An old chum of mine passed by one of my resting places along the bike path today. I saw him on the far side of the river, just a glimpse among the leaves, but sight enough that I couldn't mistake the wide shoulders and upright bearing. I was sitting on the slick, machine-cut face of a basaltic boulder, nibbling at a handful of grapes. Twice, I called out. My friend's sleek black head turned, and I'm sure his dark eyes saw me carefully place a grape on the surface of the rock, our secret sign that he should join me. He, however, stood stock still, as if the slightest movement would confirm my discovery of him. I slid my hand into my pack to retrieve the remainder of my snack; then, silently, I laid a few broken pretzels beside the lonely grape.

We kept our rigid perches for five minutes, maybe more, and then, seeing that he intended to come no closer, I leaned to pick up my bike helmet. When I looked up again, he was gone. I put the helmet on and mounted the bike, and as I did so, an elderly gentleman came up from the apartments nearby. As I struck the pedal downward, I greeted him with "G'morning!" although it was pushing mid-afternoon.

"G'morning," he answered back, and at that point, I was already too distant to make a response. Checking back in my helmet's mirror, I saw him step to the rock, pick up the grape and pretzels, but then I looked away, not wishing to see my offering discarded into the grass.

Do good intentions count? It's been a long time since I last gave the local crows their tithe, so I hoped to redeem myself in some part with this small gesture.

My friends won't have been fooled for a minute by this narrative. They all know I'm "a little wacked" on crows. My "crow board" is a subject of some dispute in the neighbourhood, Dennis not caring to have his dogs partake of fish scraps when they come trespassing into the yard, and my mother simply not understanding how I can go about the labour and expense of preparing macaroni-and-cheese dinners for my black-feathered companions. Trust me, the rewards are not something you could easily forget.

Three times (my website only cites two), I have been given a gift in exchange for the food I provide. I suspect these may have come from the family of ravens who have discovered my largesse, but raven or crow, the species is corvid, and they have an aptitude for humour which is unmistakable. The first time I was paid for dinner, I received a bare bone, either ham or t-bone, and therefore not something which could have come from my table. Chances are, it was purloined from Clyde, who also feeds our "black chickens." The second time stunned me with its thoughtfulness. The item placed on the board to replace the meal of chicken skin was a perfectly ripe and totally undamaged cherry, apparently picked and carried by its stem.

The third occasion required sincere effort, and I cannot say whether it was a team project or something done by a solitary member of the clan. I do not recall what I'd put out for their enjoyment that morning, but by evening, in its place, I found a substantial pile (six or seven) rocks, matched for size and arranged in a pyramid. The incongruity of the gesture was that the rocks were virtually identical, and resembled no gravel, either road or river-worn, found nearby.

Sande pokes fun at my communion with crows, and once when we were fishing, after I had carried on a long, unintelligible (to me) conversation with one in a tree above me, he suggested I shut up by saying, "Your throat is going to get sore."

I cease cawing, and said, "Okay, be that way. No fish for you."

The next two hours' fishing was fruitless. Neither of our rods even bobbed. My partner in conversation gave up trying to evoke a response from me and moved further down the lake to ponder what had caused my sudden silence. Eventually, he decided to try to draw me out again. Lighting in the same tree behind me, he uttered a protracted series of caws. It would have been rude not to answer, so I voiced several syllables in the corvid tongue. The echo of the "words" had not died away when my line jerked and I reeled in a fat rainbow. "Toldja so," I said to Sande, who scowled at me darkly for enlisting outside aid.

A grape and a few broken pretzels may not seem like much to put in the parson's basket, but I tried. Caw!

Mother Nature left her pantry door ajar and clever Clyde sneaked in while she wasn't looking to effect a very productive raid. I have to admit the thought had crossed my mind, but I had dismissed it as premature, a waste of time, a project slated to yield too little or nothing for the effort required, so while I dawdled like the grasshopper of fable, Clyde crept ant-like to the picnic in the woods and brought back a produce bag filled with chanterelles.

"You bought 'em," I accused, when he handed me a share. This excellent mushroom waits for the chilly, damp days of October to peek above the detritus of fir needles on the forest floor. The hunter dresses in wool long johns and rainwear to scout their hiding places, and generally wears a splash of garish orange, red or pink to prevent a mistake of identity which could end in a head mounted on someone's cabin wall. It is only during the gun-totin', good-old-boys months that chanterelles appear, never August. Surely Clyde had found them at a store.

My neighbour trusts me not to scalp his best territories, and has often confided where the big fish lie or the blueberries ripen earliest and sweetest, so I waited patiently for the punchline which I knew would follow his reply, "Nope. Got 'em not too far from here." He let me dangle at the end of curiosity's rope for the space of a moment, until finally, my raised eyebrow got the better of him and brought the full confession. "Up by headquarters," he said.

I covered my wince, deliberating whether or not I should mention the recent changes to the regulations covering that particular body of land. Clyde and I have nipped a few fish beyond the legal limit on occasion, as many of the local hunter-gatherers do, to supplement incomes that don't allow for frequent consumption of store-bought protein. He rattled on about the rain and cooler temperatures as a scene involving federal agents played out in my imagination, Clyde being driven, hand-cuffed, at the fore. If only out of gratitude for the bag of ill-gotten gain in my hand, I owed him fair warning. "Um...did you know you can't take anything out of the Park?" I said, "Nothing, not even blueberries? You're supposed to eat it while you're there."

"It's for personal use," he objected. "That's for pickers."

"Nope," I told him, "not for a couple of years now. You can only pick what you're going to consume on premises. I don't know if they'd stick to that right to the letter as far as headquarters property is concerned, but it's law inside Park boundaries. If they wanted to be stinky about it, they could nail you. Better always keep your eye out for a handy stump to hide behind."

Clyde made a joking movement toward the bag of mushrooms sitting on the step. I put my foot on it. "Huh-uh," I said. "I'm having poached chanterelles for dinner."

With a little salt and pepper, I'm all for peasant revolt.

