My father made a deliciously fearsome pirate, swarthy-skinned and tan from summer's labours in his garden. With his eyebrows thickened by pencil and a beard and moustache illustrated on his face, he played the part as well as Erroll Flynn (at least to my young eyes) and his theatrical interjections of "Yo-ho-ho!" and "Pieces of eight!" simply added to my childish delight. In a cherished photo, he is crouched with rubber cutlass drawn beside his cheek, and I am dressed somewhat less flamboyantly as a witch replete with broom and ready to fly out into the night, trick-or-treating.

Our rural acreage had few neighbours, so my dad (still in costume) would drive me through the "project," a population center of a dozen houses a mile from our own where most of my schoolmates lived. He'd wait in the car as I ran alone to the clustered doors to gather my tithe of popcorn balls and candy in the evening chill, then speed me home to hot cider and a conservative sampling of my treasures. Even today, tiny Tootsie Rolls and candy corn remain some of my favourite seasonal nibbles.

Always there was some family activity in reserve for Pacific Northwest weather whether it was cookie- or fudge-making or a game of Scrabble by the fire. Once when the night was rainy and trick-or-treating had to be foregone in favour of bobbing for apples in a washtub on the kitchen floor (a messy exercise which was never to be repeated), my father had a plan meant to amuse me. He pretended to go in search of the tub and exited via the back door, ostensibly to go into the utility room, only to return a few minutes later by the front door in disguise.

I had to be coerced to pose that evening in my jammies with my dad in what was to be the best piece of costuming he ever put together, and the simplest: a nylon stocking pulled over his head. I'm certain he didn't expect to frighten me out of my wits, although he succeeded admirably at the job for at least several minutes until I finally picked out a feature I could recognize and at last accepted the change in my father's handsome countenance as a masquerade. In hindsight, this remains the high point of my Hallowe'en recollections: a dear family moment coupled with the lesson (however unintentional) that fears could be met and overcome.

A hard frost dazzled my eyes when I threw back the drapes this morning, glittering beneath an almost cloudless, crayon-blue sky and the dazzling, newly whitened figure of the Mountain. As the north winds had thrown hail yesterday evening, so they brought arms full of cold to dump unceremoniously into the valley, with the thermometer still registering a sharp 25° at 8:30 AM. "A bit early," I said as I jotted the figure on my charts, and the chill on my back was not only a measure of the degree but from a vision of the winter's future. October sees the 20's rarely and rain has been scant, a combination which bodes well only for the purveyors of heating fuel if climatic history is the chronicler. The cycle of low minimums is coming 'round again, overdue by some half a dozen years and marking time with precipitation which has yet to catch up to its annual performance.

Given this, I wish to go on record and take a precaution here by publicly forecasting a hard winter; "precaution" I say because my horse never wins the race, "precaution" because arrogance is its own downfall, and by asserting my prognostication so boldly, I rob blind the chance of its occurrence, simply by taking its side. I am casting my vote in favour of snow and prolonged nights at zero, do you hear me? A hard winter we will have, so say I, and dare the gods of ice and storm (beg them?) to prove my prediction wrong. Tricky logic? Perhaps I have said what I propose too fully, for in arguing that my forecast must be shown wrong by virtue of assertion, it almost certainly ensures that it will prove right after all.

The weather has definitely been temperamental today, starting with rain in the early morning which cleared off abruptly and gave way to brilliant light and a perfectly cloudless sky for more than an hour before the first puffs of cumulus began returning to their lairs. Little by little, the hummocky cover thickened and deepened, grew grey with suspended moisture and drooped low over the hills as a light wind rose among the trees, spiralling leaves from maple, cottonwood and alder. Above the valley floor, bold spotlights of sun shone checkerboard on clearcut and forest, only to be fretted suddenly with a fall of half-inch hail which scratched and pecked against the windows.

If seasonal mood struck the weather, so too did the artificial disruption of daylight discommode the author. I do not object to springing forward to the extension of evening's light, but falling back to the standard of early darkness for winter seems a bit backward to my way of thinking. If daylight is to be conserved as the name suggests, does it not make better sense to do so when the commodity is at a premium? Who among us would not prefer later light of a winter's afternoon to trying to close our weary eyes with the summer sun yet in the sky and a day's work on the morrow? It would seem today that even the weather was crabby as it rushed to accomplish its variety of tasks before the sun went down.

After 23 years?

AWK!!!

Another crisp morning! The temperature sensor for my weather station seldom reflects the lows or highs for the simple reason of critical positioning. Its installation requirements were quite specific in stating that it should be out of direct sunlight and not exposed to the possibility of frost accumulation, so I chose to put it at the outer edge of the carport roof and close to open air where it should have been unaffected by radiational heat from the house. It soon became obvious that the distance was not adequate when the blasted thing would sit solidly at 34° when a heavy rime was apparent on the ground and the fence rails glittered with ice. I confirmed the reading using a second mercury thermometer which, when hung on the exterior of the same wall, gave 30° instead. Likewise, the summer highs are influenced, although seldom as radically, even though one would expect heat to accumulate beneath the protection of the roof. Compared readings give only a variance of a degree or two on the upper end, but neither high nor low is reliably off by the same margin, so I've followed a practice of recording what the instrument tells me, and in the final telling, the annual mean temperature will still be accurate within a degree. It's not a perfect solution by any stretch of the imagination: technology running only one step ahead of looking out the window to see if there's ice in the washtub, more or less.

There is no therapy quite like a walk in the woods, so when I woke from an uncharacteristically deep nap shortly after breakfast wondering if I was sickening with some malaise, I decided to seek a cure among autumn's painted hills despite the film of fog which had not yet fully lifted from the valley. In fact, I had a dual purpose in mind. One of Bob's geocaching travel bugs had arrived in my mailbox a day too late to participate in my first-to-find sweep of the area, and since the cache site bore a coincidentally similar name to the TB, I thought it would be appropriate for it to visit the spot for photos. One thing was certain: the mission called for swift action with snow dodging at the highest peaks already and due to cut off ingress at a moment's notice. Since the length of the hike to lakeside was barely greater than a walk in the back forty, I dispensed with packing and simply pocketed the bug, the camera and a pair of mittens, slammed on my hat and dashed out the door, ready to brave those Volkswagen-swallowing potholes once again.

