Cloudbursts and Climate Changes

    This spring we’ve heard of terrible floods on the Florida panhandle, terrifying tornados in the Midwest, fierce and way too early wildfires in Alaska, California, and Arizona. But we Pacific Northwesterners count ourselves fortunate to live where we live. We seldom have natural disasters to worry about.

    Or do we? We have summer wildfires. We have a vague awareness that the volcanoes looming on our horizons aren’t really extinct. Now and then, the earth shrugs its shoulders and an earthquake reminds us that a “big one” lurks on a known or unknown fault line. Signs along our coastline point out tsunami escape routes to use if the ocean should overrun its bounds. And when it rains a lot, we can have landslides.
 
  It rained a lot in Marysville last Sunday. A storm cell packed with water, thunder, and lightning sat for two hours over part of the city and let loose the hardest cloudburst that people who’d lived there all their lives could remember. The Everett newspaper, the Herald, called it a “a 100-year event.” Marysville storm sewers are designed to accommodate a 25-year, 24-hour rain totaling 2.75 inches. A 100-year event would be 3.36 inches in 24 hours. On Sunday, May 18, 2014, in the space of two hours, the rainfall officially totaled 3.40 inches.

    My brother lives in one of the neighborhoods that received the deluge. He and his wife listened to rain pound the roof as the street filled up with water. Then they realized that water was pouring in a waterfall the length of the gutter. The newly-installed screens meant to keep leaves and tree needles from clogging the downspouts were blocking the rainwater. Bill grabbed his rain gear and a tall metal ladder, and despite painful arthritis, climbed the ladder, removed a screen, then went inside to change his drenched clothes. By that time, more gutters were overflowing and back he went into the downpour as thunder crashed and lightning streaked across the sky. After two more changes of clothes, he’d diverted water from running into the daylight basement, although it flooded the garage floor. Rainwater stood three to four inches deep in his driveway when the rain finally stopped.

    As a hobby, Bill has kept a rain gauge and recorded daily totals for 25 years. For those two hours, his gauge recorded 4.61 inches of rain; more than the total for any May over the past 25 years except for May of 1988, which had 4.72 inches.

    The National Weather Service says evidence suggests a trend in Western Washington toward higher-intensity, shorter-duration rains in spring and fall. Is this a sign of climate change?

    Perhaps. Anyone who studies geology or history can point to recurring cycles of weather change. Some of those unique events have happened within the lifetimes of some still living, including the big snow of 1914.  More than 30 inches of snow fell in Everett in 36 hours, but nearby areas reported even more. Snohomish had 42 inches and Marysville, 48 inches. That was also the year the Stillaguamish River froze over. Even in the 1940s and 1950s, local winters were much more severe than they are now.

    In prehistoric times, the valleys of the North and South Forks of the Stillaguamish River were blocked by a lobe of the Cordilleran ice sheet. This caused lakes to form in the valleys. They dropped layers of sediments that became today’s unstable soils. It was those unstable soils that led to the recent landslide at Oso.

    We hear a lot about melting glaciers and warming winters, both in our mountains and in Alaska. My friend Jeanne and her brother Jonathan flew to Kako, Alaska from Anchorage earlier in the week. One hour of the three-hour trip by bush plane took them over the Alaska Range. Jeanne said, There are usually “snow capped mountains and glaciers in every direction as far as our eyes can see. This year, however, some of the snow has melted, and even some of the glacier ice has melted due to the warm winter and spring. Jonathan showed me one place that had held a glacier and is now empty, and said, ‘A glacier has been there as long as I can remember, but now it is gone!’”

    Scientists in polar regions are concerned about the melting sea ice.
  
    Spring is coming earlier and snowfall is not as heavy as normal.

    Observation in our area tells us that’s true here, too, although our Midwest and Eastern friends and relatives complain with reason about unusually severe storms and long-lasting winter weather.

    It’s fascinating to pay attention to the small things that are out of the ordinary. Maybe they’re just blips in the natural history of this area, but here are a few things that are different in our little corner of the country:

    Tent caterpillars in February: I found a couple of nests of the wriggling creatures in the arborvitae hedge and disposed of them when it was still winter. I never saw them so early and never saw them eating evergreens.

    Other voracious insects: Warmer winters and earlier springs encourage insect infestations. Something is turning the leaves on our vine maple to lace. Beetles have killed vast acreages of evergreens in Canada’s mountains and now they’re attacking our Cascade evergreens.

