O-o-o-kay, the press release page states that only about 2% of the data has been processed and updated, so if you want to have nightmares tonight, check out the rejuvenated St. Helens quake list. Oh my!

The gang at the volcano-earthquake store are really hoppin'. They've got their little hands full with Mt. St. Helens, central California and the Mono Lake area, each just shivering and shaking like it's got St. Vitus' Dance. I was surprised and pleased to see a personal response from PNSN in my email this morning regarding the missing numbers, and you could tell from the tone that the lady geologist was barely containing her excitement. I'm pretty excited myself, although I think I'd rather be excited in Vancouver, B.C. than right here on the Lady's skirts. It's an old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."

At least one expert is forecasting an eruption (minor or major was not specified) within the next three to four days, "eruption" meaning anything from a poof of steam and ash to a lava flow, but since St. Helens is not your typical Hawaiian volcano, a significant extrusion of magma shouldn't be expected. I'm voting for ash which, in its large form, is pumice.

Pumice! Mt. Rainier is covered with pumice of several colours, and if you know enough to tell the difference, you can easily see that a goodly bit of it came not from Tahoma, but Loowit, and we're talking end-of-thumb sized rocks, here. Even in the good old days when St. Helens' profile resembled Fujiyama, for miles around her base, pumice from prior eruptions covered the earth and gave hikers poor footing on the trails. Pumice is light enough to float, heavy enough to inflict injury, something to consider when the angry volcano now in the news is only a stone's throw from home.

Don't say I didn't tell you so. Please read today's "Mt. St. Helens Volcanic Advisory (Alert Level Two)," given below. Further information may be found by clicking here, which will take you to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. And incidentally, the missing numbers are still missing from the National Earthquake Information Center's site, and we are given the following excuse:

"Earthquake locations are not being updated currently, although seismicity is continuing at Mount St Helens

"Automatically calculated locations and magnitudes for Mount St. Helens events were inaccurate due to the continuous nature of the activity, so we have suspended posting of automatic locations in the MSH area. Analysts are going through the recorded data systematically and event locations will be posted as they become available. Our efforts are directed toward interpretation of data, in a rapidly evolving situation, rather than rapid posting of individual events."

The advisory:
"Over night, seismic activity at Mount St. Helens has accelerated significantly, which increases our level of concern that current unrest could culminate in an eruption. We are increasing the alert level to the second of three levels, which is similar to Color Code Orange of the alert system used by the Alaska Volcano Observatory and analogous to the National Weather Service's hazard watch. Earthquakes are occurring at about four per minute. The largest events are approaching Magnitude 2.5 and they are becoming more frequent. All are still at shallow levels in and below the lava dome that grew in the crater between 1980 and 1986. This suggests that the ongoing intense earthquake activity has weakened the dome, increasing the likelihood of explosions or perhaps the extrusion of lava from the dome. The cause and outcome of the accelerating unrest is uncertain. Explosions from the lava dome could occur suddenly and without further warning. During such explosions the dome and crater floor are at greatest risk from ballistic projectiles, but the rim of the crater and flanks of the volcano could also be at risk. Explosions would also be expected to produce ash clouds that rise several thousand feet above the crater rim and drift downwind. During today, wind forecasts from the National Weather Service, combined with eruption models, show that ash clouds will move in a southeasterly direction and could dust areas tens of miles or more from the volcano with ash. Landslides and debris flows from the crater that are large enough to reach the Pumice Plain are also possible. If the current unrest is being driven by a small slug of magma at shallow depth, extrusion of lava could also occur.

"At present there is no evidence that new gas-rich magma has ascended to shallow levels and could generate a large sustained eruption. But we are being especially vigilant to become aware of such evidence should it appear."

Now to today's posting:

The forecast was for weather in the sixties. It was chilly. NOAA promised a sunny afternoon. It rained. Sande said he was going to catch a fish. He did.

Behind the blue building, the tribal nets stretched across the waterway every two hundred yards or so. Two of the three fishermen on the bank admitted that they were just killing time, and the last was looking as forlorn as a drowned alley cat. The Indians weren't faring any better, they advised us, reporting that the nets had been drawn in repeatedly with only two or three fish in them. The water was high and muddy, and access to the channel beyond the reach of anyone but a champion caster. I'd seen the nets, so we hadn't even bothered to bring the poles. Our walk to the site was nothing but a scouting mission with predictable results, and Sande's cheerful, "We're going to catch fish today, I just know it," washed downstream in a slurry of glacial debris.

Further upstream at the confluence, a few valiant souls braved the drizzle, albeit vainly. The best hole was easily within my reach, if not theirs, but my casts of corky and yarn in various colour combinations or borax-cured roe brought no strikes. Up and down the river, the story was the same. Not a rod twitched as far as the eye could see, until behind me I heard Sande speak my name.

Now I have to say that Sande mixes up some strange arrangements, things that no fisherman in his or her right mind would ever think to put together. Surely fish have a stronger sense of colour than that man, who once attempted to describe a shade of pansy to his wife as "pink," when in fact it was a lovely lavender. The massive potpourri mounted as his terminal tackle included kelly green yarn and two marble-sized corkies, Christmas red and chartreuse. It should have been enough to spook any fish in the river, but no, he'd caught one, against all odds, and not even a bullhead had come to my designer specials.

He raised the prize for me to see as I turned to face him. The only fish caught by anyone on our stretch of water dangled below the abominable lure. Salmon or trout, I couldn't tell. It was all of three inches long.

There's funny business going on in the St. Helens sites today, and not to be paranoid or anything (who, me?), but given the circumstances, I can't think of a reason except that They Don't Want Us To Know.

Some facts:
Yesterday morning, there were 21 quakes listed as having occurred on the 26th.
Tonight, there are 14 quakes listed for that date.
This morning, there were 28 quakes listed as having occurred on the 27th, mostly in the 2.0-2.5 range.
Tonight, there are NONE for that date.
Earlier this evening, there was one quake listed as having occurred today.
Half an hour later, it had disappeared from the list.

On another page, the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network reports that on the 27th, "Seismic activity has very slowly increased throughout the day," although they go on to say that there were NO quakes exceeding 2.0, asserting that the PNSN automatic locations 'overestimate' magnitudes.

An earlier paragraph below this bit of verbal legerdemain states, "Seismic activity at Mount St. Helens has changed significantly during the past 24 hours and the changes make us believe that there is an increased likelihood of a hazardous event, which warrants release of this Notice of Volcanic Unrest. The swarm of very small, shallow earthquakes (less than Magnitude 1) that began on the morning of 23 September peaked about mid-day on 24 September and slowly declined through yesterday morning. However, since then the character of the swarm has changed to include more than ten larger earthquakes (Magnitude 2-2.8), the most in a 24-hr period since the eruption of October 1986. In addition, some of the earthquakes are of a type that suggests the involvement of pressurized fluids (water and steam) or perhaps magma. The events are still occurring at shallow depths (less than one mile) below the lava dome that formed in the crater between 1980 and 1986. The cause and outcome of the earthquake swarm are uncertain at this time. Several causes are possible, but most point toward an increased probability of explosions from the lava dome if the level of current unrest continues or escalates."

Go figure.

The flip side of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is what happened today: acute fishlessness, made worse by the knowledge that Dennis and Clyde hit the same stretch of water in the early morning, and managed to entice a few bites with an end result of two fish (both Clyde's). If there is anything more disheartening than standing on the bank playing to a bored crowd, it is standing on the bank playing to a crowd bored only with your offering but no one else's. At least I was spared that indignity today. The audience was uniformly not interested, and all but one of the six fish I saw taken were illegally caught. The remaining one was a small and obviously naive jack.

If I complain that I left a two-digit expenditure of gear on the bottom, sacrificed to rocks and tangled skeins of other lost fishing line, remind me that it could have been worse. Dennis, by Clyde's report, fell on his rod and shattered nearly all of the ceramic guides, a circumstance which cost him several fish when his monofilament was severed by the bare metal eyes. I was wise enough not to use lures on this particular stretch of water, and husbanded the baits of cured salmon eggs I had by Clyde's benevolence when I saw that the entire coho load dumped from the fish truck was heading toward the sunset. Even the snaggers who congregated over their chosen lie fared only marginally better, for their reefing pulls caught an equivalence of rocks and few fish per man.

