Napoleon Bonaparte was found by mission sisters in the arms of his dead mother beneath a banyan tree, a humble beginning for a man of such dynamic character and erudition. With the accident of his birth against him, he rose to enviable fame in his profession, fame which took him once to Agar's Lagoon, deep in the Australian Outback.

No, I haven't lost my senses. Napoleon Bonaparte is the half-Aboriginal creation of Australian writer Arthur Upfield, and a more charming detective inspector or a more brilliant would be hard to find. Upfield's "Bony" novels number near thirty, and I have read them all, time and again, and enjoyed them thoroughly in each session. They are filled with fascinating and little-known facts about Australia's topography and creatures, with particular insights into the 40,000 year-old culture of the First Australians. In one of these marvelous books ("Cake in the Hat Box"), we encounter Agar's Lagoon.

The Lagoon is more of a moat than a lagoon, and even that is an inaccurate term, since Australia's heart is "uncommon dry." So too are her swagmen and ringers after hard days in the dust and heat, so pubs are somewhat a necessity of life. Agar's famous, if possibly fictional, Lagoon was placed so far distant from civilization that it was economically unfeasible to return the empties, and so they were disposed of in an embankment circling the tiny town and the name was inscribed by a poetic soul on the figurative entrance.

For twelve years or more, Clyde's Mountain has been growing, and now with his successful completion of a second year with Alcoholics Anonymous, it is being hauled away. It was a landmark of the neighbourhood, though only visible from my home or Dennis': three huge enclosures of fence wire piled to overflowing with beer cans, with few exceptions all bearing the same brand.

His folly lies in the fact that he didn't crush them before discarding and as he bags them in black plastic, he has even surprised himself, for lying in amongst the dead soldiers are a few still living, full of what he now terms "the skunky stuff." He has sacked some 25 bags of aluminum today, enough to fill his pickup bed several times over. They are destined for recycling, beer and all, and won't that make a scene when the crusher gives its squeeze? The Mountain hardly shows a dent in its flanks for all his excavations.

The characters of life are no less unique than those of fiction, are they?

Among production plants and scarified construction sites, I found a wildlife refuge during yesterday's bicycle ride, thick with blackberry vines and hardhack, spotted with cattail bogs and open water. I have seldom seen a more incongruous display, nor one so patently mis-thought.

In the overview, the refuge is well-provided with shelter and food sources for the 200 species it is said to house in its modest acres. Tall snags have been left or deliberately installed for hawks and other birds of prey, and waterways are lined with grass or spread with lilies which no doubt both frog and heron find to their liking. The creators obviously sought to strike a natural balance, and its planning, then, is faultless as far as I could see, but for the air of wildness which, perforce, it lacks in the midst of industry.

Since bicycles were forbidden entry and no means of securing one had been provided, I was unable to explore the meandering footpaths on this day. I stood looking wistfully at the several wooden observation platforms standing high over the dense habitat, and wondered what I might see given binoculars and patience. As my vision passed these structures, another view possessed my eye: that of the guard towers on a prison. My mind travelled back to the days of new America, when her Native peoples were consigned to reservations to keep them from obstructing progress while the invaders seized possession of the arable lands.

Each time I drive from home, I see new construction. I see pavements widening, and parking lots engulfing space where trees stood only a week before. I see Man's numbers growing and wildlife diminishing, and I am sad, because this is not the proper way of the world.

"Refuge" has two semantic slants to its meaning: a place provided wherein something may be preserved from harm or a place desperately sought where one may be protected. In the maze of manufacturing and processing I passed through yesterday, Earth's innocents have fled to the only safe, small place they could find.

It pains me to admit it, but I have been known to be wrong, and it should be noted that both occasions were of such significance that they are now celebrated as holidays among my family and friends. We now find cause to add a third observance to the calendar, a minor feast, since my predictions for fast fish coming from the Kiddy Pool collapsed in a quiet stream of clear water.

Two weeks have passed since the fish truck pulled down the concrete ramp and the driver opened the spill pipe to release three thousand "catchable" (i.e., eight inches or larger) trout into the river, a fortnight for those of you who care for synonymous terms, and each day passing has been a semester in survival school for those fish escaping capture. They have passed their finals in Bait Identification, done the homework for Hook Throwing and Evasion. They are lettered in Complacent Lure Dismissal, and their doctoral theses are plainly published under titles, "Flies: Ephemerids and Jassids," and "Hydrologic Effects on Trajectory in the Leisenring Lift." In short, the hapless fisherman doesn't stand a chance.

The gregarious Sande prefers to know his doom beforehand, but nonetheless faces it squarely. He patrolled the bank while I lounged under a tree with crisp Granny Smith, and of the handful of anglers he queried, "How're they biting?" heard the phrase repeated unanimously in variation that they weren't.

I rose slowly from my lunch with concealed exhilaration. Shooting fish in a barrel might now have transmuted into a battle of the wits.

From my armoury, I selected a light, sensitive bait rod and tipped its golden line with four feet of fine, clear leader and a smaller hook than my compatriots ever use. The piece of shrimp I impaled on it was hardly larger, just enough to cover and completely conceal the bronzed metal. Dozens of trout peppered the water at my feet, and if I could see them, their view of me was equally as plain. I chose a path where their numbers were fewest, and with a quick twitch, sailed an arcing line to land the bait beyond the mass.

The skill of the fly-fisherman serves the worm chucker well if he will but apply it. Now I let the morsel sink until it skimmed the rocky bottom. My retrieve was slow, and filled with erratic motions as I brought it into the deeper channel. I saw the audience respond, but the bait went untouched until the third such cast which laid a rainbow on the rocks. The other fishermen on the creek looked at me jealously, appraisingly. I had, before their eyes, accomplished the seemingly impossible. A woman with a fishing rod and skill to use it slays more than fish.

Suffice to say that before the day was done, five respectable trout dangled from the metal stringer clipped to my pack. I caught fish when it's doubtful any other fisherman in three contiguous counties could say the same. Pardon me while I go look smug.

It's a sad day when I can't get behind a fishing trip, but such is the way of it today. Part of the problem is that I am "peopled out" by the last two days' physical and virtual interactions, socializing with strangers, composing letters of serious business, and being placed in a position of defence. Nevertheless, I can't lay all the blame at human feet.

The root of the dilemma lies beneath water. At this time of year, our trout fisheries have turned a trifle sour under the oppression of heat beyond the norm. The expert angler's silver-sided and wild prey has dived deeper into coolness, into currents not clouded by algae, and they are glutted on a surfeit of insects both mature and freshly hatched.

The productive streams are therefore those the Game Department terms "put and take," planted, and the only one nearby not jam-packed with campers holidaying produces well. As quickly as your tidbit of shrimp or worm or Power Bait sinks past the cloud of three-inch fry, a pan-sized fish will nab it, and the only test of skill is in how you set the hook. It's too easy to serve Lure du jour to the crowd of unselective gluttons waiting amongst the rocks, and my heart's not in the game, if game it can be called. It's the Kiddy Pool all over, and any fool with a bent safety pin, stick and piece of string can catch a fish.

Today, I fish as an exhibition of friendship, and like as not, while Sande pulls his limit, I may draw up between two rip-rap boulders and lie back to take a nap.

Giving testimony before the County Council is not a place my friends would expect to find me, but there I stood, and only moments after the chairman had announced that the proceedings were being televised. Such information would have gone best unmentioned if his intent was to set the speakers from the public sector at their ease. Nevertheless, I boldly stood at the microphone and delivered a carefully enunciated, timed speech with an unquavering voice, and made frequent eye contact with the members of the board before me. My shaking hands were not visible above the podium, and the sound of my knocking knees was, at its distance, not audible on the mike. I was driven by my mission, never mind that I pay the consequence today.

This was the first time I have been visible in my fight against commercial development in our rural valley, the first time I have had a face. The council chair who mispronounced my name when he called me to appear before the members might have recognized it as a signature appended to a ten-page document which, point by point, delineated flaws and deliberate evasions in the Environmental Impact Statement or, if not, he might have remembered hearing text cited under my authorship by many others who gave it reference. I have been active but not human, and now with the best of our defenders gone and few remaining, it comes to this: show myself, and be counted.

Tough job for a hermit, eh?

The human being's primary instinct is personal survival. Above all else, this holds sway. My chosen lifestyle and peculiar requirement for space apart from creatures of my kind are threatened. I am rising, teeth and toenails, in nothing short of self-defence. Like other beasts intent on self-preservation, I will bear wounds of which I am unconscious, and I shall persist in the fray until strength fails me or until I win.