Comeuppance or bad karma coming back to bite me in the bum? One way or the other, cosmic retribution has circled 'round for the many years I was unsympathetic to my ex-husband, a man who suffered horribly with autumn allergies. Even now as I sneeze and snuffle on the periphery of a full-blown attack, my agonies are mild when compared to those he endured. My nose waters, my sinuses ache, pouches swell beneath my eyes and my entire face feels as if it has been thrust into a sack filled with cat hair. Every muscle, every joint, every fiber of my body is rising in complaint against histamines.

Until you've lived it, you can't fully appreciate the sublime humour in pairing a forest ranger with an allergy to Douglas fir. With a bandanna handkerchief knotted bracelet-style around my wrist for easy access, my duties were often exercised among visitors who no doubt took me for a demented semaphorist, signalling them over as I approached to inspect their permits like a backwoods extension of Highway Patrol. The diamond glistening at the tip of my nose may have been mistaken for sweat or for a dewdrop if the day was cool and foggy when, in fact, its condensation nucleus was no more than a tiny, spiky grain of pollen from any of ten thousand nearby trees.

The latest spate (for no other word more aptly fits the definition of my travail) issues from a few days' showers which stirred molds and dust from their period of stagnation. My awareness of it began with a sneeze which I chose to ignore. Soon, I was aaaah-chooing on the hour, half and quarter like a Black Forest clock's cuckoo, and snuffling the minutes between to keep the timed drip from precipitating into my lap.

My sinuses filled with congested torment and I began to rub at my eyes, still not conscious of the changes occurring in my body as anything significantly in deviation from the norm. "It's the humidity," I told myself. After a dry summer, the conclusion was logically drawn. I brushed the cat, certain that her shedding was responsible for the tickling on my cheeks. The aches followed, and I was convinced I was coming down with a cold or the flu. Is it that I think I can deny my frailties that it took so long for me to complete the equation?

As I sit here, hands pressed against my pained face, I think of Bruce, with Kleenex stuffed up each nostril and a bottle of antihistamine in either hand, railing against the tide. It's kinda late now, but I'd like to say, "I feel sorry for you, you poor, poor thing."

Yesterday was wrong-footed. After a sleep disturbed by the antics of a rambunctious cat, I was wakened early by my mother, who had conceived the idea that the toilet would not flush and had worked herself up into a Richter-scaled panic attack over the proposition. I rose groggily, fumbled my way to the bathroom and depressed the lever. With a whoosh, the night's accumulated paper circled briefly and disappeared beyond the bend. After living 27 years in a house with non-functioning plumbing, a growing senility sometimes prevents my mom from placing too much belief in pipeware, although it had not come up before dawn previously.

I could have been amused, but it was rather apparent that my mother was in some physical distress. She claimed to have had another "bad spell" of violent trembling, palpitations and nausea during the small hours of the morning, so after some discussion, it was decided that I would take her to the doctor and forfeit my own appointment if necessary. Caring for the elderly is a job in which the unexpected must always be expected. The prospectus for the day now changed radically. The proposed bike ride was unavoidably shelved, and a sneaking hunch popped up at the back of my brain to suggest that the panic attack might have been spawned by the idea of spending the day at home alone.

The visit to the clinic proved nearly pointless. My mom refused an EKG, and seemed only to be interested in telling doctor that her daughter was unduly concerned for her health. Despite the knowing glances he flicked my way, nothing else could be done if we are to comply with her advance directive. In other words, she'd had a nice ride and a little chat on Medicare's tab, and nothing more. As for me, my cholesterol numbers reflected the benefits of exercise, an item sorely lacking on the present menu.

Our next stop was the natural foods co-op, and I made the mistake of inviting my mother into the wonderland of gleaming produce, racked cheeses and pungent spice. She roamed among the aisles with the curiosity of an explorer in a new-found land while I dawdled over my fare of figs, oatmeal and rice cakes, and when I went to retrieve her, she needed to be steered by the elbow to the exit. Of all the delights, she only selected a jar of black cherry juice in an hour's perusal of the very small shop. I could believe she would not have enjoyed a trip to the zoo any more than her wanderings among the shelves.

By the time we returned home, I was too worn to take an hour's ride between house and Post Office, even if time had been permitting. I sunk into the chair, dozing with the cat on my lap until dinnertime. I dreamt, and muttered in Spanish in my sleep, then waked feeling no more rested than before.

The phone rang as we were dining on leftover pancit, Sande on the distant end, his signal scattered amongst the hills. I caught, "...home in half an hour or so?" which birthed a vision of a trophy fish I'd missed seeing hooked. The half hour waned and faded without his appearance at the door, so finally, I called his home.

Well, it could have been worse if the prize had lived up to my mental image of a shining steelhead, his "dream fish," taken in my absence. Nevertheless, a seventeen inch trout is bad enough when it comes to adding insult to injury, and you won't be able to walk down the same side of the street as that man for a good many days to come without feeling the golden glow.

Some day, when I've had enough sleep and feel on top of the world, I'll look back on days like these and remember them with humour. You've got to admit, flushophobia is worth a laugh, even when the sun's not up.

A hypothesis: the length of time a cat will occupy a lap is directly proportional to the inconvenience it can cause. Empirical studies are showing the supposition to be valid over the long term, e.g. the distance of various types of handcraft from the host increase the weight of the symbiotic body, consumption of a double grande decaf non-fat mocha prolongs the occupation logarithmically over ingestion of 6 ounces of plain water, and an appointment will extend tenure indefinitely. In addition, the human's thwarted desire for caloric input seems to indicate a telepathic trigger capable of inducing a profound somnolescent state in the reposing feline, including deep relaxation of the long muscles accompanied by nervous twitching in the furthest extremities.

A corollary: the temperature of the feline body rises at a higher rate than both the ambient air temperature and the host's tolerance for warmth. Further field observations include marked spikes when a blanket, electric or ordinary, is applied.

At nearly two years old, Skunk has discovered the lap. It was forced upon her through objections of teeth (the toenails being absent) and great struggle, and it was only when I discovered that she liked being brushed under her ears and chin that real progress began to be made. In the space of three days, her attitude toward my ministrations became benign.

