Rainy day road trip

Since the low tide day a couple of weeks ago, I've been busy at home with spring tasks (gardening, painting, outdoor cleanup and the like) and missed the forests' switch from spring to summer mode. A  couple of rainy days gave me a chance to catch up. And the forest is all decked out in green and white.

The dogwoods are all in flower; so are the red elderberries and the thimbleberries, the Indian plum, the red osier dogwood, the ocean spray, the cow parsnip; large white flowers or flower heads all. And I took no photos because of the rain.

Beautiful rain! The forest looked happy. Green, so very green, glistening, drinking. Even the newly logged-off areas wore green lace. Along the highway, the glowing yellow-green spring leaves have turned to a more sedate, greener green; behind them, the evergreens wear bluer greens, darker in the distance as the rain shuts off the light; farther away, they fade until they're just a shadow in the mists. 

I hadn't intended to go far, but the road kept drawing me on, a silvery river curving ahead and over the next hill. And the next. I'm a we(s)t coaster; rain feels right, somehow. The sound of rain on my windshield, the click of the wipers, the splash as the car hit another puddle, somehow sounding like waves slapping the bow of a small boat, but less regular ... And the scents; wet moss, wet earth, wet wood, the resinous aromas of fir and cedar.  At one spot where I stopped to look at a waterfall, the air was perfumed, a flowery perfume, though at that spot the only flower I saw was a lone red columbine on the cliff face.

At Buttle Lake, I dug out my old raingear, hid the camera under it and followed a short trail through the woods. The rain was not as heavy right then and I did take some photos; I'll start processing them tonight. Then I turned back to the highway and drove on, looking for a spot I'd visited in the summer. I missed it in the rain, went on looking for a place to turn around (this highway is narrow, and has no shoulder) until I came to a sign saying Gold River was only 22 kilometres away. May as well go on, get some coffee and a sandwich to come home on.

At Gold River the sun was trying to break through the clouds; I tried to get some bird photos, but the wind was too strong to hold the camera steady. Time to come home, anyhow. Back through the rain, stopping to look at more waterfalls; every creek coming down the hillsides was foaming white.

At home, a small patch of blue sky promised sunshine for the morning.

Shallows at the tip of Buttle Lake, raining gently. The hills are on the far side of Upper Campbell Lake.

Gold River. The river, not the town. The waterfall on the left is Flash Creek which runs down from Baldy Mountain, 1618 m.

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Desde el primero del mes, el dia de la marea baja, he estado ocupada en casa con los quehaceres de la primavera (sembrando, cultivando el jardín, pintando, haciendo limpieza) y no había visto cuando los bosques adoptaron sus colores de verano. Con un par de dias de lluvia, tuve la oportunidad de ponerme al corriente.

Y el bosque se ha vestido de blanco y verde. Nuestro flor provincial, el cornejo del Pacífico (Cornus nutalli) ya está floreciendo; asimismo los saucos rojos, los thimbleberry, el osoberry (Oemleria cerasiformis), el Cornis sericea (otro cornejo), el rocío oceánico (Holodiscus discolor) y la pastinata de vaca (Heracleum maximum); todos con flores grandes o inflorescencias grandes y blancas. No pude sacar fotos por la lluvia.

¡Esa lluvia hermosa! El bosque estaba feliz. Verde, tan verde, brillante, absorbiendo el agua tan bienvenida. Hasta los sitios recién cortados llevaban un encaje verde. Al lado de la carretera, las hojas que hace semanas parecían lucecitas entre amarillo y verde, ahora se visten de un color verde más serio, más verde puro. Atrás, los árboles de hoja perenne llevan un color un poco más oscuro, un verde mezclado con azul; en la distancia la lluvia los oscurece, y más lejos aun, se borran hasta ser apenas una sombra entre la neblina. 

No pensaba ir muy lejos, pero el camino me llamaba; era un rio plateado y sinuoso que desaparecía tras la próxima loma. Y la próxima. Soy nativa de estas costas lluviosas (los costeños las describen poniendo entre paréntesis la "s" de "west") y la lluvia me hace sentirme en casa. El chasquido de la lluvia sobre mi parabrisas, el "clic" que hacen los limpiaparabrisas, el golpe del agua cuando el coche entraba a otro charco, que me recordaba las olas que chocan contra el casco de un bote, sino con menos ritmo ... ¡Y las aromas! Musgos empapados, tierra húmeda, madera mojada, el olor resinoso de los abetos y los cedros. En un sitio donde me había detenido para observar otra catarata (había muchas en ese dia de aguas) el aire olía a perfume, un perfume de flores, aunque en ese lugar la única flor que vi era una aquilegia roja en la faz de una roca.

Llegando al lago Buttle, saqué mi ropa impermeable que siempre llevo en el coche, escondí la cámara bajo su protección, y seguí un sendero que entraba al bosque. Aquí si saqué fotos; no llovía tan intensamente en ese momento; las voy a empezar a procesar hoy.