Fruitless labours are part of the scheme of things, and the burden of an empty creel must be borne with stoic strength and rationalization in mammoth proportion. Zeno (Greek philosopher) once said, "The goal of life is living in agreement with nature." Take no more than your due, and all may thrive on Gaia's provender. I should have known the waters held no bounty for me on this day; the mushrooms have yet to be eaten.

Spiderwebs across the face (occupied) and slippery sticks concealed on steep hillsides are a few of the hazards the hunter-gatherer experiences in the trade, as well as devil's club or wild rose handholds, or branches which part from the parent wood under the slightest pressure when their security is needed most. Mossed-over rocks are of little import when the possibility exists of being mistaken for a deer by a marksman, blisters on the feet negligible when compared to breaking a leg in a varmint hole or falling on the knife held ready in the hand. Concurrently, the mind is split between the pitfalls and the potential profits, the eyes watchful for either and focused on the area nearest the body; for those born to the woods, the thought of getting lost never intrudes.

It was a golden day, for on the sheltered, shady enbankments, the chanterelles were blooming orange and firm. Sande, uncle Eddie and I drove up the winding dirt road, mindful of log trucks which might swing wide around a corner, and Eddie parked the truck in a flat pull-out immediately below an old skidder track long since abandoned. This 8-foot wide level area is overgrown with ferns, moss and small trees, littered with deadfall until it is barely recognizable as a path. It lies up a small rise from the gravel road, across a ditch, through 50 yards of ascending forest, and if one crests the ridge beyond it and travels down the far side directly into afternoon's sunlight, the main road may again be attained in approximately a mile and a half.

This area has given us many mushrooms in past years, but recently, an influx of commercial pickers has taken a heavy toll of the meaty, coveted chanterelles, and often one must foray deep into the woods to find a patch unpicked. Today, fortune smiled, and one after one, mushrooms filled our buckets to the brim.

Eddie's hardest problem was deciding whether to pick chanterelles, rozites or both for canning. A zesty Italian, he swore volubly and creatively about the abundance of the latter, a number uncommon in the last decade or more. I was not familiar with this particular gilled species and chose to pick only the veined type I know well. Mistakes in mushrooming are not often forgiven. Nevertheless, Eddie's experience and his age imply that he knows whereof he speaks, so I succumbed to temptation and liberated three "rozites" from his collection. I referred to the guide book as they were sizzling in the pan, only to find that true rozites look nothing at all like the variety Eddie picked! Still, relying on the fact of his long survival, when the lot were done to a light crispness, I chowed down and chalked up the inconsistency of nomenclature to regional etymology. However, I was not particularly taken with their flavour.

All in all, we brought home two five-gallon buckets of eminently edible fungi which, at $19 per pound in the grocery stores, strongly supports (and literally so!) the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. And I know personally two readers of this blog who are drooling down their chins.

The list of St. Helens quakes is growing, and the official position is that they are being generated by steam explosions caused when large quantities of water such as that generated by our recent rains comes into contact with the hot magma beneath the volcanic dome. This theory was followed by a dismissive statement similar to one we heard only weeks before the violent eruption of 18 May, 1980: that there is no evidence of magma intrusion at the present time. Somehow, I am not consoled.

For one thing, the temblors are not all beneath the dome. Many of them follow an arc of approximately 12 miles length from the center of the volcano to a point west of Elk Lake, a known conduit which recorded significant activity prior to the famous blow. Ten miles as the crow flies hardly suits my definition of "directly under the dome," let alone under the mass of the mountain.

Historically, St. Helens has demonstrated times of strong activity interspersed with volcanic catnaps, periods which last 50 years or so before she's ready to settle down again for a lengthy sleep. A pattern most certainly exists, and this is a point which today's geologists seem to wish to disregard. In my family, this is known as Nixon Syndrome: the belief that if you ignore it long enough, it will go away. I've got news for you, guys. It didn't work for Tricky Dick, and it sure won't work as far as a volcano is concerned.

Yesterday closed with 24 quakes recorded, ranging 1.0-2.5. As of 2 PM today, there have been 13, 1.4-2.7 on the Richter scale of intensity, including two each at 2.5 and 2.7. Pumice, anyone?

Stay up to date! "All St. Helens Quakes" will take you to yet another informative NEIC list.

Please note that the link on the right, "Seismic Events," does not take you to the St. Helens-specific pages of the NEIC. To access real-time data on the current swarm of earthquakes directly beneath the mountain, click here.

Meteorologic and geologic events are best when viewed from a safe distance. One tends to forget one is in a hazardous area when things like hurricanes are ravaging states far, far away, and the duties of the day sometimes fall victim to neglect as happenings elsewhere catch the attention.

On this morning, it occurred to me that it had been a week or so since I last checked the National Earthquake Information Center's little map covering the postage stamp sized bit of "local" land lying between Olympia on the west, the Cascade range on the east, Everett to the north and Mt. St. Helens to the south. A click of the mouse took me there from my "favorites" folder, and my eye was caught by a cluster of blue squares following a tight, confined arc. A large red square signifying an event within the last two hours lay spang on top of our pet active volcano. "Oh, my!" I thought. "Things have been going on while I was out of touch."

I had to pan down the page to get to the critical readin' matter, and as the list grew beneath my cursor, so did a growing feeling of apprehension. The hair on the back of my neck came erect, the chills ran full spate along the cobbles of my spine, for here there were shown not just a few seismic occurrences, but many...and most within the last 36 hours. Geologically speaking, this constitutes a "swarm," and when the same is said of bees, it implies that they are ready to leave the hive. Ominous thought, that.

I hold the distinction of being the last woman to climb Mt. St. Helens' pristine cone before she upped and blew it all to Yakima, a bit too close on the calendar for comfort. I was within the "cone of silence" when she erupted, an area too close to receive sound waves deflected off the stratosphere (I participated in the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry's study of the phenomenon, and received a copy of their report explaining it). I have had my back yard ashed, my car powdered with grit, and was able to watch the effects of a later eruption (although not the eruption itself) from a vantage point high on Mt. Rainier. My life has been affected on numerous occasions by major geologic action and thank you, I'd rather not have any more of it, please.

As I write this, it is 1 PM, PST. On the NEIC list are 15 quakes today since midnight in the 1.8-2.3 Richter range. Yesterday, there were 23, 1.8-2.5. Five occurred on the 23d, from 1.8-2.7, and prior to that, only a few. Swarm? Yes. I would like to go on record at this point with a phrase I've used often since May 18, 1980: the pumice is coming.

I decided to kill two birds with one stone, as it were, and bike the Interurban Trail alongside the Green River to see if any f-i-s-h might have been making their way up. Fish thoughts...BIG fish thoughts...are second only to one in my mind lately, and after receiving a depressing report from Sande, obtained at a tackle shop and confirmed by the newspaper, the bicycle moved to top spot on the Things To Do Today list.

Bear in mind that the bike had not been field-tested prior to this point following its return, so why did I assume it road-worthy for a trip of some 40 miles? I'd given it a quick spin in the parking lot to ascertain if seat and handlebar adjustments suited me and that was all. The first half mile went smoothly, but then as I came to a slight rise and geared down, the chain began slipping on the cogs. There was also drag on one brake pad, something I could remedy by downward pressure on the caliper, which seemed to me to move too freely. Both items needed only minor tweaks, so I chose to ride on.

At the next rise, I changed gears on the forward sprocket, but as I tried to return to the mid-range, the bike threw the chain. I remounted it and rode on, thinking it might be better to turn around and go back to the shop. I had gotten a late start. The Taco Time lunch I was looking forward to was entirely out of the question. The options milled around in my brain until I finally opted to go back. So much for checking out the fish. I kicked myself for turning Sande down. There had been a dozen chaps in waders out behind the blue building as I drove over the freeway bridge, although I noted carefully that not a rod twitched while in my line of sight.

