Saa'kssoyaa'tsis And Iinisskimm

I

Saa'kssoyaa'tsis (4Dec10)

1253 Sspopiikimi - Mahoney and I have come out to make our rounds on this first day of misamiko'komiaato's (the long nights moon). For me, it is the third day of my experiment, to try and engage with these places more fully as a human being, striving ultimately to feed myself from them. When I was here last, I collected i'naksa'pis (dogbane) to make twine with. Most of that bundle still sits at home unprocessed

1307 A lot of the snow has melted since my last visit, but what remains is fairly iced over and gives off a strong reflection from the Sun. We move around north-pond and up the levee to the cutbank overlooking Oldman River. Along the opposite side of the river there's open water, and I was hoping the eagles would be around for Mahoney to see, but none at the moment. There is, on the other hand, a nice group of goldeneyes diving there, at least six of them. My mind is still on the need to gather more fibrous plants for twining material and containers. I'm just going to keep my eyes open for possible resources

1321 At the river bench, we sit down for a break. There's a flicker here, searching out tidbits in the poplar canopy. Below us, on the forest floor, there are still lots of good prickly rose hips and bulberries. These could be eaten in and of themselves, but they could also be used as bait to secure meat. I'm thinking pheasants, grouse and partridge in particular. It wouldn't take much. A very simple (though some might consider it cruel) method is to string some rose hips on a piece of twine, securing one end to a tree. The bird eats the berries, along with the twine line, and is basically snared by it's stomach

1352 We continue upstream and drop down into the owl wood. The oriole nest we've been monitoring is still dangling in the canopy, it didn't tear free in the chinook. We can hear a waxwing somewhere nearby, it's little cricket voice. And we've stopped to inspect a dead cottonwood tree for it's qualities. Both it's outer and inner bark are too brittle for use in fashioning containers. But the dry, dead cambium would make a pretty decent firestarter, almost like paper

1410 Moving further into the forest, I continue to play with different plants, to explore their qualities. I start with tall goldenrod, which feels at first as though it might have twining property, the stem is not easily snapped by hand. But when I get a good stem to work with, I find no fiber to speak of. Even less useful, in this sense, is the wild licorice. These stems snap easily into fragments

1417 We follow the owl wood trees until reaching the river cutbank upstream, below the high-level bridge. Here there is an open water crag, and a single goldeneye is floating around and diving. I imagine it would be incredibly difficult to hunt goldeneyes without firearms. They are so skittish, and they keep to the little strips of river water far from shore. Just brainstorming, the only way I could imagine getting one would be to fashion some kind of blind, as close as possible to this open water, and maybe employ a throw net with stone weights

1445 Starting to make our way back, we stop off in the bulberry brush above the south-pond peninsula. The Blonde is still here, after several weeks of cleaning the remaining berries. Today she's eating rose hips, because there really aren't many bulberry fruits left to speak of, at least not in this patch

1557 Back to the vehicle now, but before we left the peninsula I inspected the saa'kssoyaa'tsis (nettle) for how it's fibers are in this season. Actually, they seem very good, and the plants have long since dropped their seeds, so I gathered what stems there were at this site to bring home. The only other incident of note was that we saw a meadow vole skitter across the snow by the peninsula bench. This was the longest glimpse we've ever caught of one of these ever-present but elusive rodents

1703 We've decided that The Blonde in the bulberries the last couple weeks is actually The Blonde's offspring. She has The Blonde's coloration, but Peekaboo's face, and she's a bit smaller than either of them. We will call her Goldie Boo

II Iinisskimm (5Dec10)

0756 Naapisisahtaa Kaawahko - I told myself that I'd wake up and explore the coulee at dawn, and so here I am, walking straight down from my house. And it's cold-cold this morning, so freezing that my mind and body aren't really engaged with the exercise yet. But I'll warm up soon enough

0758 The magpies must be roosting all together on these cold nights, because as I approach the draw I'm going to follow down to the river, a group of twenty-five are winging their way up from below. One of them kind of circles around me before continuing. It's probably one of Derrick's friends and recognizes me from the house

