The Dewdrop World

Mountains of the Mind 山海间

“The true blessing of the mountains is not that they provide a challenge or a contest, something to be overcome and dominated (although this is how many people have approached them). It is that they offer something gentler and infinitely more powerful: they make us ready to credit marvels - whether it is the dark swirl which water makes beneath a plate of ice, or the feel of the soft pelts of moss which form on the lee sides of boulders and trees. Being in the mountains reignites our astonishment at the simplest transactions of the physical world: a snowflake a millionth of an ounce in weight falling on to one's outstretched palm, water patiently carving a runnel in a face of granite, the apparently motiveless shift of a stone in a scree-filled gully. Tu put a hand down and feel the ridges and score in a rock where a glaciers has passed, to hear how a hillside comes alive with moving water after a rain shower, to see late summer light filling miles of landscape like an inexhaustible liquid - none of these is a trivial experience. Mountains returns to us priceless capacity for wonder which can so insensibly be leached away by modern existence, and they urge us to apply that wonder to our own everyday lives.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination

“The unknown is so inflammatory to the imagination because it is an imaginatively malleable space: a projection-screen onto which a culture or an individual can throw their fears and their aspirations. Like Echo's cave, the unknown will answer back with whatever you shout at it.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination

From our base in Talkeetna, we waited. There is a saying that less than 30% of all tourists catch a glimpse of the mountain. And that is far less in summer. So many people around us pointed to the lesser peaks--some without snow on them at all-- saying, "Look, there is Denali." I heard several people talking about taking the train through Denali National Park--that is also not possible. There is so much unknown about this place. And the guides do not try to clear up people's misconceptions. For good reason. 

You know when the mountain comes out because everyone--I mean everyone-- stops everything they are doing to look. Even old timers. It is such an awe-inspiring moment. 

One of the lucky moments of my life--not only did the mountain finally come out after weeks of hiding, but it stayed out for our 48 hours in Talkeetna.

I have loved mountains all my life--but nothing could have prepared me for my first glimpse of Denali. More spectacular than Everest. More than Mont Blanc. It just rises out of nowhere in the greatest vertical on earth. 

知者樂水 仁者樂山 知者動 仁者靜 知者樂 仁者壽
The wise delight in water while the virtuous delight in the mountains.
A wise person is active and enjoys change while a virtue person seeks serenity and enjoys long life (accepting this as they come)

In an enlightened empire, both the wise and the virtuous are necessary. (All the Japanese glosses on this passage that I looked at do not position virtue above wisdom but rather stress that both types of people serve a necessary function in the world).

We flew with Talkeetna Air-- whose "flight-seeing" business grew out of their steady work delivery alpinists to base camp. 

“Maps do not take account of time, only of space.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Mountains Of The Mind: A History Of A Fascination

Flights landed  at the 5600 foot level of the Ruth Glacier, located in the Sheldon Amphitheater.

It was incredible to see the extent of the Ruth Glacier and the way it carved the landscape...

Landing on the glacier was worth every penny.

 

“There is something august and stately in the Air of these things,’ he wrote after the Simplon crossing, ‘that inspires the mind with great thoughts and passions … as all things have that are too big for our comprehension, they fill and overbear the mind with their Excess, and cast it into a pleasing kind of stupor and imagination.”
― Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit

And then our return to a watery world in wildflower season in Alaska.

Native Corporation run Talkeetna Lodge--a slice of heaven

 

Birds in Anchorage

As soon as we arrived, we drove down the gorgeous Turnagain Arm--a scenic drive that hugs the side of the mountain --nearly flush to the water. I think it is the most beautiful drive I've ever been on, rivaling my other two drives, the River Road in West Texas and the scenic drive from San Sepolchro to Urbino. Within minutes we saw the two representative Anchorage birds, the Black-Capped Chickadee and the Mew Gull. 

The next day we met bird guide Sulli Gibson at Anchorage's famous Potter's Marsh. The marshy estuary is just filed with beautiful birds. My favorites were pintail ducks, green teals, Alder Flycatchers, redpolls, Canada geese babies, so many yellowlegs, American widgeons, and Wilson's snipes....and mew and herring gulls galore. 

We also drove back down the Turnagain Arm to chase after the Orange-Crowned Warbler (beautiful song) and Golden-Crowned Sparrow.

 

Alder Flycatcher

Wilson Snipe

Northern Pintail
Cana Goose
Yellowlegs
Mew Gull

Green-teal
Wilson Snipe

Dall Sheep

Orange-Crowned Warbler

Golden-crowned Sparrow

Common Redpoll

3 Top Birding sites in Alaska

On Sully's recommendation, that afternoon Chris went running on the Terry Knowles trail... he took me back later that night before we got pizza at Moose's Tooth, so I could see the Arctic Tern with my own eyes--world champion migrator and top 100 bird. 

We saw plenty of arctic terns, along with a gorgeous red-throated grebe and lots of Canada Geese. 

She was not happy with Chris taking her photo!