My experience with my favourite bike shop was not up to standard (a subject which could take another chapter at the very least), but when I left, the derailleur was more or less adjusted, and the problem with the brake had been dismissed as a figment of my imagination. Although I didn't accept that at the time, it did turn out to be entirely true. And it just so happens that the bike shop is in close proximity to my other favourite trail which conveniently parallels the river I most like to fish for salmon. It seemed I could check up on those silver-sided beauties after all!

I interrupted my ride several times to speak with fellow fishermen, and the facts were grim. One fish was all anyone had seen caught, and no one knew if it had been legally hooked, nor was its captor telling. I commented to one man that I'd had to choose between fishing and bicycling on this fine September day. His reply: "Looks like you made the best choice."

The most difficult notions to dispel are those we hold about ourselves. On that cryptic and unrelated note, I'll leave you to contemplate your navel as I make substantial progress in that regard.

I s'pose it's time to put in a word for the best little series of books I've read in a long, long time. Never mind that my mother dislikes them passionately, claiming that she's never been so bored in her entire life, I am totally enraptured by the increasingly dreadful experiences of Lemony Snicket's Baudelaire orphans and the utmost villainies of Count Olaf and his troupe. I have already put in a library hold for the eleventh in the series which has not yet been published, and I am not surprised that my request was the 157th put in for the book.

One must begin at the beginning ("The Bad Beginning," as a matter of fact) and read straight through in numerical order in order to follow the development of the story and its three abject heroes, and if consecutive volumes seem to follow a format, expect to be surprised by a sudden change in direction in the fifth or sixth. Do not fail to read the dedications or the afterwords, for the first is a story of its own right (mysteriously alluded to within the pages of the novel from time to time), and the second is a cleverly excuted enticement closely linked to it. For those who wish to learn more about the chronicler of the children's sad circumstances, there is a companion biography of the author which I have not yet read.

Purported to be children's books, I would say these are definitely not, although I feel sure children would enjoy the patina of plot at their level which overlays Snicket's manipulations of simple English language. The more subtle undercurrents developed among the characters would certainly be beyond the scope of youth. The wordplay is extraordinary and exotic, and never, ever stoops to the mundane.

Suffice to say, I have never read anything even closely akin to Mr. Snicket's artwork, not in subject matter or creative expertise. Pair Stephen King and Elmer Fudd, and you might come close, but no cigar.

Recommended reading (HIGHLY recommended!): "A Series of Unfortunate Events," a ten-volume continuing series by Lemony Snicket, aka David Handler.

Finally! At long last, I have my bike back. I took it for a brief spin in the parking lot, wheeling up a roostertail of typical Washington weather, and anxious to be on the trail again. Truly, now this is a customized machine if ever there was one. The fork and frame are the 2005 edition, paired with a 2004 derailleur and crank, an accessorized headset, original tires and rims, add-on luggage rack and bag, gel seat pad and other smaller accessories. It is lighter in weight by a pound's difference from the original, as well. The color still matches my helmet in a small but pleasant coincidence.

The rains for which this state is famous will no doubt keep me from pedalling the 18 miles to a Taco Time lunch and back 'til next spring, but a ten-mile round trip to the Post Office is a reasonable goal, rain or shine. Traditionally, September offers five consecutive days of decent weather, a wide span which could well accommodate a lengthy ride as well as some salmon tickling. Still, bike and fishing rod are in strong competition for my attentions in the golden autumn; nor would a hike go amiss, now that the mosquitoes have retreated to their lairs.

The common theme in my endeavours is that of the outdoors' pull upon me, and autumn is the season most beloved in my panoply of days. Yet where, I ask, has September got to? It comes too quickly to its end without arising glorious, the regent of the year in exile. Shall the king return? My rod, my feet, my wheels crave to sing his anthem once more before he passes from this annual world.

It was a good idea while it lasted. The proposed salmon expedition has been cancelled due to a circumstance beyond our control: lack of fish. Whether the present shortage is due to the migration being temporarily stalled in the lower river or to tribal netting, "behind the blue building" is not producing, and the upper river is dry as far as the piscine flux is concerned. There's nothing to be done for it but to throw up the shoulders in a shrug and voice, "Oh, well." We must draw on our optimism and take consolation in the fact that next week, the weather promises to be better.

There is no room for pessimism in the character of a fisherman. The sport is built upon a foundation of hope and faith. From the youth's first cast of worm and bobber to the veteran's last artful placement of the fly, the angler of the intervening years trusts in fish to come to his redemption. I have spent too many days at the water's edge, down in spirit, yet persistent in my endeavor, as if the Fates could not be so cruel as to deny my bait a taker, or have thrown countless mechanical casts into an unpopulated hole, certain that the next one skillfully made would yield a prize.

This day, however, forewarned of failure, I can look another direction with a clear conscience and no risk of disappointed expectations. I choose not to fish, and tomorrow is another day.

It is time for some serious fishing. The salmon have begun their runs in various rivers nearby, and even those waterways denied naturally migratory fish by dams will soon have truckloads of slab-sided kings and chinooks dumped in their channels. For honest and law-abiding fishermen, a challenge has been given to play the sport fairly, but following close on the heels of the fish truck is another breed, the snagger, and a detestable person he is, indeed.

This greedy bugger is often seen in wrap-around polarized sunglasses, peering at the flowing water from a high bank. His armament varies from the standard of small coloured corkie and fluorescent yarn, and frequently consists of something white and easy to see in the shallows. He seldom uses roe because of its expense, and his line is heavy and hooks large, and generally ganged one six inches from the other. His cast falls to the bottom readily with a heavy weight, and when he observes a dark shadow occluding his hypothetical lure, he hauls the rod sharply up, hard, to impale his salmon in any portion of its body but the mouth. The practice is quite illegal in this state, but on average, more salmon are caught in clear water by this method than any other.

The snagger has a few other tricks to gain more than his due. He may fish the morning, take his limit of prizes home at lunch, and fish again in the afternoon in the same or a different location. The more brazen simply throw them in a cooler in the back of their good-ol'-boy pickup and count on the Game Department not to have hired a Fish Cop they can't recognize at two hundred yards.

However, the snagger is not the river's only unsportsmanlike denizen. Among true fishermen, "catch and release" is practiced only with barbless hooks, and indeed, that is the only way it is legal. The law states that any fish caught must be counted as part of the daily limit, whether it is released or not, unless this condition is met. I have stood at the end of a line of twenty piggish anglers waiting for one of the river-hogs to leave, his arms tired from hooking fish after fish and releasing them, injured, and I have prayed in vain for a game agent to pop out from behind his bush to clear out the crowd which has fished since sunup to allow me a chance in the better current. One or two fish is all I ask, and I'll go home and let another sportsman take my place.

Tomorrow, I plan to sharpen my elbows and get in with the big boys.

The sunflowers are being battered by rain, the cosmos have slumped over, hanging their bright heads in absolute dejection. Summer has left them standing at the gate with their gay bouquets presented, the fickle summer maiden who turned on her heel and stormed away. The tears of the suitor streak the window, fill the gutters, and only a wan hope brightens the clouds. Autumn has come upon us without warning, and the warm September days we presumed are proving reluctant.

Heads of vapour rise from a surf of thistle and crisp grasses, and no one knows where steam leaves off and cloud begins. The sky meets the forest in mist, cottonwood leaves gone cere and brown amid the heavy firs. Lilacs pale and shatter, the cherry takes on a jaundiced hue, and only the sharp red of vine maple breaks through the veil. We may say farewell to summer in these grey days, her departure sudden and unannounced. It is unfairly done.

There will be a few tastes of warmth and light left, or so one hopes, expecting the sweetness of honey to cling to the sides of the jar long after its substance is gone. Thus we keep our spoons at the ready. The mistress must not be so cruel as to deny us a day in her pantry betwixt now and November., or if she does, we may scrabble like mice for crumbs upon the floor. Would that we could husband the sunshine, preserve the pleasant hours to stock our own larders for the winter, and parcel out savoury days to see us through. Sadly, this is not the way of weather which serves feast or famine at the ends of its groaning board, and blander dishes for the peasantry between. Today, we dine on water and grey-tinted mousse, beggars at Nature's back door.

