Singing tree

Among my old hopeless photos, I found this one:

Dead tree,  Chase Valley

I've kept this photo, first on paper, then scanned for the computer, for about 10 years. It was a poor photo; too dark, taken from too far away (but it was as close as we could get without gear), with a competing sky behind the tree. Even cleaned up now, it's not very clear. But it was "our" tree, with a story to tell.

We were staying in a friend's cabin in the hills near Chase, BC. We were basically shut in there; we had no phone, no internet, no neighbours; all around us was scrub bush and evergreen forest, innocent of humans for the most part. Our companions were nuthatches, chickadees, scrub jays and squirrels, hanging around because I was providing seeds and peanuts. There were beaver down by the creek, and we saw a few of those birds that run underwater, the dippers.

To go into town, we had to drive along the bottom of a narrow valley, on gravel roads for part of the way. The view: trees, trees, trees, and the occasional small farm on the bottom land along Chase Creek. I don't remember passing more than one or two cars in the entire time we were there.

Eventually, we would come to civilization; a miniature town hall, seemingly abandoned, a wooden bridge or two, a turn-off down Turtle Valley Road. (That one has a name on the map; our road doesn't.) Then a narrow ravine, a sharp curve, a bit of a slope downwards, and suddenly the world opened in front of us. This was the valley of the river that runs from Little Shuswap Lake, just around the corner, to Kamloops to the west. The fields were lush and bright green, glowing in the sunlight, the river like a mirror held up to the sky. Across the valley the hills started again, rising gradually, melting into a blue haze in the distance. We had to stop to look, often.

And there was the one lone tree, well down the side hill, but still towering overhead.

It was dead, long dead, but still bore life. Every time we stopped, the whole tree was singing and twittering. Sometimes, we saw tiny birds flitting from branch to branch, always dark shadows against the brightness of the sky. We never saw them up close; they remain unidentified. They never seemed to leave the tree; why would they? It was a never-ending source of goodies, bugs and seeds waiting for a forest fire to get them started growing, and free for the eating. No wonder the birds sang!

Eventually we'd tear ourselves away, down into town for groceries and hardware (Laurie was doing some construction work) and a stop at the second-hand book store; then back up that long hill, and we'd dive into the shade of the ravine and the creek valley until next time. The tree stood like a sentinel, watching us return, the birds still twittering madly.

The last time we stopped, to say goodbye for now (but it's been 10 years!) a hawk was perched in a tree above us on the hillside, watching the tree. Next link in the food chain, but I hoped he'd soon go elsewhere.

Is the tree still there? I can't be sure. On the Google satellite photo, there's a dark stain where I think it was. If that's it, I'm sure it's still twittering away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next: I found a whole folder full of trees against the sky. I'll see how many I can rescue.

A break from making lists

Abandoned house; Turtle Valley, BC

And an old barn, with light shining through the roof.

Just because.

More mushrooms. And a couple of lichens.

There was a delay with the photos I promised the other day, but they're finally here and usable.

First, the mushrooms. These are still from our stay near Chase 3 years ago. Again, this is dry country, hot in the summer, very cold in the winter. Scrub conifers, mixed forest, open grassland. We were there, off and on, from July through September.

A little red mushroom, quite shiny. There were yellow ones like this, and a few purple ones, too, looking like prune plums fallen off a tree.

And a nice little earth tongue. Also in cream.

And lichen: this one looks like wolf lichen, Letharia vulpina to me. This was used and traded by the native peoples as a dye for baskets and other items. Lichens of North America says,

"This lichen is sufficiently poisonous that the Achomawi in Northern California used it to make poison arrowheads, but the Okanagan-Colville (note: that's just south of Chase, where we were.) made a weak tea of it to treat internal problems,..."

It would make a good dye, for sure. A lime-yellow, sulphur-yellow; too strong a colour to look natural; more like a dollar store plastic toy colour.

A large leaf lichen. On conifers, live or dead.

Besides these, we saw a variety of leaf and crustal lichens, ragbag lichen, and plenty of fishnet lichens. We watched a large ground-dwelling leaf lichen, probably a Peltigera, developing along the trail over the summer, as we came and went. It grew in a spiral pattern, getting to about 10 inches across before the first frost.

Next: the Easter bunny, in the wild.

Mushrooms from Chase, BC

Last Sunday, I wrote about the mushrooms we had seen at Chase, a few years back, after the rains started. So now London Drugs is having a sale: orders of 12 photos or more uploaded to the internet are FREE! I don't know what got into them; there seems to be no per-customer limit, no "with purchase" qualification. And up to the 15th of this month. I asked; they encouraged me to bring in 3 or 4 batches a day.

So Laurie has dug into the cabinet of photos from that year, and pulled out a stack of negatives; maybe we'll manage to get that whole "working vacation" onto the web before they lower the boom.

Here is the first installment; a collection of mushrooms from the second week of September, 2004.

Shaggy mane. Good eating, but very short-lived. Notice the two taller mushrooms; they would be from the day before, already turned mostly black and deliquescing. (Liquifying; self-digesting.) The tiny brown balls on the ground behind are puffballs.
More puffballs. Near Chase Creek, under the conifers, the ground was covered with these. And the whole area smelled of them; earthy, a bit nutty.
I don't know for sure what these are. Gilled mushrooms, fairly large, with a slimy concave top.

Tiny brown and reddish mushrooms along a wet log. Notice the coral mushrooms on the ground at lower right. And a ripe puffball underneath the log, ready to pop at the first drop of rain.
And more coral mushrooms. These were also plentiful.
Tomorrow's photos: a few more mushrooms, an osprey nest with young, great scenery, and samfire. Y'all come back!