Her overall mental development has been marked by sudden spurts of more mature behaviour, as if in her sleep, certain cells of her brain abruptly activated, comparable to a child learning to read a primer on their first attempt. Her comprehension of right, wrong, and I-can-get-away-with-this are astonishingly well-defined, and her defiances of the rules are done with a stealth which speaks of high intelligence. I think that Man has gone too far in his denial of "human" critter behaviour under the label of anthropomorphism because clearly, there is a logic to be observed in many of the things our furry and feathered friends do.

Although I don't believe Skunk has risen to this level yet, I have known cats and birds to feign sleep in order to keep their human perch stationary. Do they know we take pleasure in their company, and play upon our sympathies? I asked myself that after an hour of holding my water, waiting for an eye to open so my conscience could vindicate itself if I set her on the floor. It would seem that I am being trained in the art of remaining motionless for and by the cat coiled on my tummy. Cat knows the value of reward.

Today, I am enervated. If you are like most people, the vision which jumps into your mind is of your author bicycling up a trail at high speed or leaping stream-washed boulders in hot pursuit of the fat trout at the end of her line, but you couldn't be more wrong. Take a look at me sitting limp in my chair. I am sapped, tapped, bone-weary, exhausted, tired, shagged, fagged and fatigued, because that, dear reader, is what 'enervated' truly means.

All right, I am not actually enervated today. I simply wanted to make my point. Misuse of this particular word is as widespread as supposedly educated folks who say 'snuck' for 'sneaked.' There ain't no 'snuck,' Chuck. It's not a word.

I am a great fan of Harry Potter, but not of J. K. Rowling, because she perpetuates the erroneous definition of enervation with a magical spell. "Ennervate!" one of her protagonists cries (undoubtedly Hermione Granger), and restores another Hogwarts student to their previously active state. Perhaps Ms. Rowling wishes to exert poetic license with her creative spelling, as if the additional 'n' might be responsible for effecting a counter-curse, but I think not. I think Ms. Rowling labours under a ponderous burden of common misconception. (Never fear. I sent a vituperative letter to her editor, pointing out his responsibility in letting the error slip by. I suppose I had nothing better to do with my spare time on that occasion. Perhaps it was raining, as it is today, and I was frustrated at not being out-of-doors.)

A few basic prepositions in Latin go a long way when determining the meaning of an English word. 'E,' for example, denotes 'out' or 'out of,' in the sense of 'without,' therefore, 'e-nervate' is 'without nerve' or 'without vitality.' Let's see...'e-viscerate' would serve nicely to pink your memory. Remember this image: when I eviscerate a fish, I am certainly not re-stuffing it!

As for the other major offender, 'snuck,' I suppose there's no hope. Its use has become so prevalent that even well-educated people lapse. Is it so hard to pronounce 'sneaked' that sheer enervation overwhelms our tongues and lips?

The price we pay for living among the lofty evergreens and gabbling, fish-filled streams of the Pacific Northwest is that we sometimes have to turn our furnaces on in August. Yes, following a streak of ninety degree days that felt like it would never end, the daytime highs have dipped to the low sixties, and as the rain tumbles down from the vast well of the atmosphere, I nudge the thermostat up to the flannel shirt mark. Layering is de rigueur in these latter days when the slightest ray of sun can spike the mercury, and as quickly as the outer covering can be tossed off, it can be drawn on again at a downward plunge.

The cat knows it's fireplace weather, and will sit glaring balefully at the blank glass screen until someone acknowledges her discomfort with a flick of the remote. You'd have had to laugh yesterday evening when, from a state resembling an overheated marshmallow before the giddy flames, she sought the cool kitchen linoleum to finish her pre-bedtime nap.

I am fond of the grey days, despite wanting to be out and about. I love the freshening of summer's dusty colours beneath a varnish of rain. The scent of a newly damp road, whether paved or gravel, is one I've known and enjoyed since childhood, a vivid olfactory memory unmistakable in its character, slightly redolent of rubber tires and automotive fluids in an altogether perversely pleasant way. Rain is welcome, rain is good, and despite objections from out-of-state immigrants, it can be borne with good cheer.

Autumn has sprung upon summer unexpectedly this year, and whether the creature has been destroyed or deftly skittered into hiding cannot be told for weeks to come. September may find its nose peeking around the corner timidly, or it may risk a final, bold assault upon its human prey before the cooler months devour it in their turn. For now, my hand, uncertain of the weather's temper, will hover close to thermostat or flannel as closely as the cat sits, guardian of the fire.

Apart from being sealed inside a 55-gallon drum with two hundred assorted spiders, I fear nothing so much as making a fool of myself, so today, when I made an appearance in front of a stranger with my little Spanish dictionary in hand, my courage was screwed so tightly to the sticking point that its threads had stripped. I knocked on Esther's door with no idea what command of English this recent immigrant might have, since all our written communications have been in her native tongue, and I was bowled over when she greeted her unexpected caller by name and invited me, "Come in! Come in!"

I am decidedly ill at ease around other human beings, especially those unknown to me. Although I had exchanged a few quick words with her at the end of a day's fishing, the suggestion that we meet and assist each other's language studies had been her husband's. I was longing for a companion with whom I could speak Spanish in my faltering manner, someone who would correct me gently and perhaps not blush when I used a verb with a secondary and unintended colloquial meaning. The thought of assisting her with English struck my fancy like a gong.

I entered the small apartment and was immediately assailed by la hija, not quite two. As my hostess reproached her child for being too rambunctious, I listened to the mother's quick-fire sentences and caught not a single word. Having learned my bit of Spanish from a carefully enunciating computer program, I was unprepared for the real world of elided vowels and glossed syllables, although when Esther returned her attention to me, her words were English.

Her accent is heavy and her command of verbs uncertain, yet she speaks the language far more fluently than I believe she knows. I praised her for it, and she in turn praised my ability with written Spanish without realizing that I was groping for some small sentence I could vocalize with any degree of confidence. I wasn't doing very well. The words had fled into the recesses of my brain as surely as trout seek concealment in the weeds.