0818 I'm coming into view of the river now, and there are thousands of aapsspini lining the open water upstream by Paradise Canyon. They're starting to give their morning honks, and will probably depart before I get down there

0828 I came across a coyote den down in this draw last summer, so I've made an effort to relocate it. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they're occupying it any longer. It's entrance is almost completely covered over in hard drift, and there are no prints. I was thinking maybe I would find some old deer bones around here, something I could try to make use of in my project, but there's nothing in view on any of the exposed ground

0835 The snow is so hardened on this slope, I just took a good jolt and had to struggle a bit to keep myself from sliding down too far too fast. I'm going to have to move more carefully for the next bit. Just after I fell, a small bird fluttered over to check me out. I didn't get a positive identification, but I think it might have been a redpoll. It was about that size, and I'm pretty sure I saw some red on it's head

0851 So I've arrived at the river-bottom, and the geese are still here. The first one has just taken to the air, and they're all honking as if they might follow pretty quick. I'm going to walk up in their direction, because I know there's a nice patch of rabbit willow up that way that I might be able to make some use of

0909 Sitting on the cutbank of the Oldman, near a pool of open water, where thousands of geese are honking and getting coordinated to fly off to the surrounding stubble-fields above the coulee rim. Behind me, there's a tree full of roosted waxwings, chirping like crickets. The river is alive with voices this morning

1008 Family by family, the massive flock of aapsspini begin taking to the air, heading up to the breakfast that awaits them. While they make their departures, I walk around a sandbar and collect a small bundle of willow shoots, about as much as I can carry with one hand. And by the time I've gathered what I can manage, all of the geese have left. I too will head back up the slope now, following a different coulee draw then the one that brought me down here

1036 It's a difficult climb up the draw I've chosen: steep, hard-packed with snow, and thick with chokecherries. There's a lot of pheasant sign in this brush, and indeed one of them flushes as I crash awkwardly through. Up above, I come to a saddle ridge where there's a large, boulder iinisskimm. It looks just like a buffalo calf, and I have no doubt that it was positioned here in purpose in the ancient days to draw the bison down into this draw, where they could be easily hunted from the ridge above. Further up, at the coulee rim, I know there is also an effigy of Sspopii, the Painted Turtle, marking the area where I just picked willow, and all of the floodplain of Paradise Canyon as a sacred tobacco planting grounds. Last year, under advisement from our elders, the developers expanding suburbia in this area put a fence around the Sspopii effigy. While I'm glad it's being protected, I don't agree with this approach at all. To me, it's treating the site like a grave, and I feel it would have been better to incorporate it into whatever landscaping plans there are for this area, and use the opportunity for public education about the history of this coulee, and our responsibilities as human beings to the animals we have long-standing relationships with here

1100 When I crest the coulee rim, there's a coyote. It sees me and runs down past me into the draw, just below the effigy. Perhaps this is where the new den is located. A little further along, when I'm almost back into my neighborhood, I pass very close to a white-tailed jackrabbit and don't even see it in the snow until it scampers away near my feet. So camouflaged these rabbits are, which is a good thing for them if they have to share space with the coyotes

Remembering Stone

IIII ) llllllllllllllllllll I'naksa'pis (29Nov10)

1212 Sspopiikimi - ready to take my phenology study and relationship with place practice to a more complicated level

With all of the recent snow, the roots entombed in ice, the trails and runs of animals so blatantly revealed, my thoughts have turned once again to snares and traps. Last winter, when I was making routine runs to check my rabbit snares each morning, Mahoney and I set a goal to transform our diet within the course of a year to consuming only foods that derive from the Oldman River watershed. Well... we failed, time-wise. But we do have a freezer full of deer, porcupine, and all kinds of berries and vegetable material, suggesting that we have put more effort into it this go'round than ever before. If you'd have peeked into our deep freeze last year, it would have been packed with all kinds of microwavable processed Costco junk. Not anymore. But I have to admit, the majority of our diet is still imported and processed, mostly fast food. It's a problem.

