Saturday June 10 2017

In a clearcut off Donkey Creek Road, Wa

Birds

I returned to my favorite spot on the West Fork of the Humptulips River, in the rain, two nights ago. The sun broke through in the morning and I used the magnifying glass to get high while raindrops poured down. I stood naked in the rain, holding an umbrella, dancing and trying to vibrate all my muscles at once.

A little brown bird hopped onto a nearby bush and eyed me from a few feet away. Then she (?) hopped to the road and flitted her tail feathers, pecking the gravel, before flying off into the bushes on the other side of the road.

Last night I pulled into a clearcut section off Donkey Creek Road, towards the east end.

A swallow (?) was chirping insistently and circling overhead. He (?) started buzzing me, diving steeply within 20 feet of me and then turning up sharply so that he made a loud, scary, buzzing sound as he cut the wind. He was hunting insects? He continued circling and diving for an hour or more as the sun set ...

The clearcut has several old growth stumps, some with other trunks growing out of them, which were chopped off. It looks like this piece was logged over a hundred years ago and then re-logged within the last year or two. It looks like they ruthlessly cut trunks that had grown out of thge old growth stumps from the first cut. Those second trees, growing on previously logged stumps, should be protected. And the trees growing around them, from the roots of the old growth stumps, should be protected.

Loggers should leave old growth alone4. Stumps, and trees left by earlier loggers, should all be protected now.