Awesome apricot pizza from Moose's Tooth, recommended by Sulli

Red-Throated Grebe



Our hotel

Download Girdwood

We also saw on our first day Cow Parnsip.... the wildflower that haunted our days. 

 

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On our last day, we went birding with Sulli again--and that is when I saw my favorite bird of the trip, the Red-Throated Loon.

This bird was so sweet. He was loved airplanes and returns to the floatplane airport and calls out every time someone starts their plane... it was just incredible. By that time, I had fallen in love with the haunting call of the red-throated loons. 

The lagoon was situated against the international airport. We saw more Bonaparte's Gulls, which I love!

We also saw a rare Boreal Chickadee, Downy woodpecker, and a red-breasted nuthatch. 

Birds, Bears, and Blossoms on the Bering Sea

Wildman Lodge is located at the foot of smoking Mt. Veniaminof along the Ocean River. 

The Bering Sea is about a twenty minute flight by bush plane or speed boat. 

The treeless and marshy tundra was a gorgeous tangle of wildflowers and berries... leaping salmon and brown bears!

Cow Parsnip, Yarrow, and wild celery, with fireweed, cotton flowers and bluebells; eskimo potatoes and salmon berries, blueberries and raspberries... 

There was a pair of resident Wilson's Snipes at the lodge--along with nesting tree swallows, robins and white-crowned sparrows. Northern Shrikes. Nearby were short-tailed shearwaters, sooty shearwaters, black scoters, rock sandpipers, yellowlegs, fork-tailed storm petrels, arctic terns, and Bonaparte's gulls, down on the water with nesting black-legged kittiwakes galore.  

Eagles in Alaska

On our way to see the walrus haul out on the Bering Sea, we happened upon an eagle's nest. 

Both parents were working hard to feed their brood and did not appreciate human beings encroaching on their space.

 

In Search of Walrusus

Durer's Head of a Walrus,1521. Pen drawing in Indian ink and watercolor on paper

 

Walruses are the sole surviving members of the diverse family Odobenidae. Imagine a world of walrus-like creatures!

Odobenus Rosmarus: Odobenus means "Tooth walking." Circumpolar distribution-- Russia, Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Norway. Uglit is Inuit for a Walrus Haul Out, maybe from the grunting oogh sound they make on the beach and ice when they are all piled up. During mating season, males can utilize beeps, whistles, grunts, rasps, boings and knocks for a "fugue-like love song," according to Sharon Chester in the Arctic Guide. They also use their tusks for mating displays. After gestation female delivers single calf on pack ice while males haul out on beaches.  

Arctic cultures have long hunted walrus for food and hides. Tusks used to make carvings. In 16th century Europeans began hunting them for oil. Except for subsistence hunting by arctic people, hunting is prohibited in the US.

Inuits use penile bone as a club or oosik. 

For us, finding walruses began with a two-and-a-half-hour flight by twin engine aircraft from Anchorage, southwest down the peninsula. I lost track of how many volcanoes we passed since I was quite worried Pilot Tracy was asleep at the wheel! Luckily, just when I was about to panic, the scent of smoked salmon filled the aircraft... he must be eating up there--so definitely not asleep! If only I had captured his entrance onto the plane-as Craig sang it later, Moon River...

Lake Clark Air

From our base camp at the foot of smoking Mt. Veniaminof, it was then another twenty minute flight by bush plane (Pilot Tom) or chopper to a black sand beach on the Bering Sea. And from there: a trek across the tundra--and over Hell's Bluff to the Walrus Haul Out.

The Six Best Places to See Walruses

Pilot Ryan talked a lot about the vastness of the tundra landscape--"like the Serengeti, you can see for miles and miles..."

 

The Haul Out was BIG! Over a thousand bulls.

“Walruses are coastline embodied. They cannot eat without the sea, feeding a hundred or more feet underwater, where they root beds of clams and benthic worms from the mud. But they must breed and birth in the air. So the herds slide and wallow between, riding the edge of the sea ice south in autumn, then north through the Bering Strait in summer, sometimes leaving the ice to flop onto patches of sandy earth. Like whales, they concentrate rich seas in their bodies—over a ton for females, more than two tons for males. Walruses are not as fat as bowheads; the mussels they eat take their cut of the sunlight. But beneath inches of furrowed skin, a third of a walrus’s body weight is blubber. They do labor no person can, transforming submarine muck into useful tissue and hauling it to shore, drawing a line of energy from the sea onto the solid world.”

— Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait by Bathsheba Demuth

Tough to hike off trail through tundra

The Dream Team: Nancy and Craig, Colleen and Hunter, Chris and Tom and Pilot Leanne (oops, Pilot Tom!)

Lunch on the beach...

Hunter with a whale vertebrae

Craig taking it all in!

On our way, we saw an eagle's nest too. Pictures here. 