Although it had only been a few days since I'd travelled this same logging road, noticeable changes had occurred in the trees and brush. The vine maples, so golden and lush at the bridge less than 72 hours ago, had now released more than half their pennants and the remainder had taken on a duller hue, while the bracken fern, previously sickly green, had gone to flaxen beige and softly rose-lit tans. Along the trail, the Canadian dogwood had shrunk into itself, the devil's club had peeled its bulk of thorns and the creek ran with more ebullience and vigour down the course of boulders, singing to the accompaniment of a woodpecker's drum. Little remained that was not marked by the season in some way; fading, falling, withdrawing into the roots and the soil to husband the germ of life throughout the winter.

The bowl of the lake had escaped northerly notice, and the sun beamed from behind the craggy ridge onto a mirror of water with only a faint tendril of mist suspended above its shine to haze the reflected evergreens, so different from the thready snow I'd seen just days before. Had it not been for the overall damp and spilled beads of dew on every surface, it could well have been a picnic day among the cover of moss and canopy of boughs.

It is a kindness of the backcountry to lose one's in-dwelling self therein, and as I posed with Bob's travel bug, I found that the spirits of water and stone had silently commanded health from my lapse into introspection. My vision had refocused on surroundings again, those things which define the world in its true perspective. My malaise forgotten, I had found renewal in both the forest and vicariously sharing it with the center of my heart.

The elk have sensed the change of weather and begin to straggle down from the hills into the pasture which now stands shoulder-high to them in thistly disarray, grey as old ashes and slumped under the lowlands' drizzle. The day is chill, and behind the foggy veil, the higher forests give only a forced and stilted welcome to the ill-mannered snow which has come so early and unannounced to displace the former guests.

The pasture has little food to offer these intermittent travellers: twigs, mushrooms, and short, poor grass hidden deeply in the parched and pathless thorns. For now, the great beasts follow the rare natural byways, keeping to creekside and clearing, or along the margin of the woods where the low-hanging boughs of maple dip their last sweet yellow leaves within reach. Only when compelled by hunger will they chart routes through the harsh thistles to reach the oases of brittle grass hidden in the interior, or search out a solitary mouthful of dandelion, determinedly green.

Looking at the pasture in its present condition, it is incomprehensible that the five members of the advance guard could find adequate nutrition to carry them through the winter amid the largely inedible fare which blankets the acreage, yet in another two weeks, as many as a hundred more may have joined their number and most, if not all, will survive every hardship but the hunter's gun. If Nature promotes the doctrine of minimalism, the elk is surely its grand master.

The cat's warmth in my lap is welcome in the cool morning, and I sit in the rising fog of her dreams, nodding against my intention. I am ordained to sleep beneath the comfort of her living blanket, my mind attuned to the alpha waves reflected in the twitches of her whiskers and paws as she pursues the prey lurking in the tall grass of her idle snyapses. My head lolls forward, and I am lost into an undeniably drowsy feline peace which no mere mortal could refute.

There is a lesson to be learned under the passive tutelage of a cat: that relaxation is no halfway state. Both mind and body enter a form of suspension from awareness which is absolute, the consciousness only peripherally in touch with external stimuli which might threaten survival. That which is familiar becomes irrelevant to the cat who sleeps like a child does, subconsciously trusting in those around it to ensure its security.

I am not so confident as the cat, and yet when I wake from half an hour's doze at the sound of a car on the highway, a sense of ease surrounds me. The sound of her breathing wheezes beneath the paw which shades her eyes from daylight, her muscles and whiskers are still, and her weight across my knees is greater than the gravity it demands. Her wisdom is contagious, and my eyes again fall closed beneath her subtle instruction to seek the path to enightenment which only a lazy cat can ever truly know.

Botherin' me, that's what it was doing, so as soon as the sky started to pale, I began putting together the essentials for a quick dash into the woods despite the fact that it was raining steadily and fairly hard. That dang geocache was still out there someplace, and nobody'd put their name on it overnight. I'd taken a bit of a blow to the old reputation by dint of having gone up the wrong road, y'see, and the need for personal redemption was sittin' sorta heavy on the shoulders.

In full rain gear and an extra layer of woolies, I hit the road with wipers running and the GPSr wedged up against the windshield where I hoped it could get a satellite lock through the trees and clouds. Sometimes weather can play hob with the reception, and although the Summit is one of the best instruments to use in heavy tree cover, I still wanted to give the little gadget plenty of time to acquire a signal before we got into the deep hills. 'Bout the time I crossed over the river, he'd latched onto the sky bugs and was carrying on a good conversation with them.

With that covered and a few more miles behind me, I turned off the paved road into the first maze of potholes, all now filled with muddy water and their depths impossible to guess. The narrow wood bridge crossing the stream a quarter mile further on was trenched crossways at either end, and the holes threatened to pitch the car against its abutments amid splashes and splatters. This short stretch is the greatest challenge to drivers. Once through it, one must continue to watch for foot-deep chuckholes, but most can be circumnavigated with only two wheels in the brush. The mainline, which is travelled more frequently and by larger vehicles than the secondary roads, was in poorer shape than the spur road which I had missed yesterday. The lesser road was rocky and rough, however, and required almost constant use of second gear. A few large trees had fallen across it and in many places, fragments of them remained where the logs had been winched off to one side, but neither rock nor branch blocked the way to the pullout at the trailhead.

The rain was coming down hard and it was chilly. The GPSr indicated a straight-line distance of .36 miles to the cache. The trail, however, ran along the contour, climbing through dense forest, crossing a creek twice and then cutting a final switchback directly to the lake at the top of the rise. It was here that the GPSr ironically lost contact with its satellites, here in the more open trees exposed to a broader expanse of sky. Within ten minutes, another satellite had tracked through the heavens and I once again had signal, although spotty and inconsistent in where it directed me to go. At no point was accuracy greater than 248 feet, and with a cache hint of "inside a stump," I definitely had my work cut out for me. By triangulation, I was able to narrow my search to four or five likely stumps, and the third proved to hold the cache: a hide-a-key in a baggie, wedged into a deep hole and filled over with twigs. As I signed the log, it began to snow lightly, with a slight breeze blowing the stuff in curtains across the misty lake. It was the perfect ending for a four-cache sweep, and I headed back to the car, content.

We got into a little predicament, the car and I. Somebody thought there was light at the end of the tunnel of slide alder which had linked its arms above the ratty old logging road, the brightly beaming light of a geocache which had not yet been found. That in itself would have been enough to tempt me out on a cold and frosty morning, but in truth, there were four...four brand-new caches, and all on familiar, nearby ground.