Typically, when I am nervous, I wax pedantic, and had to slap myself up-side the head a few times as the conversation continued. I think Esther saw my dilemma, and tried to put me at my ease. Finally, after exploring the territory of English for twenty minutes or so, she suggested, "Now you talk in Spanish."

I was rescued by la hija, rummaging in the closet for some crayons to eat.

My hostess addressed me with a question, only part of which fell within my vocabulary. "No comprendo," I apologized. She repeated it carefully, and I understood her to be asking what I'd had for breakfast. She was doing an excellent job of trying to draw me out. I groped for words, "Harina de avena y...pasas." I don't use leche or azúcar, and was hoping that my peculiar eating habits wouldn't become an issue. The harina stuck on my pronunciation, which I had given a broader vowel, making it sound like 'arena,' sand. Hominy grits aside, that wasn't what I ate.

We got past that rough patch, and once again, I was saved by la hija, who dived behind the couch and down to its furthest end, and then returned on all fours. "Es un oso en una cueva," I announced, on familiar territory with animals and their habits. Esther laughed, corrected my 'es' to 'está,' and conversation resumed in English. Once a bear, always a bear, but a bear in a cave may not stay in the cave.

For a couple of hours, we chatted back and forth, largely in English. We read aloud from a Spanish Readers' Digest containing an article on moths and butterflies and an English "Snow White," either translating as we went, or practicing pronunciation. I was very amused at Esther's elongated rendition of the word 'dwarf,' but after we had broken it down into 'dw' and 'orf,' she was able to manage it quite well.

I emerged from the session sodden with sweat, for such is the toll human contact takes upon me, but as I said in yesterday's posting, the proper attitude will make this venture possible in the end. I am highly motivated to learn to speak Spanish fluently, and if I make a friend in the process, or help someone gain a greater command of English, so much the better. For all my nervousness and unease, this was a highly productive day. We hardly used the dictionary at all.

"You are the person you believe yourself to be," I wrote a cousin, illustrating how attitude shapes our lives.

The actual subject matter was bifocals and adjusting to them from single-vision lenses. I had suggested that my relative look toward the process as one of attaining the convenience of not having to switch from one pair of glasses to another instead of a skill to be conquered only with great effort. It is our nature to seek reward and avoid unpleasantness, but we must learn to use the tendency to our advantage, and that's where attitude comes into play.

If, for example, the secretary of your club has just surprised you by saying that this is your week to provide cookies for the meeting and your kitchen is presently a mess, you may view the scenario in two ways, as a) a terrible burden imposed upon you without fair warning, or b) an occasion to provide a special treat for friends with the added benefit of inspiration to get a distasteful task over and done with. If you focus on being put upon, of course you'll be miserable, whereas every stroke of the mop done with the thought of impressing the club's president with your Lemon Crisps and perhaps securing a candidacy for next year's show chairman will seem light as a breeze. Attitude, attitude, it's all in your attitude.

Great things are possible for people who truly believe in themselves, and those who believe they are failures are doomed before they begin. I see extremes of it in those around me. In the news, we hear of blind adventurers climbing mountains, paraplegics winning slaloms and such, people who surpass what would rightly be called their physical limitations. Call it "drive" or call it "attitude," it makes the person an achiever.

While most of us will never face challenges such as these, we have our own mountains to climb. No one is suggesting that we tackle Everest first off and re-make our entire personality. Better we start on the lowland trails and build up the muscles we need to convince ourselves we're capable of exploits on a larger scale. Start by revising the defeatist attitude on some small thing like bifocals, and create an outlook for the project overall where gain outweighs the pain. Refuse to let competing negative influences sidetrack you from the goal ("my eyes get tired," "it's easier to just go get my other glasses"). Distract yourself with something (a trick I used when climbing was to subdue physical pain with the mental activity of multiplying several-digit figures in my head). The next time you look around, you'll be closer to the finish line, and that's incentive on its own.

Yep, if somebody tells me I've got an attitude, I'll say, "Damn right," but I had to cultivate it. I'm proud to say it's taken me to a lot of summits, physical and psychological, and today, I am ready to spring the next hurdle. I know that to falter is to stumble, so faltering is not an option. I am what I believe in, so up I go, over and beyond.

Thunder spoke in the night, and the pale suddenness of lightning illustrated deformed shadows against the textured walls of the bedroom. The clatter of raindrops on shingles was followed by tinny pecking in the gutter, as if a flock of chickens was feeding along the eaves. I lay listening to the surge and fall of the shower's intensity, the rain barely audible over the meandering, angry thunder. It was a good sound, a fresh sound, and I could hardly begrudge it waking me.

August's ego suffered a mortal blow from the storm's cursing, and she has crept into her den to sulk. The weather has turned, if the forecast can be believed, for rain is in the offing (and the awning, naturally) for the remainder of the newborn week. One and three-quarters inches fell here last night, and the thirsty earth gulped dry every puddle of it by dawn.

The return of rain drives western Washingtonians a little mad, and last night, to wit, it came down in torrents (maybe even Bakersfield). Now that I've gotten that out of my system, let me say it was as welcome as heaven's own manna or a day in spring. Yet I am both jubilant and despondent with its coming, caught in ambivalence's dewy web between the onset of the year's cleansing season and the lessening of outdoor activities. I shall damn or praise the rain alternately, as it complies with or contends with my schedule, and occasionally, I will defy it and be soaked in the name of recreation.

You can always spot the Californians. They're the ones with the umbrellas. No true and self-respecting native to this State owns one. We place our faith in Gore-tex, and failing that, hip waders. Jokes aside, wet-side Washingtonians are proud of their lead-grey skies and traffic-slowing downpours, and wouldn't trade for all the apples in Wenatchee. For good or ill, rain is as necessary to our lives as breathing, eating and contributing the government's mandatory tithe. Its benefits come with a cost, but a fair price it is for our glorious summer days.

This evening's air is spotted with fine, infant precipitation. The cloud deck is sagging heavily among the trees and hills. We may, in all senses of the phrase, look forward to rain by morning.