    Early blooming flowers: Usually we have armloads of lilacs to take to the cemetery on Memorial Day. This year my lilacs and irises are already through blooming.

    Ocean Acidification: Increased carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels dissolves into the ocean and is killing off sea creatures such as coral, whose skeletons are based on calcium carbonate. In recent years, reproduction of the famed Willapa Bay oysters has been wiped out because of the acidification of ocean water along our coast.
 
    Since our early ancestors migrated from Asia to the Americas, people have adapted to changing conditions. We can adapt, too. I just hope that we humans will soon discard the practices that hurt the earth we share, for the sake of those who will live here after us.
 
Photo courtesy of blog, New Dharma Bums

Dragonfly Encounter

Yesterday I accidentally watered these two dragonflies who were sipping nectar from the last of the miniature lilac blossoms. Can you see both of them?

 

 

Evidently, dragonflies can't fly when wet. They stayed where they were, shivering their cellophane wings slightly to speed the drying.

Still a little wet. When I came back later, they were dry enough. Away they zoomed from that monster with the hose.

Madison Creek Falls, a Fun and Easy Exploration

The Elwha River

Dodging spring showers, we recently drove west on U.S. 101 from my sister’s home in Port Angeles. We turned onto Olympic Hot Springs Road just before 101 crosses the Elwha River and followed the river toward the Olympic mountains. Once that beautiful valley was the sole territory of Klallam people who hunted, fished, and gathered there for hundreds of years. When settlers came in the late 1800s, they appreciated the valley’s beauty and natural resources as well. They found giant cedars measuring thirty feet around the base and large herds of elk. There are photos of fishermen with Chinook salmon so large their tails dragged on the ground. But when the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams were built (in 1913 and 1927, respectively) to provide power for Port Angeles they blocked access for the massive runs of migrating fish.

Times changed and the dams supplied only a fraction of the power needed by the one remaining mill at Port Angeles. The Klallam and others who valued wild and free rivers agitated for the removal of the two dams. In 1992, the Elwha River Ecosystem and Restoration Act, with the help of $54 million in federal stimulus funds, began the second largest restoration project in the National Park Service system after the Everglades project. Glines Canyon Dam, 210 feet high, is the largest dam so far decommissioned in the United States. In 2011, both dams began to come down, releasing water and sediment to roar through the canyon.

A short distance beyond the Olympic National Park boundary, we see a sign pointing to the Madison Falls Trail. The Elwha hurries past to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, bearing the silt released by the removal of the dams. Across the road, a parking lot fronts a meadow with mossy, gnarled big leaf maples. A paved, wheelchair accessible trail leads to the base of the falls.

Madison Falls cascades down a mountainside and over basalt cliffs a short distance from where Madison Creek runs into the Elwha. Around 1900, Dr. A.L. Matteson dug the Grey Eagle Mine tunnel at the base of the falls and left only his abridged name (Madison) as imprint on the land. Other settlers followed. The remains of a stone chimney and an old orchard are still visible south of the creek where Lester and Anna Sweet lived for more than fifty years. Lester raised strawberries and used the old mine tunnel for cold storage, but rock falls have since hidden the opening. The settlers left long ago.

The surroundings have pretty much gone back to nature. The elk, once hunted nearly to extinction, once again winter in the area. It’s a beautiful spot to let your imagination run free, remembering the early settlers and the even earlier inhabitants of this verdant corner of Washington state.

For more favorite explorations on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, see my posts: Cape Flattery Perspectives (Aug. 11, ’09) and Surprised by Serendipities (Aug. 8, ’09).

 

The Elwha River, across the road from the trail

Big-leaf maples in the meadow

Remains of an ancient tree

Big lichens fallen from a tree

Burls on a maple near the trail

One hundred foot tall Madison Creek Falls

THANKS FOR THE STORIES, MR. WOODS!

Here are some more memories from A Logger’s Daughter. V.G. Woods was a beloved teacher at Granite Falls High School for many years.

V.G. Woods (center front) and fellow teachers in 1944. His wife Agnes is to his left.*

  V.G. Woods smiled a welcome from behind the wheel of the big yellow bus the morning I, a frightened but excited five-year-old, climbed aboard to begin my career as a student. I didn’t know then that V.G. had taught forever in our small town’s high school, or that this bus route was just a side job. He was tall and thin. Scanty dark hair camouflaged a shiny, freckled pate. But for the brown eyes twinkling behind rimless glasses, I’d have been terrified of him.