This is not just a health issue. In my mind, it is a matter of social ethics. And not merely human-social, but eco-social. In Niitsi'powahsin, the place where we live is called kitawahsinnoon, meaning what feeds or nourishes us. Everything we need to sustain ourselves affluently is right here, or at least it was throughout all but the last few decades of human history. The bison were the first local victims of the industrial machine that swept across this land from the 1850s onward. When they were slaughtered, every other species of the plains ecosystem was affected. The magpies and eagles left for a time, and turkey vultures are only now beginning to return. All of the large predators waned in population and distribution. We don't even have the tools to measure or quantify the extent to which this change hit other animals, all the birds and rodents, plants and insects who had evolved their ways of life with the presence of bison.

What happened to the herds should never have been. Many thousands of years ago, humans entered into innaihtsiiyssini with the animals, an agreement that we would respect one another's right to life. The animals agreed to teach us ways of living sustainably as members of particular watershed-based eco-societies. We in turn were to limit our intrusions on their lives, and to make appropriate amends for any violations of the spirit of this agreement. For more than a century now, and especially in recent decades, we've continuously ignored this treaty. And the predictable result is that today we don't remember very much at all about how to survive (let alone thrive) as real human beings here, without mining for fuels or metals, without Walmart to sell us the means of our unsustainable culture.

I want to re-learn some of what has been lost, and in so doing to amend further my own relationship with this place and it's non-human inhabitants. Call it an experiment, if that language helps to make it seem any less... whatever. But basically, the idea is this: I will start with nothing, save for the clothes I wear and my fairly extensive (by today's standards) intellectual knowledge of plants, animals, and indigenous technologies. From this basis, I'll pursue the same objectives as before, but with a twist. I'll strive for a greater awareness of my environment by continuing to make regular phenological observations, but now more in the context of attempting to change (incrementally) my diet, from what it is today, to eating only that which derives from this place. And I'll do this completely without the assistance of store-bought technologies. I want to find out for myself what is required to access, gather, process and store nourishment from this ecosystem, to engage with it at that level as a human being independent of the global market.

1220 Just by posing this challenge, already my awareness is changing. As I walk beside north-pond to embark on this project, my immediate question is, "How does one begin in this season?" There's deep snow, the ground is ice. I have nothing, not even a knife. Well... I do have a store-bought hunting blade in my pocket, but I'm not allowed to use it. That's the rules. And for a challenge like this, a simple knife can make a world of difference. I mean, I'm pretty confident that I could kill a rabbit, today, just by way of blunt force trauma with a heavy stick. There's lots of mountain cottontails around, and they tend to allow me to get fairly close. But if I did kill one, I'd have no means of processing the carcass. Of course, I could get totally real and use my teeth, bite a hole through the skin on the neck perhaps, and then rip the hide off. But that would probably destroy the hide, and even with the skin off how am I going to work on it without a blade? Rabbit sushi? Clearly, knives or cutting tools are of the utmost importance. Where can I get one? Not likely I'll find appropriate rocks to fragment in this weather, with so much snow on the ground. I might get lucky and find a bone or antler, but again not likely given the weather and how early we are in the winter season. Probably I'm going to have to settle for some crude wood instrument to start with

1239 Rounding north-pond and walking the ice along the edge of the wet-meadows, I'm wondering how to even fashion a crude wood knife without some other tool. In order to function at all, it would have to be a hardwood like okonoki, but how could I shape it without having some kind of blade to begin with? One idea, and this is just brainstorming, would be to break a chunk of ice off the surface of the pond, and use body heat to shape this until it's sharp enough to work the wood with. But that might be a whole lot more difficult than it sounds, and it doesn't sound easy to begin with