Twice a year, fishing comes to a standstill locally, and we are in the barren of August presently. The shallows available to bank anglers have warmed to pleasant bathwater temperatures and, if not clotted with algae, they are lifeless to the naked eye. No rise dimples the surface unless bluegill, bass or perch can be stirred to suck a fallen insect from the thin, gluey scum which lies like oil on the surface. The firm-bodied trout have gone to the depths, torpid, and they are not inclined to take snacks, let alone a hearty meal.

The fishermen are in denial, downcast (excuse the pun). They want fish, therefore, fish should come. Their lines trail limply into the distance, burdened with a laundry of lost hope, pinned here and there with a tag of decomposing weed. Their attitude is as dull as the water: oh well, at least we're fishing.

Sande has swallowed the lure of steelhead, despite the predictable outcome for two less-than-knowledgeable anglers playing a game of wit and skill where luck is no one's friend. The steelhead river is fast and deep, generally the domain of drift boats, and I am too short to wade into reach of the productive current, Sande too cautious and conscious of his age. I would sit out this dance, but for my faithful sidekick's ambition to hook the grandfather of all trout. He dreams of steelhead like I dream of sturgeon, and as vainly, without a watercraft.

Around the corner of the season, there are salmon with fresh rain in their gills and monikers that detract from their edibility: chum, dog, humpy, pink. They're smokehouse fare, but tasty given proper treatment. Close on their silver heels are the glamour fish: chinook and coho. At either table, I can play a good hand. For the bank fisherman, this is high sport, and peaked for me last year when I wrestled a 40" fairly hooked king for 45 minutes before getting it to land. Now that's a fish fight!

For now, however, we have the slow month of August to endure. It's not so long that I begin to see a fantasy of fins as my eyes wink shut at bedtime, nor will my patience be stretched too thin before September washes summer from the rivers and invites her prodigals upstream. The big fish are coming, sure as Christmas, and I'm for conserving my strength right now.

I got back on the horse. Twenty-two miles was my score for the day, and I would have gone on longer, but for another appointment. Not a twinge of pain. I'll be back to forty next week, barring weather, and the road bike should be repaired in time for the following week's ride.

Recently, vandals have been smashing windows in vehicles parked at two of the trailheads, so today, I drove a few extra miles and pulled in at the city park. The trail runs conveniently beside it, the only difficulty being in choosing which direction to go. I chose uphill (a relative term, since at any point, the trail's easy grade is three percent or less). Paving the last few miles of the upper section is slated for September, so I veered onto highway shortly before reaching dirt.

At trail's end, I lounged for a bit in a shady picnic spot beside a creek and considered how my body was performing. I had planned to ride ten to fifteen miles, no further. I felt good, every muscle cell anxious for activity.

Coming back, I had the option of taking the highway again, or sticking to county roads which climb several hills. That, I decided, would be the true test of my injured hip. If I could get up the nastiest stretch, I'd pronounce myself healed. All right, county roads, then! And off I went.

Several smaller rises lay between Nasty and the resumption of Flatland. None of these gave me the slightest trouble. In fact, my legs felt stronger than the day of the accident, showing that I'd gained more than I'd lost. Even Nasty fell behind me with relative ease. I found myself using a higher gear, even on the mountain bike.

I zipped back to town, careful to slow down for pedestrians and other cyclists regardless of their size, pedalled past the car without a thought of stopping. I wheeled on down to the McMillin trailhead against the wind, took a turn in its parking area, and rode back happily to my starting point with the breeze at my back. Yep, everything was back in working order, and if I hadn't had an important afternoon engagement, I might have pushed another ten miles or so.

The road bike is still waiting for its new frame, and I'm waiting for the call. You can't keep a good (wo)man down.

Prior to my cycling accident, I had never used acupressure for anything more serious than a headache. On the face of it, the principle is simple to understand. One applies firm pressure in a pre-determined direction to a specific nerve cluster ("tender point") to stimulate blood or "energy" (chi) flow to a certain portion of the body, giving the healing process a bit of a push from behind, so to speak. With respect to muscular problems, the same might be accomplished with hot or cold packs, however, acupressure may also address other internal disorders just as effectively. There are a number of theories as to why it works, ranging from the patient's susceptibility to suggestion to artificially increasing the body's production of endorphins. Whatever the mechanism, the practice brought me relief from pain and, I believe, a quicker healing. I'm ready for another ride, and it hasn't been quite a week.

My primary area of concern involved the right hip. Although I had landed on my left side, my spine twisted in the fall, possibly aggravating an old climbing injury (see 14 August 2004). For the first few days following the bike crash, I was finding it painful, if not impossible, to bear weight on my right leg first thing in the morning. I referred to an acupressure manual, hoping to find some way to alleviate or reduce the spike of pain generated in the hip joint each time my foot touched the floor. I was surprised to discover that after a few minutes' use of pressure points and one simple exercise, I was able to walk the rest of the day without a twinge. However, I concluded that the acupressure was merely masking the pain rather than contributing to healing, a supposition that I now feel needs to be revised. After four daily treatments, I was able to walk without pain and ceased administration of the technique.

In addition to the hip treatment, I simultaneously treated a wrenched neck and shoulder, difficult to effect on one's own person, since the force required against the pressure point often creates its own tension in muscles on the opposing side. I elected to concentrate on one side only. Not only did I receive relief from the immediate pain of my injuries, the acupressure was also effective against an existing condition of bursitis! To my amazement, the swelling in the shoulder joint diminished into normalcy, and the knotted trapezius muscles relaxed fully. This was an unexpected benefit, and one most welcome.

I find, too, that my bruises are disappearing faster than anticipated. I bruise easily and deeply, and have a history of remaining discoloured for weeks from something as simple as resting my foot on the opposite knee. I can credit nothing other than the acupressure for this change, no change of diet, no poultice, no medication.

If you had told me I would see this much improvement in this short a time from simple pressure against nerves, I would have scoffed and dismissed you as a faddist. Today I will say, "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it."

