Autumn color along the Mountain Loop Highway

Jim and I thought to drive up the Skagit yesterday to see the colorful deciduous trees in their glory since rain was expected for the next three days. By the time we were ready, after getting up late and doing those Saturday must do errands, however, it was time to rethink and I consulted the map to consider a loop through Darrington. After living in Seattle for over 20 years, we finally took this day trip Jim had been told to check out in residency.
The route we took coursed through Granite Falls, past Pilchuck, and along the Mountain Loop Highway, stopping to photograph a stand of trees in the sunlight for the 350 ppm campaign and moving on to the Big 4. This is a large mountain with pinnacles and massive formations. A very picturesque and perfect place for a picnic with kids, there was once a luxury inn the present meadow. Between 1921 and 1949 the a gas powered train brought visitors to the Big Four Inn; sadly, it burned in 1949 and there was no interest in replacing it. There is a wetland boardwalk hike and ice caves in the area.
Further along, the road turns to excellently graded gravel at the blocked turn off to the ghost town of Monte Cristo, center of gold and silver mining, now accessible on foot. Easy to navigate, the road has little elevation variation as it follows the river. The colors along the stream were enhanced by the alternating blue sky and fog among the trees. From the previous day's rains, there was a tremendous amount of water filling cascading waterfalls and the rivers. The map we had showed paving in the middle of two courses of gravel, each about 8 miles (~13km). We drove along these, not really measuring but noticing the increasing length of the gravel road. We never did find a paved road between the areas marked on the map, and there were a number of forest roads leading off this local highway 20.
We continued to Darrington and checked data for a place to dine in Arlington, settling on Bistro San Martin. The kitchen is very talented and skilled. Really enjoyed special pork tenderloin and flat iron steak, and their special pour wine to sample 3 different Washington state wines was a good value for me who doesn't drink much. Sauces were flavorful, not overly salty nor rich. Vegetables steamed and lightly dressed. Edamame risotto was intriguing and a good foil for the tenderloin's sauce, but the addition of cheese (not always de rigeur but often expected) made it too rich. Chanterelle soup not distinguished: creamy and flavored with brandy or sherry, so mushrooms didn't come through as much as other cooks' soups can. No vegetarian options on the menu, but indicated they would cook especially for you. On a menu like this, in western Washington, I was surprised to see no provenance on the menu, and they featured [gasp!] Chilean sea bass. Also, including raspberries and blueberries in the vanilla mousse cake dessert in October didn't suggest local. (The cake and mousse were delicious, if a shade too sweet.) But what they do, they do very well. We didn't try the bread which was served with olive oil and herbs. If I were a regular, and we later consulted with our Arlington friends who are, I would try the duck and veggie options. Also atmosphere was warm, genial without being overly familiar, and not obscure. Our friends say it's considered the romantic place in town.

Micellaneous Food Posts

In an effort to clear out paper notes from my desk, some from long ago, here are some food notes, most recent first:
dinner at Navarre on September 8, 2009 on our way back from Tamara and Eric's Wedding
Warm potato salad
Stuffed patty pan squash
Porcini with corn salad (not the green, but a salad with yellow corn)
Ken's bread with grassy olive oil (Robin was surprised)
Salami Plate
Braised greens
Potato pancakes
Trout baked in parchment
Steamed clams
Italian/Spanish cheese
Anjou: red wine
Walnut pie with chocolate
coffee
I'm a big fan of this restaurant, first recommended to me by Fritzi Cohen of the Moby Dick Hotel in Nahcotta

farther back in time:
July 12, 2006 dessert at Flying Fish (in Seattle)
wonton wrappers in a long roll stick with fig-cherry (probably dried) fruit filling, fried, dusted lightly with powdered sugar + dipping sauces (not sweet): raspberry/blueberry, chocolate and caramel. This was an amazing dessert: tall in flavor, but not sweet, despite ingredients. Fruit parts were flavorful, the way the fruit rolls are at Chocolate Arts in Vancouver.

A Pyramid and Return to Seattle

Summerhill Winery with its pyramid wine home, lovely view of the lake and sunset, and delicious food.