1241 I've come across an area of the north-pond wet-meadows that has a lot of dogbane or Indian hemp. The Niitsi'powahsin term for this plant is i'naksa'pis, or little-rope. As the name infers, this is an important plant for making twine and rope, another very essential first ingredient for this project. I recognize this i'naksa'pis by sight, and I'm intellectually aware of its properties - the root was once used in tea as a laxative and as a wash to prevent falling hair, the latex can be dried and chewed as gum, and the fibers of the inner bark were famous across North America for producing a quality twine used for making snares, nets, clothing, bow strings, you name it. What I don't know about this plant is the experiential side, the relational aspect. When is it best gathered for twine? I'm going to collect some of the stems right now and find out for myself what i'naksa'pis has to offer in early winter

1405 I've picked hemp stems until my fingers and toes grew numb, now I'm walking again, trying to get the warmth and circulation back. The stems are definitely still good to use this time of year, and I noticed that sometimes, when a bit of root came off, it would have one of the stems from two years ago still attached. So apparently, pulling the stems in early winter will not harm next year's growth, because the plants will be sending up new shoots anyway

1414 I climb back on the levee and move to the cutbank overlooking the Oldman. There's a large, adult bald eagle in a tree on the opposite shore, but it sees me before I see it, and heads downstream. There's a decent open crag below the trees where the eagle had been sitting. I figure it was either waiting for fish to swim by, or for ducks to land

1423 Now I've dropped back down off the levee into the forest main, and my thoughts are totally consumed by the knife... how am I going to get a blade? I need a knife and cordage, immediately. And the next necessity after that is flame. I haven't attempted fire by friction in decades, but it's going to be necessary in order to cook or smoke any meat. For that, I'll require a softwood base, willow root perhaps (something that won't be easy to come by in this season). And I'll have to fashion a hardwood spindle, out of saskatoon perhaps, which again leads me back to the importance of a blade

1426 I'm barely into the forest main when my attention is drawn to a small, fiber-woven nest in some bulberries. As I'm looking at the nest, probably that of a yellow warbler, I also start considering various uses I might have for bulberry thorns. Fish hooks, sewing needles, eventually I would like to build a nice fishing kit, for sure. But I'll leave these thorns alone for now. Most of them have next year's buds attached, so I don't know if I'd want to disturb them. Plus, I'd like to have a good look at the hawthorn trees as well, so I can compare those

1449 My last thought of the day has to do with containers. I didn't go far into the forest main before turning back, and now I'm at my vehicle. But all the way along, my mind was on containment systems. A person can't gather or store very much without containers. The simplest means of acquiring something would probably be to use the skins of animals I'm eating. But there's also the possibility of basketry, and in the past there was even a pottery tradition here. Nobody today remembers how the pots found in archaeological digs here were made. If I could experiment with local clays, and eventually renew the pottery-making technique, that would be quite something

IIII ) lllllllllllllllllllll Remembering Stone (30Nov10)

1308 Sikoohkotoki Kawaahko - this afternoon I've decided to take a hike in the coulee just below my house. I never got the chance to start stripping and twining the dogbane I collected yesterday, because we had guests staying with us last night. But hopefully soon. In the meantime, there are other essentials I need to start collecting. Foremost among them, some kind of a knife

1310 Walking along, I come across a patch of prairie sunflowers. They're all black and dried out, and by appearances one would assume they've long ago dropped all their seeds. But I pull the head off one and roll it between my fingers, over the open palm of my other hand, and sure enough there are still seeds falling. These would make a small but beneficial addition to a local diet. Unfortunately though, following the rules I set for myself yesterday, I have no container with which to collect them. I also see, as I start heading into the draw leading toward the river, areas along the rim where land has slid off, exposing an assortment of roots. Some of these would be worth collecting as well, but again no container. So that's another immediate necessity to think about

1313 Yet another food resource is at my feet while I consider the exposed roots of the landslide areas. This is black medick, the smallest of our clovers that, in this season, still carries berry-sized clusters of black seeds, hoisted just above and in contrast to the surface of the snow. Today it's all coming back to containers. If I had something to put these seeds in, I could collect a whole lot of them in a very short time. They are still nice and black, not grey like some of the sweetclover, so they appear to be fungus-free. I pop a couple dozen seeds in my mouth and they taste good to me

