ironic. They have to escape <em>to</em> their homes to survive.)<br />
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Another concern that he had was of getting nutrients back into the river. One of the great benefits of the huge salmon runs of the past was that the carcasses left after spawning brought nutrients back to the entire river system. However, even with the number of the pink salmon that is now returning there would not be enough nutrient loading.<br />
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In addition, pink salmon, by not having been favored in the past, were not as highly prized commercially so populations weren’t depleted as much by commercial fishing as with Chinook and other species. Now that there are more restrictions on other species of salmon, he was waiting to see how much commercial activity there was for the pinks.<br />
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I wondered: If driven by need, how many local food advocates would be willing to go to the shores of Puget Sound in late summer and catch their dinner? I did some research. The costs of supplies that one man elicited on the Seacrest Pier in West Seattle the following Thursday would be about $100. Add to that a $28.05 fishing license for individuals aged 16-69. At about $5.50 a pound in local stores on the low end and 3-4 pounds per fish if one were to catch 3 fish in a day (which many on the beach were) the catch would be around $60 worth of fish in a day. So, two days of good fishing would almost offset the cost of setup and they’d be harvesting 100-mile fish.<br />
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I’m generally more in favor of coordinated efforts when it comes to natural resources. I can’t not wonder about the impacts if everyone fished the salmon runs without constraint. Most people who fish are conscientious and if their numbers were not too large they might not shift the balance further away from protection of key species in our rivers and water ecosystems. However, we seem as a society often not to have that constraint. So a year in which we are having an abundance of pink salmon may be a good time to think about ways to coordinate the fishery. How could we support protection and sustainability of all species and if there could be a sustainable fishery, what would it look like?<br />
<div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_10480" style="width: 223px;"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-10480" height="40" src="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Walking-Fish-CSF.png" title="Walking Fish CSF" width="213" /> <div class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Walking Fish CSF</span></div></div><br />
I found another way to harvest fish that I liked very much. It is the idea of a community supported fishery (CSF) much like a CSA in concept. This has been done in other parts of the country where fisheries have been depleted and communities at a loss for sustenance have gotten together to harvest the fish in a manageable way. A good example is the <a href="http://walking-fish.org/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #317527;">Walking Fish Cooperative</span></a> in North Carolina. They are in their third year of operating and have just this year become a cooperative. This seems like an idea that many in the Seattle area would embrace. <br />
<div class="wp-caption alignleft" id="attachment_10482" style="width: 190px;"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-10482 " height="240" src="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/photo1-e1316057573638-225x300.jpg" title="Successful Fisherman" width="180" /> <div class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Successful Fisherman "Samih" fishes for sport all the time.</span></div></div><br />
Just by chance <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016197678_reefnet14m.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #317527;">an article by Lynda Mapes</span></a> for the <em>Seattle Times</em> on September 13 offered a possible fishing method for a sustained local fishery: reef netting. Human powered and low tech, this approach takes watchful waiting and hand-thrown nets. The fishermen carefully select which fish they take out of the net and keep and they avoid “by-catch” by pushing away anything they are not supposed to catch. If the independent fisherman practicing this technique were to coordinate their work with a group organized as a cooperative, it could be a healthy step in both resource management and developing a sustained food supply.<br />
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The pink salmon are now moving into the rivers and the Coho and Chinook runs are starting. I am sure that many individuals will continue to fish on the shores of Puget Sound and the rivers for both the ocean and upstream catches. Many will opt for the choice of standing for hours on the beach for more than just a source of food. Fishing provides time, a connection to a place and a chance to renew relationships both spiritual and ecological. It’s good for them and all of us to be reminded of those connections.<br />
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I love that Alisa and J.B. of Plenty ultimately did survive for a year on their 100-mile diet and I might try taking a pole out myself to fish for the food and the contemplative time by the water. I hope it will be another piece of working for the greater good of the whole food and ecosystem here, now and over time—and it definitely won’t be boring even if it isn’t Provence!<br />
<div class="wp-caption aligncenter" id="attachment_10483" style="width: 650px;"><img alt="" class="size-large wp-image-10483" height="480" src="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Lighthouse-and-small-salmon-boat-9-9-11-1024x768.jpg" title="From my window: Some people fish in small boats as well. Perhaps they could be part of a Coop." width="640" /> <div class="wp-caption-text"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From my window: Some people fish in small boats as well. Perhaps they could be part of a Coop.</span></div></div></div></span>Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-79359592765662805492011-09-15T10:51:00.001-07:002017-02-14T11:04:05.246-08:00The Pink Salmon run in Puget Sound--Can we manage it sustainably?<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
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</div>Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-33881702539754192222011-08-24T12:00:00.000-07:002011-08-24T12:00:55.607-07:00Ceremonial Time<span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span>One of my all time favorite books is <strong>Ceremonial Time </strong>by John Hanson Mitchell. It's about the spiritual history of a place in Massachusetts. I think I live in a place like that too.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span><strong>Key Rock</strong></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">I have one of those rocks you can hide a key in. But it’s not mine. I found it in the planting bed around my building. I thought about taking the key out and using the rock but I decided not to. I like the idea of that key that opened some other place. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This building was a party pad for a long time. I like to think about opening the door to my place before me with that key and the smells that would come out. I imagine them stale. I see a picture on the wall that hasn’t been noticed for a long time; thick stained drapes in a room dark and forgotten. That’s the way it was from photos I saw when I moved here after the condo conversion. Now this place has light and windows that honor the view of Elliott Bay. Wind flows from front to back all summer when I open the door and I sit here watching osprey, eagles, sea lions and seagulls whenever I can.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">This building is on rocks on Alki Point. There is a small beach around the point. At the Duwamish Longhouse there is a map that shows a summer convening place here—a different kind of party. I wish I could picture it but that seems disrespectful. I can’t picture it. I have no idea of what it was like; but I can honor the spirits that I feel. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Last month a local tribe stopped at Alki Beach in their long canoes. I happened to be walking on Alki. While the cultural genocide of intermarrying has made many white, there were many brown faces and seeing the actual first people here in numbers on the beach was jarring. It wiped out time. They looked so connected to the ground and I felt invisible. They owned this place and I was the outsider. What a reversal.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">When I leave and close the imagined door I put the key back in the rock and just leave it there because. The history of this place and those people reside in that rock outside my door.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", "serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"></div></span>Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-10455419441726586892011-07-19T09:15:00.000-07:002011-07-19T09:15:02.909-07:00Thinking about LocalBarry Lopez, <strong>About This Life</strong>, <em>The American Geographies</em>, Page 134<br />