I think it's appropriate to tell a Frog Dreaming Story today. Although I myself am a Crow, the right to it come to me through my mother, a daughter of Frog Dreaming. The land it portrays is her country.

The Origins of Old Desolate and Mystic Lake

Long time ago now, that mountain over there (Old Desolate) was a big, old frog. He walked about all over the country to find a home. Soon he came to a place where a lake should have been, just a dry, hollow pit in the ground in the middle of some fir trees. He sat himself down there and thought, "Yeah, I like this place. This is a good place for me."

That old frog, he was awfully heavy, and while he sat there thinking and settling down, the water squeezed out of the ground and filled the hole and made a lake. Little frogs popped up from the mud on the lake’s bottom. The big old frog liked his new home even more with his children hopping around.

People came. They walked all around the lake, but they didn’t notice that big old frog because he was sitting so quiet, oh so very quiet, they mistook him for a mountain. Only a few people went there at first and because they also thought how beautiful was the old frog’s home, they told others who told yet others and, finally, a certain group of people came with survey stakes, and they marked the land and made a trail and called it a National Park. Then one of them looked up and wanted to climb onto the big frog’s back.

Now the old frog was afraid the little human would see he was really a frog, and so it was he turned himself into rock, which was what everyone had thought he was, all along. That other one, the adventuresome survey man, put a round metal mark on the old frog’s tallest bump, with numbers to mean how tall, and he made words in a survey book to be the name of that mountain which was really the big, old frog.

Now old frog still sits there in his beautiful home, thinking like a mountain, but it’s hard to do while silly people run around his toes. When he starts thinking like a frog and laughing at them because they can’t see through his disguise, water seeps out from the pores of his skin and runs down into Mystic Lake, where the frog’s children still hatch out from the mud.

It rose in a roughly round form from a flattened bottom, its lobes blotched with pale sunburned scars. A few dry, warty scabs disfigured the yellow hide of the behemoth, brown pocks left by insects feeding on the sweet liquors underneath its skin. Taller than a child, and fatter than its height, the monster's weight approached one thousand pounds, near as made no difference, and whether you called it squash or pumpkin, it couldn't fail to impress. One of the giant breed, it welcomed visitors at one doorway of the agriculture exhibit in the Western Washington State Fair. Its smaller cousins flanked artistic arrays of produce, raised and displayed by various chapters of 4-H throughout the state.

Yes, indeedy, it's harvest time and the Fair is open, rain or shine and sometimes both. At one end of the agriculture building, women sat at spinning wheels, plying fibers from sheep, llama, yak and rabbit. Knitting needles clicked their wares into delicate garments dyed with vegetable, bark and Kool-Aid, and row on row of skeined yarns invited the hand. The weaver's loom sat idle, but its products filled the racks: jacket, shawl, blanket, all so soft and warm and fuzzy that they begged a touch. The sunlight I felt on my shoulders when I entered through the fiber arts section faded away during my leisurely transit, and I stepped into a downpour with the giant pumpkin at my back.

Undeterred by the rain (I am a born Washingtonian, after all), I made my way through a moderate crowd to see my favourite sites, and sat awhile at a covered stage to watch a San Francisco cowgirl spin a wicked rope, lashing her audience tight with a herd of classic corny cow jokes that simply split the onlookers' collective sides. Small-scale venues such as hers are in every available open area of the Fair and feature entertainers in great variety, from Peruvian instrumental ensembles to jugglers, country dancers or a one-man band.

I must admit I was taken aback at being searched before I could purchase my admission, and for as inefficient as the process was, it might as well have been left undone. Of my backpack's four compartments, two were emptied of their contents and the other two ignored. I was then hustled out of the area and back into line with my belongings draped over one arm, to struggle with jacket, lunch and sundries as I tried to dig the fee out of my pocket. During my search, several people with large purses, diaper bags and carryalls slid by unhindered.

The crowd was less dense, perhaps due to weather or perhaps rising admission costs, and commercial displays have invaded the old Hobby Hall, nudging out collections of Coca-Cola memorabilia and Ukrainian pysanky, but otherwise the event is much the same. New to me was the Fair Museum, housing antique farm equipment, cookware, typesetter's boxes and the like from the olden days.

It is still easy to spend a day wandering the barns, surrounded by penned cows, draft horses, goats, fowl and pigs, although the event has outgrown its acreage, and now different species of animal are brought in by rotation. I missed two favourites (sheep and chickens) and would rather see the theatre where cartoon character Garfield was making an appearance turned into another livestock barn. In some ways, sadly, the atmosphere is more theme park than grange. On the other hand, as long as there are giant squash in the world, I don't want to miss the Fair.

Fit of the sillies coming on! Here's some original humour for you in the form of "Tom Swifties." Many of them have been previously posted on another website under my pseudonym, "DeForest Ranger."

"These fasteners won't close," Tom objected snappily.
"I enjoy a meal of halibut or flounder," Tom explained soulfully.
"Could we play a little with the dogs?" Tom inquired fetchingly.
"I've joined the Lions," Tom announced pridefully.
"I ran over a nail," Tom told the repairman flatly.
"We'll go on a trip," Tom announced jauntily.
"We will not go to the 4-H club event this year," Tom told his family unfairly.
"Must wash my shorts," Tom thought briefly.
"I’ve lost the trail," Tom realized distractedly.
"Well, gotta go call the darn cows," Tom complained moodily.
"I’m terrified of parachuting," Tom protested jumpily.
"I’ll probably miss," Tom said aimlessly.
"I’ll leave the house to you," Tom offered willingly.
"I don't care much for spicy food," Tom said blandly.
"I know where that deer is going next," Tom told his hunting partner insightfully.
"Yeah, that guy always has some kind of angle," Tom said obliquely.
"It will be a short flight," Tom said plainly.
"I didn’t care for Denmark," Tom said disdainfully.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?" Tom wondered reflectively.
"Quilting is a relaxing hobby," Tom remarked peacefully.
"I’m going to upchuck!" Tom said heavily.
"It’s a man’s world," Tom stated deliberately.
"My sled dogs will beat yours in the Iditarod," Tom asserted huskily.
"Have a schnapps," Tom suggested cordially.
"Glad to have you in the corporation," Tom said firmly.
"Keep it!" Tom offered freely.
"Well, that’s a plus!" Tom said positively.
"What do you suppose the weather is going to do today?" Tom wondered hazily.
"That’s the last time I’ll ever pay for sex," Tom complained crabbily.
"I’m sure I’ll draw into this inside straight," Tom hoped tenaciously.
"I’d be glad to help you install your toilet," Tom said accommodatingly.

A word of wisdom to my fellow anglers: re-line your reels annually if you fish often, every other year if you don't. Besides saltwater, light and stretching are monofilament's worst enemies, and exposure to all three makes replacement critical. Also be aware of changes in color or texture. If your line seems cloudy or rough, strip it off and put on new. Ten minutes' labour and a small expense can make the difference between landing the fish of a lifetime or watching it eyeball you in its rear-view mirror as it races away, free.

That said, I've done my duty this morning as far as two of my reels are concerned, and new hi-vis gold Stren fills their spools. I hear a lot of objections to this line's colour while I'm on the water, the bulk of which end with some variation of, "The fish will see it." It delights me at that moment to hook one and bring it to the bank to demonstrate the fallacy. Unless the fish is particularly wild and wary, the average cruiser has forgotten all about the yellow thread running through his environment by the time he's swum the length of a five-foot clear leader, and I have had the advantage of being able to detect the slightest movement of the line against almost any backdrop of weather.

There's another clue to my success in that paragraph: watch your line, not your rod. Sitting on the shore with a beer in hand waiting for the tip to bounce isn't fair-play fishing. You will rarely lip-hook a fish which delicately samples the bait several times before gulping it down, and if you're parked in a chair, your prey (regardless of size) will come to land gut- or tongue-hooked and injured beyond hope of recovery. I don't necessarily advocate catch-and-release. I like to eat fish as much, if not more than the next guy, but I deplore releasing a mortally injured fish which may swim away to die later. It is far better to mind your rod with your eye on the line, and set the hook as soon as a strike is detected by an alteration in the slack, either less or more.