Suggested reading: "Acupressure Techniques," by Julian Kenyon, M.D., Healing Arts Press, Rochester, Vermont. This is largely a manual of pressure points, not an instruction book. Nevertheless, I would recommend it even to novices.

My garden was carefully planned in shades of blue and purple this year, but something's gone amiss. Laughingly, I'll blame Park Seed Co., with whom I've done years of business. In a rare mis-pick, they sent me a five-pack of cosmos varieties instead of pennyroyal (an insect repellent meant for the herb plot) and, typically of Park, they told me to keep the seeds when informed of their mistake. Thrilled, I sowed several dozen Jiffy Pellets with this windfall, and am now reaping the reward in a garden vividly orange, despite statice and asters making weak, cool-spectrum incursions here and there.

It's a lovely garden, but it's a far cry from blue.

When the seed catalogues arrive, I first run through them for an overview. A few things will catch my eye as must-haves or maybes, and from this compass, I take my bearings. If the mental projection tends toward a hue, the next time I review the catalogue, I begin to form an outline with its major points delineated in a predominating colour. At this milepost, height and growth habit can narrow the list of choices, and the candidates are recorded on a scratch pad for further reference.

Now a rough draft of the garden is drawn up with the perennials clearly marked. It is here that I frequently err in my estimation of required space. An X does not properly represent the sprawl of a delphinium, and the rectangle allotted chives and onions is invariably not to scale. The camellia has been forgotten, and allowance for the border of gazanias overlooked. My chart becomes a geography of tiny cantons, striving to squeeze the greatest population in the smallest area. Nevertheless, I have learned my tendencies in estimation, and am able to weed the hypothetical garden by half. I am left with a dozen or so species at my disposal, and a realistic approach says that six is probably one too many. I crop the list again, and settle for seven. The order goes to Park in the following mail.

Depending on the dollar value of your order, Park sends bonus varieties specific to your climactic zone. You will notice that I did not consider whether they would fit well in my horticultural scheme. When the order arrives, I discover marigolds, petunias, nasturtiums or some other type of homeless kitten straggling in behind.

Come spring, three seed flats (each holding 72 Jiffy Pellets) again restrict my over-enthusiastic nature. I know from experience that this is the capacity of the plot of land. I review: "twelve gazanias, twenty-four helichrysum, eighteen rudbeckias...no, better make that a dozen..." until the pots are full. My diagram is clear, my mathematics perfect, my intentions good to weed out all but one seedling in each pot.

Was it Bobby Burns who said, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley?" I have again neglected to consider all those free zinnias which are to be directly sown into the ground after danger of frost has passed.

Yesterday's mail included an extensive, massive and very dry genealogy, labouriously compiled over many years and at great expense by an aunt by marriage who's gone a little wonky on the subject. In my experience with genealogies and those who research them, two principle observations may be stated: 1) the people who devote themselves to exhuming the paper bones of ancestors are all a little wonky, and 2) life boils down to a few bare dates in the end.

I feel certain that my great-great-grandmother had stories about her own grandparents that she passed down to her offspring, just as my mother heard the story of Lloyd who was savaged by a grizzly and told the tale of his amazing survival to me; yet nothing is left of my distant maternal relative's anecdotes to be recorded on paper now, and her vibrant oral histories exist only as diminished sound waves faintly rippling the gauzy air.

"When Memory lives, Spirit endures," I wrote in a condolence. "No spirit may be said to have passed from this Earth as long as its memory remains with those it has touched; thus any Being which has ever been loved exists in some part within those who still care for it." My great-great-grandmother has died "forever dead," as the forest pygmies say.

The sum of this woman's mark upon the world is contracted into a few lines stating date of birth, date of marriage, children born to her, and date of death. That, four generations later, is her value: a mote in the eye of the flea on the tail of an unconcerned Universe, and devoid of any stain of personality. Tell me instead that her laugh was musical or harsh, that she smelled of violets or roses, or that her hands were rough and work-hardened, or whether she caressed the son who would carry the family name with pale, soft fingers. I read her statistics and find her cold as government archives, grey as concrete, and I do not see a person in my mind. I am grieved by the absoluteness of her departure from the world, grieved more for her than for my lack of her acquaintance.

So it is that we shall all be reduced to the minimum of our contribution: that we walked the Earth for so many days. It begs a question which may only be answered with ambivalence: What is the purpose of life? The response: Does it matter? If I should act in benefit of my fellow man, will your recollections of me preserve my essential spirit longer than if I made war against him? If I amass a fortune or if I live the life of the ascetic, what of my true person passes into a future genealogy? My physical self, scattered to atoms and particles, will continue reborn in tree, water and stone far beyond the days allotted memory of a human, in a natural document, pedigreed and alive.

The pruners and pickers arrived this morning, bent on a good day's work. They began with the Whatzit Tree, the unidentifiable weeping ornamental, and soon had it looking like a bonsai version of a trimmed willow, its long, trailing branches pared to a uniform distance from the ground. The handsome boss cast an eye over the work, and was obviously not satisfied. He wove his three-tined fork through the crown of the tree, and pulled several vertical twigs down so they could be cropped off short.

They passed the dogwood by, its lower trunk smooth of any offshoots, and the next time I looked out, the younger fellow was making a botched job of the red Japanese maple. Once again, the boss intervened and nudged his protege aside to attempt improvements. The apprentice started on the contorted filbert as his superior began mowing the lawn, and here I felt it necessary to intrude. I did not want Harry Lauder's Walking Stick pared down, not even slightly.

I approached the workers cautiously, and then addressing the younger from a distance which surprised him, I suggested that his talents might serve better among my neighbor's trees than on my precious hazel. He looked up, as if to say with a glare, "Who are you telling how to do the job?"

The spike wandered casually away from the garden, joined forces with the three-prong buck, and the two leapt the wooden fence for their next appointment with Clyde's apples. The girls showed up to tidy the tender ground browse, an old doe with her daughter, and a spotted fawn for each.

A little later, the phone rang. Clyde said without preamble, "Dennis has got a big plum picker in that yellow plum tree."

"Yeah, they were over here, the whole famn damily," I replied. "Which one is it? The three-prong?"