Blossoms and Birds at Wildman

Eagles in Alaska

Below is Wallace Wildman Martin, from the Anchorage Museum

Happy Ivory Walrus, by Jamie Seppilu, Saint Lawrence Island (Walrus Ivory and Baleen)

 

“Until the nineteenth century, when the name ‘walrus’ became established, ‘morse’ or ‘sea-horse’ were the most common English terms for the animals. Unlike the creature we now call the seahorse, the walrus does not seem to much resemble a horse, other than in its large size and herd behaviour. But it was perhaps not so much the appearance of walruses as the sounds they made that enabled the comparison. During a voyage to the Arctic in 1789, the writer and anti-slavery campaigner Olaudah Equiano encountered ‘sea-horses’, presumably walruses, ‘which neighed exactly like any other horses’. Vernacular names for sea animals were often maritime equivalents of familiar land creatures, following the ancient idea that all land animals had an aquatic equivalent; thus seals were sea-dogs, the killer whale was the sea-wolf and the porpoise the sea-pig or herring-hog. Some of these nomenclatures, such as sea-lion, elephant seal and leopard seal, survive today. These names were not always consistently applied to the same species; the sea-cow was the manatee and its extinct relative the Steller’s sea-cow, but the term was also sometimes applied to walruses, as was sea-elephant. Other names for the walrus found in early European descriptions include mo-horse, rohart and bête des grands dents, the beast of big teeth. The scientific name for the walrus is now Odobenus rosmarus, which loosely translates as ‘the rosy sea tooth-walker’: in fact this is quite a good description of the walrus, which can look very pink in warm weather when the blood flushes the skin to help the animal cool down. Early observers had correctly identified the walrus as a member of the seal family (although it was also classed as a fish, as was any creature that lived in the sea), and it was with the seals that it was placed when first classified as Phoca rosmarus by the great Swedish taxonomist Carl Linnaeus in 1758. Although there were many good descriptions of walruses, scientists were hampered by lack of access to actual specimens, being dependent on often poorly preserved body parts and the odd short-lived juvenile bought for a zoo. A considerable degree of confusion subsequently emerged within the scientific community about the origins of the walrus, and during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was given a variety of scientific names, including Trichechus rosmarus, Odobenus obesus and Rosmarus arcticus.”

— Walrus (Animal) by John Miller, Louise Miller

Backyard Birding Summer 2021

The junco is two weeks behind last year's nesting. I hope everything is okay. She is used to my peering in and let me snap one photo today. 

Leaving for Alaska so sad to be missing the hatching. Hope all goes well!

Last shot is a California Towhee in flight.

Santa Clara Estuary, Ventura 2021

We spent the Fourth of July in Ventura. This was the last birding excursion before we leave for Alaska. 

A glorious misty morning, we saw Western Grebes (Lifer) and a solitary Willet (Lifer). It was magical watching the pelicans! I took these shots with my pocket camera... which says something of how close we got. 

Most shorebirds have headed to Alaska (we will follow them there).... there were a few snowy plovers and killdeer--and so many pelicans and western grebes out on the water (ocean and pond).

The junco laid three eggs. I am listening to a hawk fledging and her mother hunting outside (nest in oak tree behind our house?) They nest there every year. The junco nest was over two weeks late this year, compared to last year--sad that we will miss all the action when we are in Alaska. 

LA Arboretum June 2021

Today we saw more Great Horned owls--two juveniles. Probably the babies of the mom we saw three weeks ago...

The highlight was seeing the Pin-Tailed Wydah. A bird found in Africa, it was a stunner!! Look at how he dances...

These birds are also brood parasites (speaking of which, we saw a cowbird that was getting fed by a song sparrow down by the lake in the Arboretum this morning (pics below)... first time to see the cowbirds working a song sparrow. Tracey saw one being fed by a junco. Sheesh. 

American Robin above

Allen Hummingbird

Cowbird working it

King of the Birds--Out my Window July 2, 2021

The Summer Sleep-- Ventura 2021

“Migration withdrawal, it is termed, only half-jokingly. Time to mow the lawn or watch Law & Order reruns or whatever else one does in between spring and fall migration. Fortunately, the affliction is short-lived. The birderly disposition is fundamentally sunny, and the onset of migration withdrawal is commonly reversed as fast as you can say “Killdeer!” The big bird is standing on the mudflat in front of you and your companion, and it’s not going anywhere. This plover is one of the handful of shorebirds that will spend the whole summer with you. The Killdeer is a common breeder in your area, and this one probably has a nest nearby. The bird is boldly patterned below; its tail is orange and impressively long; and its oversize eye is perfectly ringed by a thin circle of blood-red bare skin. You take a few steps closer, and the bird does something odd: It crouches down, fans its orange tail, and emits a low, slow trill. You get even closer, and the bird lurches into flight—barely. This is the “broken wing” display of a Killdeer with a nest nearby; the bird is trying to fake you out, to lure you away from its young or its eggs. You could spend the whole summer studying this one fascinating species! The summer months are, for many birders, a time to intensify their contributions to the science of ornithology. In the lessons that follow, we’re going to see that there are more opportunities than ever before for citizen-scientists to get involved, to make a difference, and to have a lot of fun in the process.”

— How to Know the Birds: The Art and Adventure of Birding by Ted Floyd