Field, Emerald Lake

heading out

Walcott2009 Day Three Books and wiwaxia!

Place holding for reports on great day three:
More on eyes by two Chinese women scientists with great presentations! Hallucegenia eyes and connection to arthropoda!

New discoveries by JB Caron team in Stanley Glacier area, including "tulip" animal.
Fascinating geologic ideas about underwater mud volcanoes by local (metro Calgary, etc.) geologists and decay chemistry by scientists from Ohio.

Books signed by our favorite scientists.
Special wiwaxia reproduction aquired.

Walcott 2009 day two

I can see I'm going to have to write a little tonight and post more later in the trip. These scientists go all day, even more than College Art, although they don't put the avant garde at 8:30 pm. We found the blogger from Nature: she is Nicola Jones, journalist, adjunct professor at UBC school of journalism and blogs here

Saving space here, I'm just going to mention the wonderfully inspiring keynote talks by Douglas Erwin and Nicholas Butterfield. Erwin, whom we have been reading in articles provided by Nicole Killebrew, one of our naturalist supervisors at the Seattle Aquarium, seems to be pulling together some ideas across the field regarding development, ecosystem engineering and niche construction.

Butterfield, who may have been easier for me to understand since he spoke after dinner, is interested in broad views of fossils, especially their microstructure to synthesize resolutions to taxonomic issues. We had absolutely no idea that wiwaxia was controversial. It's everywhere (that's comforting): almost no middle Cambrian shale which doesn't have it. Apparently wiwaxia is not a polychaete worm, nor a mollusk. Previously Desmond Collins showed a "frolicking" wiwaxia, and Butterfield had some really breathtaking images of wiwaxia and other fossils, many prepared to show their microstructure.

Walcott 2009 day one!

It is so good to be surrounded by sensible people and rainy weather!

Two disclaimers: first this conference is really well organized. Jean-Bernard Caron of the department of Paleobiology at the Royal Ontario Museum and his staff did a terrific job organizing this with frequent emails, and an impressive, yet thrifty abstract volume with schedule, etc. There is also a beautifully produced "field trip companion volume", and we received copies, too. The Banff Centre really has excellent accomodations; the food is good and plenty; the coffee is very good and there is plenty at the Max Bell building where the presentations take place. It's kind of like an upscale college experience; Jim and I have a deliciously comfortable king sized bed. Second, we're really glad to be at a conference where we don't have to be "working." We're just fans of these people who seem careful about taking care of their junior faculty and graduate students.

The very first talk was given by Desmond Collins, also of ROM, about the discovery of the Burgess Shale in 2009 by Charles Walcott of the Smithsonian Institution. We are familiar with this story, but he had great historical photos, including Governor Burgess of the NW Territories (the government of the site at the time). Desmond Collins has led scientists and students up to the Walcott quarry for years and the hike is a major accomplishment for the enthusiast. The history continued with J. Stewart Hollingsworth discussing Walcott's insights on the Esmerelda Basin in Nevada and California, where he had hunted fossils before his Rocky Mountain adventure was so successful. The trilobites he'd found in Nevada are apparently similar to the ones in Siberia. David Bruton of the University of Oslo shared photos and connection to Harry Whittington having joined in the 1967 exhibition to the Burgess Shale. This began Whittington's fossil collecting for Canada since Walcott had removed his collections to Washington DC. David Bruton also relayed greetings from Professor Whittington who remains in England (he's 93!).

The very energetic and enthusiastic Keynyn Brysse of Princeton explained contemporary ideas about phyla and cladistic systemization. Before I get myself into confusion because her explanation as an historian of ideas was very clear, I will quote from her abstract: "Decisions about how to classify Burgess Shale organisms are not mere disputes over stamp collecting, but instead reflect such critical biological issues as how to define a phylum, and whether all animal species belong in this most fundamental of taxonomic groups." She also suggests that the controversies between naming and classification, and contingency and convergence reveal how scientists think about evolution. She had very cool graphics which I realized sadly were not reproduced in my iPhone tweets and cited a couple of references I plan to look for. She must be a wonderful teacher. Jim and I need to study up on the new nomenclature of "crown" and "stem" groups.