He chuckled like he'd caught somebody playing a prank. I could hear his smile when he led me on, up and out of my chair. "No, I mean a really big plum picker." I peered out the window toward Dennis'. Sure enough, there was a bull elk, a long-tined spike, and he had nibbled the yellow Christmas ornaments in scientific order from the bottom to head height, and was straining to reach the higher ones. He'd already cleared the purple Italians lower down the line.

Clyde laughed again. "He's been at it a couple of days," he said. "Found something on my trail t'other day and I couldn't figure out what it was. He eats the pits, too." I got the picture without the further elaboration which followed. "He's pretty loose. Been eatin' plums for about a week."

The young bull obviously enjoyed them. Even Dennis' Doberman barking at his heels failed to send him too far from the tree. After a couple of sallies, the dog retreated to his doghouse, deflated of any pretention to his value as the property's guardian.

Neither Clyde, Dennis or I would dream of potting a little venison from this local herd. So we lose some trees, a crop of fruit here and there, so what? There's plenty, even if you have to go up a ladder after it. If our four-footed neighbours have fallen on hard times, it's only decent to share.

Conclusion: guppies are not a beginner's fish. After I cleaned the aquariums at the first of the month, one of the two adult males rapidly sickened and died, whether from the shock of being caught and removed to a smaller bowl for the cleaning process or from the amount of debris raised by the siphon, I can't guess. The symptoms were that of dropsy, which has been responsible for several guppy losses. I am now left with one adult male and, remarkably, the two babies.

An empty chamber in either of the two aquariums, both of which have a separator screen dividing them into two equal parts, offends my sense of feng shui. A week ago, despite hot weather, I brought home Haze, a light blue male betta, to replace Mr. Fish. I seem to be able to keep bettas successfully, but considering that they live in truly rank waters in their native habitat, this is no credit to me. One simply feeds them daily, adds more water as the level subsides due to evaporation, and cleans them monthly, replacing approximately a third of the water volume.

I enjoy bettas for their colors and their flowing fins, but despite suggestions that they can be housed in very small containers, I can't bring myself to range them along the top of a bookcase, one after another, in tiny bowls. Loomis and Haze share a five-gallon tank. Each side has artificial plants (silk or plastic) as well as a gravelled floor, and the whole is filtered, something entirely unnecessary for bettas if you are willing to make frequent replacement of a portion of the water. In other words, my two bettas have living conditions better than many of their relatives, and my conscience is salved for their restriction to captivity.

At first, Haze cowered before Loomis' angry territorial display. Loomis is red, older and larger, and looks like the devil himself when he raises his fins and flares his gills at an interloper. Poor Haze fled to the furthest corner of his tank and hid behind silk shrubbery, reluctant to come out even to eat. Within a few days, he'd grown braver, and although he kept a close eye on the crimson demon on the other side of the partition, he'd take pelletized food fairly close to its top edge. Then he seemed to realize that Loomis was nothing more than a posturing bully, impotent, and this emboldened Haze to get quite close and stare his rival in the eye. Loomis charged the divider, set on mayhem. Haze backed away, still facing his furious tank mate, and I fancy he might have been amused when Loomis' nose came hard against the plastic.

The younger Haze still understands the pecking order. To date, he has not raised gill or fin in challenge to Loomis, although when I showed him a mirror, he made a showy threat against the image of himself. He's got it in him, has Haze. In their aggressive way, they're keeping each other company and entertained.

As attrition takes its toll of guppies, their vacancies will be filled with other bettas. After all, I kept Mr. Fish alive well past his normal life expectancy. I might as well stick with the job I know I can do well.

Today, the bruises show and the aches are all too apparent. From just below the ears to the ankle joints, I am in a world of hurt.

The worst of it lies in the sacrum, a portion of my anatomy which has seen its share of woe. Many years ago (and I should be reminded how many, lest I forget my age), I led a climb on Mt. St. Helens through a minefield of crevasses on a glacier which no longer exists. It was challenging, if only to find a route through the maze, and I was rather exhilarated when we reached the summit. We descended by a different route, only to find ourselves in unstable corn snow and hidden water ice, but despite falls by every member of the party, we arrived at the top of Dog's Head without injuries. Here we unroped and, feeling macho, I took the burden of 150' of wet kernmantle onto the top of my pack.

As we came down the face of the Dog (a slope which was eminently well-suited for glissades when snow-covered), I decided to cheat and hasten the descent with a standing skoom in the loose pumice. I lost control when I hit a patch of concealed ice and went flying through space for twenty feet or so, to land on my fundament on a pointy rock. I promptly lost consciousness, and my climbing partners hastened to my aid.

To cut a long, unpleasant story short, I walked off the mountain slowly several hours later under my own steam, and it wasn't until the following day that I admitted I might need medical treatment. Under x-ray, it was revealed that I had fractured the sacrum as well as crushing the uppermost vertebra in my coccyx. Can't exactly put a cast on that, now, can you?

I was working as a forest ranger at the time and never missed a day's work. I was put on light duty, and stumped around the parking lot with a cane, making "visitor contacts." One evening, I stubbed my toe on a root beside the cabin's outhouse and lost all feeling in my legs. It came back a few hours later, but it was probably the worst scare of my life. For this reason, I am a bit concerned when an injury involves the sacral regions.

Crawling around on the floor with the cat today, I am aware of damage which yesterday was not apparent. I am not alarmed, merely anxious. If it has not improved by Friday when I have an appointment for another reason, I'll request an x-ray.

Of course, I could always hop on the mountain bike and go for a ride to see if I can loosen it up. Some people got no brains a-tall.

I've never had a Friday the Thirteenth before.

I t-boned a very small bicyclist while moving at a good clip along the Foothills Trail. It grieves me to report that there was a fatality: my pretty new bicycle, folded and mutilated beyond all hope of redemption.

After making a quick summary of my appendages to see if there was any excruciating pain radiating from them, I rolled my body closer to my victim who sat clutching his small leg and rocking to and fro. He was conscious and sitting erect. That was something good to be said. His dad rushed to my side, surprisingly more concerned for me than for his child. I put my hand on the boy's arm, "Hey, son, are you okay? Is your leg hurt?" The boy was no more than five years old, bravely holding back the tears that struggled to come.