  The first day of school proved overwhelming for a shy little backwoods girl. After the long bus ride home, I wanted nothing more than to get back to Mother and my little brothers and sisters. V.G. folded back the door for me to exit. I hopped off the bus, curls bouncing.

  He grinned after me. “Good-bye, Blondie,” he said.

  Blondie! That was the last straw. I turned, bristling with indignation, glared, and gave him the most cutting reply I could think of:  “Shut up!”

  Then I raced down the driveway and into my house, where I sobbed to Mother that the bus driver had called me a bad name.

    Mother smiled and told me he was only teasing. She told me what to say next time it happened. The next evening when he called, “Good-bye, Blondie,” I answered, “Good-bye, Tall, Dark and Handsome.”  He threw back his head and laughed. That began a friendship that lasted all the way through my elementary and high school career.

    The Granite Falls School District was small, a place where new teachers came for two or three years to get their “teaching legs” under them before moving on to bigger, better-paying school districts. V.G., who’d grown up in the area, and his wife, the high school librarian, were among the few who settled in to become a long-term part of both school and community. As such, V.G. assumed a vested interest in his students. Because he taught all the high school math classes, and our only foreign language, Latin, he had most of the students at one time or the other. Our other teachers were Miss, Mrs., or Mr., but everyone called him V.G. (or “Veege” behind his back.)

    V.G., a loyal alumnus of the University of Washington, knew a lot about our local history. “Have you ever found fossils around here?” someone once asked at the beginning of Latin class. V.G. forgot the lesson plan and spent most of the class period telling us about the summer he helped lay out a road for the Forest Service and his discovery of rocks containing fossilized seashells on a nearby mountain. I was hooked on geology!

  This proof that the very mountains where I lived were once part of an ancient ocean bed perhaps didn’t have much to do with learning a fossilized language. But as V.G. helped us uncover the Latin foundations of words we use every day, I learned that words had beauty, precision and power…concepts basic to my budding interest in writing.

    Another day a student in geometry class winked at the rest of us. Then cleverly, (he thought) he distracted V.G. from the lesson at hand by asking if he’d ever met any of the Indians who once traveled the nearby rivers. V.G., allowing us to think he’d swallowed the bait, launched into a story about old Pilchuck Julia, nearly blind, who still lived near town when he was a young man. She wove beautiful baskets by touch. As my imagination reconstructed Pilchuck Julia’s lost culture, my interest in history and anthropology took root.
 
  Often V.G. told tales of his pranks as an underclassman at the university in Seattle. He described the beautiful campus and the exciting mix of learning and fun. For most of us, college was not even a dream. But V.G.’s portrayal of college life opened up the world beyond our little logging town. Doing extra class work at home seemed an even exchange for his stories.

 “Joan, where do you plan to go to college?” V.G. asked one day after geometry class.

 “College?” I stammered. My parents struggled to feed and clothe us. College was out of the question.

 “Yes,” V.G. replied. “You’re a good student. You can go far. You should be making plans for your future.”

  That conversation started me dreaming. Maybe I could pursue an education. Maybe God would make a way. In many further conversations, V.G. lobbied hard for me to attend his beloved University of Washington. I chose a smaller, church-sponsored college instead. Nevertheless, he encouraged me to pursue my dreams and was pleased when I followed in his footsteps by graduating with my teaching degree.

  V.G. lived by Galileo’s premise:  “You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.”  I’ve forgotten most of what I knew of math and Latin, but by V.G.’s story telling, he taught us the power of story to spur accomplishment, to further cultural understanding, and to communicate ideas.

    V.G. retired and grew old in the same house he’d always lived in. One icy winter evening, his car slid into a ditch near his home. Dazed, he staggered onto the highway, was struck by a passing vehicle, and died.

    He’d invested his whole career in our community and “his kids.”  Many of his students went on to graduate from college. Their careers have taken them all over the world. But I’m sure his greatest reward came in knowing that he inspired his students to reach beyond themselves, to be the very best they could be.

*Photo courtesy of Granite Falls Historical Museum

Not Your Usual Tulip Tour

    I’m not suggesting one would ever get tired of the rainbow of tulips in Washington’s northwest corner this time of year, but locals know Skagit County holds many attractions besides the beauteous bulbs. While following our curiosity along a new-to-us back road recently, we came across an ancient schoolhouse. It brought back memories of one that stood around the bend from my family’s home when I was growing up. A faded, hand-crafted sign on front announced that this was the Pleasant Ridge School, No. 14. A little online sleuthing helped me pull together an interesting side trip for anyone who wants to broaden an outing to include more than just tulips.