Of course, if you're hungry and your reflexes aren't particularly good, you can kick back in the canvas, pop the Coors top, and cast out a #18 treble covered lightly with Power Bait and let your holstered rod make the set-up for you. All you've got to do is reel in. If you're lazy and unsporting enough to do it that way, you've probably also neglected to re-line your reels and deserve doubly to lose the trophy rainbow blind luck sent your way. As for me, I'll hunt fish and use my wits and skill to outfox them, garish yellow Stren and all, and prove myself worthy of the title, "fisherman."

If you're looking for other fishing hints, visit my webpage. Internet Explorer users can enjoy hunting for the hidden link to "Secrets," a long list which includes techniques, advice and the occasional glimpse into the author's quirky personality.

Book me a berth underneath the table saw and give me access to the recreational facilities, and Dennis' woodshop is a place I'd love to spend an extended vacation, if only the weather were a bit more temperate. I worked at the lathe for several hours today, and although it was sunny when I started, by the time I finished sanding a four-inch alder bowl, the rain was pelting down, the temperature had dropped ten degrees, and I was shivering in my flannel shirt. I hadn't expected to want long johns, and didn't feel like abandoning the project to go home and change clothes, not when Dennis was being kind enough to leave off what he was doing to conduct Woodshop 101. My own lathe will hold a piece 1 1/2" x 5 1/2", tops. This was my first experience with a man-sized model.

My father worked wood and as a small child, I loved to observe him at his hobby, even in the simple act of shortening a 2x4 for some use in basic carpentry. Spokeshaves, coping saws, the brace-and-bit intrigued me, although I was too young to use them even with supervision. My job was to pass them from the bench to his hand when he called them by their curious names. The puzzles he wrought for me with his jigsaw (scroll saw) seemed possessed of internal magic as I watched them develop from thin stock, figures of animals and stars and irregular islands whose promontories jutted into the land of my imagination. Today, the odors of cut wood and silky feel of sawdust illuminate the image of my father, his black hair powdered with fragrant pine, his slender hands measuring out knotty lumber for the blade.

My own shop holds more tools than the average woman's: the tiny lathe, a scroll saw, circular saw, power drill, Dremel; mitre box, hand drills, saws in crosscut, combination, coping, mitre, hack varieties; wrenches, pliers of many sorts, screwdrivers, clamps, files, rasps, chisels and a host of other oddments which fall outside the purview of the woodworker. Socket sets, fence pullers, a propane torch litter the expanse beneath the garage window, a place which qualifies as storage space rather than a workbench. The back porch and kitchen table are the preferred locales for construction, and my two sawhorses are so deeply buried that I am usually found with my foot on a board suspended between two white plastic buckets or two chairs. Some tool or other comes into use daily, whether I drive a nail or section a sheet of plywood, but when I want to get serious, Dennis' shop is where I go.

The pattern for the alder bowl came from my neighbour's creative genius. Inspired by a plastic bird feeder, he envisioned it in wood. It is mounted on the lathe opposite to the customary fashion, the centers embedded in the bark of a green or dried section. The piece is brought into round, the parting tool marks the base, and the outer shape of the bowl is rough-cut. Now the piece is mounted on a face plate, and the interior is cut out with a hole saw to a partial depth, then finished with the cutting tools to the desired thickness (approximately 1/2") and lightly sanded. The exterior of the bowl is then turned and sanded to completion, stained inside and out, and then parted with a concavity in the bottom of the vessel. The remaining stub is sanded out, and the bottom of the piece is stained. Finish may be applied as desired.

The resultant bowl has an edge with two high sides and two low sides, owing to the way it was mounted on the lathe, and should show some bark remaining on the rim. It is a very attractive piece with a rustic appeal which makes it suitable for an indoor planter or jardiniere, or outdoors (as Dennis suggests) as a birdseed holder.

Hurricane Ivan isn't getting the press he deserves here in the US as he approaches Cuba and the Yucatán Peninsula, so I went in search of a Spanish-language weather channel on the internet, expecting to find something from Mexico. Google brought up an odd assortment of things only remotely related to weather when I entered "tiempo Mexico" in the field, so I added "huracán," and was rewarded with a link to the Agencia EFE, all the way over there in Spain. Presently, they're the best source for up-to-the-moment coverage, and I'm providing a link to their site for those of you who speak Spanish. An English-language version is not available. Through Agencia EFE, I discovered that Venezuela has sent a million dollars to Jamaica in disaster relief, a bit of news I would not have known if I hadn't had a second language.

As I write this, Ivan is skirting the westernmost tip of Cuba, the eye of the storm passing directly through the narrow Yucatán Channel. Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 115 miles, and tropical storm-force winds up to 220 miles. Sustained winds (those which have a duration of one minute or longer) are being clocked at 162 MPH. Higher gusts have occurred.

As a hurricane passes over land (such as those which ravaged Florida earlier in the month), simple friction slows the cyclonic rotation. In Ivan's case, this is not occurring since the eye of the storm is over open water. Additionally, the warm water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico will actually feed the storm. Impress your friends with this bit of information: hurricanes require an ocean surface temperature of 80 degrees to form, and parallels have been drawn between higher water temperatures and the size and strength of a hurricane. Ivan is moving into warmer waters, only moderately impeded by land. The gulf states lie directly in his path. My personal prognostication is that our boy Ivan will have a lot more to say before he's through.

It is (or should be) apparent that global warming is playing a significant role in the 2004 hurricane season, and I'm not just jumping on the "Day After Tomorrow" bandwagon. I've kept personal weather records for over thirty years and the trend is obvious. We're in the soup, and it's coming to the boil.

Grey weather is rolling 'round the bend of the seasonal river now, and although it isn't going to curtail my outdoor activities, it does put a cramp in my enthusiasm for 40-mile bike rides. Trips to the Post Office (ten miles) are fine. Jack Frost can't quite get his teeth through woolen long johns before I have a mug of hot chocolate steaming in my hand again. My age and scrawniness are telling on me in a growing vulnerability to cold, and one experience with frostbite was enough to sharpen my wits, so as the mercury subsides into its reservoir, my interests turn to projects one can do before the cozy fire, such as handwork, reading and jigsaw puzzles.

Yes, I have the stereotypical little old lady's passion for reassembling shattered pictures, one of the purest forms of time-wasting known to Man. I have always loved a puzzle, be it verbal, mechanical or mental, so when I discovered 21st Software's website, I succumbed to temptation and bought the selections, "Loveable Cats" and "Kelley Fractals 2."

While the images are charming and complex, the real appeal of these disks is that either enables you to create puzzles from your own photo files, and allows you to choose the number of pieces as well as controlling the randomness of piece shape from very irregular to almost identical. As you work a puzzle, you may change the size of the pieces displayed on your screen, so if you were inclined to make a puzzle having the maximum 32,000 pieces (!), each one might be displayed at a one-inch size. Of course, this makes it difficult to tell what you're doing, since only a small area of the complete puzzle would be visible without scrolling, so I tend to create jigsaws in the more traditional fragmentations of 800-1500 parts and keep my piece size to approximately 3/8 inch.

Additionally, as you work with the program, you'll find and learn to use other perquisites, such as the ability to change background colour with a click, or quickly arrange all pieces in a grid formation. You may move groups of single pieces simultaneously to sort them onto trays which can be labelled descriptively. If you're the kind of person who fudges at solitaire, you can even cheat by asking for hints, although the program comes with a built-in conscience which will remind you of your weakness upon completion of your game. There are many options I haven't fully explored. Best of all, there's no wondering if you've lost a piece! They can't go missing in the vacuum or the kitty's tummy.

You can purchase a variety of puzzle themes from 21st Software if cats aren't your preference. Each disk includes the puzzle-generating capability. Buy one, and never be stuck for an interesting puzzle again! Winter's coming, and you're going to need something to fill those long evenings after work. Puzzling is ever so much better for your mind than television fare.