The problem was that I was on the wrong road, although I didn't know it as I nosed the car forward into the constriction of alder. The GPSr was telling me the cache was a mere .65 mile away, across a 400-foot deep gully, and the topographic map in my hand was woefully out-of-date. I felt a bit like I was entering a crawdad trap as the car pushed aside the brush...you know, one of those contraptions which once entered cannot be escaped?

For a quarter of a mile, I drove at five miles per hour through a thicket of alder with no hope of turning around, listening to the branches squeal and scrape against the shiny finish of the car's side panels and roof, and then all too abruptly, progress was blocked by a washout even a Jeep would have had difficulty negotiating. With the roadbed canted sharply and contorted by mounds and dips, there was no alternative left me but to back out the way I'd come.

The simile of the crawdad trap was more apt than I care to remember. The branches which had bent ahead of the car now tangled in mirrors, bumpers, grill, antenna and wipers. At times, I could not see the road in either mirror and would pull ahead a foot or two to get my bearings, then back out another two or three yards before needing to pull forward yet again.

Suffice to say that the paint job will never be the same, and the cache remains unfound, although I did claim three FTF's for my day's adventure. Still, I think Bob said it best: "Ouch."

No matter what you may have heard, it's not an acquired taste so much as a challenge to the sensibilities. No person who likes fish could find any reason to complain of the taste of lutefisk, nor is its texture as off-putting as one might believe it to be after a visual assessment of its translucent and somewhat gelatinous nature. In fact, the processing it undergoes renders it boneless, an added benefit for connoisseurs of this quintessential Norwegian holiday fare, but still the dish has its reputation to live down, and therein lies the problem.

In the good old days, lutefisk was made principally from the cod which grew in abundance off the shores of Norway, a pungently scented fish to begin with, and the source of lutefisk's unsavoury notoriety. Nowadays, the lye bath and lengthy rinsing phases of preparation are done commercially, substantially reducing the cook's work, and haddock or pollock are used as frequently as cod and are no more highly aromatic than any other fish one might prepare for dinner.

Although I have lived most of my life among the Pacific Northwest's predominantly Scandinavian population, I had gracefully avoided contact with this suspect delight until becoming acquainted with my fishing buddy, a Norwegian of the first water. Now I am adventurous in my eating, so when he tempted me with a ticket to a local group's annual lutefisk buffet, I said yes without much thought to what I was getting into. Truthfully, I knew nothing about the dish other than the fact that it was fish, and as I told him, I never met a fish I didn't like, but when I met the stuff firsthand, I began to wonder if I'd been unwise. The substance did not look much like fish as it sat in the warming pans quivering like so much pale Jell-o at the touch of the server's spoon, but I figured I could gag down a few mothfuls for friendship's sake if all else failed. It did not help that Sande piled his on a piece of lefse, added mashed potatoes and poured cream gravy over the lot before rolling it up and eating it like a burrito. To me, this seemed almost as peculiar as the Canadian specialty of poutine. I followed his lead nevertheless, and found myself somewhat disappointed that the flavour of the potatoes was stronger than the fish. Shortly after that, I began eating the items separately and enjoying each much more fully.

For five or six years now, I have gone with the family to several different lutefisk feeds. The one we now attend regularly is in the artsy little community of Gig Harbor, west of Tacoma and is held in the latter part of October every year as a function of the small Lutheran church there. I have been ever glad of my daring, and with that statement, comes a word of advice for those of you who are reluctant to essay the smallest taste of some exotic cuisine: Life is too short to fear new foods. Live on the wild side, close your eyes and try lutefisk some time!

My tenure as keeper of a virtual bar is about to end. I have survived the requisite four hundred pages with no lasting damage to my psyche, although at times it has been difficult to stand back and take an objective view of goings-on which rub contrary to my personal grain, principally among the younger, more libertine members. Still, there has been a preponderance of good times among the bad, often crossing the borders of cliques when even sworn enemies have disported with the original spirit of abject silliness which brought the thread its fame. I cannot say that the transition comes too soon, but neither do I leave my position without a sense of sadness at having achieved less than my sojourn's unreasonable goal: restoration of the principle intent. As I prepare to hand the keys to the new owner, I am certain he has a similar mission in mind, and far be it from me to offer him anything but the most fervent encouragement although in my heart, I fear he faces a hopeless task. Time...and four hundred pages...will tell.

On a rare year when the summer has been dry, the autumn nip early and the winds light, the bigleaf maples stage a grand production along a lonesome half mile of highway on the way to town. Along this brief stretch, they are the predominant tree, only shorter Indian plum and sparse vine maple filling the blanks between their trunks with dots of red and ochre, towering above the grey asphalt with vivid arms thrown up against the sky in a reflection of the center line. In fullest glory, the sight blinds the eye with yellow, alight of living firework brilliance within the leaves.

The mystery of the Golden Corridor is one of weather's whimsies, a frivolous exposition brought off for our enjoyment but once or twice in each decade. It is begged from thirsty earth and Jack Frost's pocket, kept only at Boreas' indulgence and its stay predictably terse as if a condensation of its colourful history. A gust here, a degree there brings the house of cards tumbling down in browns or rain closes the curtain untimely as the prima donna shuns her prospective audience as too base to appreciate her art. From green to gold is a logical but difficult transition in this theater, and too often cut from the act which precedes the grand finale.

In the Golden Corridor is a magic which compels the mind to subconscious recognition of the subtleties of the spectrum, a journey in mystical Ångströms at the edge of transcendental perception. It is to be literally entranced by the vision of nameless yellows to go along this suddenly autumnal byway. With a blink of cognition and as fast, even the most mundane driver exits the tunnel into the ordinary reality of a common road as a changed being.

"You're kidding?" I replied to Bob's explanation that there could be five. I could almost swear he knew that's what I was going to say.

"No, Molly's kidding," he answered. Half a heartbeat, and I realized I'd been had. Whether he'd set me up or I'd blundered into it by accident, I'd played straight man to his goofy sense of humour once again.

He busted out laughing. Kidding? You bet she was! Sweet Molly was finishing up her birthing and had already shelled out two adorable baby pygmy goats, darling little girls.

Happy Birthday, kids!