Jim and I were, we admit, expecting that much of this conference would really be over our heads. However, we were also able to follow the discussion Alison Olcott Marshall, of the University of Kansas on the use of new non-invasive spectroscopy techniques to analyse the biopolymer walls of microfossils known as acritarchs. Are they embryos or animals? Maybe microalgae? Dinoflagellates? Her clear presentation was a good introduction to us of some of the issues in Protereozoic fossil study. Most early lifeforms are assumed to be benthic, bottom dwellers, and it is during the Cambrian that animals start floating around inthe water column. The acritarchs might be a move from benthic to pelagic. Her working group expresses enthusiasm about these techniques for further study of preservation of the fossils.

Frank Corsetti of USC expressed interest in environmental considerations of fossil microorganisms of the Doushantuo formation (China). There's a connection between fossil retention of 10% of the world's phosphate resources and the fact that nowadays that sulfide oxygenating bacteria concentrate and rapidly release phosphate.

Our curiosity was piqued by the presentation by Guy Narbonne of Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario of the "best preserved Ediacaran fossils in the world." These are rangeomorphs, found in Spaniard's Bay in Newfoundland. Professor Narbonne said these fossils are by the beach, in a beautiful spot, with B& B's nearby. However, they are also receiving UNESCO World Heritage designation, so we will have to look at them from a distance. The photos are beautiful: rangeomorphs ahave fractal like structures and seem to build up frond like structures. He spoke longer later in the day in a keynote, further expanding on these beautiful and intriguing lifeforms.

There was also a scientist from Russia we'd met briefly at breakfast. Ekaterina A. Serezhnikova of the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences made an elegant digital presentation of the attachments Ediacaran biota make to the sea floor. She documented finds from Ediacaran deposits in the White Sea area of Russia. These attachments support the benthic location for these fossils.

If I review all my notes now, I'll be up all night. We definitely came away from the talks today understanding that Stephen Jay Gould opened up the world of invertebrate paleontology to the rest of us at the risk of making the Cambrian model of contingent evolution. Too much the myth of individual consciousness, I think! Scientists today work to find pre-Cambrian evidence of evolution and convergence so that the Burgess Shale is less singular and fits into models of richness, complexity and the fascination in the nexus of ecology and evolution.

At dinner, we met Marianne Collins whose illustrations, whether pen and ink or color, grace many texts accompanying these discussions and, we think, had shown some at the Tyrrell Museum when we went there both times with Robin. I asked her about her palette, which is very colorful and almost psychedelic, and she replied that she began when the Royal Ontario Museum wanted murals appropriate to a general audience, including children. As a scuba diver, she wanted to remain loyal to underwater limited vision, but didn't want everything to look like Bermuda, either. So she uses green and contrasting colors to distinguish the animals. She thinks others caught on later. You can sort of get an idea via this link; I'll try to update if I can http://www.rom.on.ca/exhibitions/nhistory/nhhighlights.php

Also, it was announced that a blogger from Nature was posting. I haven't found the link yet.

Marble canyon hike and Walcott 2009 reception

Just a quick post as we will add more photos and commentary from our hike later.

We arrived in Banff Sunday night and after checking in and fussing had a very beautiful dinner in the Centre dining hall. This was a high end special in the Three Ravens Restaurant, on the same floor as Vistas hall and open to the views of the mountains. It's 360 glass, and lovely even when there's atmosphere surrounding in the form of clouds. It was very hot and we ran the fan all night.

Unlike other conference goers, we didn't arrange to go on any conference hikes. We had already done the Mt. Stephen one, and just are not up to doing the one to the Walcott quarry, though it is the trip of a lifetime. Instead, we had arranged with Joel Hagen who runs Great Divide Interpretation [http://www.greatdivide.ca/] to take a short hike with little elevation so Alice could get used to the heights in the Rockies. That thankfully didn't end up being the problem: there was too much sun because we hiked in a part of the Kootenay (koo' tun ee) Forest that had burned in 2003. We had heard about this fire because it was actually several fires which joined and burned hot over an extremely large area. Driving from Cranbrook to Banff, we viewed the devastation from the road and were shocked by the immensity of the burn. However, our hike helped us understand the fire ecology and we were impressed that it was more than 5 years ago that the fire had occurred.