1319 One of the best tools for containment is a basket. I'm see the crested wheatgrass is growing pretty thick in some places here on the coulee rim, and it makes me wonder whether I could use these stems as material for something like a coil basket. In order to collect and keep something like the small seeds of black medick, I'll need a tight weave, and a coil basket would serve that purpose well

1330 Okay... I've finally come across some exposed stones near a fencepost on the ridge I'm walking above the coulee draw. It's amazing, with my head in this project there was no way to pass by these rocks, ignoring them as I usually would. Two of them are quartz-like, and I've managed to break off a couple nice, fairly sharp shards by banging them end-to-end. The grain of the crystal is not as smooth as I'd like, but they will do for the time being as my starter knives

1357 With my new knives in hand, I move down off the edge and to the bottom of the draw. It's slow-going because there are dangerous, iced-over drifts. Eventually though, I make it to the bottom, where there's a line of chokecherry brush extending to the river. I'm looking toward the wood for anything useful, I'm thinking rabbit stick at the very least. But most of the chokecherry here appears to be long dead. It's black in color, but not charred. I wonder if maybe it got strangled out at some point by a major plague of black knot. There are still some live bushes, but they're small. I eat several winter-dried berries off them. While I'm snacking, a small bird lands on the snow nearby. I'm not sure what it is, could be a redpoll. It quickly darts around pecking something off the top of the snow, then flits away. Just as it leaves, a magpie lands in the chokecherry brush beside me. This has to be one of the birds who visits our house each day. It's really close to me, which I interpret as familiarity. I don't recognize it as any of our most familiars, but there are still several regulars I've lost track of as individuals since they got their full winter plumage

1409 In one of the chokecherry bushes, I come across an interesting cocoon. It is a bundle if silk, almost as big as my fist, coiled around a branch, and shelled with chokecherry leaves that had been individually glued on. I opened it up, but there's no current resident. My mind started considering uses for such silk, and then immediately turned to the possibility of using bird nests as make-shift containers. The deer mice use them to hold their caches, so why not? I wonder how strong the big mud bowls in magpie nests are? I also wonder whether the clay cliff-swallow nests could be fire-hardened?

1505 Having made my way eventually to the river, I tried out my knives and cut a bundle of young rabbit-willow stems to begin experimenting with at home for basket-weaving. I'm now hiking downstream to the next draw, and I'll climb that to make my way home. The most efficient way to travel this time of year is on the frozen river. I wouldn't trust the ice yet to cross to the opposite shore, but I can walk very safely parallel to my shore. The coyotes know about this efficient trail too, the evidence of their using it is considerable

1522 As soon as I start climbing out, and get low up on the ridge over the downstream draw, I'm hit with a really strong, cold wind. I hadn't realized how low I've been on energy until now, and I'm finding the ascent a real struggle. Makes me think though... if I were living out here in this season, climbing up and down the coulee slopes means considerable energy expense. Too much, I think. There are different resources in the floodplain than up on the rim, but I think overall the river-bottom is the most profitable and weather-shielding. Best to just stay down there, unless one had lots of food back at camp to replace the energy lost in climbing

1619 The wind kicked my ass climbing back up out of the coulee. I swear it hardened into a cold, flowing spear, threw itself directly into my right ear, and half-froze my brain

Breath Exchange And Burdock Maggots

IIII ) llllllllllllll Breath Exchange (23Nov10)

1257 Sspopiikimi - super cold today, hovering around minus twenty-five degrees. We've had almost a full week of constant, light snowfall, and walking in I see no sign at all of recent human presence. This afternoon I'll be watching the snow for animal signs, and starting a collection of seeds that I can use as a baseline for comparing against seeds I find in dung, corvid pellets, and rodent dens