Dreary skies moved me to action this morning to optimize the natural light falling on the handwork which occupies a large portion of my winter hours, moving my best chair south and east to be beside both window and the fire. It is a seasonal fancy, reordering the furniture and, surprisingly, one which the majority of my friends and family find odd. Whereas many of them will decorate to match the holidays, I have always preferred to simply make changes to the arrangements, in effect providing a new look amid familiar things.

In summer, the more fragile items are withdrawn from direct exposure, and consequently, I often supplement with artificial light even during the peak of the day. In its way, the winter illumination is of higher quality, allowing me to see the true colors of floss and cotton as I ply the needle. Certain pieces (piano and desk) are deeply rooted and others (bookcases) too tedious to shift, limiting the options for rearrangement, but tables, chairs and lamps are readily moveable and plants fairly beg to be placed nearer the glass when the sun lowers in its transit. With half an hour's work, my environment has been given a new look, all the neglected corners have been tidied and the cat was only momentarily confused.

With three-quarters of an inch of precip coming down yesterday, it was time to check the propane tank. The gas fireplace is somewhat of a luxury, I'll admit, but since it also functions as a backup heat source, I like to keep it topped up. It has always struck me odd that any home would be constructed to be entirely dependent on electricity in some manner, especially in an area where power interruptions are fairly common.

I had never lived at the mercy of the grid until I bought this place, nor had it occurred to me that furnaces were not equipped with thermocouples until one stormy evening when the lights failed and the rumble coming through the vents fell silent in mid-cycle. The cache of firewood on the slate hearth was sadly empty, so as the indoor temperature dropped to an uncomfortable level, I braved wind and rain to chop a new supply sufficient for the night although I knew the pitchy fire would provide little heat to the body of the house. Although many years passed before I was able to install a gas fireplace, the idea was born then as I lay curled up like a cat on the carpet, keeping only my back and fundament warm until the lights flickered back to life some hours later.

My personal preference has always been for radiant heat over forced air, whether from a wood, propane or free-standing oil stove (not to be confused with the grumbling monster in the closet), a source of warmth to which one turns -quite literally- in need, as if on a rotisserie, basting the legs with heat until jeans scald against calves before performing a half-revolution to toast the other side. And it is a glow which carries well, to follow its grateful recipient back to chair or couch, there to linger while some other task is done; a portable heat, to the point, and not some vague sense of dull, obscure non-discomfort. Yes, I enjoy this simple luxury, and sometimes even when the lights are lit brightly on a cool evening, you'll find me indulging at the hearth a basic human craving for the solace of a simple fire.

A check of my weather records shows that the last significant rainfall in this area occurred in mid-June, so when I woke in the night to the sound of spray rising behind the wheels of the few cars on the road, I was elated. Today's dark skies are making up for lost time, as if to apologize for having forgotten the soil and rivers through the dry months to leave them hard and parched or nearly emptied. The rain comes down in sheets, and puddles stand to confuse the juncoes who have bathed in a basin all summer long. It has come so suddenly, this barrage of precipitation, and it has arrived with an unexpected display of temper. It is not a content, warm drench, no; it spits tiny pellets of ice against the window to be sure we pay it heed. The weather has spun on its heel, and turned its back on summer.

One generally thinks of music appreciation as a human concept, but this morning, the cat provided evidence of the feline ear as well.

Although Skunk is four years old, both her voice and her purr were very slow to develop. When my mother was alive, she tattled to me of Skunk's mournful yowls as she patrolled the house in search of me on days when I was away from home, but many months passed before I heard the sound for myself. It was a horrid noise, strangled around a mouthful of toy squirrel, more a gargle than a meow and loudly uttered. It was a different profanity than the one she applied to a door barring her way to myself beyond it, which was the plaintive, soft mew of an abandoned kitten politely requesting a map to a prospective patron's gate, yet either song was seldom sung. On principle, Skunk was to all events and purposes a silent cat who only spoke her mind when the situation warranted.

During the latter part of July, Skunk was essentially home alone while I travelled. My fishing buddy and his daughters paid her visits every other day, but her nights were empty of the companionship she had always enjoyed. If my absence had been remarked upon while out shopping for a few hours or on a rare overnight stay, it was painfully felt during the twelve days when I never made an appearance, and to fill the hollow hours, my cat began practicing her voice.

When I arrived home from Georgia, she caterwauled the first night through to inform me of her displeasure or to tell me of all that had transpired while I'd been gone, but then her complaints grew fewer and less voluble over the following week, although she talked more during the day than ever before. Following at my heels, she would often draw my attention with a single syllable, reserving her truly memorable arias for the white and tabby-patched friend who often sits outside the kitchen door. If not the silent cat she had once been, her comments were still reserved.

This morning, however, my feline friend entered a new phase in her vocal development. As I stood brushing my teeth at the bathroom basin, I heard the tinny thunk of cat feet on the floor of the tub. It ws followed by a protracted melody which might have raised the neighbours from their beds. It was a carol, no doubt about it, and the venue carefully selected. Like so many of us who daily sing in private concert, Skunk today discovered the magical acoustics of the shower and was delighting in the sound of her own voice caroming off the walls.

Her fingers were burled with arthritis at the joints, twisted and cramped, and yet they set the tension of the thread and the pace of the hook with exquisite skill as my grandmother's fine work grew beneath them. From a hard-spun ball of cotton at her side, she would draw hours of detailed laces as she sat with her eyes focused on some far infinity, her hands active with an independent life beyond the pain. There was a magic in her crocheting, each stitch following its destiny as she ordained the pattern which would give the finished piece its form.

It was at my grandmother's knee where I learned many of the various needlearts, knitting nose muffs for sale to my peers in grade school or sketching lazy daisies onto handkerchiefs with multicoloured floss, and her standards were not easy for a seven-year old child to attain. Yet it was her insistence on patient labour which proved one of my life's greater lessons, for as a schoolteacher, her instructional goal was more than the education in stitchery which it seemed to be. She would remind me that my work was intended as a gift for a person who would appreciate both the skill and time spent in its making when I would bemoan her command to pick back an imperfectly executed stem stitch or wobbly French knot in my embroidery, conjuring up images of disappointment in a flaw and leaving me with a compulsion which is reflected in my handwork to this day.