I have not skulked back to my den this day without further agenda. I have sat half the morning composing letters with the greatest skill I could command. It helps that the opposition made a poor showing, so I am encouraged, and a reply in my favour has fed the flames within. The heretofore invisible objector has taken on the mantle of a presence unexpected, and I'd like to think I delivered a blindside blow. If no other deed was accomplished, one thing is now clear to the enemy: Watch out! There's a new kid on the block, and she ain't looking to play marbles with those rocks in her pocket.

The aurora has eluded me for several nights' running, but neither am I inclined to sit patiently in the lawn chair at an hour when customarily I am fast asleep. I would never have made a good astronomer because of the hours. The discipline is hardly a morning person's science, so although I seize the occasional advantage of a dawn or dusk phenomenon, I leave its deeper study to the night-owls of the scientific community.

I witnessed my first aurora as a small child. My father called the family's attention to a fiery red glow on the northern horizon, as if somewhere distant, an entire city was in flames. The colour was constant, its intensity varying little, and I was disappointed that it was so vastly different in appearance than the illustration in my "Golden Book of Astronomy," which showed draperies of fluid, rainbow light panelling the sky. Several times that summer, this glowing red aurora was visible again, and equally unspectacular as the first.

Before I saw another, I had reached adulthood, and this time it manifested in a washed-out white which could have been mistaken for cloud but for the way it flowed. No touch of colour graced it, boring. I began to feel cheated.

Some years later, a solar event sent an eerie green aurora to the state. That was thrilling! At last I had been privileged to see a colour in the sky that was common to neither mist nor sunset. I stood hours outside our prairie home observing, but I longed to fulfil the promise of the Golden Book with the sight of gossamer colour rippling across the field of stars. Forty years from my birth, I was finally rewarded with an exhibition of green and purple any Alaskan would dismiss with a shrug, but for me, it was as wonderful as finding an uncharted supernova in my telescope, and maybe that's why these past few nights, I haven't made any particular exertions to watch the sky: when given a lovely present, it's rude to ask for better, and the night sky's gift to me had been lovely indeed.

This current spate of aurorae follows several X-class solar flares and powerful coronal mass ejections (CME's). Oscillating curtains of electromagnetically charged particles have been viewed as far to the south as Nebraska, and their colours span the spectrum. If you'd care to learn more, Spaceweather.com (a branch of NASA) provides daily updates and a growing gallery of spectacular photos which is well worth a visit.

I look out the window at a field of thistles with their heads about to burst into bloom, and I wonder why it is that the county has not yet seen fit to place this plant on its "noxious weeds" list. Indeed, five or six years ago, the patch which now covers approximately 50 acres was confined to an area about a hundred feet on a side, lying at the eastern end. The neighbour (who hasn't the brains God gave a goose, being Californian) decided to control them by disking annually, and waits until the purple tufts have turned white with seed-bearing parachutes to do so, thus ensuring an ever-widening crop. He shall get his comeuppance if ever he does succeed in building his master-planned resort, complete with golf course, for nothing is as reluctant to let go its life essence than those tiny, tiny seeds, all three hundred and thirty three trillion of them.

These are Canada thistles, Cirsium arvense. The field guide describes them as "pernicious." Good word, that. It lets you hear the thorns.

I'd doubt that field mice could find safe passage through that pasture. Certainly the coyotes have learned to stay away. It seems that the only creature unwise enough to attempt entry is the occasional tourist who seeks to photograph the backdrop and, occupied with lens and settings, blunders without looking into the spillover which now lines the ditch as well. Fresh or dry, I'd rather trip the Light Fantastic through a field of land mines than go walking on the verge in anything but loggers' caulks.

Immigrants are creeping across the asphalt border, too. I find them lurking in the lawn, mowed within an inch of their lives. I dig them out with a shovel and burn the bodies, the only assured means of control. The tap root extends a foot or more beneath the surface, and any bit of it remaining will sprout a replacement plant as energetic as its predecessor, as if to defy the hapless landowner's right of domain.

We neighbours on this side of the road have been more successful in opposing resort plans than in conquering the thistles, but on both fronts, the war goes on. Perhaps if Californian and Canadian are set at each other's throats, we'll see the same results experienced by the Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat who, side by side, on the table sat until that fateful day. One can hope.

With a nod to Arnold J. Rimmer, it's Gazpacho Soup Day! Yes, it's served cold.

Phillip and Paul (Pablo) introduced me to this dish, and although their version was quite different from mine (developed with "Joy of Cooking" in hand), both are equally scrummy, and just the thing to top off a hot-weather dinner of lightly broiled surf perch filets with oyster crackers on the side.

You'll need a food processor for this one, folks. In a pinch, you could use a blender, but be careful not to overprocess it. Rather than being smooth like tomato soup, you want the finished product to have some texture to provide a visual interest. Garnish with a parsley spray if you're feeling elegant, but around here, it's served in colored Pyrex bowls that date back to the '50's. I've never heard it mentioned that upper-class people have a greater number of taste buds, y'know?

The hardest work you'll be called upon to do is peeling and seeding a cucumber. Aside from that, you have five to seven minutes of prep time, and half a day to chill the soup thoroughly. Are you ready? Then let's go shopping.

1 can S&W Italian Recipe Stewed Tomatoes
(sub three fresh tomatoes, seeded, if you must, and increase the spices)
1 medium-sized green bell pepper
1 cucumber
1/2 yellow onion
20-30 fresh chive leaves
5-6 sprays of parsley + 1 for garnish (optional)
1/2 tsp. basil (it comes in a jar, moist, so use less if dried)
1 heaping tsp. minced garlic (again, I use the stuff in jars)
1/2 can Swanson fat-free beef broth
1/4 cup olive oil
2-3 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 level tsp. paprika
salt to taste

Wash veggies. Peel the cucumber, cut into quarters lengthwise and remove the seeds. Cut each quarter into four or five pieces and drop them into the food processor.

Remove the seeds and white membrane from the bell pepper and cut the flesh into 1 inch squares. In the food processor it goes, on top of the cucumber.

Do the same with the onion. See how easy this really is? We're going to pitch everything else in the processor before turning it on, so just keep going.

With scissors, cut the chives into smaller bits. Hey, you can't go wrong with the chives in this soup, so you may want to add a few more.

Pull the leafy bits off the ends of the parsley stems and throw the stems away. They're bitter. You can overpower the gazpacho with parsley, so go lightly. You can add more later, or as garnish.

Add the basil. This is something else you can't overdo without really working at it, so feel free to adapt proportions.

Add the garlic. Oh, garlic is good! And it's good for you, so don't stint here.

Add the beef broth. You could use another brand, or you could substitute consomme, and it doesn't have to be fat-free. This is a matter of personal preference.

Add the olive oil, extra virgin if you please.

Be careful with the lemon juice. You can stir more in by hand if the soup asks for it, but you can't take it out.

Add the paprika and a good shake of salt, then pour the canned tomatoes over the top and close the food processor. Yay! Turn it onto high for 15-30 seconds and then check the texture of the soup. There should be little bits of onion visible, and tiny lengths of chive and flecks of parsley. Chill for a minimum of two hours before serving.

Oh, you might want to put on a video tape at dinner. I'd suggest "ME²," the first season finale of the British hit sci-fi comedy, "Red Dwarf." (PS. For you trivia fans, the real "Gazpacho Soup Day" is 25 November.)

Webster's Third gives several meanings for the word caltrop, and the second of them reads as follows: "a device with four metal points so arranged that when any three are on the ground the fourth projects upward as a hazard to the hooves of horses or to pneumatic tires." This I knew. The first definition surprised me, because it is so pointedly appropriate: "any of several plants having stout spines on the fruit or flower heads."

While I doubt that the seaside burrs' taxonomy allows them membership in Mr. Webster's botanical category, they look far more like the illustration he supplies than any Tribulus, Kallstroemia or star thistle also listed does, and they are quite up to the task of temporarily laming a person wearing thin zori sandals with their three rigid 3/8" long spines, which fulfills his description of medieval ordnance, given poetic license.

Between the sandy, pleasant beach and the hard-packed parking lot lies a belt of stickers, unavoidable and evil, through which the fisherman must pass, and worse, pushing a bicycle heavily laden with tackle, rod, clam gun, mud boots, pack with lunch, sundries and clothing against the afternoon winds, and a five-gallon bucket dangling off one handlebar. It is an awkward and cumbersome arrangement, and each stick of it as necessary as the reel and line. It has fewer projections than the caltrop, but is nonetheless vulnerable to them, and by the time bicycle and fisherman have crossed the fifty feet of trail winding through this portion, they are studded, tire and sole, with hundreds of seed-bearing spikes.