1259 A set of coyote tracks crosses my path on the trail from the parking lot, and as I come into view of the pond I immediately spot the tracks' creator, or at least one of it's close relatives. There is a coyote over by the ksisskstakioyis. It spots me right away and trots off across the wet meadows, heading to the forest main. This is the first time I've encountered coyotes at the pond in the middle if the day. Normally, I only see them here in the early morning, or hear them at night. I know, however that coyote families elsewhere are sometimes active during the day, but I think the potential for human presence at Sspopiikimi usually makes them reluctant to approach. This afternoon, however, it's quiet and very cold here, so I'm sure they weren't expecting me, and with the snow cover they need all the hunting time they can get

1305 I'd like to observe the coyote in her hunt, but I've no doubt she's watching me right now from some hiding spot either at the edge if the forest main or in the big bulberry patch in the middle of the wet-meadows. My best chance at spotting her again is to move away from the area, until I'm out of view, and then to stalk up along a different flank and hunker down to watch the wet-meadow and pond. The levee that runs along the length of the river provides the perfect opportunity to conceal my movement. So I head to the far end of north-pond, away from the coyote, with intention to climb the levee and drop down into the forest on the opposite side. From there, I can easily move south without the coyote knowing it. But before I carry out the first part of this plan, I stop at the base of the levee, at the tartarian honeysuckle tree, where I notice a fine, fiber nest, probably from a yellow warbler. I blow the snow out of the nest cup, curious as to whether it houses a deer mouse food cache. It doesn't. I am, however, able to collect my first two seed samples here, honeysuckle and yellow sweetclover

1331 I've now passed over the levee and through the north forest to the river. Along the way, I stopped at a Russian olive tree to collect a few of it's seeds, then at a bulberry bush to graze on some of the frozen fruit, eating straight off the branches with my mouth. While grazing in this fashion, I noticed a nest hidden deep in the bush, a thick but shallow bowl loosely woven of grass and twigs. I suspect it is a catbird nest, from the family who we observed with their fledglings in this area during the summer. Blowing some of the snow out of the shallow bowl, I see that it contains a cache of bulberries, and there are deer mouse droppings here and there as well. I leave the nest and move toward the river, where I now stand at the forest's edge, just coming into view of the water. A duck, possibly a golden-eye, flew whistle-winging past a minute ago, moving downstream. And I suspect the bird flying by at the moment is the one that motivated the duck's scramble... a massive, adult bald eagle

1344 The Oldman is almost completely iced-over, though there is an open stream running it's full length. Behind the concealment of trees, I cross the levee again and drop down into the forest main. Here, at the base of a large poplar, I notice some feathery frost that suggests local humidity, possibly rising breath coming from a nested mammal

1405 I dig into the snow at the base of the tree, searching for some sign of whatever is producing the humidity. I find nothing, but the snow itself obscures quite a bit. There must be something living here, perhaps somehow within the tree itself. There's no other explanation for the feathery frost, which reminds me very much of the ice crystals that form around the vents on top of beaver lodges. I will be keeping my eye in this tree. For now, I'm moving on, out to the wet meadows, and into the big bulberry thicket here

1423 I crawl on my hands and knees following a coyote trail, to scurry with relative ease through the tunnels that permeate the brush. About half way through, I come across a pile of coyote shit that's larger than I would expect. I know it has to belong to a coyote though, because of how loaded it is with rodent and deer hair. I can also see that there are bulberries and other vegetable material in the shit. Given the objectives of my seed-collecting project, I figure it best to take a sample that I can disintegrate in water at home

1444 My mind is still on the feathery ice crystals at the base of that tree, and now I can't resist the temptation to climb the ksisskstakioyis and check their ventilation holes. Wave after wave of aapsspini pass, headed south, as I cross the wet-meadows. Soon I'm atop the lodge, and a bit surprised to see that the more intricate ice formations aren't really here yet. We need a more extended period of cold, perhaps. But the ventilation holes are completely apparent and snow-free. I put my face down close to one of them and after a few seconds get a warm waft of beaver breath, which I in-turn breath in. It's scent is a mixture of wood, earth and pond that's difficult to describe. It's another of the unique scents of nature, as immediately enjoyable as the smell of baby snakes. I keep my face down in the ventilation and direct a deep breath of my own back to the residents. A few seconds later, I catch the warmth of theirs again. It's a pleasant exchange