    Following Interstate 5 from either north or south, take the Conway exit and follow Fir Island Road west. It turns north, past the Snow Goose Produce stand and its monster ice cream cones, and crosses a high bridge over the Skagit River. It then becomes Best Road.

     The high ground you’ll be traveling along has been called Pleasant Ridge since the days of the early white settlers. When they made their homes on the forested promontory, the fields surrounding it on three sides were still salt marsh and tidal channels. Rising above the flat like the prow of a huge green ark, the ridge was bounded to the south by the Skagit River, at Rexville. The trading post of LaConner, across the Swinomish Channel from the village of the Swinomish people to the north, was a two-and-a-half mile trip by horse and wagon from the ridge. Or you could go by canoe or boat.

   The first settlers came to the flats as early as 1863 to build dikes and clear the land for farming. The single men and families found home sites on the high ground of the ridge out of danger from seasonal flooding. As sections of land were diked, the farmers planted barley, oats, and hay in Beaver Marsh to the east and Dodge Valley to the west. The farmers were amazed at the yields from that fertile land. People heard the tales all the way back to the east coast.

    Today’s Best Road takes you past beautifully kept Victorian-style homes with sweeping views across green fields and flower farms to Mt. Baker and other peaks of the Cascades. Then it descends to the fields and carries you on to LaConner. LaConner is one of our favorite places to spend an afternoon, but it’s worthy of a blog all to itself. Let’s go there later. Instead of descending to the valley floor, watch for Valentine Road, which turns uphill past one of those Victorian-looking homes. There’s a cluster of old-fashioned country homes, and among them, on a plot to itself, is the dilapidated but still charming old school. It was built in 1891 and served the district for 38 years.

The Pleasant Ridge Schoolhouse

    A teacher’s cottage stood across Valentine Road from the school and housed the teacher for the Pleasant Ridge School as well as the teacher from the Rexville School, about three miles away by trail through trees and brush. Mary E. Childberg was the first teacher in the new school. Prior to that, classes had been held in homes or small cabins. The very first school was held in the home of the Leamer family. The teacher was fifteen-year-old Ida Leamer, who held the first teacher’s certificate ever issued in Skagit County.

    Community life in Pleasant Ridge centered around the two churches and the school building. There were clubs, dances, potlucks, Christmas pageants and parties...even a small orchestra. The people living on Pleasant Ridge visited back and forth or travelled to these functions on foot or by horseback along the trails leading through thick Douglas fir forests. Kids on their way to and from school often encountered deer, black bears, and other wildlife. After paved highways came into existence around 1930, social activity tapered off in favor of quick access by automobile to more distant activities in LaConner, Mt. Vernon, Stanwood and beyond.

    Now, let’s leave the echo of the schoolbell ringing from the cupola and the imagined children playing in the school yard and continue a short distance up the hill to the point of the promontory and Pleasant Ridge Cemetery. There’s plenty of parking along the verge of the road and plenty of solitude to wander and wonder about the people whose names are on the gravestones...some simple, some ornate.

    This is the oldest cemetery in Skagit County. John and Bessie Cornelius settled here in 1868. They had come from Whidbey Island, where John was a government surveyor. When their little boy, Charles, died of typhoid fever in 1875, the couple established the Pleasant Ridge Cemetery on a piece of their land. A teacher from LaConner and a neighboring farmer were buried there soon after. Five years later, John Cornelius died, leaving his wife and children without support. His friend Joseph Rudene married Bessie two years later, in 1882. Title to the cemetery land then passed to Rudene. He sold forty-foot square plots which were maintained by individual families. These are visible inside the welcoming archway.

This must have been a strong lady.

The marker for the Conner family. Individual graves fill the 40' plot.

L.A. Conner, for whom LaConner is named.

    Walk along the graveled drives, noting the changing styles of cemetery architecture and the stories chiseled in the stones. Many of Skagit County’s earliest pioneers are buried here, including the founders of LaConner. Through the trees fringing the cemetery, you can glimpse farmers working their croplands. At the base of the bluff you may see black and white Holsteins crowding their barnyard. If the wind is right you will have already smelled their presence.

    Now you can retrace your route to Best Road, or you can follow Valentine Road to its intersection with Dodge Valley Road. Turn right and head north, then west, to LaConner, an artist’s paradise, or continue north to the tulip fields. Do a little exploring of your own. You won’t be disappointed.

Snow geese and daffodils from Best Road