They are brittle, these miniature weapons of war, and all but one projecting point breaks off when struck against the pavement, leaving a single needle embedded and the surrounding material again exposed to attack. All that can be seen at the end of a quarter mile's travel are those which linger in the valleys of the tread. Here, then, a person must again cross an expanse salted with cruel prickles to reach the tide flat, where an hour digging mud shrimp is as delightful as it sounds.

A mile beyond and at the end of a road closed to motorized traffic by washouts and strewn with shattered shells from seagulls' dining, across a stream affected by the tide, through another, wider bed of herbal caltrops, a point of beach is waiting. The angler goes forth with bait and bucket to the sand and casts a line into the receding tide.

Heavily burdened with surf perch at the end of two hours, the fisherman returns to his conveyance. If travel previously was clumsy and lopsided, it now becomes a fight between rider and machine. A ten or fifteen pound list to port is tough to manage, pushed or ridden, and more than once, the bucket topples and spills its load. Armoured with tough scales, the lifeless fish are spared the caltrops as they tumble onto the verge.

One last hazardous crossing awaits the bicycle before its day concludes at the campground. Its knobby cross-country tires have held up well. Nevertheless, they will require patient de-studding before essaying a trip of any magnitude. The fisherman, on the other hand, is going to the nearer beach to ply the incoming waters to their maximum. The widest band of caltrops yet awaits.

Sandal and foot will need de-thorning before either is fully functional again.

Surf perch are sneaky buggers, and can suck a soft-bodied, stinky old mud shrimp off your hook without ever giving the slightest tug. Never mind that the tide plays games with your reflexes, eddying your bait into sand divots, around pebbles and into weeds. Never mind that dogfish and undersized crab favour the grey-brown delicacy you've tied to your hook in the hopes of keeping it for another cast. You have gone for surf perch hopefully, and your rod tip's motion calls you to jerk. If the gods smile upon its action, you've half-won the contest. Combined with the drag-and-pull of the incoming tide, when a one-pound perch turns its body flat against the waves and runs, you've got a fight on your hands.

In the area where I fish for these sporty fellows, a rock jetty walls off a portion of beach. At its maximum, the rampart is no more than ten feet in width, with open spaces between the rocks which serve only to mitigate tidal erosion. The perch feed on the barnacles clinging to the boulders, and as the tide rises, the fisherman moves down the beach, closer and closer to the parking area, casting as closely as he can without getting snagged up. Accidents happen, so it is wise to carry a good collection of surf rigs, a heavy wire device with dropper loops for two snelled hooks and an eye at the bitter end for a leaden weight. A 3/8-1/2 ounce sinker suffices. Any more, and you cannot feel the bite.

I have a fondness for surf perch. Not only are they delicious and filet nicely, they're as much fun to catch as shad. The problem is, they're finicky and fickle, and although they will generally accept mud shrimp or clam necks, any other bait is hit-or-miss. If they bite today, they may not tomorrow, and one pelican on the rocks is enough to send them all scampering for open sea.

Fishing for surf perch often has unexpected rewards, even if perch fail you. An occasional "keeper" crab will latch onto your bait like a bulldog and be dragged ashore. Small halibut and flounder also frequent the shallow water, as do ling cod and sable, and rockfish of several varieties. Surf perch notwithstanding, my finest hour was bringing a cabezon to land.

The ocean beach is more than three hours distant, so my trips are limited to one or two each year. I drive down, having consulted the tide table, in time to root out mud shrimp with a clam gun when the mudflats are exposed at low tide, and then fish two hours before the high, moving along the jetty toward the car. After cleaning fish on site (assuming I have caught any), I drive home again, exhausted. My responsibilities to the Aged Parent make overnighting impossible.

After riding forty-one miles on my bicycle yesterday, I am going surf-perching today. I have been skunked before, and if that is my fate on this occasion, so be it. The tides are eminently well appointed, the moon is in the proper phase. Nothing short of a herring tide and the incumbent flux of pelicans should prevent me from bringing home the fishy bacon...but I've seen that, too. Twice. And me without a bucket.

The sun is still behind the hill, and the long day is ahead. Wish me a fish!

Again I refer you to Señor Pablo who, like me, prefers the Netscape browser (see 20 July 2004).

Internet Explorer crashed no fewer than five times yesterday, in variations from freeze-ups while I was trying to access seismic information through USGS to the Grey Screen of Death as National Geographic's images tried to load. Why do I persist in using Explorer? Because too many sites do not support Netscape.

Over a year ago, Neopets made changes to their Flash games to curtail cheating. While the idea was good, the actuality was less than perfect. One of my favorite and best-paying games went mad when using Netscape, and since I relied on it for a third of my daily virtual income, I reverted to Explorer and submitted a bug report. In short order, I missed using Netscape sorely, because Explorer was slower and the default display font was harder on my eyes.

Despite the fact that I post a link to Neopets, I am presently more than a little disgruntled with them, and it started with the Netscape issue. My repeated complaints went unanswered and unaddressed, and to this date, the one game still functions only with Explorer.

However, another friend who uses a Mac and Safari has it far worse. The site displays on her monitor in miniature, and none of her pet experts can remedy it. For her, the pop-ups of the games are unreadable at less than half size, and many do not function as they should. One solitaire allows her to make a single move per session, and by this I mean that she must shut her computer down entirely to make another play. She, too, has submitted bug reports aplenty. Neopets, it seems, is ready to bury clients who do not use Explorer. (Incidentally, the Better Business Bureau states that "...this company has an unsatisfactory record with the Bureau. An unsatisfactory record is given when a pattern in the company's customer complaints causes us concern, when the company does not respond to complaints, or when it will not substantiate its advertising claims. In this case, our complaint history for this company shows that although the business has responded to customer complaints brought to its attention by the Bureau, some remain unresolved..." I'd guess they number in the tens of thousands.)

Internet Explorer has more vulnerabilities than you can shake Norton's stick at. Its moodiness is legend. I suspect that somewhere behind the scenes, Money is whispering to make it the browser of choice by rendering the competition impotent and as you'll see if you read Señor Pablo's blog, apparently even Blogger is listening.

I flatly refuse to get old. All right, I know it'll catch up with me in the end, but for now, I'm running ahead of it by exercising body and brain, and maintaining an interest in life. At 57 years old, I hike, bike, and fly-fish, perform hard labours in yard and garden such as setting posts with a manual posthole digger or splitting rails; I stretch and bend and walk whenever possible, and deliberately take the farthest parking spot from any entrance except when it's pouring rain. I have learned basic HTML and a smattering of Spanish, and flex my verbal muscles daily in this blog; I read copiously (and seldom fiction), am addicted to FreeCell solitaire and puzzling over words. In short, I'm living a young life both physically and mentally, and I'm told it shows.
 
This morning, I discovered an article about diet and exercise forestalling the onset of Alzheimer's. The obvious recommendations for good health were there: eat right, stay slim, work out a couple times each week, but also included on the page was a report of research indicating that mental calisthenics play an equally important part. Well, now...what's that old saw? "Use it or lose it?" Amazing! Here's scientific proof!
 
Your basic human being is a lazy varmint and a glutton. We've all heard that a high-fat diet and a sedentary lifestyle is sending Americans down the tube. Our affluence has greased the skids. It's too easy to find things to do while you're sitting down. We've gone and got a mind-set that keeps us idle, mind and body: watching TV, playing computer games, reading dull magazines that stultify instead of stimulate cerebral activity. We're losing the ability to move or think. We're vegetating, a nation of rutabagas, pasty-pale and fat.
 
I love my foster sister dearly. We are the same age, as close as makes no never mind. This vignette tells a story of divergent ways of living. Being far apart, she and I had had little contact for several years and had only recently begun a routine of daily emails. This set included a discussion of libraries and our distance from them. Marilyn's is just across the street.
 
"I've got to go pick up my reserves this afternoon," she wrote. "I wish I had a scooter."
 
I was inspired by the image and replied, "Man, I'd love to have a scooter! I could ride it up to the Post Office" (a five-mile trip) "and exercise one leg going up the hill and the other one coming back!" By "scooter," I meant the means of transportation which has two wheels separated by a platform with a tall handle at its front, now most commonly made of aluminum instead of wood (as in my childhood), impelled by thrusts of leg and foot.
 