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<em>"In forty thousand years of human history, it has only been in the last few hundred years or so that people could afford to ignore their local geographies as completely as we do and still survive."</em><br />
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I wouldn't say that people in the Pacific Northwest completely ignore their local geographies but it is something to think about. I sometimes see in the Local Food movement a tendency not to ignore maybe; but a lack of effort to really deeply understand local. It's easy to get caught up in techniques and practices that are shared throughout the country and believe that networking at a national scale will bring a game-changing idea to Seattle. That's not completely unlikely but I wonder if, when that technique or practice is used, how deeply anyone is focusing on what is uniquely here that we need to accommodate. The geography of a place includes the people, wildlife, plants, topography and, realistically, all the human modifications that have made it. To think local, I think it is important to retain the unique aspects of the place-- not in a Luddite or reactionary effort--but because each place really is unique and we forget that. <br />
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For me, kingfishers and Orca whales define the places west of the Cascades in Washington. For others it might be a certain butterfly; for others a building style or a neighborhood. Whatever it is now defines it and we can't completely turn back the clock. But when we start something new and are not mindful of what we might change by adding something new, we lose things without realizing it. I see the effort to use the best practices from other places doing this. That is what has occurred in the US since it was founded but it seems contradictory to the movement for local, smaller-scale networks. I'm not saying we shouldn't learn or change; just that we should stop and think. <br />
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Standing in one spot, looking around, breathing in the smell and listening to the sound of a place is worth doing. It's a subjective experience and can't be completely static but I think that there is a human need to feel rooted and connected. In a rush to get something done we sometimes lose that. It's something to think about.Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-28220778695138842372011-06-15T09:32:00.000-07:002016-01-02T15:17:11.346-08:00Article on GoodFood World: Shoulder to Shoulder...I was lucky to meet the publishers of the website goodfoodworld.com and they accepted a post from me. To see the original and their great website, check the link below.<br />
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<a href="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2011/06/shoulder-to-shoulder-we-await-our-food/">http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2011/06/shoulder-to-shoulder-we-await-our-food/</a><br />
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Shoulder to Shoulder We Await Our Food</h1>
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<a href="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/author/joannehedou/" title="Posts by Joanne Hedou"><strong><span style="color: #317527;">Joanne Hedou</span></strong></a>, June 14th, 2011</div>
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There is a hydrological term for the end and next beginning of the flooding season wrapped around Summer. It’s called the “<em>Shoulder Season</em>.” The end of the shoulder season is the last flood in the Spring and the beginning, the first in the Fall. We are still touching shoulders with this past year’s season in Western Washington after what many feel is one of the worst flooding seasons we’ve ever had.<br />
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<a href="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/USGS-Water-Level-Charts.png" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-8192];player=img;" shadowboxcachekey="1"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-8196 " src="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/USGS-Water-Level-Charts-300x222.png" height="178" style="margin-right: 10px;" title="USGS Water Level Charts" width="240" /></a> <br />
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March 31-April 1 Flooding & May 15-16 High Water.</div>
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The normal timing of the shoulder season seems to be shifting. Rain and flooding, as we’ve seen since last Fall, started later in the Fall and is extending later into the Spring. This wrecked havoc on farmers planting schedules. The flooding season seems to have ended but the impacts continue.<br />
Not all river basins are the same even with rivers that are 50 miles apart so the actual timing of floods has been different for different farmers that are relatively close to each other. The Snoqualmie River, about 30 miles east of Seattle, had its most recent high water on May 15-16th. The <strong>NOAA</strong> flood center predicted a major flood then pulled back on the prediction when the center of a storm moved.<br />
Fields in the Snoqualmie were already soaked from December, January and end of March floods; the March flood being fairly late itself. In late May, when waters started rising again, farmers who had already waiting since February to plant delayed Spring planting again. But after that scare the valley farmers started taking starts from greenhouses and putting them in the ground.<br />
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The baby greens and early root crops like radishes and onions valiantly withstood the abnormally cool weather that has come with intense rain this Spring. By June, farmers who had put in eighteen hour days when the sun was out, and gotten used to eating dinner at 11PM, had nurtured their babies enough to bring food to urban restaurants and farmers markets who had been waiting for the fresh local foods they have grown to expect in the past fifteen years.<br />
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<a href="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Local-Roots-Farm-Spring-Root-Vegetables-2011.jpg" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-8192];player=img;" shadowboxcachekey="2"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-8197 " src="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Local-Roots-Farm-Spring-Root-Vegetables-2011-300x223.jpg" height="178" style="margin-left: 10px;" title="Local Roots Farm Spring Root Vegetables 2011" width="240" /></a> <br />
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(Photo: Local Roots Farm)</div>
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It’s hard to know what to plan for this Summer after one of the coldest Springs we’ve seen in years. July 4th is around the corner but the heat-dependent corn and tomatoes that we would normally see in a warm summer were planted late—if at all—and may not produce like they do in warm years. The resilience of the farmers should amaze us all, however. <strong>Local Roots Farm</strong> in the Snoqualmie Valley publishes photos of bounty on their blog and Facebook before their Sunday trip to market. Farmers have all moved forward with their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) drives. These are membership programs in which subscribers pay in advance for a share of the season’s produce. Urban and suburban residents have enrolled undaunted seeming politely not to express concerns that they may not receive as many of the warm weather fruits and vegetables they’ve gotten in the past. They seem to be silently saying, “We’re all in this together.”<br />