Even as my grandmother's hands crippled and bent and her vision dimmed, she was diligent to the task of faultless needlework, if on a larger scale with worsted yarns and coarser cottons. The hours she had once spent on doilies and dainties turned to the more mundane: frivolities were foregone for afghans, cutwork laid aside for henscratch and heavy smocking, and still every thread was laid with the greatest care. In her last days, my grandmother practiced as she preached in both her life and her handcrafts and admirably so, to convey a legacy to me beyond her tireless manipulations of fibers: patience serves well.

(With apologies to Bob, who's already heard this story...)

The bridge is not my favourite place to fish, as followers of this blog may have discerned in their prior perusals. Subject to gathering hordes of fishermen during the runs of silvers or kokanee, angling there often falls under the definition of "combat fishing" where competition for the best spots runs high and tempers shorten. Although I have not heard of guns being drawn here as on some of the other local waters, I have myself come narrowly close to fisticuffs with a man who dropped his rod across mine in order to fish where the piscine prey was coming readily to my hook. Lest any of my readers colour their interpretation of this story with an incorrect image of me in their minds, I am not a brawny logger to be challenged man-to-man. I am a scant hundred pounds of tiny woman with greying hair who, for the record, defended her territory with firm and tastefully chosen words.

Currently, the reservoir is being let down for the winter, and as the water level falls, the span of fishable inlet is substantially reduced. In light of the fact that some nice kokanee started hitting two weeks ago, I winced when Sande suggested another trip to the area, assuming that if we did not find the concrete pedestrian bridge lined with fishermen literally elbow to elbow, the run would have ended (which I thought would most likely be the case). Nevertheless, I agreed to go "fishing the fishless waters in the name of friendship" with my 86-year old pal and his two daughters.

Indeed, as we drove down the evergreen-lined access, I was certain I'd been right. The parking lot held but one vehicle. As we unpacked the car, two men walked down the ramp with a bucket which I could see was heavy, and to my surprise, it held at least seven kokanee of 16 inches or more. The day's prospects were certainly looking up! The remaining member of their party (an older lady) was fishing halfway across the span. As the men gutted and cleaned their fish, our group took up positions on either side of her, and within three minutes, I had hooked and lost a decent fish due to line breakage. Such an event makes neophytes weep; we with more history in the sport shrug it off with no more than minor regret.

I was not totally pleased with my position, so after I retied with a stouter leader, I took up a new station more central to the inlet but dangerously close to one of the concrete footings of the bridge. The big fish often lie there in the shadow, but only the more seasoned anglers will risk the peril of snagging, resigned to the possibility of losing rigging on the chance of better game. My choice proved a good one, and I quickly had another fine fish on the hook.

As always, the rooting section took up the cheer: "Wow! That's a nice one!" as I reeled and reeled to bring the writhing beauty up through many yards of open air. As always, I disdained someone's offer to hand-line my prize over the three and a half foot railing, stubbornly wanting the victory to be mine, all mine. With three feet of leader beyond the tip of the rod, I swung the beautiful kokanee up, over and onto the bridge decking, and only then did the hook come free of its mouth as it bounced once on the concrete...and in the next seconds, the fish gave three or four strong flops and disappeared through the bottom two boards of the railing on the far side to splash into the water sixty feet below.

My years of experience as a fisherman came to my rescue. I laughed. Not much else you can do at that point in the game. I laughed, and my fellow anglers laughed with me as I said, "That's why they call it 'fishing' and not 'catching,' one of the oldest fall-backs in the book. I re-baited my hook, dropped the line beside the piling, and before the day was through, the prankster Fish Gods had put a limit of 16-17 inch kokanee in my creel.

The microwave door swung on its hinge, revealing a cup of stone-cold, brown liquid occupying the spot where I would normally set my customary bowl of oatmeal and raisins. I stared at it for a second as if I'd just discovered a mouse in the interior, a little bewildered by its tenancy. How had it come there, and in one of my favourite Old Farmer's Almanac mugs? And what was its hidden message, for surely it must have had one to have made its presence felt in so startling a manner?

I eyed the dark contents warily, assessing. Discerning whether it was tea or coffee would be helpful in uncovering its riddle, but visual surveillance of the substance left me still confused. I had made a new pot of coffee only the night before, and the fact that I could see the bottom of the mug dimly through the liquid only meant that it had not been reheated more than once. Although my mouth was fresh with toothpaste, I essayed a sip. No help there, and the cup's contents were yet a mystery I had to solve.

Now I am known (and infamously so) for my love of coffee and willingness to partake of it in any form, be it caffeinated, decaffeinated, Turkish, weak, strong enough to strip paint, flavoured or not, hot, cold, tepid, or made a week ago last Thursday, but my morning's first beverage is nearly always decaffeinated Red Rose tea brewed lightly. "Leaded" coffee follows shortly thereafter. Therefore, as I started to put the unknown substance in the fridge for later appraisal, a bit of logic formed in the back of my brain. The day was in its youth, I was heading out to fish. Whatever the cup held, it was in no danger of keeping me up past bedtime if I chose to drink it at this early hour. I put it back in the microwave and heated it up to go with breakfast, leaving the new tea to thicken in the pot.

Bowl of oatmeal in one hand and mystery liquid in the other, I settled in at the computer for my morning run. As I composed emails, read the forums, checked the weather and the earthquake pages, I sipped and supped with my mind fully occupied by the information on the screen. When I had gathered the last cluster of raisins into my mouth and swallowed them, I gulped the remaining inch of flavoured water in the mug. Five or ten minutes passed before I thought again about drinking, and then it was to wonder if another cup of something was in order. Only at that moment did I realize that I still had no idea what had been in the mug, now sitting empty on the desk.

The first freeze has snapped in the night air, ambushing the hindmost of the summer's tender plants, biting at their most vulnerable leaves and fruit. The stately tomatoes have gone down on wounded legs and the grapevine's younger shoots have been gutted under the assault of its teeth and claws. The remaining annuals are shivering in their tracks, spent by the chase and coloured with exhaustion, sensing that their time has come, resigned to fate. The predatory frost is on the prowl.

And yet the crisp morning brings sugar to the drooping bunches of grapes pendant beneath the cover of yellowing leaves, imbuing them with an exquisite succulence which was lacking only yesterday. Swollen with flavour, the green clusters are not yet frightened of the picker, to shatter at a touch and fall haphazard to the ground. This is the tithe of rime o' mornings (the 'icing' on the grape, as it were), to set the farmer's table with the sweetest treat of the year in all its glorious abundance as the summer takes its final bow.