The silence in her next email was telling. She'd meant a Rascal. The realization brought tears to my eyes, and I've never mentioned it again.

Whether the weather be fine,
Or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cold,
Or whether the weather be hot,
We'll weather the weather
Whatever the weather,
Whether we like it or not.
          -Author unknown

Nine hundredths fell last night, scarcely enough to fill a teaspoon. Kick a pebble in the garden and you'll find dry dirt beneath it, and the mist in the air is only a prank, a lie. The few clouds are a cheap masquerade, gulling no one and only providing brief, tempered amusement with their farce. It's hard to laugh when you know the joke is mean.

The promise of thundershowers wilted. The current of cooler marine air which should have crept in from the coast turned tail and ran, the coward, too weak to stand its own against the bully heat. We are bitten by the dog days, rabid and frothing at the mouth.
 
I am a cool-weather person. Seventy-five is hot enough, thank you, and eighty lays me low. I entered this world at minus twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit, and I hold the belief that no creature should be constrained to endure a greater range of temperatures in their lifetime than that encompassed by an even hundred degrees' variation, preferably less. Eighty-five will find me wrapped in wet towels or dunking in the bathtub hourly, and at ninety, I resign and lie down on the floor and wait to die.

As a temporary escape, I may find refuge in fly-fishing a cool creek or plashing in the ocean surf on pretext of catching cabezon or perch, standing in cool water up to fanny depth and thinking about Alaska or the Canadian North. In this pleasant venue, I remember fondly waking in a tent and consulting a thermometer whose mercury indicated ten degrees. I heated coffee and watched the dawn on that occasion, mittened and caparisoned in wool and feeling privileged. Nevertheless, I am not disillusioned by my recollections, and I know I'll find this vile, hot weather waiting when I go heading homeward, unavoidable as an angry spouse and twice as cruel.
 
It goes on, the heat and the passing arid clouds. I tire of it, but whether I like it or not, I weather the weather because there's nothing else to do.

The baby swallows have flown the coop, and none too soon, with temperatures slated to reach the 90's by the end of the week. The last two emerged on the same day, as if the youngest acknowledged his sibling's instincts as superior to his own. They will not return to the nest, nor new tenants take it. The jubilee of the swallow is done.

An errant few goldfinches and grosbeaks linger at the feeders where the food's easy and good, but soon the beckonings of Nature will urge them and they, too, will wing to the next port of call. The jays will be glad of their absent competition, and their raucous calls and hawk parodies will soon dominate the air.
 
It is a time of transition in garden and garth, for all things have their season. The youth of spring has come to puberty, and confuses its observer with a face neither adult nor child.
 
Mischief rises in the pasture: delinquent thistles straggling into gang wars over territories, tansy painting yellow graffiti to defy the county road crew its authority. Thorns clash, seeds litter, and the fallow acres are unfriendly and unsafe for all outsiders.
 
Summer itself is in its teens, rebellious and swearing hot profanities at eighty-five degrees. It curses with evening thunder and stays up late to party, and stints its chore of watering the flowerbeds with a cursory sprinkle. It is out of control, running wild, doing as it will regardless. It demands the attention and cares not for any but itself, willful and selfish. It is at times hard to believe that it will ever grow to manhood, but it will, and grandly so. There is no malice in it, only an overfilling of life. Stand out of its way lest it knock you down in passing.
 
Footnote for the day: Mr. Fish has made his transition. Sweet water to you, old buddy. You were the best fish I ever had.

For the second time in as many months, I am grieving with a friend over the loss of a family member many people would call "a pet." This is a sorry word, "pet," a short word and dismissive, one that shows few of the heartstrings tied so closely into family. It spills the years carelessly in a single syllable equating to something bought in a shop and replaceable, like worn jeans or a broken toy. Oh, for a longer, broader, deeper word!
 
Companion: you have been my friend these many days, faithful beside me in play and healing me when I was sad. You have gifted me with your affection despite my faults and failings.

Educator: lacking language, you taught me to communicate with a non-human species. You schooled me in your care and your requirements, and made me a better person by responsibility.
 
Therapist: you knew when I needed to talk, and when I needed silence. You sensed my moods and guided me to a greater understanding of myself.
 
Pastor: you heard my darkest confessions, and by your love, granted absolution without penance. I could go to you without fear of reprisal or reproach.
 
Comrade: we had some grand times, didn't we, my friend?
 
Loved one: I miss you, miss your touch, your warmth. I wake in the night and feel your phantom walking in the rooms, and long to put my hand out to touch the being you once were. The space is empty, and though its core may someday be full of happiness again, a niche of it shall always be yours, and yours alone.

In conclusion, I offer shaman's words to the families of Brother and Gladys Night, and to any reader, friend or stranger, needing solace: No spirit may be said to have passed from this Earth as long as its memory remains with those it has touched; thus any Being which has ever been loved exists in some part within those who still care for it.

Today I draw my blogging inspiration from Señor Pablo who has written of tattoos. Like my friend, I have contemplated a tattoo, never mind that I also gave more than passing consideration to having my nose pierced for a sliver of bone. Though the second fancy was dismissed after a few months' ruminations, having no mentor to perform the appropriate ceremony, the first persists; but what and where, and why?
 
As a student of Aboriginal and Melanesian culture and religion, I too believe that a tattoo or cicatrice should signify. Aboriginal youths, both male and female, are cicatrized at successive stages of their maturity following completion of specific trials and rituals. A scar is no mere decoration, but a badge of honour or token of confirmation into a society. Certain ceremonial symbols are placed in positions on the chest and back such that they may be concealed and revealed only when the wearer chooses to impress a chief or express superiority. In other cases, they are shown only to fellows, clandestine as a Masonic handshake.
 
The use of henna as seen in Middle Eastern cultures is, on the other hand, adornment. The bride beautifies herself with henna and is excused from household labours until its color fades. The initial two weeks of her marriage are her days of glory, while the tender places of her body (palms, soles and labia) remain patterned and dyed in rust-red. Subsequent applications are a luxury and often an erotic treat for the husband, but they give her no respite from her chores.
 
Henna sounded safe and sane compared with dashing out to my local tattoo parlor and having a crow inked into the flesh of my upper torso, so when the local library offered a seminar on the subject, I attended. Participants from a wide cross-section of age groups divided into pairs, and my partner was surely no more than 15. Presumably, she had provided a signed parental consent form, but whether it was forged or not is anybody's guess. After an hour or so of good instruction on the history and application of mehndi, we were given prepared henna paste and told to go play. I had no idea of my young friend's artistic abilities, but risked a suggestion that she make a simple geometric on my ankle where I could cover it with a sock if need be.
 
The skin is first conditioned with a bit of mixed oil. The henna paste (also containing oils) is then applied through a paper cone, much like that used by cake decorators, but on a smaller scale. The paste is allowed to dry until it flakes off easily, which may be an hour or more, during which time the person being dyed sits motionless to prevent disturbing the design. Any dab of henna will leave a stain. The longer it stays on, the deeper the colour.
 
My partner and I worked simultaneously on each other. Besides the mandala, we added a zigzag band around my wrist which made me look like Kleezantsun, the Tenctonese "overseers" from the TV show, "Alien Nation." I flinched a little at her request, envisioning the infuriated but impotent mother who would soon find that nothing short of full debridement would remove the large dot between her daughter's eyes. A floral vine wound across the back of her hand.
 
I'd like to say the story ends there, and I should have anticipated the later chapters. Yes, I was hennaed artfully, but I have terribly sensitive skin and a history of allergies. When I later applied it again to myself, I used straight eucalyptus oil as the carrier, and the red, blistering rash which broke out wherever it touched me sent me screaming to the doctor. It seems that Aborigines and henna do not mix.
 
As for that tattoo, I'm undecided. I don't like the traditional blue or black. What if I'm allergic? Then what? So many questions! And I've been thinking on this subject for half a dozen years. It never does to rush into a thing like this, does it?

The temperature has climbed past the level of comfort these last few days, pushing the digital mercury in my weather station close to the ninety mark. The breeze is dead calm, the humidity cloying, and at night, the sheet across my bare chest feels as ripe and heavy as the pelt on a drowned sheep bloating in the sun. Fan? It only moves the weight of sticky air. I am greased slick with jellied sweat, sautéed in my own effluvium. The expense of an air conditioner is a frivolity few native Washingtonians deem worthwhile, except on days like these which, fortunately, are few.