All right, I suppose my patrons have guessed that there are conditions which occasionally arise to interfere with my literary aptitude prompting the posting of a recipe, so tonight, forgive me as I beg off with a big pot of minestrone on the grounds that I am singularly uninspired. There is very little labour involved in preparation of this delicious dish, principally because quite a few of the ingredients come out of cans. Don't let that deter you. It is really a wholesome and tasty meal-in-a-bowl which my more carnivorous readers can spruce up with gobbets of cow flesh if they so desire.

Ingredients:
1 16 oz. can of Swanson's beef broth (I use 99% fat free)
1 16 oz. can of S&W Italian style tomatoes (you can substitute fresh if you'd like)
1 16 oz. can of garbanzo beans, liquid and all
2 9-10" zucchinis, quartered and sliced 1/4" thick (remove seeds if there are any)
2 carrots, cut into small chunks
2 celery stalks, cut into small chunks
1/2 yellow onion, diced
1 heaping Tbsp. diced garlic (I use the stuff in a jar, very liberally so)
1 heaping Tbsp. Italian seasoning
salt and pepper
3/4 cup dry shell macaroni

Optional:
1 16 oz. can of kidney beans
1 cup green beans, fresh or canned
bok choy, sliced stalks and/or leaves
dead cow, cubed (ugh!)

You're on your own for browning and adding the last option. Do with it what you will, but don't put it in my bowl. I eat red meat on rare occasions, preferring sheep and veal, but I cannot abide the flavour of an adult bovine.

All right, let's get cooking.

Put everything but the macaroni in a big saucepan and add a cup of water, maybe a tad more if you've got lots of veggies. Stir it up good, then bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat to simmer, slam on the lid and cook until the carrots and zucchini are almost tender, about half an hour, stirring a couple of times.

When the veggies are biteable without a crunch, add the macaroni. You may want to add a bit more water. Return the soup to the boil, reduce the heat and put the lid back on. Cook until the macaroni is done, then serve.

If you want to serve the minestrone two days in a row, or want to freeze half a batch, divide it before adding the macaroni. Refrigerate or freeze the vegetables in their broth, and cook the macaroni in the soup just before serving.

Day Three: Wildlife

Northwest Trek's 10:30 AM tram pulled away from the station, and the tour guide almost immediately pointed out a bison bull bedded down beside the pavement. A fusillade of camera fire arose from the ranks, passengers darting to the nearer windows for a better view. Our car was relatively empty, housing only the four of us and no more than half a dozen other tourists, among whom was one small child with a large, shrill voice and very few language skills. This creature's delight was evident and made me recall with regret the porter's suggestion, "There's still room up front." Half-deaf as she is, I saw my mother wince. The bus crept past the lazy bison, the riders subsided into their hard plastic seats, and tucked away digitals to conserve on battery power just as a bighorn ewe approached from the side. Again, the cameras were drawn. The sheep paced the tram as it gathered speed, trotting alongside as we pulled ahead.

Rounding a bend and coming out into a wide grassland, the guide slowed to point out bison wallows, reciting her set piece. "The bison use them for a natural parasite control," she explained. They urinate in the wallows and roll in the dirt. It's bison cologne, but I don't expect you'll see it on sale in stores any time soon." Laughter followed the groans of distaste as she put down the accelerator and glanced in her rear-view mirror. "Oh, there's the bighorn ewe again. She's coming up behind us." Sure enough, the sheep was tailing the tram, clippity-clopping along the asphalt trail.

As the bus began to climb a small hill, the guide explained that this particular ewe had just been returned to the grounds after a period of incarceration for being ornery and obstructive. The penalty had had little effect, apparently, because as our conductor geared down, the sheep caught up and passed the tram and cut her off by pulling into the center of the single lane and falling into a slow, comfortable pace at our fore. Our bus ground into a lower gear to match, and the guide put in a call to the gamekeeper to bring some food to lure the pesky sheep off the track.

We gained a little ground on her as we reached a flat. She broke into a trot and then a full run. A corner lay ahead. The heavy bus went 'round it slowly as the clever ewe cut the switchback and regained her place at the lead. In the meantime, we ogled white-tailed deer and more bison nearly hidden in forest shadows and glens.

At the next flat, a whole herd of bison were gathered, and a blue heron stood nearby on the opposite side of the road. All part of the job, the guide stopped the tram to allow us time to take pictures. The ewe had again fallen behind, but quickly caught up. At that moment, the keeper's truck came up from the rear. The driver climbed out of the cab, grabbed a plastic bucket and shook the contents, the cue for our impromptu escort to come to the road for feeding time. The ewe rounded on the sound anxiously as, unbeknownst to the keeper, the herd of bison also responded to the rustling grain. The keeper leapt into the truck as both ewe and herd converged, and our guide breathed a sigh and resumed driving.

This, however, was not the end of the story. As we climbed the next small rise and descended the opposite side, our pet ewe abandoned her dinner and took the flat cross-country route to come apace with the tram one last time. We finally lost her on a steep, long hill. Old and out of breath, she decided she'd had enough about halfway up.

After this experience, our close-up sightings of moose, elk, deer and other species seemed to pale. The humour of this one persistent bighorn ewe was worth a dozen admissions, although I'm sure she's found herself in the pokey once again, poor dear.

Day Two: The Fishing Trip

I forget that a fishing trip can be a vacation plan, an event so special that it asks to be recorded on film to show the family and friends. I wasn't surprised when Toni said she wanted to 'see me in action,' since my exploits verge upon legendary, but I was genuinely rocked when she admitted she hadn't fished in fifteen years. Brian's last encounter had been with saltwater and even further back in history, and his freshwater adventures fall in the realm of "Once upon a time." I felt like a guide, and neither of my sports had used a spinning reel before.

Sande 'adopted' Brian after we surveyed the calmly flowing river and spotted a few fish holding at the edge of the deepest channel. I helped Toni down the rip-rap bank, thrust a baited rod into her hand, issued a few perfunctory instructions and then said, "Okay, flip it upstream and across, reel in until you're just at the edge of the trough and then slow down your retrieve as you bring it in." As she readied for the cast, she repeated the points of her education, "Finger on the string, this piece goes back, and then I do this." She twitched the rod's tip and let the line slip off her finger. Standing less than a yard away from her, the hook landed directly at my feet. She made several more boo-boo's, followed by a good cast. I assumed she'd figured it out. The next flip went wild and landed nowhere near the channel of deeper water before us. She tried again with similar results. She passed the rod to me. "You show me," she said.

"Okay," I said, "like this. Pick up the line on the tip of your finger, throw back the bail, and just kinda toss it upstream with a motion of your wrist. See?" My cast landed at the far edge of a tree's shadow, precisely where I'd wanted it. "Now reel across fairly fast, because there's a bunch of rocks over there that'll hang you up if you don't clear them. Now, as I get close to here," (I could see in the clear water that my piece of shrimp was just reaching the spot where the river began to deepen) "I'm going to slow down my retrieve, and then right about here, I ought to...GET A FISH! Fish on!" I brought a foot-long rainbow to the bank. "Like that," I added, blandly. "Now you do it."

I coached her through several more casts, and then, by George, she hooked one! She fumbled with the reel's handle, but ol' fish came right to land. Her hands were shaking like she'd fought a tarpon to the boat, and she was hooting like a kid with his first perch. I drug another stringer out of my pack and secured her trophy, then left her to her own designs, and hallooed at the guys. "Hey! You doin' any good down there? We're one for one up here!"

Brian shouted back, "Not a bite." Oh-oh.

Toni missed a few strikes, but she clearly had the system psyched, if not mastered. I made six casts, adding three more fish to my stringer, one of which was a slab-sided beauty. I went to check on the boys who were fishing fishless water, snagging up frequently and losing gear. A couple of casts was all I needed to confirm the futility of their efforts, so I directed them to follow me back upstream. I put Brian in a good spot and Sande stationed himself just above us, but for the moment, the fish had gone down and the bite was off.

The next person to hook one was Brian. I was sitting it out. With Brian and Toni running neck-and-neck, he with the greater experience, I shifted my full attention to her. She'd lapsed into a couple of technique errors that were causing her casts to fall short more than half the time, although that wasn't the greatest problem. The reel had come unseated from the lightweight rod of mine which she was using, and when she handed it to me for another demonstration, I found myself hand-lining a fish in when the reel fell to the ground. That filled my dance card, so I passed her Sande's silver rod (the one I'd been using). It didn't take long before she announced, "I like the way this one feels."