An update on the Blogger/Netscape incompatibility problem...

It seems to be only Blogger's front page which causes the browser to collapse. Some fast footwork on my part has allowed me to enter the interior pages successfully.

I must say that I was not pleased when I submitted a bug report to Blogger. Their response was that my complaint could not be handled individually, and they recommended visiting the 'help' pages and forums. Oh? And at this point, I could not get *into* Blogger, so just how was I supposed to effect that, eh? It would be nice if such bug reports went into human hands.

The elk are coming down out of the hills, calling in the dusk of morning and evening in their shrill voices. Their feeding ground has gone to thistles, untended by the owner who in past years mowed and baled the dry grass hay and left new shoots exposed to the hungry herd, a field now useless to either man or beast in its abandonment. The majestic animals have been at work among the plums and apples instead, plucking the harvest ignored by either neighbour. I see their evidence and hear their singing; where a hundred once walked free and highly visible, now only a scattered handful prowl in secret for autumn's feed.

The call of the elk is eerie, a high and thready squeal not fitted to the creature in its timbre or its volume. It cuts the morning fog in a fashion which makes it hard to pinpoint the source, whether high or low on the hill, distant or close behind the hedge of brush immediately beyond the mailboxes, and along the withered creek of an evening, the few bewildered frogs ofttimes speak with greater strength and clarity. Coyotes mock the pitch with their cacophonous natterings, laughing at the irony of so feeble an utterance coming from so great a body as the bull's as he serenades his harem. The elk's illusion is its salvation, the notes of its melody harmonizing among the trees in a tight, disguising unity which hides it, even as its colouration masks it as it moves through sun and shadow.

These days, I listen for the music of elk from the fallow in the dusks of night and morning. Whether I see them or no, they are coming down from the hills, carolling into the fog with their high voices, singing autumn into the Earth.

A thump and bump first made me wonder if a small earthquake had just occurred, and in the next few seconds following, I discounted the idea for the theory that the cat had jumped off something in the kitchen. There was another bump, and then the rolling began. No question about it, an earthquake was in progress.

For as long as I have lived in the Pacific Northwest (all my life but for two years on the east coast), I have never gotten used to eathquakes, have never been able to train myself to respond with the recommended actions, and last night I reacted in typical fashion: I froze in place, hands on the computer keyboard. The disconcerting motion of being carried on a wave passing through the floor beneath me continued for approximately fifteen seconds as the house groaned and creaked and my hanging planters swayed slightly from side to side. Whether my stomach was agitated from the movement or from fear, I can't say for certain, but I was decidedly queasy, and when the initial tremor had passed, another thirty seconds went by when I still had the sensation that the house was sitting on a bowl of quivering Jell-o.

Ironically, I knew exactly what to do next: contact USGS through their "Report A Quake" website to record my experience, and when I brought up the page, the temblor was not yet listed. I filled out the questionnaire, dropped a hasty email to my sweetheart (sound asleep, so far away in safe, solid Georgia), posted a quick note to our forum to let them know what had happened, and five minutes later, the listing appeared, showing a preliminary magnitude of 4.0. I was disappointed. It had seemed stronger than that to me, and I can generally estimate the Richter readings with more accuracy than that.

I had been rather thoroughly frightened by this one, and my mental functions were not operating at peak capacity, so I dithered on the computer a bit past bedtime, knowing I was too shaken (literally) to sleep. I kept checking the various earthquake sites for further information, and was pleased to see the magnitude revised some twenty minutes later to a 4.5 (my original estimation). Reports had come in from a much wider area than I had expected, including Seattle and many points out toward the coast as well as into Eastern Washington. Surprisingly, I received an email from a local geocacher who had received news of the quake but had not felt it, despite their location a mere 15 miles to my south.

I would like to go on record to say that I do not believe this quake is associated with Mt. St. Helens in any way, although I have some misgivings about the larger geographic feature to the epicenter's northwest. Although Mt. Rainier is classified as inactive, USGS has seen fit to install a number of seismic recorders on its slopes and is monitoring 'hot spots' all around the Mountain. Geologically, Rainier and St. Helens are not connected...at least, not yet. As the aftershocks continue, I recall the Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."

Just to show you how things go awry, I am publishing this as I wrote it. If you are reading it, it is safe to assume you have not downloaded the newest version of the Netscape browser. If you have not downloaded the newest version of the Netscape browser and are a blogger yourself, read this before you do.

As a person who is not particularly computer-literate, I do hate 'update' or 'upgrade' notices, especially ones you can't get rid of, such as the one my browser presented me with recently. Thank you, I am happy with my old browser. Perhaps you do have heightened securities available, but I don't visit the type of websites one generally associates with their necessity. You won't find me downloading music clips from the .gov pages I frequent, nor images from anything with less reputation than National Wildlife. In short, my paranoia regarding viruses, pop-ups and spyware keeps me moderately safe: "once bitten, twice shy," as it were.

Furthermore, my computer speaks to the internet via the world's most tenuous dial-up connection, and often not on congenial terms. The two often part ways in a huff and refuse to communicate with one another during their spats without dedicated counselling on my part, a problem which renders lengthy downloads a subject not to be broached until their demands become imperative as they were today. Under my growing frustration, three attempts at update failed before a successful reconciliation with the browser was achieved this morning, at the expense of almost four hours of my patience.

All is said and done at this point. With my usual lack of confidence in the procedure, I shut the computer down when the process was complete, rebooting from scratch with a skeptical eye cast toward the position where I had left the shortcut last. Empty. It reappeared in a different location, as if the dratted thing had a mind of its own, so I grabbed it by its metaphorical ears and put it back where it belonged. Grrrr! I don't like people moving my stuff around without permission. Hesitatingly, I double-clicked the icon and experienced a moment of misgiving when 'the remote computer failed to respond' to its hail, but a second try was successful. The newly refurbished browser came up on the screen with an introduction to its features, all of which were as old and familiar to me as my favourite hiking boots.

I've been using the upgrade for several hours now. Ironically, for my morning's sacrifice of time and nerves, I have been unable to see a single change from the older version. You'd think they'd at least change the decor a little for your pains.

I spoke too soon. It will not let me access Blogger! And they have the audacity to call it an 'upgrade!'