"It isn't the heat, it's the humidity." With Puget Sound just over there, and the ocean only a peninsula away, a marine flow drags itself along the ground each evening like our (in)famous banana slug, oozing slime on any surface it touches, creeping across the lowlands and pasting the mountain valleys with its gross viscosity. Shade gives no respite. It seeks the smallest crevice. Grass and leaf and human are alike, wilted under its pervasion.

I was inspired to bicycle beneath this blanket of suspended moisture, though in daytime hours, its effects aren't fully blown. Not 'til temps begin to cool does it seep upward from its sea-level warren, so early morning found me on a trail lined with trees and paralleling a river, a pleasant way to seize advantage for the labour of ascending. I pedalled idly, keeping a decent pace but never racing, then played a minute among some man-constructed hummocks in a park and broke a sweat. The beast of humidity slept on in its den, lazy as my ex-husband who kept hours unconscionable to those of us who wake with the sunrise. A rabbit of the dawn, I frolicked while it dozed.

From park to park I proceeded, with a stop for lunch at the end of formal trail. Now I was to enter territory I had never cycled, on the county road and climbing a hill memory (eidetic) said was steep. Gears ground lower, but not to the bottom, and two miles later, I was back on flat terrain and puzzled. Steep?

Meanwhile, Old Humid was rising from his hibernation cranky. I think he'd seen me sneaking past his door.

Enough's enough, and when I reached the next small community, I remembered my shopping errands unattended. Around the interesting blocks I went, then reversed for home. I was surprised by a stretch of paved bike path by-passing a mile of roadway, sheltered by trees on either side, and lined with ripe thimbleberries. Mmmmm! Not to shun Nature's provender wherever I may find it, I did appropriate homage to these furry, succulent fruit.

Now I came to that hill again, and it looked quite different from the summit. The pavement sloped away quite a bit more than I'd noticed, climbing. Down I went, and on a coast, attained a speed of 25 breezy miles per hour, sending whiffs of moist, afternoon air through my helmet's vents. The humidity was rising, and its mood was certifiably cross.

Thirty-five miles I made, with loops through neighbourhood to round the total. Shopping done, I headed home in the oven of the car. While a hastily prepared dinner of pancit (see 27 June 2004) rested in my lap, Humidity's full fury struck the valley, and all things, self included, waned into a cess of gelatinous, torpid exhaustion. The slug was back, and we were slimed.

A brave and tiny head thrusts out the open door, with bright black eyes darting, flicking thither and yon into the wide expanse of open and promising sky. An anxious heart trembles in the white, downy breast at the vastness, the immensity of air. The quick gaze is curious but timid, and the small watcher hastily disappears into the closeted safety of the nest as a paper wasp jets past the opening. Tomorrow is a better day to learn to fly.

Mother and father have been hard at work providing winged morsels these last few days. As quick as they can capture a lazy beetle or disoriented mosquito, another yellow-lined gape rises, crying to be fed. The boldest youth among the hatchlings studies either parent closely and essays the far down ground with the trepidation of a first-time bungee jumper. Food and family are just beyond reach. The dilemma is obviously painful, but the spirit, though willing, is young and easily bowed. The eldest child reaches a conclusion despite appetite's nagging: nope, not today.

It is easy to anthropomorphize baby swallows, and by God, I'll defend it. You can see the machinery turning behind the windows of the eyes, the cogs grinding and the smoke rising from the wheels. We base our presumption of intelligence on verbal communication and process, which only goes to show how dumb we really are. Birds, the psitticines and corvids most particularly, are capable of almost human reasoning and humour, far moreso than the canine and feline companions who dote upon our care. A problem is still a problem, whether words describe it or no, and what is a solution but a concept by another name? Some serious thinking is going on in the box outside the kitchen window, and somebody is about to make a transit between infancy's and childhood's logics.

In a few days, mother or father will insist upon a step toward maturity. The parent will bring a fat fly or captured spider and hold it just beyond beak's reach. Soon, one of the stronger fledglings will venture a bit too far, and here instinct plays its card. Even a human will flail their arms as they tumble from a tree or building, but unlike these children of the sky, our journey ends at ground level. For the young swallow with the air beneath its wings, it's just begun.

A recent Internet customer service experience merits mention in this blog, so that friends and readers will understand my sudden change of allegiance to a topographic chart provider known as MapTech. I shall no longer recommend the 'other place,' and here is why.

Three years ago, I purchased an eTrex GPS unit specifically designed for cross-country hikers and alpinists. Unlike many top-end tools, this one does not accept downloads of maps from disk or other sources, so when I needed the precise coordinates for a bathtub-sized alpine tarn I wished to reach, it was necessary to go on line and search them out. Oddly, the United States Geological Survey Department does not have this facility on its website, so I was constrained to use a private-sector supplier.

I found one that served me well for about two years. Once the map was on the screen (a process which takes a bit of time with dial-up), I could wave the cursor across the virtual terrain and watch the latitude and longitude changing at the bottom of my screen. It was a simple matter to bring up one map and plot a route which went from tree to tree (or nearly), touching on each feature I wished to use as a waypoint and entering its coordinates into the GPS. As long as I didn't let the batteries in the unit go flat, I was in like Flynn.

I got to a lot of obscure places using this facility, and then one day, I settled down to chart a proposed adventure, but the interactive data feature had been made inaccessible to any clients not having a paid subscription. I looked up the fee, and recoiled at the number. For the few exploratory trips I make each year, I'd be adding $10 or more per outing. Happy camper? Not I.

There was, however, a solution to this dismal development. By clicking on a specific waypoint, I could bring up another map. The coordinates on which I centered (but only those!) would then display in a data field on its own individual page.

Put this in perspective. I want to go from Point A to Point B (a distance of half a mile through rugged terrain) and need to navigate around a cliff, a bog and a waterfall to get there. It may sound like a short distance and an easy job, but in the field, it can wind up being scary. In order to reach my goal, I may chart ten points of reference and still find the infamous 40-foot precipice lying between two 20-foot contour lines. Where previously I could do this on a single map screen on the topo website, now I needed ten, each taking a minimum of two minutes to load. Are we ready to go on holiday? Not quite. Give me half an hour to feed the GPS.

I put up with this inconvenience (a word I use lightly) until recently, and then began searching for another means to solve the issue. It was here that I discovered MapTech, whose interactive data display is fast, convenient and FREE.

Never content to let sleeping dogs lie, I thought perhaps a flea in the ear of the customer relations folks at the 'other place' might improve their image, so I wrote a nicely worded letter to explain the plight. I received a prompt reply so laced with sarcasm and vitriol that it stunned me for a minute. Were these the same people who had been so helpful when I was confused by NAD27 vs. WGS84? Yes, I read the letter again and noticed with horror that it was signed, not by an angry flunky, but by the president and head honcho of the company himself! Ooooh, somebody doesn't take criticism well at all.

In an exchange of half a dozen emails, he defended his company's reputation and its rights to profit repeatedly, at one point stating that backpackers "love the freebies, but won't pay." I suggested that, over the course of time, the many referrals I had given his site may have generated subscription revenue, but he dared me to prove it. "If you can give me the name of ONE, I will give you a free subscription for life." I replied by stating that my interest as a ranger lay in providing a better Wilderness Experience for the visitors to the wild lands, not in asking for their names, but this meant nothing at all to a man so impelled by money, money. The discussion ended without resolution, and I closed the metaphorical door, dissatisfied. The site had failed me first, and now my constructive input was deemed both valueless and insulting.
Though it pains me to admit it, their service saved my bacon more than once by keeping me on course, but I can no longer recommend them, and the next time I want to find a secret cave behind a waterfall, I'll go to MapTech (click "Online Maps") for my numbers, free of charge.

Bluegills are gullible little fish, and a lot of fun on the fly rod. I can't say they make good eating, not at the quarter-pounder size, but for spunk, this handspan scrapper delivers. Scoff if you will, I have been towed in my pontoon boat against the light wind by a creature no larger than a saucer.

I spent several hours over a punkinseed redd today, lifting fish after fish in measures I classified with amused conservatism as "dime" to "dollar." I released most, only lightly wounded in their bony, hard mouths, and I'm sure that they fled immediately to the nest to be caught yet again.

The Grasshopper parked at the outer fringe of a mass of tiny lily pads, and the fisherman artfully dropped a brown beadhead woolly bugger at the break 'twixt sun and shadow. The nymph sank slowly in the murky water, but not evenly. A slight hesitation in its descent cued a synaptic response and I raised the tip of my rod sharply. Fish on! It had looked like a bluegill spot, and it had fulfilled its promise.