When we left the river, both Toni and Brian had three fish (worthy of note is that his were smaller, and Sande, off his stride, got only one). Out of the corner of my eye, I'd seen Brian checking Sande's reel and rod for brand names. As we walked back to the car, my cousin quietly confided, "He said we're going to have to do this more often." If I had caught a chrome-bright 25 pound salmon, I couldn't have been happier than I was to hear those words!

Day One: A Character Study

My cousin Toni surprised me, not with her height because she had told me she was nearly a foot taller than I am, but with her softly modulated voice. Our emails had verged on the rowdy a few times, and I think I expected her speech to be somewhat brassy-toned to match. Instead, I find myself listening to catch the ends of sentences which fall in volume toward their conclusion. I could have expected this, since I have frequently reproached her for not being assertive enough with other people. Her diction suggests that she would be an easy person to over-run in conversation or even in life.

Her hands are graceful, long-fingered and feminine, despite her passion for gardening. Her fingernails could strike terror into the heart of the King of Beasts himself! I had to ask if they were real, boorish and nosy as I am. I've always envied fingernails like that. The one long one I sport on my left little finger is purely functional for things like digging the last of the Power Bait out of the bottom of the jar.

Her eyes brown and gentle, and are set in a face which is freckled and guileless. She seems very readable and open, and perhaps more innocent of the world than she deems herself to be. Nor does she exhibit expectations of any person or situation. She met each of the neighbours with honest friendliness and a non-judgmental attitude, at the same time satisfying her curiosity about the named beings who populate my emailed anecdotes, and today she's looking forward to the pièce de résistance: Sande, the most charming and colourful character in any of my tales.

We're off to go fishing shortly after breakfast because Toni says, "I want to see you in action." My goodness! I have a reputation to uphold!

The next several days promise to be filled with more than it seems possible they could hold. A shirt-tail cousin is coming to visit, a friend I haven't seen since we were both two years old.
"Shirt-tail" is a poor adjective to describe Toni's relationship to me. She and I are identical in age, but her father was my grandmother's brother, and her mother is ten years older than my own. To further complicate the matter of "second cousins once removed," Toni is adopted.

My re-acquaintance with her was brought about when my mother came to live with me last fall. For many years, both my mother and Toni had been part of a round-robin letter exchange among the "cousins." I was no part of the group, and seldom had reason to contact any of its members until my mother's illness dictated it, then when many of them replied to my communication with email addresses so they could receive the latest updates on my mother's health, Toni and I began exchanging emails fairly frequently. The period of time between our letters grew closer and closer until they became part of our daily routine.

Soon we discovered that we have a lot of things in common: similar childhoods, marriages gone bad. The emails became even more frequent as we got to know each other and could sympathize with the other's plights. We told stories and joked around, and I began to see a similarity in Toni with the quirky and delightful personality of my very best of friends. Sometimes, as my hands raced to put words on the screen, I'd forget who I was writing to, and I suppose it's possible I sent something to either of them that was meant for the other. I wouldn't be surprised. That was when I realized that I wasn't putting on a face with my re-discovered cousin. I was being myself, as I can be with only a very few people.

Toni is coming to visit, and her gentleman-friend, incidentally, is coming with. I think I've managed to find something to keep him amused while the hens are cackling. At least I hope so. My cousin and I have 55 years of catching up to do.

The tourist tsunami is subsiding and the flooded mountains are returning to a semblance of their customary tranquility. The influx comes more gradually than the outflow and goes almost unnoticed as anything more than an extended period of weekend-weight traffic, but when the handle's depressed on Sunday, the accumulation spirals down the drain like...well, if I continued that metaphor, you'd get a very accurate picture of how I feel about visitors to my beautiful big Hill. Let's just call them blots on the landscape, to be polite.

Take for example that Winnebago that's parked on Clyde's newly mown grass right now. I don't know what's de rigueur in the city, but around here, we don't drive on peoples' lawns. Wouldn't you call the cops if I crashed through your vegetable garden hoping to take a picture of a common English sparrow? Tell that to the jerk who's making footprints through Clyde's artichokes with his lens aimed at a deer. I've voiced this complaint before, you say? That must have been Memorial Day or Fourth of July, three weekends the Game Department should consider making open season on the breed.

The roar of traffic has not subsided since early this morning, strings of rumbling motorcycles following a parade of vintage cars, interspersed with Humvee's and clunkers, pickups and campers howling their way back to Flatland. The river's whisper is drowned by the incessant grind of rubber on pavement, and I haven't heard a local crow caw for three long days.

The nice thing about tourist season is that it's over. They're gone, or at least they're going in a steady line. Tomorrow, after the community has had a good night's sleep on a mattress padded with their money, we can roll up our figurative sidewalks, kick back on the porch, and listen to the faint sounds of the dormant highway snoozing by our doors.

Over the hills and not so far away lies, on this particular weekend, the garage sale to end all junk fests, an assembly of tailgaters and goods (both new and used) which extends down both sides of a small-town street for the better part of a mile with offshoots into alleys, by-ways and park. In its midst, the city's retail shops are lost, their façades disguised by racked dreamcatchers, tie-dyed dresses and worn tack, all arranged beneath pointed nylon canopies and seeking to trap the customer's eye. Beside African masks sit neck scarves for your doggie, adjacent to bleached LP albums or carven wooden signs. Down the way a bit are mounted antlers and leather goods, flanked by bonsai plants and superannuated fishing tackle. There is no logic in the melee, only confusion, milled from the dusty impromptu pathways and distributed over the thronging crowds. It is a madhouse without walls, indeed.

Thousands of people swarm among the vendors' tables, crunching caramelized popcorn and drinking giant sodas, dipping into their wallets to buy old glassware and Beanie Babies. Tired dogs hitch rides in baby strollers, and some folk bring wagons to trail along behind, laden with their precious finds. The two-lane highway becomes a pedestrian thoroughfare and an obstacle for cars attempting passage on legitimate business, for no detour shorter than thirty miles wears pavement on its bed.

I had gone with friends, and the atmosphere was County Fair, no doubt about it. The inclination to buy ridiculous bric-a-brac was strong. Life-sized glass vegetables caught my fancy particularly: "5 for $10," the sign teased, a fine price for the craftsmanship involved, while a voice in my head suggested the names of at least three friends I'd foist them off on, come Christmas. Some wiser part of myself perceived their dust-catching propensity if installed on my own mantel, and a recollection of the full text of "Do unto others" painted an image of what I wouldn't be overjoyed to find beneath my own tree. I fondled the glistening corncob, admired the charming garlic, and walked away without a pang of conscience.

Barbie dolls (Ken, too), Harley paraphernalia, chartreuse hobnail glass make interesting reading, but thank you, I don't want them on my shelves. Maybe it's a good thing I wrote yesterday's posting. Incredibly, I seem to have listened to my own good advice for once.

People archive the strangest things, and I don't mean your collection of pink ceramic dachshunds or photos of unidentifiable objects from your last vacation. Open up your cupboards and tell me what you find. Half-eaten sleeves of crackers which are now too soggy to remain afloat in soup? One bag of Super-duper Hop, Celery and Echinacea Blend Tea? The last tin of canned sardines you bought in Mexico? You know the one I mean...the one with the 1993 pull-date and the bulge in the lid.

Or how about the cerise spike heels or the wing-tips with the hole in the sole? The napkins collected at Aunt Mary's wake? The filbert...filbert? How did that get in there? Why are you saving these things, if not to keep your house firmly anchored to the ground in case of unannounced tornadoes? You're an accumulator, an archivist, and you can't bear to let them go.

I have a box. It is labelled, "Collectible paper." It is a modest size for a box, approximately 20 inches long by 8 x 10, and it is the allotted storage space for brochures, serviette rings, pretty illustrations from magazines, old Christmas cards and so on. There is a regulation regarding this box which stipulates an unalterable condition: if there isn't room to add the item currently destined for archiving, something presently occupying space must go, permanently far, far away, and no stuffing it in a different box to side-step the law. The policy has served me well for many years, despite ridicule for being obsessive-compulsive by friends who have archived themselves into second garages.