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<a href="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/edward-and-his-sister.jpg" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-8192];player=img;" shadowboxcachekey="3"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-8193 " src="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/edward-and-his-sister-286x300.jpg" height="240" style="margin-right: 10px;" title="Edward and Maria Los Angeles-Riva" width="229" /></a> <br />
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Edward and Maria Los Angeles-Riva (Photo: GroundUP Organics)</div>
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Urban agriculturalists are being hit hard by the shoulder season as well. <strong>GroundUP</strong> is a program that hires youth interns for a Master Composter program at Yesler Terrace in Seattle’s Central District. Collecting food waste from local restaurants and grass trimmings and leaves from donors in city agencies, the interns learn about the cycle of producing soil to grow food. In the first year of the program the interns wanted to grow food as well so they could see the whole cycle. The program managers found unused land at Yesler Terrace and started a garden. The garden was bountiful.<br />
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This year, many of the Spring Saturday volunteer days were cold and rainy. Plant starts languished in the cold and alternating spurts of hot weather almost, ironically, dehydrated them. But the interns are there for the summer now and they’ll be raising their babies, feeding them with new compost and hopefully selling them at a produce stand for local residents and passersby on Yesler Way.<br />
So, shoulder to shoulder we stand waiting for our hand grown food; not allowing ourselves to be scared, and not knowing whether the warm dry season will extend so much later into Fall that it will affect next year’s winter crops.<br />
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This is farming. This is the growing of our food. Whether this is a natural system going awry or a pattern not seen by us before, we are adapting: standing together shoulder to shoulder.<br />
<span style="color: #317527;">________________________________________</span><br />
<strong>About Joanne Hedou</strong><br />
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<a href="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Joanne-Portrait-5-4-11.jpg" rel="shadowbox[sbpost-8192];player=img;" shadowboxcachekey="4"><img alt="" class="size-medium wp-image-8200" src="http://www.goodfoodworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Joanne-Portrait-5-4-11-300x225.jpg" height="158" style="margin-left: 10px;" title="Joanne Hedou" width="210" /></a> <br />
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Joanne Hedou</div>
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I live in North Central Washington state after having spent 35 years in Seattle and Kirkland WA. I received my M.S. in Fluvial Geomorphology from the University of Massachusetts Department of Geosciences and my B.A. in Geography from the University of Oregon.<br />
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I worked primarily with local food groups from 2006 as an advocate and fundraiser. In 2011 I found that my scientific skills could help create understanding and support for local farmers working in the river valleys around Seattle. I started this blog in 2011 after spending months researching the impacts of flooding on local farms in Western Washington during the winter of 2010-2011—one of the worst flooding years in decades.<br />
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It's now 2016 and I have moved to the Methow Valley, a place considered one of the best places in the Pacific Northwest to ski, bike, fish and hunt and a good place for me to write.<br />
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Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-26480770309993802322011-05-11T10:22:00.000-07:002011-05-11T14:42:00.707-07:00Salmon Story II<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A few things have changed since I wrote this story almost 9 years ago but not much.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Salmon Story II <span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><date day="2" month="11" w:st="on" year="2002">November 2, 2002</date></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Joanne Hedou </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m driving towards <place w:st="on"><city w:st="on">Duvall</city>, <state w:st="on">Washington</state></place> where I worked for a short while in a small environmental organization called Washington Trout. The group is headed by Kurt Beardslee, a <state w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Washington</place></state> native who twelve years ago took up the leadership of a small group of fisherman distressed to see that nothing that was being done to save wild fish was working. Since then, I believe Kurt’s every living breath has cycled some portion of his tireless energy to see salmon and other wild fish come back to the streams, lakes<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and rivers of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Washington State. Whether or not it is working, Kurt is breathing deeply every minute.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is November 2 of one of the driest falls the northwest has had in years. There is a bridge over the <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Snoqualmie</placename> <placetype w:st="on">River</placetype></place> just before you enter Duvall. Under the bridge there is a grove of agricultural poplar; a new crop raised by lumber companies for wood chips. These large companies have clear-cut so much forest that they are looking for new ways to create wood and the farmers that used to farm this valley have had their small-scale food and hay growing operations supplanted by agribusiness. So, the corporate timber harvesters are trying to turn the fast growing poplars into agricultural crops. The leaves of these trees should be bright yellow but they’re not. They’re brown and curled up at the edges. They look dead. They could be dead. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As I drive over the bridge I look down and can barely see the Snoqualmie. Poplars need a lot of water. That’s what the agribusiness foresters thought they would get for free when they planted these trees in the mile-wide floodplain—lots of free water. But nature doesn’t work for them and the Snoqualmie is withdrawing her gift this year. I halfway hope these trees are dead before they are harvestable. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I had emailed Kurt (through his office manager-Kurt doesn’t have much time for email reading) earlier in the week asking where I could see some salmon spawning. The office manager told me Kurt said to look where the <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Tolt</placename> <placetype w:st="on">River</placetype></place> enters the <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Snoqualmie</placename> <placetype w:st="on">River</placetype></place>. I turn right after I cross the river and head south on Route 203 along the Snoqualmie towards Carnation. Everywhere I can get a glimpse of the river it is low. It’s been a much drier year than I had thought viewing it mostly in the more built-up suburbs where I live.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I turn into the road to <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">McDonald</placename> <placetype w:st="on">Park</placetype></place>, a campground and picnic area located at the confluence of the Tolt and the Snoqualmie. In the 15 years since I have been visiting this park, I have never seen many people here but today the parking lot is almost full. Most of the cars seem to belong to mountain bikers who cross the suspension bridge over the Snoqualmie to ride in the logged-off hills on the other side of the river. Yet another place that used to be a secret that has been discovered. I think, “Too bad.” But the campground is mostly empty.