We had taken a hike with Joel in 2002 when we were here before with Robin. Alice had already sprained her ankle and had indifferent physical therapy; so limited hiking was our goal. And a few years before, in 1999, we had taken the Mt. Stephen hike to the trilobite site, Ogygopsis bed; so doing contemporary natural history was also welcome. Joel was a great guide and we were spoiled at having him all to ourselves. This time we learned about the succession of plants following the fire and the geology of the limestone (not really marble) canyon.

The sun was really too much for Alice despite covering, hat and tons of sunblock and water. However, after a nap, we went to the reception/icebreaker at the Whyte museum where there was a terrific small exhibition of artifacts surrounding Walcott's discovery. Notably there wasn't anything from the Smithsonian, where Walcott took his hoard of fossils. His panoramic photographs of the mountains were lovely, and it's always great to see the mountains, even though we had just seen them.

We decided to get supper and go to bed early; so had a comfortable Japanese meal at Suginoya: beautiful sushi with that gorgeous Japanese pearly rice and a noodle broth bowl with preserved wild vegetables. Not sure whether it was wild mustards, but it could have been dandelions: they just pick what's around. Also pickled radish, plum and a delicious cabbage pickle. Seems as if Banff has more chain eating (the Keg and Tony Roma's) than we remember. Early to bed in anticipation of 8:30 plenary!

Nelson and Kootenay Lake

Alice likes the stone buildings in Nelson: art school and Selkirk College. Nelson was once a big railroad town.

On Saturday, in the Seattle-like heat of Nelson, after packing up and having lunch at the historic Hume Hotel, we visited the town museum. This beautifully air conditioned facility, in one of the many historic buildings, had some interesting historical photographs and objects, and psychelic oil paintings of various older houses in the town, definitely in the tradition of the Canadian Group of Seven. More iced coffee at Oso Negro, where Alice added food reviews of Nelson to Odaria on Twitter, a last visit to the Otter book store, and we were ready to head east. One last stop was to a BC liquor store to buy a bottle of Havana Club rum, unavailable in the US and said to be far superior to the contemporary productions of Bacardi.

We drove along the West Arm of Kootenay Lake for about a half hour, heading to the ferry dock for the ride across the huge and beautiful lake, naturally occurring and miles and miles long, and seemingly as wide as Puget Sound, as the ride took about as long as from Edmonds to Kingston. We thought it more beautiful than Lake Tahoe, in an area not so dry and surrounded by mountains and evergreen trees. The intense heat had moderated, and afternoon clouds, which later led to another spectacular thunder and lightning storm, shielded us from the sun, so we could fully enjoy the views from the little car ferry. Picture: Riding on the MV Balfour.

Once across, we stopped in the small community of Crawford Bay, which has an outstanding array of craftspeople, especially broom makers and a blacksmith. We bought a find hand broom attached to an iron handle for Wanda, and learned that the broom makers, whose workshop was closed for the day, had made brooms for various movies, as well as the Canadian publisher of Harry Potter books.
http://www.northwovenbroom.com/
The road trailed south along the east shore of the Lake for miles, with many gorgeous views, and we began to spot peaks from the higher Rocky Mountains to the east as we headed for Cranbrook, where we slept well but didn't see much other than the thunderstorm, the fast-food lined strip along the highway, and the vast parking area of our Best Western motel.

Travel along the Crow's Nest Highway

As indicated in yesterday's tweet, we began our day in Hope, BC with excellent coffee and tuna sandwiches at the Blue Moose Cafe. We had stayed in Hope the first time we went to Banff in 1993. Robin was 5 and we camped along the way, but our first stop, in Hope, allowed him to play at this playground and park which seems to be undergoing a huge reconstruction, including a number of these shellacked cute-ish wild animal sculptures. We really appreciated the kid friendliness of civic parks in BC, and the kindness of the children who played in them. Hope is the location of the confluence of the Coquihalla and Fraser Rivers.