I wasn't in a mood for trout, not today. I was feeling testy, sorely put upon, and sorry for myself, and trout sometimes try the patience. I wanted results, control. Crappie could have done me, but I seized the Bluegill Moment. There's nothing like easy fish to soothe the disposition.

The wind kept nudging the boat into the fettuccine of lily pads and weed, backward of the direction I wanted to cast. Trailing from the oars and from my feet, long strings of vegetation braided with twelve feet of hand-tied leader, forming a kite tail that persisted in lying on the surface. Not even a crappie would rise to that. My thoughts were fully occupied with rowing, steering, fishing, tangling, drifting, as the cares of home drifted in another direction, out of mind. Another pass along the runnered lilies brought another bluegill to the net. Easy, gullible fish; control, results.

I must have caught two dozen before moving further up the lake to seek another redd. As I rowed, I studied. Hm. No punkinseeds there, nor there. The Grasshopper made a course change and glided under wind power back to the glory hole. Bingo! Bluegill! so there I stayed, in the Bluegill Moment, fishing for inner calm along the reedy shore.

The garden looks flat as an old tire. We're lying in the wasted space between delphiniums and daisies, the tatty blue spires deadheaded, the bright-eyed, golden cosmos barely ankle-high. At times like these, I ask myself why raise my posies from seed? A small investment in bedding plants would colour the landscape gaily.

The answer lies in variety. Petunias, salvia and geraniums don't do it for me. I want things with names you can't find at Wal-Mart: rudbeckia, helichrysum, statice, and the glorious gazania. How more elegant to say your beds are filled with budding nigella and heteropappus than with impatiens, chrysanthemums, pansies and the lot! Give me Eyeball Plant (Spilanthes oleracea Peek-a-Boo) and keep your darn carnations!

Recurrent in my garden is a planting of gazanias along the border. You've never heard of them? Imagine, if you can, a flower similar in form and size to a small sunflower rising above a mound of grey-green foliage notched like the leaves of the oak. The stems of this magnificent plant shoot less than twelve inches skyward, and the blooms of the "Sunshine" variety can be striped widely or narrowly along their margins, or banded like a multi-hued bullseye in any combination of red, rose, maroon, white, yellow, orange or black the mind can conjure. The centers are quarter-sized, yellow and offset by a dark surround.

This African native is a late bloomer, coming into its day in late September. Though technically an annual, the plant is amazingly resistant to the ravages of frost despite its origins, and will spring back with yet another set of blossoms after a night at twenty-five degrees, possibly wintering over for another year. I've had them in bloom on Christmas morning, and there's a sight to see: Zulu warriors dancing in their finery among the needled hoarfrost, daring winter's demons to put down their mighty spirit.

I look out the window at the cropped humps of columbine, the truncated delphiniums, the struggling seedlings and I think: those gazanias are worth waiting for.

Half the woodpile is gone, goodbye. My patience with Dennis' good intentions reached its end early in the week, bolstered by a way out contrived by Sande. I am sometimes too honest for my own good, and sought a way to accomplish my mission without a baldfaced lie. Thus it was that I suggested to Linda that she offer me a penny, one copper Lincoln cent for half a cord of wood, permitting me to tell Dennis that a friend had said she'd buy it.

Linda is a little thing, though not as small as I, fifteen years younger and a hard worker. She arrived in her pickup even as I was bicycling back from Renton, and soon had filled the bed to overflowing beneath the watchful, green-eyed gaze of Skunk in the picture window. Skunk knows what lives in the woodpile. She was waiting to see if one of the dratted things would make a dash for cover. I am no friend of wire-chewing, joist-eating, brush-hauling, profoundly destructive squirrels, delight of urban dwellers, true, but bane of rural homeowners. Linda may have found a squirrel or two in some condition or another, down inside the woodpile. She didn't say, and Skunk can keep a secret tightly.

As I pulled into the driveway that evening, an emptiness filled my eye. One birdhouse was missing from the stack of twelve on the porch. One, two, three...I counted yet again. Eleven birdhouses was the total. "Ah!" I thought. "Maybe Sande's friends stopped by." The mystery deepened when I discovered a ten-dollar bill in the coffee can left out for payments, twice the posted price. I hadn't looked at the woodpile though I parked right beside it, blind to its diminished size.

My mother greeted me with, "Linda hauled two loads of wood today," as I walked in the door.

"Oh!" I said, surprised, and checking the view from the window, "So she did! Is she coming back for more?" A note I'd missed in the coffee can told the story. The ten dollars covered a birdhouse and "some wood," a euphemistic term, but no, the rest of the pile was doomed to stay.

Well, Linda is an honest person, too, and I don't think she quite understood the desperation in my generosity. She'd paid far more than I'd asked, and might have even misinterpreted my suggestion. Over a few emails, she's decided to donate the remainder of the stack to a needy neighbour. Tonight the woodpile leaves, goodbye.

Jack and John shared a repartee that could only have meant they were old friends. Jack was pulling ahead in the fish-catchin' game, and John was having a tough time setting his hook soundly in the mouth of any but the tiniest kokanee. Like mine, Jack's biggest koke was a solid 18", and even I couldn't resist a barb about the smelt run being in when John hoisted another six-incher.

To my right, two teenage boys were learning the ropes. The eldest was knowledgeable, but not adept with the rod, and another bite slipped away into the deep current below the bridge, the phantom departing with a dab of shrimp as its remuneration for a tender lip. The younger lad was more concerned with milking my brain than with fishing, and as an excuse for conversation, tied on a fluorescent wedding ring and idly jigged it up and down in opposition to its proper application.

I'd begun the day inauspiciously with a bullhead. Nothing like a bullhead to bring the mighty to their knees, I say, and occasionally, your author fails the test of Humble. I took a gibing fairly delivered by a man further down the span, although I accused him later of delivering low blows when he brought it up again, never mind that I had asked if he planned to mount that one as he tenderly shook the fingerling off his hook. So is the fishing fellowship, give and take, and don't dole that which you do not wish to receive.

John and Jack were running nearly neck-and-neck, John having found the secret of adding an inch of worm. My pet teenager caught another bullhead even as I added a second impressive kokanee to my stringer. We (the J's and I) were "on 'em."

Between the pair of adults and myself stood a solitary man in a gloomy pose: Sande. At his feet lay a herring-sized fish amid bits and gobs of bait. Near as his arm's length, I struck at another nibble, and then when no subsequent twitch followed, reeled up and checked my bait. The shrimp was gone.

Sande watched me carefully and copied my moves exactly. He refreshed his bait, measured his leader, gauged his cast to land within five feet of mine. We let our lines drift down side-by-side, and surely no more than six inches could have separated us by depth. Within minutes, my rod tip jerked. I missed the fish. Intuition told me my shrimp was yet on the hook, so I raised my tip slowly and high, then allowed it to sink in imitation of the current to its original position. As I reacted to the abrupt tug at the end of the line, Sande gave me a look which said, "What are you doing that I'm not?" I couldn't answer.

Jack and John caught their limits. So did I. The man in the middle had few bites to even tease him, sad but true, and although he claims to have had his fun in trying, only two small silver shapes lay in his creel at the end of day.

Okay, forty miles might have been a little excessive, although I'm not feeling it this morning. I got a little carried away on yesterday's bicycle ride.

Some years ago, a serial killer lurked along a portion of this path, preying specifically on solitary women. It's not that I feel immortal (at nearly 60 years, one tends to lose that illusion), but as I understood it, the chap has been incarcerated for quite some time. I could be wrong. I don't read the news. In any event, I am not a person to live in fear, to crouch and cower at the suggestion of possible violence, hiding under my bushel or checking under the bed for burglars every night. There's too much world out there, too much to enjoy and see and do to countenance such behaviour. Besides, if the Green River Killer was perchance still roaming free, he'd be roaming somewhat more arthritically than in his heyday 20 years ago.

I left home, planning to make the loop which constitutes the upper section of the trail, first to take the eastern arm, which is ruler-straight and goes directly into Renton. The other branch winds casually along the diked edge of the river, twisting and turning beside small parks, a golf course, condominiums and industry. Occasionally, it debouches onto roadway and the cyclist is compelled to share domain with cars and trucks, though only briefly. An Internet search implied that a few sections of the western trail might not be paved. I ride on mountain tires. A little gravel does not deter me.

From the town of Pacific, then, I headed north, armed only with a map sorely lacking street numbers. I had no idea how to connect the two halves of the proposed route in Renton, only that it could be done. There were few wayposts, few mile markers, but an abundance of Porta-potties, so at one of these, I approached another cyclist to ask directions to the lower point where the two trails join. He was clear in his instruction, but added a word of warning: "You don't want to ride the east part of the Interurban. Nobody rides it any more."