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I access the banks of the Tolt through an empty campsite. At the mouth where it opens to the Snoqualmie there is a huge accumulation of gravel. The largest of the cobblestones seems to be about 8 inches in diameter. The size of the stones a river carries indicates the power of the river. It might even be possible to conjure an inverse mathematical relationship between the size of boulders a river carries and the size of the fish that will survive in it but I don’t need to. Considering that some rivers carry boulders as large or larger in diameter than my 5’6” height, the Tolt is not a super powerful river but a river that can carry boulders of that size is not very hospitable for spawning salmon. I learned at Washington Trout that the Tolt is the right size for some pretty big fish. I also learned that some research shows that a small trace of a river’s scent may reach the ocean and the young salmon who left the river four or five years before may look for that natal scent when they are ready to return.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On the bank, I pronate my toes over the many cobbles. I can smell dead fish but don’t see any yet. All along the edges of the river four-foot tall engineers have been working throughout the summer as their parents sat in lawn chairs under trees watching them. There are circles of rocks, side channels with levee systems and deep pools surrounded by larger rocks. If the youthful engineers were to come back now they would say their damming efforts had been a big success. But they would just be being fooled inversely like the poplar farmers who thought they could count on the river. In a normal year these mini-Coulee-dams would now be obliterated by the higher waters of fall and all of the carefully placed rocks would be resorted according to systems long ago established by nature.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As I walk up the Tolt from the Snoqualmie, I see the first dead Chinook. It is about forty inches long and it has an adipose fin on its back which means it’s a wild, not hatchery fish. I see three more carcasses of which one more has the fin and the others are too decomposed to tell. I walk back down the Tolt and up the Snoqualmie and see another carcass on the Tolt and seven on the Snoqualmie. Most of them are the same size but are too decayed for me to see whether they have the fin. I don’t see any live spawning salmon.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Two girls about 7-8 years old are throwing rocks into the river. I’m urban enough to be cautious about approaching them. I’m a mother and don’t believe kids should talk to strangers—even me whom I know they are perfectly safe talking to. So I try to walk by them, but one of the girls talks to me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“We’re on our second night here. It was really cold last night. We came down to the river to get some wood and we didn’t find any. This is all there was.” She says, waving her hand disappointedly over the still frosty, shaded banks.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh.” I say non-committally, still wondering how not to encourage her.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“These are tide pools. See the tide pools.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She says; pointing at all the circles and channels created by her four-foot predecessors.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh!” I say again not wanting to disabuse her of her illusions but wanting to tell her that this is a river and those can’t be tide pools. I want to tell her about the great power of the river that can carry all of these rocks here. I don’t want to venture further into conversation but I want her to see something of what is real here, so I ask,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Have you seen any fish?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“No we haven’t seen any fish but that’s why we’re throwing rocks into the river to make them come.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want to ask her if they have noticed all of the dead fish but I think if I say anything about them it could trigger the “eeewws and ughs” of the grossed out reactions that most suburban kids have to anything natural and fetid. I think this particular kid might not but I don’t want to take a chance. I have no right to destroy the girls’ mindless idyll by the river.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I just say,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well that might make them come or that might make them not come.” And I walk past her and her friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then I hear from behind me as I walk away into the sun her little voice saying, </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“By.” to me; and then yelling down the river, </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“C’mon salmon! C’mere salmon!” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And I am struck with the elegance of the sunny afternoon and two children throwing rocks. I didn’t say salmon to her. I said fish. Somehow she knows there are supposed to be salmon here. Somehow she has been inculcated with the lore of the contemporary environmental credo that is taught to most kids in the <place w:st="on">Pacific Northwest</place>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wonder how it looks in her mind. To most modern kids the natural world is much like an extension of the antiseptic zoos they are used to seeing wild animals in. To others, who may have never been to even a zoo, the natural world is all pictures and television shows—if that. I wonder what level of awareness her call to the salmon comes from but it doesn’t really matter. The way it sounds to me is this wonderful, high, scratchy little girl voice calling down the river and the tunnel of time to all of those salmon that should be coming back up this river. When she says again,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“C’mon salmon! C’mere salmon!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I immediately see small Native American children and, in my very inappropriately-educated Caucasian mind, a short, stout, barefoot northwest Native American in a Haida hat and Chilcoot blanket standing there by the river with us. All of the cobbles are dead salmon and our feet are slipping all over their dead bodies and the stench is unbearable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we all are saying, </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“C’mon salmon! C’mere salmon!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I think of how the romantic images of the contemporary white world have expropriated and distorted what they think are the idyllic images of Native Americans and woven them into a fantasy of pure natural spirituality and a connection with nature that is unattainable for the flawed modern human. I also think, in reality, people of native cultures don’t own spirituality and connections with nature anymore than I own Fisher Price because I am white. To many native peoples I’m sure the rocks, the animals and the trees were as utilitarian as tinker toys were to me and my son when he was young. But that little girl brings me back to when I was four and sat by a small stream next to route 128 outside <city w:st="on"><place w:st="on">Boston</place></city> catching frogs. I feel like turning around and calling with her:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“C’mer salmon! C’mon salmon!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So I do in my mind because it doesn’t matter what we think we are saying or what we think Native Americans were saying or who says it. We are all linked to that primeval world where millions of salmon came up this river every year for 10,000 years and we should all be calling them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“C’mer salmon! C’mon salmon!”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I drive back through Duvall. I stop at Washington Trout to tell Kurt what I saw but he isn’t there. I drive back over the Snoqualmie and past the poplars. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That night my friend tells me that he heard the local NPR host, Steve Scher interviewing a meteorologist from the <place w:st="on"><placetype w:st="on">University</placetype> of <placename w:st="on">Washington</placename></place>. The meteorologist said there is a big low front looming in the distance and it will rain next week. If it does, that will bring more water to the rivers, and if there is more water in the rivers the salmon will come back. Whether or not it does rain, doesn’t matter to me. In my opinion northwesterners have an inverse relationship with rain. They hate it when it’s here but are afraid when it’s gone. Either way, next weekend I think everyone—including Kurt and all the other people he has inspired and all the people who have just moved here and all of the people who have lived here and watched the rivers change and the land change—should go down to the river and we should all just yell and stamp our feet and think of the echo of that small voice and say,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“C’mer salmon! C’mon salmon!” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And hold our hands up to the sky and the air and whatever comes, comes but we should invite it and keep saying,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">C’mer salmon! C’mon salmon!”… and saying it and saying it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div>Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-11392156492742168672011-04-26T15:22:00.000-07:002011-04-26T15:34:22.152-07:00Hawaii Journal 1996<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; text-transform: uppercase;">Hawaii Journal</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">This is mostly a diary of a trip taken 15 years ago but the questions remain.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I have lived a relatively sheltered life. I spent the first 18 years of it in a city outside Boston now known for it’s toxic waste site, 4 months in Japan in 1976 and the remainder in the Pacific Northwest. I teach Environmental Science now but I do not preach environmentalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel that unless someone lives the ascetic life of Mahatma Gandhi or, perhaps, Ralph Nader, they are standing on shaky ground if they criticize those next to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, I was shocked when my husband, my then 8 year old son and I left the sheltered ecohaven of the Northwest for our first conventional travel experience in the fall of 1996. We went to Hawaii on the spur of the moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is part of my journal.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Honolulu</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">When we arrive in Honolulu the friends we will visit are working so we decide to spend the afternoon at Waikiki Beach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It is hot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I burn the bottom of my feet on the sand almost immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is so much exposed flesh - huge pale German women in bikinis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I find a spot on the beach in the shade of a lifeguard tower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The piece of shade is big enough for about three beach towels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While my husband and son go boogie boarding I do my favorite thing, which is to rest and watch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the towel next to mine is a group of young Japanese men who smoke continuously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They leave and a young couple with skin untinted by the sun place their towel in the spot and go to swim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A family comes and takes the next spot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They see the empty foot of space between my towel and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>theirs and proceed to move their towels closer to me. I sit up and openly stare as the father/husband does this hoping he will stop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He starts a friendly conversation with me about the water as he continues to move the towel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He and his older children go to swim. His wife and younger child stay on the sand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I am surrounded by cigarette butts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About 20 feet away two overflowing trashcans are being pored through by an elderly woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She removes aluminum cans. There are no separate recycling bins. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">When my husband and son return we drive to our friends condo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is in a 15 story building with a pool, pool table, party room and hot tub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are happy to have moved back here from the Pacific Northwest where we met them and where they suffered the cold and rain for two years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The unit they are in has a view of the beach and many wall mirrors so that you can see the view from almost anywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are feted and fed in such grand style we feel guilty but we enjoy it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thinking about the contrast of the old woman on the beach, I ask our host what they do with all of the garbage in Hawaii.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are, after all, islands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t know. The question stays with me through our whole trip.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">At night we sleep with the windows wide open.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People outside are awake long into the night talking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A barking dog is finally silenced after an angry discussion between neighbors.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">To Kauai</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">We chose to go to Kauai for the majority of our trip because everyone said it was the most “natural” island.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We hadn’t really had time to research the more remote locations.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">“Natural” turns out to be a relative term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was not surprised to see a lot of condominiums but I had expected them to be separated by expanses of lush tropical forest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, they are well connected to each other by resorts, shopping centers and “activity centers”; the last being a euphemism for an information booth where you can ask questions and get answers but also be offered many ways to spend your money on “adventures” such as kayaking, helicopter rides and boat tours.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On our first night at Poipu, Kauai we leave the windows of our condo open.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We hear the kenneled dogs behind the condo (the canine force of the local police we are later told), the talk and footsteps of the people above and around us, refrigerators, TVs and air conditioners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My continuing impression is that Hawaii is an experience of human noise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pounding surf is two blocks away but we can’t hear it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We walk away from the artificial light and noise to see the sky and listen to the surf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sky is so clear we see the Milky Way exactly as it is poured into the sky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even in the mountains of the Northwest it is not the fluid entity it is here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We look forward to our first day on the beaches of Kauai.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Kee Beach, Northern Kauai</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It’s our third day of snorkeling and I am snorkeled out. My husband and son are out in the coral reef swimming with sea turtles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is raining and I am sheltered in the car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sit and savor the time and think about whether I can remember the sound of each individual wave crashing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each time a wave touches the coral it touches it a little differently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I imagine the water entering each void in the coral like thoughts reaching remote parts of my brain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some thoughts will only be discovered once and then permanently forgotten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wonder if there is water in some void in the coral that has been there for 10,000 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would it tell us 10,000 year old stories of Hawaii, of volcanoes breaking through the surface and settling into the surf to be constantly massaged by it; stories of a peaceful people coming to enjoy the flowers and light their fires in the exotic vegetation? My son stands in the water in the warm rain and asks why I don’t go out and swim with the turtles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t understand that this is what I came for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is enough for me to know that the turtles are there and that he swam with them. I know I won’t get these moments back.