"It hu-urts!" he said. I could see blood coming from a small wound, just a drop or two.

From behind me, the father asked a second time, "Ma'am, are you all right?"

I looked at my knees and shins. They were so covered in dirt, I couldn't tell. I dusted them off and was truly surprised to find no abrasions under all the grit, not a mark, but my left arm was beginning to ache. I'd landed on it, apparently, and slid for several feet along the pavement. Yeah, it was barked pretty good. As far as I could tell, that was the only damage. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm more worried about your boy. Can you move your leg, guy?"

Mom and the other two kids had reversed course now, and she stood beside the young man I'd crashed into. Dad had seen the accident, realized that there had been no way to avoid the impact. I had come past the first four members of the family with a cheerful, "Passing left!" to warn them into their own lane. The youngest boy trailed behind the group, weaving up my side of the trail and not watching for traffic. He spotted me as I whizzed past his parents and siblings, tried to jink the wrong way and then apparently recalled what his dad had told him: stay right. He spun his little bike around and darted in front of me with very poor timing. I caught him broadside, and I was doing about 15 MPH. He fell toward me when I struck him. My bike went left and I went right and forward.

"Are you sure you're all right, ma'am?" Dad was genuinely in a tizzy about the little old lady, but at least he'd crouched by the youngster's side. I got the boy to move his foot, relieving my greatest fear that the leg was broken. I was pretty sure I'd hit him square on it. I assured the poor father that I was fine, fine, except for being dinged up a little, and he then turned his attention to the boy.

With mom's help, they got him standing, but the poor kid was afraid to put weight on the leg. My worries were soon dispelled when he managed to limp a few feet. The leg was okay.

Now dad had gone to check my bike. "I think your tire's gone flat, ma'am." He paused, and then I heard, "Oh, my God. Look at this."

The tire was flat, no doubts there, but that wasn't a tenth of the problem. The lower bar of the frame had buckled, crumpled like a dirty Kleenex, and the weld securing the upper bar to the fork assembly had snapped clean.

The boy's father offered to give me a lift back to my car, and rode off on his own bike, carrying my wounded conveyance in one hand. I walked the mile or so to his vehicle and waited while the rest of his family reconsolidated as a group. Mother and the kids stayed behind, and dad, still concerned about my well-being, transported me back to McMillin, several miles away. During the drive, I found out that my victim had just gotten his arm out of a cast from his last romp...two pins through his elbow, that time.

Second time out on my bike, and what do I do? I bust it, and not just a half job, either. I hadn't even sent the warranty card in yet, but I drove straight to the shop ("A," as you may recall) to see what, if anything, could be done. My salesman, Paul, was there, and his jaw fell audibly when I walked through the door with the fatality under my wing. He remarked that it looked like I'd ridden straight into a brick wall at 40 MPH.

I was prepared for the worst: to have to buy a new frame and fork assembly. Paul got the manufacturer on the phone and explained the situation. I chewed my fingernails for fifteen minutes while he was referred to this person or that department, but when he finally came back, he said, "Good news or bad news?"

Always one to eat my peas first, I said, "Oh, gimme the bad news."

So reliable are these bikes that there has never been a warranty claim on the 2004 model frame. As a consequence, the manufacturer had not kept back any replacements. No hope there. However (and this is the good news), they stand by their products. They will be sending a replacement 2005 frame (an upgrade, lighter weight and different fork design) as soon as they are released later on this month!

Let's say Friday the Thirteenth is a 50/50 proposition. I'm getting a better grade bike which I wouldn't have had if I hadn't hit the kid. Not that I'm going to go out and run down any more toddlers on two-wheelers. My arm is too sore.

A light Forest Service green truck pulled into the driveway, familiar, with a strip of unsightly brown mossy-oak breakup camo decal defacing twelve inches of its lower portion front to rear. Clyde got out and took a few steps toward the house before noticing me sitting in the big chair in the window, cat on lap, whereupon he about-faced to retrieve a large and obviously heavy box from the pickup's bed. A glimpse of dark green caught my eye as I stood up to go to the door, alerting me (not that it did much good) to incoming zucchini. It's that time of the year again.

Clyde is a thoughtful person. Knowing my mother's appetite for this particular vegetable, he put in a few extra plants in the spring to bring his total of lavishly productive vines to seventeen (I believe that was the number): enough zucchini to feed you, me, and Napoleon's army, marching on its assembled stomachs into the brutal Russian winter, with still enough left over for the pigs and parrots. Whatever was the man thinking?

If mankind truly wants to find an unlimited source of energy, its scientists should devote their efforts to developing zucchini power. Imagine, if you will, fields of this prolific plant, each bearing a dozen or more fruits capable of growing to immense proportions given only abundant water and a dollop of manure from time to time, stretching far as the eye can see. On the periphery, massive silos tower like skyscrapers, with long, wide conveyor belts leading to their summits, chug-chug, carrying zucchini after zucchini to the brink of the abyss. Deep in the bowels of each silo, fermentation is taking place under force of weight and nothing more, generating both heat and gases: power, there to harness in copious supply. The by-products of the process could easily be recycled: the water separated from the marketable alcohols and reclaimed, the few solids (and they would be few, as anyone who has cooked zucchini can attest) spread upon other agricultural land.

The demand for power would create new frontiers for agri-business on the wide scale, but even the family farmer could sufficiently fuel a generator to provide a year's electricity for his home. Excesses could be sold to the power grid, ensuring pocket change to be put aside for a lean year, although frankly, I know of no historically lean time for the enthusiastic zucchini. The home gardener could supplement himself as well.

We are in a critical period in man's expansion, and our resources are rapidly diminishing. The time has come to explore new solutions, however bizarre. Let's put aside our efforts to harness wind and sun, and discard our dependence on petroleum once and for all. Let's turn our will to the easiest, cheapest and most dependable thing around: zucchini. One thing is certain. It'll never run out.