Jim is dwarfed by the greatness of Lordco, proving the hierarchical nature of the great chain of being through its godlike divine power. LORDCO is a fond and humorous memento of the first trip to Banff , which actually was a trip to Drumheller and the Tyrrell Museum there. Our motivation for that trip was vertebrate fossils in the form of the dinosaurs found in the Drumheller Valley: rich in fossil fuel, the area proved to be replete with Cretaceous creatures. The Royal Tyrrell Museum is about an hour and a half from Calgary, and to our minds is the British Museum of Dinosaurs. We've been there twice with Robin, but since this trip focuses on invertebrate fauna, we're only going as far as Banff.


Before we left, I dropped some artwork off to be scanned for the Medieval Women's Choir cd, Laude Novella, that will come out this fall. In consultation with our director and friend Margriet Tindemans told me her sister is coming to visit from Holland next week and after a few days will take her family on a road trip to California. Like the tourists now shown in this picture of the "Dutch Star," they will rent and drive a massive motor home. Margriet says her sister does not own a vehicle at home and rarely drives, but will assume the driving of this monstrosity. I had no idea, but there is an entire industry, clear from the special model identification on this van, of making these excursion vehicles available to Dutch tourists in North America. I think Margriet's sister was going to rent hers in Bellingham or Snohomish county, but she told me there's a huge company in Vancouver since it's popular to drive around western Canada, too. Got to say I wondered about these large vehicles, since when I was at the North Cascades Park residency, they were widening the roads for accessibility to rv camping sites to accomodate them. Wow! the 21st century.

We drove along highway 3 in southern British Columbia through provincial parks, First Nations reservations and finally, near Osoyoos, great orchards of stone fruits such as cherries, apricots and peaches. I had thought most of these were north of here, around Penticton, Kelowna and Vernon, but signs in the town of Cawston indicated that it had more organic farmers, or orchards, than anywhere in Canada. Very beautiful area, but I wondered since it's all irrigated whether they are having trouble with mineral build up as they do in California's central valley, which has become quite toxic (selenium? not sure). We did see a large reservoir/pond which had evaporated leaving telltale salts. We need to consult with these orchardists about good food to be had, since we didn't find any in Osoyoos.

Just outside Hope and before reaching the Okanagan Valley, we drove through Manning Provincial Park, a very beautiful part of the North Cascades, and we saw the far upper Skagit River flowing southward toward Hozemeen and Ross Lake in the US National Park. We identified the valley through which the Skagit flowed north into the Fraser River before geologic events changed its course to southward a million years ago. Highway 3 is aptly named the Crowsnest Highway, due to many great high vistas, and the indicator sign has a cool looking crow on a nest behind the number 3.

On the other side of Osoyoos are interesting towns linked with water: rivers mostly and some lakes. Immigration of Russian pacifists, Doukhobors, in the early 20th century is still seen in towns like Grand Forks--lots of places advertising borscht here and in Castlegar, and many Russian names seen on timber companies and orchards.

On our first night in Nelson, we had dinner and outside were street musicians playing Django Reinhardt style music very well: guitar, harmonica, violin and bass. We picked up their CD and strolled back to our hotel; many restored historic buildings here from a hundred years ago, and a setting on an arm of the huge Kootenay Lake below forested mountains. After we got into bed, there was an amazing thunderstorm, with huge and for a while almost continuous flashes of lightning. All the lights went out, apparently all over town for almost two hours. This was not the first such storm we've seen in the North Cascades over the past 6 days! Summer in the mountains surely brings spectacular weather, and it is finally cooling down as we prepare to explore Nelson on this Friday morning.

An Unexpected Party

Sitting at painting work, contemplating the continuing heat wave and the forecasting possible temperature increase, nearly a week before our anticipated departure, I received a phone call from Moria Peters: she and Steve were coming to the Pacific Northwest and could spend a few days with us before we went to Banff. What a treat! As you can note from March 2008, we visited them at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the legend of Albuquerque Jim began. So we chilled as best we could, starting with faux tropical feast and cocktails Saturday (July 25). On Sunday, after a necessary stop in Shilshole at Marination Mobile, the Korean/Hawaiian taco truck in Seattle, we drove up the Skagit River to North Cascades National Park.