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">That night while we are celebrating my husband’s birthday at an archetypal Hawaiian tourist restaurant with the coconut motif, and which overlooks a small bay, I say that I think it’s great that my son swam with sea turtles but I wonder if in 20 years he would still be able to do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My husband gives me the kind of look people do when they have been taken out of a deep reverie; but then we talk about Hawaii.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When did it become a tourist Mecca? In the 40’s, the 50’s?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the 60’s was it a surf Mecca? I was in Honolulu in 1976 and it didn’t seem that different from now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We decide it was probably with the onset of inexpensive air travel.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">For the next two days we see more beaches and do more snorkeling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I observe the tourists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They consume time like it is a material thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every minute has value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They consume sights and pieces of the landscape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No wonder primitive people say cameras steal their souls. They are stealing the soul of Hawaii.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bit by bit the landscape is being broken into “views”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The views are printed onto postcards with borders of island script letters in white on black.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I imagine a collage of postcards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Between the script edges of the postcards are the resorts, the tourist traps and the adventure tour guides booths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tourists are consuming the views but ignoring the edges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon the soul will be consumed by the edges.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Waimea</span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">We check out of our Poipu condo early because I can no longer tolerate the dogs and air conditioners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>September is the off season in Hawaii and I have found a good rate on a cabin at Waimea Plantation, a restored group of former sugar plantation workers dwellings.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The next morning, I semi-willingly go on a hike to Waimea Canyon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would prefer to stay with the quiet at the plantation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We arrive carsick at the top of the winding 11 mile road to the hiking trail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is only one other car there and I am surprised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sure we are in the wrong place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had expected 20 or 40 cars. It’s cool and cloudy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We hike down the Hanaluma Road to a trail that is modestly marked with hand painted arrows on three-foot-tall wooden posts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">After 1 ½ miles of walking we get our first glimpses of the canyon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is deep and red with the horizontal lines of hundreds of lava flows layered on each other to the bottom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>White terns circle below us on updrafts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is almost pristine and it is the most quiet place we have been - in years - not only in Hawaii.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I gravitate to the ground and resist movement or speech.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We take our time smelling gardenia-like flowers and watching copper headed salamanders whose color matches the soil. Our son is anxious to go but I linger and loll and resist returning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are the first truly peaceful moments I experience in Hawaii.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had not expected them all to be like this but I had not expected so few.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Waimea Canyon becomes my most favorite serene place in Hawaii.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the first heli-tour-copters come up the canyon it momentarily breaks the silence but, thankfully, they are occasional.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">As we return, I start to think that walking two miles is too taxing for most tourists and that we will have the canyon to ourselves all day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, we had just been fortunate in our timing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apparently, most tourists don’t wake up at 6:30 and start hiking by 10:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we start to leave they all come in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each one asks us how far it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m tempted to lie to them so they will turn around; and the salamanders and terns will have a day off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is still silent but although my experience of Waimea Canyon itself will be unfettered by the images of these tourists I realize that it is just as much a postcard as the rest of Hawaii.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is just a bigger one where the edges are not yet clearly defined.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">That afternoon we return to Waimea Plantation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our little cabin has a ceiling fan in each room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We can hear the surf and there are more kinds of fruit-bearing tropical plants around us than we can count.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of the windows and doors have screens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hotel desk people had given us a ripe mango, which we eat with ice cream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The geckos scamper around on the screens catching mosquitoes.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Friday</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On our last day in Hawaii we all agree not to get in the car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the morning we eat our breakfast on the porch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I walk to the town library and ask the librarian if anyone has ever studied the carrying capacity of the Hawaiian Islands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She gets very excited and gives me lots of references.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the way back I observe the little village the locals live in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a group of small 1 story houses raised about 2 feet off the ground with dirt alleyways in between.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A cute little mongrel dog - a “poi” dog - follows me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">For the rest of the day our 8 year old is happy to enjoy the plantation and think about playing croquet, which we never get around to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, we take the risk of walking through the coconut groves and maybe getting hit by a coconut falling from about 50 feet in the air.