A thin, grey rain is falling, half-hearted and dull, as if bored with its job. It has no work ethic, this mist, and exposes itself in its laziness as an apathetic successor to the ebullient storms of the season's previous employ. Supervised by no strong front, this newly hired drizzle is goofing off. As from my grandfather's day when employees put in hours off the clock in the name of company pride, the weather of yesteryear has spawned a generation which has waned in its commitment to the corporation of autumn. Thunderheads are shiftless, winds puff with diminished ambition and the rain, once enthusiastic, now kicks back and puts its feet up on the desk.

A John Henry of a storm is what we need to break the chains of summer, one game enough to die with the hammer in its hand, and this is the month for it, as recorded history will show. On Columbus Day of 1962, a terrifying extratropical wave cyclone hit the Pacific Coast with the magnitude of a Class 3 hurricane. The winds raked the Seattle area in which I lived, uprooting trees, tearing roofs from buildings as it screamed through the night. Ah, now there was a hard-working storm, and a sight to witness as it bent its back to its labours!

I never pass Columbus Day without a memory of that dedicated tempest, and as I look out at the slothful, spiritless shower beyond my window, I wonder where the glory days have gone.

Read more in Wikipedia: The Columbus Day Storm

Caches are few and far between around here, so when I received notification of a new one this morning, I quickly gathered together the tools of the trade and dashed out the door with hopes of being first to find. In the urban caching community, this is a strongly competitive field, but only recently has the local area felt growing pressure in that regard. Of our local group, I happened to be the furthest removed from the new hide, so uncharacteristically flew beneath the radar for some forty miles (one way) in pursuit of the prize, suspecting every man/woman pairing I passed of being my foremost rivals.

As I made my final turn from the roadway, my enthusiasm began to dim. My way was blocked by a gate which said, "Campground closed to vehicular traffic." Had I read the cache page thoroughly before leaving home, I might have known that the picnic area next door was open at all times of year, weather permitting, but I had not taken time to do more than jot down the coordinates and peek at the hint before leaving home. In any event, it made no difference. I parked and went on foot, only to discover that a signal lock was almost impossible to attain among the tall, dense evergreens.

Following the intermittent arrow on my GPSr, I walked down each of the four spur loops of the campground until I was finally able to locate a trail which took me alongside the river, but the reception was no better even for the slight exposure to open sky. The readings jumped wildly from ten feet to over three hundred from my position, so in an attempt to triangulate, I made several passes through one spot where four stumps fell loosely within the description given in the hint. Yes, that seemed to be the spot, and there were no other stumps within reasonable range.

I spent the next hour in growing frustration, clambering over rotting logs and through ferns, examining any cranny which might have concealed a cache larger than a micro. I crawled on my knees to check deeply beneath each root and branch. I probed into mounded moss with my hiking staff, moved pounds of fallen bark, scrabbled with my fingers among the decaying wood, but no cache came to light, only two silt-filled beer cans which had at some point washed down the river. Out of cell phone contact, I cursed myself for not having read the cache description more thoroughly, but as it turned out in the end, it would have been no help.

Some days, you just shoulda stood in bed.

Of the two of us, Marilyn and I, I was the adventurer when we were kids. Although we'd both grown up in the country and played in the woods behind our respective houses, Marilyn's familiarity with camping was limited to a room-sized canvas tent pitched on level ground no more than twenty feet from the car. Her family carried Coleman stoves, lugged along coolers filled with lunch meat and potato salad, slept on cots and air mattresses and built immense blazes in a firepit, whereas my idea of the sport was a bedroll tossed down on a groundcloth spread over a mound of boughs with Nature's provender to fill the larder, and a tiny Aboriginal-style fire for warmth. I had a tendency to look down my nose at lesser mortals in those days (I was all of eleven and proud of my imagined survival skills), but I could not countenance such a lack in my one and only friend. Thus it transpired that I should take Marilyn camping, my way.

The weather forecast was for drizzle as we set out from the back door of the two-storey farmhouse in which I lived, each of us carrying a swag of a single wool blanket and a heavy painter's drop cloth, bound for the six-acre wood behind the goldfish pond. Our goal was an immense ivy-covered stump dubbed "the Liberty Bell" for its size and shape, all that was left of a massive old-growth cedar which may well have provided timbers for the various structures on the property. The remnant stood fully ten feet in height, and although its core of wood could not be seen from any angle, its diameter must have been a good seven feet beneath the sprawling web of English ivy which hid it so thoroughly from view. It was here we intended to set our camp, with escape to warmth and comfort less than a hundred yards away, to pit ourselves against the environment for two days and nights.

Now it must be said, strictly keeping with the truth of the affair, that my prior experience in such matters was practically nil, but I'd read books and my uncle was a forest ranger, so perhaps I counted on genetics for something it was not equipped to provide. Pluck I had, and then some, but whether or not it could carry both of us through the endurance test was not an issue I had considered, nor would it be the first time I had bitten off more than my boon companion had been willing to chew through to the end.

With some small foresight, I had not disdained the single can of pork and beans my mother provided supplied the expedition, but other than that negligible bit of sustenance and its incumbent can opener and a jug of water, we had taken no foodstuffs with us into the wild, intending to forage among the canes of the hazel thicket and the blackberry patch beyond the barn for nuts and fruits. Had there been rabbits in the field, our attempts at building snares would have been no threat to them, largely because the green berry vines we tried to use as cord failed to perform in the way the Campfire Girls manual had described. So it was we passed our first hours vainly attempting to secure meat for the table. Somewhat deflated, we were forced to fall back on canned goods for our evening meal, warmed over a fire successfully (if slowly) ignited by the 'drill' method of spinning a stick between the palms.

It did not rain that night, but dew fell heavily, and our bedding was somewhat soggy when we woke to a morning sorely lacking in commodities. The new hazelnuts had not yet come on the trees and last year's fall had been holed and devoured by worm and insect, and the blackberries were barely out of bloom. Far removed from the skunk cabbage bogs which had fed us several times when we rented out a fishing cabin father north, in this midsummer season, comestibles were in rather limited supply. Short of pilfering the neighbor's vegetable garden, it seemed we were doomed to short commons for the duration or returning in abject shame to the pantry for a raid. This, pride would simply not allow.