That box was where my anti-archiving program began. You'd think that might have been one of the more difficult areas on which to concentrate, but in practice, it was foodstuffs which proved to be the hardest to clear out. Tiny jars of specialty jellies, remnants of loose teas, ten boxes of pickling spice with the same long-expired pull-date seemed to inspire as much emotional attachment as the bells from a wedding cake. My shelves were populated with odd-flavoured mustards, split peas faded to dingy tan, dried-up bottles of paste food colouring left over from my cake decorating days. A psychologist would have blamed it on my childhood of hunger, but I'd dispute that, seeing the same trait in so many of my acquaintances.

I think my favourite archiving story deserves repeating here. A friend's grandmother passed away, and among the effects which her son (my friend's father) inherited was a shoebox clearly labelled as to content, which he in turn put away for safekeeping. For many years, it held dominion over its niche in the family garage until at last, it passed into my friend's hands directly, and she (bless her) consigned it to a more appropriate location. The label, still intact, read, "String too short to use." (I would have archived it, if only for the novelty.)

Let us honour the box and all its kin by divesting ourselves of the unreasonable clutter of our lives. Let us this day take one shoebox of undeniable junk and pitch it in the bin. If we do the same tomorrow, and again, again, the pain of parting soon becomes the joy of burden's lightening, and we shall rise straight-backed, empowered over the stuff which rules our lives.

With the coming of the holiday, suddenly my life has turned busy and full of activity and expectation. Ordinarily, in any given year, the front door opens to admit company no more than ten times, at least four of which will see my ex-husband on the other side. Admittedly, the plot of land on which I reside is only just short of the boundary of the Back of Beyond, and perhaps fear of bear and mountain lion and bearded mountain men keep some of my acquaintances away; nevertheless, for me (beardless mountain woman) who drives forty-five minutes to the store that has shampoo and looks both ways for cougar before crossing to the mailbox, none of these specifications seems worthy of remark. Company is coming, by my definition, a lot of it: a pair of guests for half a day on Sunday, and another pair for three days later in the week.

Ah, the adventures we have planned! Dining out, hunting mushrooms, going somewhere with someone else at the wheel (now there's a joy!), visiting the wildlife zoo to see a cougar behind bars, and bears and elk and moose. And going fishing! Wow! I'm dead serious. The chance to be a guide to a cousin I haven't seen in 55 years is just what I needed to lift my spirits. Like a kid at a party, I'm hopping up and down with the thought of playing (cards? Scrabble?) until my eyes go googly, staying up past bedtime, laughing 'til I'm faint.

Friends! I have friends, and they're coming to see me. We hermits go a little wonky at the prospect, and sometimes over-react. I've vacuumed, dusted, pickled shad, mowed the lawn, given Skunk her birthday present, hidden all the clutter. Mopping's next, and baking bread, but I'll stop short of washing windows. Can't be driven to that by anything but uncle Lee, or lack of light, whichever comes first. The garden is as tidy as it gets, the ginkgo is repotted. Why? Because I was in a frenzy. I've cut my toenails, and I'd probably paint the house, except it's vinyl siding. Woo-hoo! Company is coming!

Sande dreams of catching a steelhead, so once again, we loaded the gear into the truck and set sail for the waters below the dam, beguiled by rumours and reports of cooperative fish as we have been many times before. Neither he nor I has ever caught one of these rainbow-trout-from-Hell, and neither has a solid education in the process required. Armed with corkies and yarn in almost any colour, odd-shaped lures and wicked jigs, we are no doubt equipped, if we but knew how to wield it from our compulsory positions on the bank. Ah, yes, we are handicapped as landlubbers and we know it, but guides come dear, too dear for the likes of us.

At the first stop, only I am able to cast to the serious current where the monster fish lie. Sande's efforts fall short by twenty feet or more. The bank falls steeply off, and I am not inclined to wade, spooked by a mishap last year which almost drowned me. My partner adds more lead to his line, yet still his casts land in the calmer water, and no tick of the rocky bottom twitches the end of his rod. He's snagged, stuck between two stones or wound around debris, with no alternative to snapping his line and re-rigging.

My rod tip follows the river's course, matching pace with the leaves on the surface. I feel rocks pecking at the weight as it passes them by. The flow takes over toward the bottom of the vector and swings my jig unnaturally across the river. I reel in and make another cast. On the tenth, eleventh, twelfth throw, I snag. Sande fishes while I retie. There are no fish in the river, only hungry rocks.

At the second site, I wade butt-deep across slimy stones, edging my feet between them and fighting the drag of the water. Sande perches on the sandy bank beside a backwater pool where fish are often seen to rise but seldom bite. From our locations, we fish with good intentions, and I remark to the chap beside me that last night, I dreamed of landing a 31-pounder, as if the number was some charm or mantra which I hoped would bring a bite.

Several hours later, chilled to the bone (they don't make insulated waders in my tiny size), I struggle back to shore, empty-handed. Sande has long since laid his rod on his tackle box and walked a ways apart from it in boredom.

Just then, as we prepared to leave, a truck pulled up beside us. The driver gave the appearance of a man with a purpose as he dismounted and made a bee-line to a spot. The lure he flicked into the river was nothing we recognized at a distance, and almost immediately, we saw him strike. No self-respecting fisherman could have walked away from the scene without trying to get a closer look (at the very least), so we crept up behind to do a bit of observation. We weren't stealthy, by any means, so when the man turned around at hearing voices, he gladly joined our conversation.

After we had chatted ten minutes or so, Sande piped up to say, "I'd give my life for a steelhead." It was a statement meant with humour, obviously, but our companion blanched and hastily replied, "Don't ever say that," before his narrative continued.

It struck me odd, as if he had seen Death firsthand and knew the value of life most keenly. Too, I noticed that he held his arms oddly, and handled his rod as if uncertain of his grip, peculiar for a man whose expertise was so apparent. He spoke of side-planers and cut-plugs with exquisite knowledge, and mentioned his years as a fishing guide on this very river. I noticed also that he was appraising Sande, lined face and grey hair, taking a measure of his years. Then he said, "Tell you what, you give me your number and I'll put you onto a steelhead from my boat."

Often, you'll meet people and promises on the riverbank, and neither will ever pass your eye again. Nevertheless, I heard (and Sande heard it also) a sincerity in this man's words which made believers of us. Then his story unfolded, and gave it more credence still. Our new-found friend was indeed fighting pain as he fished, the pain of having been pinned under 3200 pounds of freight which had fallen on him. He explained that the injuries to his arm and side were sustained as he fought to keep the weight off his body until rescuers could free him, arms now in orthopedic devices. He passed the details over lightly, and returned to the subject of principle concern: how to catch a steelhead, and his enthusiasm to help Sande at the task. A man so glad of life, so thoroughly grateful to be able to cast a line, could not be doubted, and I'm certain as I can be that we'll be hearing from him soon.

Fishless? Yes, but a good day after all.

Today is September Morn, and I am sad because I cannot observe this special day with the simple, eloquent ritual which has been my tradition for lo, these many years. My body and my spirit long to plunge into the chilly waters of an alpine tarn, there to find renewal and cleansing, but it shall not be. The dross of humanity will burden me tonight as I lie down in my bed, weighted with another day in a series unrelieved.

This should be a happy day and festive, but it dawned with no more occasion than a week ago last Tuesday, or the whichth of March. I opened a jar of precious wildflowers and set it on the mantle beneath an Aboriginal "road map" of my Dreamtime ancestors' home, then lighted a stick of pine incense to honour them, gestures I might have made on any ordinary day.

Today is incomplete.

I have long since given up hope of my friends remembering this day as one of importance to me. It falls outside the realm of their experience, more foreign to them than prayer wheels or Ramadan. Not too many people number shamans or animists among their acquaintances.

Ah, but there you go! I was looking in the wrong direction. As those words freckled the white screen before me, a roll of thunder pealed across the hill. When its shower arrives, you'll find me standing under it, celebrating.