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Departure</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The day we leave Waimea we wish we had been there for our whole visit.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I have many thoughts about Hawaii.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although I criticize the tourists and tour guides, the adventurers and consumers as a group, as individuals I realize they are just products of their own culture and the ethos of the world in all developed countries is becoming one of consumers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tourists consume landscapes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I came here to consume peace and quiet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As an individual I didn’t really do anything there that was that much different from other tourists although I like to think I try harder. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">We talked to our friends in Honolulu again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thought the trash was taken off the islands in barges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked to where.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thought out to sea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He seemed concerned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had never really thought about it - he said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">As I leave Hawaii I wonder; will my son’s children swim with sea turtles?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
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</div>Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-31944177980842767642011-04-03T20:44:00.000-07:002011-04-03T20:44:59.290-07:00North WoodsRick Bass is one of my favorite writers and his book<strong> Colter </strong>had a permanent effect on my life. I read it when I was in treatment for cancer. There is something about the raw wildness in this story that brought me back from chemo and fear and into a sparkling present. Thinking of that book, I go there sometimes still.<br />
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Another person who had this effect on me was my former father in law Paul, who died recently, even though I couldn't have known he would.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My former father in law</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My ex-husband's father and my son's grandfather was 89 and of a generation that was able to see a different world than we did. He had a huge impact on my life and the things that I write about.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Even though I am no longer part of their family, Paul was part of my life. I wouldn’t know what I know about the north woods and I wouldn’t have the feeling I do for the traditions of sportsmanship in Maine and other northern places like Montana. I probably would have had different relationships with writers I have met if I hadn’t seen firsthand what is was like to fish, or hunt with dogs. I wouldn’t have any sense of what it’s like to have a relationship with a good dog. And I wouldn’t have met his partner from Damariscotta who was a great classic Maine woman whom I liked and who encouraged me to paint and write.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I once wrote a story about the sound of Paul's voice in the woods in the summer. I've lost it but the tone of his voice through the windows of a small cabin was deep, velvet and resonant. I listened to it canoeing on lakes in Maine with him and walking with a shotgun through the New Hampshire woods in the fall.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ironically, we never really got along. When we were exploring the dirt backroads of New Hampshire or Maine I would tell him we weren't where he thought we were and he would never listen. I would point at the symbol for a church on a topo map and say, "We are not there!", and he would say, "We are!", even though there was no church in sight. Now I know getting lost was part of the adventure. He reveled in stories about getting stuck in his four-wheel drive vehicles and using the “come-along” (winch).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Even if we weren't hungry, w</span>e would heat canned beans on the tailgate on a Coleman stove and brownies made by his partner. He would say, "Isn't this mahhvelus?" as we looked over the White Mountains or whatever particular location we were in: Moosehead Lake or Lake Umbagog. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, I just feel lucky I was there. I could write so many stories about him and the summers, falls and winters we went to New England to see him and others. I heard that my son read a beautiful story he had written about his grandfather and rivers at the service. I can’t wait to see it.</span></div>Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-14861743369421960542011-04-03T19:52:00.000-07:002011-04-03T19:52:45.527-07:00Sidereal Time<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Since I wrote this in 2003, on the war in Iraq, the ground hasn't stabilized; we've just gotten better at balancing ourselves. I don't want to be too dreary though. I'm stronger now and I think a lot of people are bouncing back and really doing good things.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sidereal Time</b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Sometimes I get attracted to a word because it’s odd. I like the sound of it or I don’t know the sound of it or I can’t quite pronounce it or understand it so I struggle with it. That’s how it is with the word “sidereal”. Pronounce it sid (like the name Sid) eerie and all (all eerie reversed). Sidereal contains the word “real” like in surreal or ethereal and the sound of the whole word is like a mood of fluidity that I like to be in. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I want a good definition so I look on the Internet first. Among the definitions I find, the one I’m first drawn to is the second one from WordNet 1.6, <place w:st="on"><placename w:st="on">Princeton</placename> <placetype w:st="on">University</placetype></place>;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">sidereal</b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">adj 2: (of divisions of time) determined by the daily motions of the stars; “sidereal time”.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">It’s so simple--the idea that we tell time in synchrony with the stars. It helps me breathe. I can open myself to the universe and feel it. It would be so freeing if I just let myself go into sidereal time and just lived in synchrony with the stars.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">But my breath hesitates as I look further. In Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, my Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 1948 Thin Paper Edition and the American Heritage Dictionary, the second definitions are all very similar. They go like this;</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">sidereal</b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">2. (Astron) Measuring by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">apparent</i> motion of the stars; designated, marked out or accompanied by a return to the same position in respect to the stars; as, the sidereal revolution of a planet; a sidereal day.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">The word “apparent” rattles my desire for a blissful meaning for this word that rolls off my tongue so effortlessly. Apparent can mean: obvious, readily seen; like we think the stars are. But apparent can also mean: appearing as such but not necessarily so. That’s what it means in most of the definitions of sidereal. The motion of the stars is only in relation to where we are standing. If we stay in one point a sidereal day will pass but only if we stay on that one point. If we move, our sidereal day is a different day. Sidereal time is relative to where we are. So I am uncomfortable; disillusioned with what I want this word to be.