Food for thought, but no more than a morsel caught in the teeth, I decided. Paranoia of the city-bred. Then, just short of the junction, I stopped another cyclist to ask the second half of my question, the part I had forgotten: "How do I connect in Renton?"

Older than I, this man looked at me squarely and directly advised, "Don't take that trail. It is not safe for a lady alone."

Perhaps it was the fact that he referred to me as a 'lady' rather than a 'woman' which gave some credibility to his insistent recommendation. He spoke to me at length and kept returning to his point that I should not ride the path alone or even in good company. He offered to conduct me along the safer river route (a mental process questioned this, but my neck hair didn't rise), then sensing that I wished to ride in solitude, he pedalled on ahead.

I found him again at a spot where trail joined road for half a block. I laughed aloud when I saw him waiting at the barricade and wisecracked, "I think I could have figured that out by myself!" He rode ahead again, a faster cyclist than myself, and again I found him waiting at a point where I could have become confused. Thus we progressed to a park, stopping for a water break and chat at a picnic table. The Green River serial killer was not far from the forefront of my mind, but not looming.

It turned out that my companion was a veteran of repeated STP's (Seattle to Portland races), and one of many "old-timers" (as he put it) who ride this lovely, fully paved path quite often. Indeed, the bulk of cyclists were older than myself, including one spry and tiny white-haired gal who looked a hundred just rippin' trail as fast as she could go. My nameless friend had set a goal of 25 miles for his daily exercise, and turned around when he saw me safely deposited at Renton's city limit.

I rode back against the wind, tired but exhilarated, and only when I reached the lower and unfrequented miles before Pacific, felt the least at ease. This day, I was glad of company, and although I cannot fathom the city paranoia, I will not ride the Interurban's eastern fork on good advice.

I suppose it could be said that my attitude toward enterprise borders on sedition. I see no purpose in exacting high tolls for cheap goods or minimal labour other than greed, and greed is, contrary to the American ideal, deplorable.

A man stopped to buy several birdhouses a few weeks ago, and illustrated my point most finely. He offered to purchase all I could manufacture if only I'd make a few revisions to the tried-and-true design. Angle cuts, he explained, made a more finished-looking product, an improvement I could add with very little addition of time or effort, sacrificing only an inch or two of lumber for each completed house, and the fronts and sides would then abut seamlessly, allowing him more freedom of expression when he painted them to sell to tourists.

At this, I felt a disturbance in my back hair. Nothing serious, just a prickly feeling of something not quite to my liking. The second suggestion brought up my full hackle. "Close up this gap back here, why don'tcha?" he said, pointing to the 1/4" ventilation slit most necessary to proper habitat.

"That," I explained, "is to let air in." Brainless nitwit! Did he think I couldn't saw within a quarter inch of my mark?

"Yeah, but people aren't going to buy as many of 'em with a gap. They want 'em to look nice. I'm tellin' ya, I'll buy all of 'em you can produce, and at seven bucks."

Incentive? I think not. At $5 per birdhouse, I am still making a handsome profit, enough to validate my default as an American, and I have had no problem with a backlog of unsold houses. Two dozen have gone from my roadside stand, two dozen cottages, plain and unadorned, which will house birds. My visitor took three, and proffered a gratuity with his $20 bill. "Keep the change," he said. I felt slimy from the buttering.

Therein lies my point. Despite my entrepreneurial client (who, I may add, I did not usher off the property at shotgun's end, although I was tempted), I am not building birdhouses to please the human public. The business of birdhouse-selling is secondary to my purpose of putting a birdhouse in every garden. If I make a gain, it is incidental to the goal. These are not birdhouses for tourists. These are birdhouses for birds.

Up the ladder I went, and onto the roof of Dennis' carport. You don't have to say the word "cherries" twice to spur me into action, despite the fact that there were still some Bings and Rainiers in a bowl in the fridge. I have no idea what these odd little fruits are that bear so freely on an ancient tree. They are small and red like a pie cherry, and not quite as sweet as a Royal Anne, mainly coming in clusters of three to five. The stone is proportional to the meat like any other table cherry, the tree unremarkable in size or form.

A heavily laden branch juts out over the carport, missed by the pruner. Dennis is avoiding roofs. Shoulder surgery will tie the best man to the land. Grateful for his benevolence, I offer a finder's fee: half the bowl I've picked, but he's had his fill at ground level and says if he wants more, he'll send the wife up. I fling a large green spider out of the container and march for home. You can't say no to tree-ripened fruit, not if you're a farmer's daughter.

Our little community of three neighbours has come to an accord. At one time or another, each of us has been on the outs with either or both of the others, but now water has sought its own level and the oil has been spread across the waves. Disputes of dogs and romantic approaches have been put to rest, the serious drinker reformed, the bird-shooting children grown to ecological awareness, fence lines established without surveyor's intervention, and a society of tool-sharing and fishing trips and produce swaps has applied itself as the norm. An observer might have thought it could never come to this, but here we are: proof that rural America is still a society of friends.

A loaf of homemade bread, warm in a brown paper bag, is humble in its nature, capable of framing apology in its brown and steaming crumb. Two years' friction dissolved with a simple action of its passing over the stile. There were no embarrassing words needing to be spoken, no abasement to be borne, no loss of face nor downcast eyes nor awkward pauses, for the gesture said it all. I am clumsy in admitting fault, but I bake a grand old loaf, and I am glad to let it do my talking.

Thus we come to a trade of surplus serving two functions, that of sharing and that of clearing the air of slights. As the zucchini flow, so do grapes and plums and beets and artichokes, and I am left to wondering with humour what Dennis did that I came into so many, many cherries?

Unnoticed, a hawksbeard plant has grown to two feet tall in the window garden, and several bright yellow flowers are open on the tips of its spindly, branching stalk. This weed forms a fluffy head of miniature white parachutes in its seeding phase and sends them far and wide, its sap is milky and it grows from a basal rosette, so for all events and purposes, we might call it a "dandelion" since we are but laymen and casual gardeners. The floret is similar, and although the two plants are unrelated except as members of the Compositae, the plant is equally durable as its remote cousin and as plentiful. Call it a dandelion, then, and take away its dignity. While you're at it, tell me how I missed it when I weeded last.

I am thorough in my weeding, if not remarkably diligent. For weeks, the sight of budding weeds will distress me not at all. A new morning dawns, however, and rain or shine, fair or foul, the urge to rout offensive growth from its bed spurs me into action. I wear no gloves, preferring to use bare fingers to pluck the merest speck of weed as if with tweezers. I loosen dirt with a dinner fork and sift its grains finely to catch the slightest thread of green.

For the first few years after I moved in, this endeavour was a thankless and never-ending chore. The flowerbeds had overgrown with grass, chickweed, dandelions and other undesirables in the absence of a gardener, and a friend helped me dig them down to a depth of eighteen inches, screening the soil of root fragments with our hands. We raised dormant seed from hiding in the process, gave it cause to germinate by stimulating it with light and air, and soon my beds were rife with all manner of growing things I did not care to have. Every week, I carted bucket after bucket of insufferable herbage to the compost heap and, after two summers of this labour, nearly fell into despair. In the third year, I noticed a diminution. In-roads were being made.

The virulent clover persisted longest, and in the hardest patch of soil. Its tendril-like roots broke under pressure, leaving each hair-filament to generate another plant in its place. It scarcely surpassed the chickweed for native vigour, however, and even to this day in July 2004, I am pulling the children of their children's children's children, though in smaller numbers of both species.

My days of weeding now count less than ten per year. Where once the task took hours, today a brief thirty minutes saw the job done. It is a weed if I do not recognize the leaf, or sometimes (as with violas), even when I do. I change the colours annually with annuals, and if a few strays linger over, they may be allowed a tenured status, but no dandelion, whether it bears the formal name of hawksbeard or not, shall be permitted to stand.

Events make a lifetime worthwhile, and they are as we define them. What may be important to you (the Big Deal, the promotion, the Hawaiian vacation) may not matter in my scheme, nor may my moments seem relevant to you.

I have stood on the peak of this state's highest mountain six times. I have spent the night in a tent within its cratered summit. That is my major achievement. I have had a volcano blow up in my back yard, relatively speaking (close enough that I failed to hear the sound of the eruption due to a phenomenon called the "cone of silence"). I have seen two spectacular comets without travelling any great distance, and I have witnessed the arc of five rainbows reflecting one another simultaneously in the sky.