After shaking out the dropcloths and throwing them over branches to dry alongside our blankets, we rekindled the fire to warm our hands before setting out on a breakfast-finding foray. In true spirit of the hunter-gatherer, we had no preconceptions of what we might find as we patrolled the forest, but disappointment dogged us, for the salal and huckleberries were still in blossom and not a mushroom was to be seen in any of the dark glades. At last we came upon a patch of Oregon grape (mahonia), a holly-like plant which bears a small, tart fruit in clusters, edible but not particularly savoury even at its ripest, and these were not quite fully mature. To two half-starved expeditioners in the eleventh years of their lives, the find seemed like manna. We brought about two cups of berries back to camp and proceeded to eat them one by one, grimacing at the acidic taste with every bite.

I am certain now that Marilyn did not share my sense of a goal achieved, but despite my distaste for the breakfast fare in my palm, I felt I had passed a milestone in my fledgling growth as an outdoorsman. Nevertheless, when lunchtime rolled around, I would have been happier with a different entree. Our afternoon foraging brought only more Oregon grape back to the campsite, and by now, we had both had enough of the dish to relish any more. The evening was coming on with clouds and grey skies, so again we stirred up the ashes of our campfire and huddled close over its warmth, pondering what to do about dinner. I suggested a change to a warm meal: Oregon grape, cooked over slow-banked embers.

The pork and beans can had been a fatality of the previous night, so we were left with the problem of how to effect the process. It was finally determined that with appropriate care and caution, the small fruit could be impaled on a tiny twig and roasted like a marshmallow, providing the twig was not placed so close to the few flames that it burned and dropped its burden into the fire pit. It was a slow process, to be sure, but the deed was done at length, and the two explorers turned in for the night under light showers, albeit with growling tummies.

In adversity, we often find hidden resources in both ourselves and others. Having come thus far, now even Marilyn had caught the soul of the adventure. As morning dragged in beneath genuine rain, it found us again huddled at the fire with wool and plastic wrapped around our shivering bodies, preparing skewered, sour berries for our breakfast, but delighted in our accomplishment. We'd gone the distance, and hot lunch was only a sprint away.

So here I am, labouring to learn to juggle and making a little progress, thanks to an on-line friend and a good set of instructions gleaned from the internet. 'Progress' may be defined as being able to have three balls in motion long enough to begin the fifth throw before one of them hits the floor and the other two wind up in my starting hand. We will call this 'progress' because ten days ago, I could barely exchange two balls from hand to hand without dropping one of the pair.

I am able to pinpoint two flaws in my technique, both of which can be remedied by practice, 1) a tendency to throw the third ball away from my body instead of directly upward and 2) a reluctance to let go the fifth ball as I prepare to catch the fourth pass in my starting hand. To further complicate the exercise, the balls I am using are too large for my small hands. That fact came to light today when one of my fishing buddy's daughters spotted my toys sitting on the corner of the desk.

"Where'd you get the juggling balls?" she asked as, to my utmost chagrin, she picked them up and began a demonstration of her skill. Daphne never ceases to amaze me, and although she walked forward to keep up with the flying objects, it was obvious she'd had a great deal of practice and the first thunking noise audible in the room was my chin hitting the floor rather than a dropped ball. It was she who diagnosed the balls as being too large for my hands, something I had already suspected. I had tried to use three rubber cat-toy balls, but their predisposition to bounce left me weary of chasing after them. Daphne sent them gaily in their arcs and I was left staring in admiration. Later, she gave a further demonstration with three common one-inch rocks and never once was heard to utter, "Ow."

Of course juggling is not an art easily described in words or even illustrations, and I should have known what to expect when I pled with her for suggestions to help me master the skill. Her response was elegant in its simplicity: "Don't drop the balls."

The big kokanee were running down at the infamous bridge last week, and now my fishin' buddy has the fever. There's something about hoisting 16 inches of wriggling trout through sixty feet of empty air that's guaranteed to have that effect on a person, even your humble narrator who ordinarily disdains this particular locale as one of the more unpleasant places to wet a line. A channel a few miles long connects two reservoirs at either end, and the bridge lies like a wire across the nose of the funnel at the head of the lower lake. If you don't have to deal with the hordes which normally attend the run crowding at your elbows, you still may find yourself up against the weather snarling across the span, beating you with wind on a good day at this time of year, rain on a bad one.

The spring run was feeble and short-lived, and the sweet summer mornings saw too many weekend warriors armed with weapons which they had no idea how to handle creating chaos among the rank and file who often came and went in disgust, vowing to return in the cooler days of fall. We were among them in shirtsleeves, eyes blinded by the sun sparkling on the river and as unable as they in seeing where lay the flaw in our thinking.

Although most of us Northwesterners accept that rough weather and big fish go hand in hand, it doesn't follow that we revel in it. On the flip side, we do tend to forget our prior experiences with precipitation and chill as soon as word of the first nice kokes gets out, an oversight which often finds us unprepared in the early stages of the season, and an autumn trip to the bridge is frequently the first reminder of what we failed to pack. But do we retreat to the haven of the truck when our hands become stiff with cold and our faces redden in Boreas' breath? Not hardly! We stand, shivering, with rods rested against the rail as the kokanee prowl the water far below, and proudly refer to ourselves "dedicated fishermen" as if the phrase were not a synonym for "idiots."

Corn shucks, that's the first thing I think of when October comes around, corn shucks and my dad, dressed in his brown leather bomber jacket, bringing in the sheaves to stand at either post of the wide driveway gate. They were pale and taller than his child, the bundled stems hewn from the field with his scythe, bound with rough cord at their waists like monks and their elbows crooked to carry the last few undeveloped ears as if bearing prayerbooks to the Mass. Perhaps it was this annual ritual which captivated me at first. I waited on it anxiously as the drying stalks bleached tan beneath the sun, anticipating the special pleasure of seeing my father topple their ranks with a stroke of his great, curved blade.

This is how I will ever see my father: youthful and strong. I was too young to observe the shadow of the Reaper's scythe falling across his life even as he hewed the corn. I see my dad now in my mind's eye: he draws back the heavy wooden handle with his feet planted firmly amid the tatty stubble and brings it forward in a smooth arc across his body, twisting at the waist. I hear the splinter and rustle of the falling shocks as the metal shears them below their jointed knees and, as they tumble into one another backward, my father brings the blade across them as they come to rest and makes one step in preparation for the next sweep of the row. The action marks rhythm -swish, crackle, sigh, swish, crackle, sigh- as the whispering corn subsides onto the earth. I have seen my father's Dreaming sung back into the land.