1452 Leaving the ksisskstakioyis, I head toward south pond, and walk casually out over the ice to check on the new muskrat lodge on the small island. There's no sign that the muskrats have come in or out lately, and it occurs to me that this could very well be just an over-sized beaver scent mound. Right now though, it's so cover with snow that it would be difficult to tell

1457 From the muskrat lodge or scent mound, I walk further south along the perimeter of the pond, keeping to the ice, and heading to the river-fed spring. When I arrive, there are all kinds of animal trails leading down to three small open pools of water. They're mostly coyote I think, hard to tell with the snow as powdery as it is. This would be a good place to sit and watch some evening

1505 Continuing on, I climb back up the levee walk and pass between south pond and the owl wood, toward the bulberry and currant patch above the peninsula. As I approach, a flock of about fifty small birds takes to the air from a starting point somewhere on the coulee slope. They split into two groups, one of which makes a surveillance pass low over me, then rejoins the other, and together the whole flock move erratically out toward the river. I suspect they are waxwings, but I'm not certain. Just as they're departing, I notice that The Blonde porcupine is back munching on bulberries. I'm going to try and move close without scaring her away

1546 I've been with The Blonde for a while now, watching her graze on berries and the occasional strip of bark not two meters away. There's a mountain cottontail who's joined us as well, but it's too deep in the underbrush for me to easily see what it's eating. While here, I've collected bulberry and buckbrush seeds, and I saw the large eagle twice more - first flying up above the high-level bridge, then back downriver again. It could be more than one bird, of course. Now my hands and feet are freezing from lack of movement, and I think I'll head back to the truck

IIII ) lllllllllllllllllll Burdock Maggots (28Nov10)

1156 Sspopiikimi - it's been snowing steady since last night, making the driving conditions treacherous. I'm forced to park in a neighborhood on the coulee rim and hike down rather than parking at the bottom. This is okay with me though. I have a pretty bad cold that's been trying to shut me down the past few days, but my thinking is there's few approaches to kick a bug that're better than a good workout in the fresh air

1219 It takes me twenty minutes just to walk from my car to where I begin dropping into the coulee by the high-level bridge. In the snow, this alone is quite arduous, and I wind up having to strip off my gloves and unzip my jacket just to regulate the heat so that I don't sweat. Along the way, I suck on hips of prairie rose to extract their seeds for my growing collection

1236 I'm drawn to a brushy area near one of the upper anchors of the high-level bridge. There are bulberries here, so I expect to find animals as well. And just as I'm walking in, I spot some movement on the ground, a rodent, possibly a meadow vole, dashing between subnivian entrances. I decide to park here briefly, to see if they'll continue to come out in my presence

1259 The voles stay hidden and, again for temperature modulation purposes, I decide it is time to move on. I don't have to go far, just crossing under the bridge really, before I see a mountain cottontail standing still and silent nearby. I watch and after a few minutes it proceeds to munch on a certain plant. I can't identify the food from where I'm at, so I begin to move closer, and of course the rabbit scurries away. But when I walk up to where it had been sitting, I find that the plant it was eating is a mustard species. It's nothing I recognize right away, but it's tall, with very slender seed pods, and the remains of white flowers. Should be able to narrow it down later. For now, I gather some of these seed pods, along with other samples from chokecherry, stinging nettle, and a catnip-like mint. Moving on