It was extremely warm, and we took the Cascade River Road toward the Chelan trailhead. We passed highway cone with a letter sized sign in Marblemount, ignoring it. However, we also noticed a number of US Forest Service trucks and other green vehicles coming down the mountains, and wondered whether a Sunday work party indicated urgency. Near the end of the road, but not as far as the trailhead, the gate was closed. Steve spoke with a hiker and we all quizzed her: the night before they had sustained a dramatic thunderstorm with buckets of rain. Well, the Cascade River Road washed out between our gate and the trailhead, stranding the vehicles of those weekend hikers. She said it was thrilling, but their vehicle was at this stop, and they were headed home, unlike those who awaited road repair. Having lived up in the park during the fall of 2006 (I blogged in Live Journal, odaraia), we experienced this during the fall storms, usually much more dramatic in eroding the mountains and hillsides, and culminating in a serious washout of highway 20 in November. Jim missed work then when he couldn't return to Seattle for a couple of days.

So we drove down the river road and east on highway 20 up to the Lake Ross overlook to view Mt. Hozemeen, always breathtaking to see Canada up the gorge. While there, we felt, heard and saw the drama of the mountain lightning storm. The bolts were coming out of the clouds and striking the peaks: we saw two strike Pyramid Peak and the first was followed by the telltale smoke of a forest fire.

By way of nostalgia, we went by Camp Tender, where I stayed in the park, and to see the vista from the visitor's center. The view of the Picket Range look familiar? Also, I've included Moria's clouds. The alpen glow and sunset reflections were deeply dramatic.

Yesterday, we left home around 7 pm, after record heat in Seattle above 103 degrees F (never in recorded history). Hard to pack and get organized in the heat, we moved so slowly that our drive in Sedro Woolley and north on highway 9 was in twilight/dark. However, we again viewed a lightning storm, this time more dramatic with quinacridone gold bursts of brilliant branches dispersed to the brewing clouds against the dark sky.
We arrived in Hope, BC, and are preparing for the next leg of our journey to Nelson, BC.
For information on North Cascades national park:
http://www.nps.gov/noca/

Portland and upcoming peregrinations

This year is filling with travel, not all with the car, which is repaired, but now has its navigation system compromised. Alice takes Wiwaxia to Portland next week for the exhibition, Cultural Sensibilities IV at the Littman Gallery at Portland State University, [April 3-29] with a week of feasts and activities with women artists from Korea and Portland. This image is of the work Alice will show, "O Rubor Sanguinis: Tu Flos Es," 1996, also the cover of the Medieval Women's Choir's first cd of music by Hildegard von Bingen.
Robin leaves for Egypt on April 7, and will return to Olympia in mid May after a month there and two weeks in Jordan.
Then there's a possible trip to DC in June for a conference for Jim and some patriotic gushing if Alice goes, too.
Our most significantly fun trip will be to Banff in August for a 100th anniversary conference celebrating the discovery of the Burgess Shale. For the uninitiated, this extraordinary fossil site, discovered in 1909 by Charles D. Walcott, director of the Smithsonian, contains exquisitely preserved soft bodied invertebrate animals, including wiwaxia corrugata. This conference will be attended by students and renowned invertebrate paleontologists. The Burgess Shale is near Field, British Columbia, not far from Banff. If we are fortunate, we may travel to Jaspar as well.
Alice's brother Paul's daughter Tamara is preparing nuptials for September 5 in Glen Ellen, California, known for Jack London's home and more recently Napa wine country. It will be hot, but family reunions have their charm.
We are still pending information on Albuquerque Jim's appearance at reunion in San Mateo this year.

Wiwaxia in the shop

I could see it coming: at 80th and Dayton going east on my way to feldenkreis and yoga, I thought "here's a good situation asking for an accident." Less than a minute later, I was hit from behind in a three car pile up. Wiwaxia is now in Arne's on Greenwood: not as damaged as the Prius squeezed between it and the jeep that hit us. Gravity was part of it. I'm ok. Bad things have happened on my birthday before. Completing any part of my March to do list is affected by my current part time job of dealing with insurance and car rental.