Regresé a la carretera y seguí adelante, buscando un sitio que había visitado en el verano. Por la lluvia, intensa otra vez, no vi lo que buscaba, y empecé a buscar un espacio donde dar vuelta. No tan fácil; esta carretera es angosta y casi sin bordes. Pasé un letrero anunciando que el pueblo de Gold River quedaba a solo 22 kilómetros. Un café, un sandwich antes de regresar a casa, ¿porqué no?

En el pueblo, el sol trataba de penetrar entre las nubes; traté de sacar unas fotos de gansos, pero el viento estaba tan fuerte que no podía pararme sin movimiento. Era hora de regresar a casa, de todas maneras. Llovía de nuevo, pero me detuve un par de veces para mirar otras cataratas; cada riachuelo que ahora bajaba de los cerros se había convertido en espuma blanca.

En casa, una pequeña area de cielo azul prometía sol para la mañana.

1. El extremo del lago Buttle.  Llovía lentamente. Los cerros que se ven están del otro lado del lago Upper Campbell.
2. Gold River. El rio, no el pueblo. La catarata visible a la izquierda es Flash Creek, que baja desde la montaña Baldy (Calvo), midiendo 1618 m.

Cutting edge

Summer on Vancouver Island is the time for large-scale wood carving or driftwood sculptures. We discovered a whole new installation in "downtown" Gold River (population 1,212). Wolves, bears, crabs, eagles, fish; our native totemic species. With one exception:

Bears (with teddy bear mascots) and a pair of chimps (or sasquatches). Very modern, up-to-date chimps. (Probably sasquatches.)

Already addicted to his phone. It's a Sassung™.

Selfie

And another modern bear:

Must have his coffee!

Kingfisher

Near the rivers and lakes, I often hear kingfishers. Sometimes, I even see them before they've darted out of sight.  Only twice in all these years have I managed to aim the camera at one. This was the third time, and he perched on a branch for a few seconds, before he plunged into the river.

And he's actually in focus!

He's a male belted kingfisher, fishing in the Gold River.

The kiss

Cousins ...

In reality, moving Tiny back to a quieter parking spot.

Boom boats, Gold River harbour.

At the mouth of the Gold River

Gold River comes in two parts. There's the village, population 1300, and 13 km. farther down the highway, where the river enters Muchalat Inlet, the tide flats, the docks, and the logging operations. The scene there changes as you turn from left to right, from sleepy and quiet, to a growling, rumbling, pounding busyness.

Green water, green hills. The yellower water is the tail end of the tide flats; the ruffled water in the centre is the outflow of the Gold River.

Moving right. A Nootka Air float plane, and the inland arm of the Inlet.

Smokestacks of the Uchuck lll. The name derives from the Nootka word, "Chuck" (approximate pronunciation) meaning "water", or "ocean", depending on the tone.

Log booms, and the outward-bound arm of the Muchalat.

Busy harbour.

Yellow boom boat pushing a log back into position.

And on the far right, the log piling operations. Hungry jaws!

Oddities

Seen on a day trip to Gold River:

In the centre of the river a short way out of town, there's a bridge support. There's no sign of construction on either bank; there's no road heading that way; there's no sign to identify it.

At the dock parking lot; a two-wheeled truck stands, apparently unsupported.

Scree makes good rock-piling material; it has sharp corners and flat edges.

I think I posted another photo of this corner a couple of years ago. No left turn; plow straight into the rock face. Not photographed: heading the opposite way, a couple of turns later, a left turn sign where the road curves right. Going left would take you over the bank into the river far below. What were they thinking?

Folded lichen

Lichen on rocks near Gold River:

I like the way this patch folds down over the sharp edge of the rock. The pink dots are fruiting bodies.

The black spots and orangey smudges on the rock beneath are also lichens.

Another patch on the same rock.

A few metallic waterfowl

They fly, and they float. And sometimes they make an awful racket. Must be waterfowl.

Harbour Air floatplane, taxiing into the dock at Tyee Spit.

Vancouver Island Air Otter, about to splash down, Tyee Spit. These little birds serve work sites and residents from Campbell River north to Bella Bella.

Getting ready to take off. They have to line up with the wind, the waves, the fast tidal currents. Each flight starts from a different spot. Quadra Island in the background

Across the island, on the west coast, at Gold River. Nootka Air has been serving settlements up and down the coast since 1981.

I've noticed that our local estuary sleepers, the gulls and ducks, accept these little flyers as one of their peer group; they don't even bother lifting their heads when one goes by.

Where the road ends

Tyee Spit is less than 5 minutes from my house, by car. A road leads about 2/3 of the way to the end, and stops. There is a parking lot behind us here, but a few cars always park at the very end, where big rocks block the way. I walk to the tip of the spit, at the mouth of the Campbell River, and stand there listening to the splashing of waves on stones, and the whine, roar, and hum of traffic.