1324 Rather than heading straight down along the easiest route toward the coulee bottom, I decide to take the more difficult lateral route up and down different draws until I'm perched on a ridge high above the pond. I figure, if there are any coyotes or other large mammals around the wet meadows and such, I'd like to know about it before they see me. My best option is the height advantage. As I move, I gather more seeds, prairie onion and a blue flax. The canary grass and crested wheat long ago dropped their seeds, so I'll have to get those in a different season. Eventually, I'm in position to survey Sspopiikimi from above, but the animals I thought I might surprise are not apparent, save for a furry bundle in the bulberries above the peninsula who I suspect is The Blonde

1325 Before leaving the ridge, I pop a handful of skunkbrush berries in my mouth, puckering at the burst of citrus, and roll these around my teeth with my tongue as I walk, extracting the seeds and swallowing the flesh. When I'm about half way to the bottom, I notice there are a couple of recreational schmucks working their way around the pond perimeter on cross-country skis, with a husky dog running between them. A local magpie, one of Derrick's immediate family members no doubt, perches in a chokecherry tree beside me, and we both watch the oblivious couple and their equally unaware dog pass just below us

1402 Soon I'm down to the bench on the cutbank above south pond, and heading into the bulberry and currant stands to confirm whether the furry bundle is actually our porcupine friend. I pull one of the sticky seed heads off a burdock plant on the way, and I'm separating the seeds in my hand, when I find that there's a small white maggot in here, feeding off the burdock seeds. I can't very well put the thing back together so the larva could continue growing. I decide the best thing for this baby is if I take it home, along with some of it's favorite food, and try to help it reach adulthood

1434 As expected, the one in the bulberries is The Blonde. As I walk over to her, I flush one, then another, then a third ring-necked pheasants, two turkeys and a hen, each of whom take off in different directions. The recreators ski past again, this time noticing me and calling out a friendly hello that I recognize as being all too loud for this place. If any of the animals weren't aware of me being here prior to this gesture, they certainly are now. It's snowing pretty heavily, and I've made my way to the river bench. No ducks or geese here today, and no eagle sightings yet. I sit on the bench and separate a mullien head. It's seeds are tiny, like those of tobacco

1506 Already thinking about the pending darkness of sundown, I opt today for an exploration of the owl wood. This will lead me back toward the bridge, where I can start my ascent of the coulee slope again. One of the things I'm checking on in the owl wood is whether or not the oriole nest has dropped yet with the weight of this snow. It hasn't. It's still dangling perfectly from the tip of a narrow branch high in the forest canopy. I collect some tall goldenrod seeds at ground level beneath the oriole tree and move on, now scanning for any of the owls. None show themselves, but I do come across two more ring-necked pheasants, both roosters. They are sitting beneath bulberry bushes, no doubt pecking for dropped berries. When I reach the river again, by the bridge, there is a lone mallard drake in the open crag of water, watching me over it's shoulder as it drifts purposely away

1523 I take it back. The duck is not a mallard at all. As I finished typing that last bit of my notes, I saw it dive. Has to be a goldeneye. I got my camera out and waited for it to come up and dive again, then I ran to cover some distance between us and dove behind a cluster of licorice plants. This is as close as I could get without going right down onto the river ice, and that would be senseless, because the bird would see me right away and vacate. I'm able to get off several pictures between his dives without the goldeneye noticing me. When I depart, I use the same technique, waiting for him to be underwater before I make my move

1550 I want to follow the cutbank along the back of the owl wood, to return and look out over the pond one more time before I head up. So I do. Then I start the climb, hiking up along a brushy draw where I suspect I'll have more encounters. Indeed, when I come to the top of the first steep rise, there is a pair of niipomakii scouring a clump of low saskatoons. They're not interested in the berries, as far as I can tell. They want insects. And being as curious as they are, they don't mind my proximity at all. Rather, they flit several times over to bushes that are even nearer to me, for the purpose of checking me out

1617 Back up on top now, having scared up yet another pheasant and passed by another silent and still cottontail. What a brutal climb. They should make StairMaster machines with a setting for coulee slope with fresh powder over chinook-hardened drifts. People would be busting their ankles at the gym. I'm sitting for just a moment on the rim to catch my breath and cool down. The dusk is settling. I hope the snows continue