Aside from the night on Rainier's summit, the most significant day of my life was elegant in its simplicity. I had gone backpacking with a half-formed thought of a Vision Quest in the back of my mind, not realizing that I had subconsciously set myself up more thoroughly than I'd intended. Somewhere a bag of foodstuffs went missing, and on the third day of seven, I discovered I was on short commons. I had also shorted myself on the medication that regulates my heartbeat, and with the exertion of reaching this distant, off-trail campsite, my body was at the extremes of supply and demand.

I was a fledgling shaman when I waked to watch the sun rise as is my custom. Wisps of mist rose from the darkened water of the creek, and beads of dew coalesced with the growing warmth of dawn and slid down the feathery shafts of elephant's head and sleek stems of beadlily. I marked the details without conscious process, suspended in a timeless, existential state known to the Aborigines of Australia as the Dreamtime.

I spoke no words that day, and took only water as my bodily refreshment. My mind flew with the hawks above the open meadow, soared along the cliffs, transmuted into the being of cloud and sky and evergreen fragrance. I was not conscious of temperature or time, and no language illustrated the images passing through my head. I was a Dreamtime being, unified with that around me and no different from it, not separate from it nor individual in my spirit, part only of a universal One.

In mid-afternoon, the perception of a shadow lighted in the tree above me. I say now that it was a Clark's nutcracker and unusual for its appearance in this particular area, a bird which has the appearance of a grey jay at first glance, but whose shyness often gives the first clue as to its true identity. This one, however, descended from its perch and sat upon my outstretched hand. In that moment, my degree was granted. My initiation was complete and I was a shaman, lettered by the spirits of my ancestors and friends. I can't say how I knew nor that it was a conscious acknowledgement. I believe I was still entranced and suspended in the world.

I have never again seen a Clark's nutcracker in the area, never again felt the same perfection of nature in this or any other place. I cannot say if I saw a real bird or an illusion. A lifetime moment is unique to the person living it, and this was most preciously mine.

The guppy business is not going as well as one might have hoped. The babies are fine, but a feud between two males this morning necessitated removal of one to a different aquarium, and I am afraid the shock of transfer may prove fatal. Whoever said these fish were easy to raise was sorely misinformed.

Perhaps it's that I presently have too many things requiring my care. First and foremost, the aging mother takes more keeping with each passing day, not so much in a physical capacity as for her mental state. Her hearing is sporadic and selective, her memory even moreso, and although she spends most of the day sleeping in a sitting position on the couch, my behaviour in my own home has deviated radically from what it used to be. I am making do, but it's taxing. When one is used to singing nonsense songs in operatic magnificence or babbling continually at the cat, the enforced silence makes a heavy weight to bear. I must keep my emotions in check, whether they manifest as anger, delight, frustration or ebullience lest they intrude into the grey realm of her fading life.

I am a solitary person. I have always preferred being alone to keeping the company of friends, however dear, and my outdoor activities have been my abiding passion. Now, of course, I fish with Sande, but lately I've noticed a failing of patience on my part and a readiness to bark at minor irritations. My hiking days have drawn to a close owing to the number of people on the trails, an influx that extends even into the remote off-trail regions I once could call my own, and I greatly miss the solitude I could find only in the high country. On the bike, I pass strangers and greet them warmly, but that again is a contact I normally would shun if possible.

"Too many rats in the box," I say, hearkening to an experiment in psychology where rats are introduced into a closed environment one by one. At some point, despite the appearance to the observer that there is adequate room for a much larger population, the rats begin to feel crowded and fall to killing one another. There are too many human rats in the box of the world.

Guppies, grannies, cats, garden, friends, labours, the business of life...I am badly in need of a vacation, and the light at the end of the tunnel glows no stronger than that of the dimmest star in the Pleiades.

Yesterday's 23.5 mile bicycle ride was invigorating and fun, even though I was forced off the established trail and onto county roads which took a direction rather more up than I would have picked if given a choice. Consequently, I got a bit higher ratio of exercise to distance, and all in all, that qualifies as a Good Thing.

The detour was necessary to circumvent construction on a section of the path that was previously just a dirt run in the center of an old railroad grade. The ties and tracks are years gone and the broad strip of bare ground has grown over with weeds and grass, and the narrow little stripe of bare dirt generated by persistent cyclists was rutty and muddy the last time I rode it. In spots, you could have said it was outright dangerous, witness the fact that I didn't quite clear one dip and piled off into the mud when I connected with the far bank. Four miles of the old trail are presently undergoing reconstruction. I often shared the county road with heavy equipment moving to and fro, and tandem dump trucks bearing load after load of rip-rap and gravel which, despite the nature of the task the drivers were performing, weren't inclined to afford re-routed bicycles any particular courtesy.

Ostensibly, the finished asphalt trail will be almost double its present length, and will have two options at its upper end, one of which will allow you to access a main highway. For now, only the more experienced riders can even find the sections above the terminus of pavement, and I am not one of them. I had intended to pursue the course to a town on the main highway, but found myself dead-ended at a barricade beyond which there seemed to be nothing but brush and scrub. I reversed course.

Near the top of the hardest hill, I geared down to low without keeping adequate pressure on the pedals and predictably threw the chain just as a gravel truck was roaring up behind me. I had enough forward motion stored up to steer off the side of the road and onto a grassy patch where I hopped off and remounted the chain. When I got back on and began pedalling, there was a nasty little click-catch that occurred in every revolution of the crank regardless of gear. It was more of a sensation than a sound, so once again I dismounted and inspected the derailleur assembly. I could find no obvious damage. I rode back to the car obsessed with the problem, although it didn't prevent me from taking a quick side trip to the cherry stand down the highway. When it was time to load the bike into the car, I did another thorough check. None of the links in the chain were sticking, there were no damaged cogs on any of the 21 gears. I spun the crank backwards repeatedly, not finding the click-catch during the freewheeling motion. I was puzzled.

Since I wanted to have the stem of the bike raised an inch (a process which requires an additional riser), I drove to my favourite bike shop merrily spitting cherry pits out the car window. I was dismayed to hear that he'd had a run on risers this week and was presently out of stock, but he said he'd take the bike out for a spin to see what he could discover with regard to my complaint. He soon returned with the words mechanics are famous for: "I couldn't feel a click." I bought a water bottle cage to make the trip worthwhile, and then took the bike out into the parking lot and rode it around.

No click. It must have been a tiny rock caught in the chain that shook loose when I spun the crank backwards. Or something. I hadn't tried the bike after freewheeling. By this time, it was too late to take the extra ride I'd hoped for, so I just headed home. Next week, weather permitting, I will have the riser installed and then I'm off to a different and longer rail-trail.

Twenty-three and a half miles is a good trip for a little old lady who's basically breaking herself in again. I could easily have done another ten, and for that I credit a pair of newly-purchased bike shorts. I can't say that the padded gloves did any good, but that soft, thick liner in the crotch is a life-saver!

Grosbeak season is nearly done, as can be seen by the number of young, clumsy, cute and fluffy fledglings coming to the feeders. I haven't kept a tally of the pounds of black oil sunflower seed they've consumed, but it must be close to 400, an average year. Both the "porch parrots" (evening grosbeaks) and black-headed grosbeaks enjoy them, as do the Steller's jays and even the tiny goldfinches. Finches have beaks made for splitting tough seeds, and although the goldfinches prefer dainty comestibles like thistle and dandelion, they won't quibble at a hearty meal of sunflower seed regardless of type.

The goldfinches are dwindling, too. For several weeks, we had crowds of bright yellow males pecking at the fare in the boxes as well as that which fell to the ground beneath them, and during that time, the more dull coloured females were noticeably absent. The male goldfinch is the provider for the nesting mother, who spends her days keeping the eggs warm and safe from predators. Now we have more females than males. The flock is packing its bags.

Not all birds divide the tasks of child-rearing so equally. The swallows' nests are tended by both parents in shifts. We've taken great amusement from the family on the north wall of the garage, just outside the kitchen window. Mama is a tiny little thing who can fly directly to the hole and pop in by merely folding her wings. Papa is a stout fellow, and must wiggle and twist his broad shoulders to slip inside. There is a constant exchange of labour going on now, as the fledglings demand more food and tidying up after. One parent brings a meal even as the other carries away the excrement generated by the last.

The goldfinches and grosbeaks will have moved on to other climes by the end of another week or two, but the swallows will remain. Once their young have left the nest, they will not re-enter it, and the watchers behind the window will have to content themselves with watching their poised grace and beauty.