Where the road ends, the air and the sea continue. Little floatplanes drone over the hills beyond the channel, roar overhead, splash down, and rumble in to the dock. Another revs up, its song going from bass to alto; then the plane lifts off the water, and the motor settles down to a hum, fading off in the distance. A skiff with a couple of fishermen putt-putts along; someone drops a crab trap before they speed away, the outboard motor howling.

Down channel, I see a fish boat beating away against the current under the cliffs of Quadra Island, a barge with its tug and load of brightly painted boxes. And the ferry is just turning into the landing in Quathiaski Cove. If I wait, I might see a cruise ship sliding by, a city in a white floating box.

For much of the forbidding coast of northern Vancouver Island, these are the main methods of transport; small floatplanes, and boats tiny, small, and huge.

Touching down. Tyee Spit.

One minute later, the next plane lands.

On the far side of the Island, the west coast, the highway stops where the Gold River meets the sea, at the inner end of an Nootka Sound, still 40 km. from the open sea. Here, the Uchuck III, which regularly visits small coastal communities with no road access, ties up; and Air Nootka float planes pick up mail and travellers to be delivered up and down the coast.

Air Nootka plane. This photo taken in July.

The dock next door. Photo taken in March. Same view; still green even in winter, but with more snow on the mountain peaks.

Beside the offices (we stopped in to discuss a possible trip on the Uchuck next summer), a sign advertises the mail run:

2 hour flight, with several stops. $190.

I am seriously tempted. I was on this flight many, many (55+) years ago, on my way south. The landing procedure, spiralling down into the Gold River dock, one wing pointing at the clouds, the other pointing directly down into the water, and spinning, spinning, frightened me so badly that I don't remember any more about that trip.

I should go, if only to prove to myself that I'm no longer scared.

On the other side of the Gold River docks, Western Forest Products machinery herds logs. On land big, toothy machines pick them up and stack them; in the water, tiny, also toothy, nimble tugs sort them into booms for transport.

These little tugs fascinate me. So tiny, so solid, all welded steel; they look like they should sink. But they chug about, slamming into logs, tipping and whirling and thudding, water sluicing over the decks. Nothing fazes them.

I had to look this up twice. 3 seconds - seconds! - after the previous photo. Wham!

And 16 seconds later the log has been rousted out and is on its way to the boom.

The average boom boat measures approximately 16 feet long, 8 feet in the beam, and 4 feet deep. The typical gross tonnage is only a mere 3 tons. (Custom Boat Building -scroll down)

Gold River on the west, Tyee Spit on the east coast.

Plaint

I don't know. I just don't know.

In my little patch of dirt, I dig and rake, I cultivate and weed. I provide bags of fresh topsoil and peat moss; I build compost and pour on fish fertilizer. I check the requirements; sunshine and shade, water, eggshells, bug protection; and then buy seeds that suit the spot. Or even bring home pre-grown specimens, coddled and fed for maximum vigour. I check them daily. Need more water? Sure, here it is! Don't like that bit of shade? I'll trim a branch; whatever their little green hearts desire.

And then they limp along, turn yellow, lie down and moan. Or invite in a friendly blackberry, entwining the stems and roots so that I rip apart my fingers trying to help. Some actually grow, but most just go.

And then I go out and look at a bare rock face; if there's a speck of rock dust in a crack, or a leftover fragment of moss, a seed will settle in, grow and thrive.

I don't get it.

Here's Tsuxwin Falls, just west of Gold River, streaming down a rock face.

The top half of the falls. 49.72992, -126.09537

Among the rocks beside the pool at the foot of this section, red columbines dance in the wind. And all the way up the rock face, an assortment of wildflowers and ferns cling, trembling, to cracks barely big enough for a skinny root.

An assortment of mosses, green, thready, and red-brown. A smooth alumroot, Heuchera glabra, just to the right of a deciduous fern. Above it, something with red stems, and a spreading plant with tiny leaves at the top. To the left, there are a few wood saxifrages, Saxifraga mertensiana. They like the spray zone beside waterfalls, soil or no soil. There's even a bit of grass.

At least these get watered. The rock garden a few steps down the road doesn't even get that.

Wooly eriophyllum, grass, and something with hairy arrow leaves.

And one of yesterday's photos turned out to be a Silverleaf Luina. It was growing just beyond the eriophyllum.

No fertilizer needed, thank you!

The waterfall drops into a pool beside the highway, flows through a big pipe, and drops into the Gold River far below.

The bottom of the falls, in the distance. Taken from a viewpoint down the road, in March, before the leaves got in the way.

And even in the early spring, there was no shortage of vegetation on those lower rock faces, either.

Promise

Nestled up against a roadside barrier, a wild strawberry plant gets a head start on the summer's growth.

Come back in June; there will be sweet berries.

Prepare to stop.

Abruptly.

No left turn.

Highway sign, Gold River.