Twitterpainted 2009

Well, my silence lately has been a good one. There has been much going on since returning to the states, and all is well. I haven't been able to take the time so much lately to sit and update my blog, but nonetheless I am writing a ton in my journals, doing a ton on the trail, and living an all around inspired lifestyle on the Olympic Peninsula.

However, at the moment, I am in Winston-Salem, NC visiting a friend I met in Peru. I turned 26 yesterday. The past several years I have taken pictures of all the flowers I can find, but yesterday we drove on the Blue Ridge Parkway, winding through early spring in the oak and pine ridges of Appalachia. We stopped at Mt. Mitchell, highest place east of the Mississippi, where at roughly 6680 feet we had a 360 degree view of the surrounding mountains for long distances.

Spring awakens my spirit every year reminding me who I am, and how vibrant life is. A new leaf, delicate and bright green, slowly unfurling as it bounces around in the warm spring breeze stirs something within me as I stare. It is a feeling that, to me, just feels like perfection.

After several weeks of watching the catkins growing and swelling to an arousing shade of red on the alders along the lakeshore, it finally happened. The leaf buds swell as the pollen tassles lengthen. The chickadees dangle from the branch tips inspecting for larvae poking their black heads from the buds. Then, one day a memory of a song echoes across seasons, and spring is really here. I hear the first excited song of a yellow-rumped warbler coming from the top of a doug-fir standing high next to the lakeside alders. After arriving from somewhere in California or further south, they begin blocking out a territory with their ethereal voice while frantically gleaning larvae and hatching insects from the awakening alder trees.

Within a few days of their arrival, the catkins open, casting powdery waves of condensed sunlight through the warming air. The wind gathers the pollen in streaks across the lake, sometimes reaching several miles unbroken. This year, the catkins on the large alder next to the boathouse opened the day after the warbler arrived at Lesage. I live on the North shore of the lake, where sun is much more abundant, and spring comes a few days earlier. On the South shore of the lake where I work on Barnes Point at OPI, winter holds on a little longer in the shade of Aurora Ridge and Mt. Storm King. The warblers didn't show up there for another 5 days.

With each free day I have, I sit for hours on the deck at Lesage, watching the awakening. The kokanee snatch stoneflies from the surface of the water, while those that escape into the air glitter in the sunlight like snowflakes returning to winter clouds. Stellars Jays hawk through the trees, and tear clumps of moss from the maple branches in search of the recently emerged large black beetles that I have yet to identify. Sometimes I think that I could live forever in the vibrance of this season.