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">It is like this “war.” To some, including George Bush, we are dealing with certainties. To them it was apparent. and obvious that Saddam Hussein was evil. Killing him was supposed to solve everything. But George Bush only stands in one place. To most of us it is the other <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">apparent</i> that we are dealing with. Many things appear one way but are not necessarily so. What we see is relative to where we stand. I look from many places and see many different perspectives. What are the real reasons we are doing this? I, like everyone else, want the stars to be fixed in the sky and move consistently but they don’t. They look different in Iraq than they do here. I’m on shaky ground and I’m not sure where the focal point I need is. Are we fighting for oil and world dominance over the oil economy--a dollar based oil economy vs. one based on the euro? Or are we fighting to assure dominance over the Arab world and thus assuring ourselves of many things. There are so many hints of what it could be. For every little move I make, reality shifts.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I want sidereal time to be a real time not a surreal or ethereal time. I want the motion of the stars to be steady and consistent. I want them to be something I can count on yet the sidereal time that is our time is the apparent time. It is the time that is relative to where we stand. But where do we really stand? What is the real time? </div>Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-36339488299189716502011-03-27T14:29:00.001-07:002011-04-03T19:56:06.561-07:00Why this blog?<h3 class="post-title entry-title">Learning When to Talk </h3><div class="post-header"><div class="post-header-line-1"></div></div><div class="post-body entry-content" id="post-body-5211027389562451125">My name is Joanne Hedou. I live in Seattle now, was born in Massachusetts and came to Seattle via Oregon in 1979. I have now spent most of my life in the Pacific Northwest. <br />
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Since 1994 I have been writing essays, poetry and screenplays; most of which I have not published or produced or even tried to. Now I want to publish. Why now? <br />
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-Mostly because I often find that what people perceive about me is incorrect. I'm fairly introverted and people make assumptions based on my looks, my current employer, or my address.<br />
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-I have always been an environmentalist and my activism has been through the practice of living carefully. Interestingly, this has made my efforts invisible. What I do to live is pretty simple but the reasons I do what I do are pretty complicated.<br />
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-I want to talk in public and be understood. The best way I can do that is through my writing.<br />
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The name of this blog, <em>Learning When to Talk</em> comes from an essay I wrote about talking to my son in the car when he was younger. I realized then that I was always learning. I'm still trying to get better at it. <br />
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I hope that what I share will give people hope and encourage them to explore their own inner voices.<br />
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Thank you, Joanne Hedou <br />
<div style="clear: both;"></div></div>Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5275953017163580702.post-41912289751231273462011-03-27T14:28:00.000-07:002011-03-27T14:28:04.800-07:00Water and Where we Live--Some Old Writing<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I've changed a bit in my stance on this but this place I lived in is now ten years old.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Place Where I Live: Kirkland , Washington—2001</b></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Where I live wasn’t here a year ago. I used to work for the county-reviewing building permits to protect environmentally sensitive areas. When I moved here I had faith that my former co-workers had done everything right to ensure that no stream or wetland values were compromised, no drainage design incomplete.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t know until I had already bought and lived in for a few months this brand new townhouse, in an infill development, inside the Urban Growth Boundary, built according to the Growth Management Act, that what was once here were three wetlands, a stream and many years accumulation of chicken manure. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">One day I noticed a seep of rust colored water with a blue oily surface coming out from under the landscaping below my kitchen onto the main access road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A thirty mile drive to and twenty minute wait at the county’s building department led me to a very familiar stack of documents in which I found the records of mitigation for a wetland under the other half of my duplex and a soil survey that showed the accumulation of chicken manure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I complained to and harangued the builder, the county inspector and the onsite workmen, who were still finishing the development, until they built a French drain below the landscaping.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a partially cosmetic solution that redirected the groundwater flow to the stream so that I didn’t see the seepage and the drainage is somewhat filtered but now my ground no longer weeps and I know the water is there under my feet. I feel it moving underground and draw on its energy through the floor. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">I look outside the kitchen window at the western style split rail fence from my craftsman style house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is some design confusion here but that is just one aspect of living in a new house in the northwest. A sign labeled NGPE (Native Growth Protection Easement) tells me not to go in there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m offended that they would tell <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i> not to go into a habitat restoration area but they did a good job on the restoration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They left the old apple tree and fir and pine trees along the stream and put in thousands of new native plants. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the segment of stream that for years had been “just an old farm ditch”, according to the aggravated builder, will be one piece of restored stream. The stream continues into a catch basin and is then piped below a schoolyard next door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Salmon will never return to this stream because a pipe under a schoolyard will never be unearthed but I can work with the homeowners association to encourage them to use non-toxic fertilizers on all of the landscaping and to make sure that the mitigation site is maintained so that the wild roses and other native plants will survive. (Ninety percent of restoration sites fail due to lack of ongoing maintenance and monitoring according to a study done by my same former coworkers.) This small piece of stream may not have salmon in it but the water can at least be kept clean and cool for those few further downstream. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">As I get used to living here I think about the irony of being an environmentalist living in what many environmentalists think is the bane of life in the rapidly growing suburbs of Seattle. I used to feel the same way—that the new houses were a scourge—and to be sure the burgeoning development and growth that continue here are like the exhalation of a large monster spewing new houses like germs with every breath. The growth impacts all of the ecosystems as well as the spirit of the people. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">All of the elements that have caused that need to be changed more than locally. I don’t say that to rationalize it. I want it to slow down but it isn't. Encouraging and achieving the right kind of development is difficult and with world populations growing we are forced, despite our desire not to, to compromise. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I think, instead, about the hypothetical place in the forest, in the hills east of here, outside the Urban Growth Boundary, that wasn’t built on because the state required that building happen here where I live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope that there is a fish jumping in a stream in the foothills and a bear is watching it—because I am living here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><br />
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</div>Joanne Hedouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06017095006813117532noreply@blogger.com0