Locomotoring

A friend recently said, one should go mushroom hunting with older experts. Older the better because they are living proof of their expertise. Our guide, a friend, is not old, and I sometimes like to think of her as a benevolent sorceress running an herbal apothecary. She sees mushrooms as tasty healers of human body. And, who will deny that forest bathing heals the soul. When foraging, you rarely walk more than a mile an hour with greatest mileage covered in between your patches. Your eyes constantly scan the forest floor. You notice and you see many a banana slugs. You fill your lungs with forest aromas. And if you are lucky, you come back home with mushrooms. Or should I say, you bring the forest to your home. You have to be OK with dirt, with bugs and the aroma of forest floor filling up your kitchen. And when the mushroom is matsutake, it is like bringing pine trees to your home.

This is our second year of regular hiking. The winter months are a good time to watch the Pacific flyway migratory birds. They are either catching the sun or digging into mud for bait or flying low on the water hoping to catch a fish. This year, we also went to the raptor fest organized by the POST. Here are some lovely photos from the first batch of photography.

“Kumropotash” from Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol. The photo is from a wonderful Durga Puja story Nabin Palli Durga Puja Committee in Hatibagan, North Kolkata by Maitreyee B Chowdhury (link)

This is my second year carving a pumpkin for the Halloween. This year, my brother wanted me to carve “Kumropotash“, a character from Sukumar Ray’s Abol Tabol, the collection of magically whimsical verses from 1922, here is a link to 2020 dual-language print on Amazon. While Ray is a common last name from the sub-continent, Sukumar Ray is the father of filmmaker Satyajit Ray. All Bengali children grow up to the tales of Kumropotash and the idea is simply put, perfect. There can’t be a better way of bringing my heritage into my current life.

It’s all perfectly clear now. Or maybe this clarity will only last the rest of the day. Fact is, my glass is full again. Fact is, I am just back from exploring the inner passage of south east Alaska. I continue to be filled with a sense of awe, I am feeling humbled, and privileged to be alive on this incredibly beautiful planet. Fact is, natural beauty heals me, fills my glass with clear cool sweet tasting water. Fact is, as time goes on, my glass will start to empty again, a little by little each day. Is there a way I can top up the glass, maybe enough to slow down the pace at which it empties? The clarity today makes me think that maybe I can.

Do you know Gordon, the audio ecologist who went searching for one square inch of silence in the Hoh forest? For the last several months, I have been meeting with him and a few other like minded individuals. All of us in our own ways, are searching for a one square inch of silence closer to where we live, in vertical and horizontal human sprawls. At the last meeting, which had happened before the Alaska trip, one of our team members, Tim, suggested that we take a moment of silence and visualize our quiet place. The meeting had happened at the end of a long day, I was tired from the general chaos of life, and I was hangry. But I knew that a minute wasn’t too much of an ask, and so, I decided to give it my best, and conjured up my quiet place. I remember noticing the transformation then. After that minute, I had felt a lot less tired, a little healed.

Between 1990 and 2013, the South Sawyer glacier has retreated at 120m/year, and between 2013 and 2022, the retreat rate has been 50m/year. As the glacier calves, it creates numerous bergy bits and icebergs that the harbor seals seem to love. I watched the James Balog documentary, Chasing Ice, right before our zodiac trip and I didn’t want this glacier to calve anymore.

… is that of an osprey.

Mosquito Cove trail is a charming mile long trail that goes to the cove and back. It is one of those trails that makes you want to be a child again. From the parking lot, the trail goes down to the cove and comes back up again, through the hemlocks, spruce and cedars and crosses from Tongass forest to Alaska State forest. I wasn’t sure if they named it Mosquito Cove because the cove was tiny. Later I found out that back in the days when Russians were running charcoal operations, there would be temporary swarms of mosquitoes here.

After the stairs on Herring Cove trail, my knees loved this flat trail. Parts of the trail where it went over bogs and marshes, the trail was a low wooden boardwalk, parts covered by a thin layer of tar. Most of it seemed wheelchair accessible. This part of the Tongass forest is dominated by muskeg and coastal grass land. It was a clear and cool day.

Sitka trails are often marked by landmarks. For example, half a mile to the lake. Indian river trail is marked by the “big bridges”, first one at 1.8 miles, second at 2 miles, 3rd at 2.3 miles and so forth. It is relatively easy to lose sense of time and miles. We think we went up to the first bridge.

Incidentally, Sitka is bear country, it boasts of nearly a bear per square mile. Practically every trailhead boasts of bear sightings. I don’t see one outside of the Fortress of the Bear. The taxidermy specimens at the Sitka airport don’t count.

First view of Tongass temperate rainforest was magical. This was Herring Cove trail with a loop around Beaver lake. The trail is beautifully maintained. There are waterfalls, creeks, lake, and bogs. The understory is lush. Around the lake, there are benches to sit around and enjoy the view.

We were impressed with the Pescadero marshes when we were there last time (link). This spring, the flowers blew our minds! On Butano trail, it felt like we were in a yellow tunnel. The lupines had grown so tall, that we could not see the Butano creek much of the time. And when we could catch a glimpse of the creek, the fields of cat tails seemed to extend as far as we could see. Also, the Butano trail now extends nearly 1.5-2 miles, it starts from the Pescadero road parking lot and meets the road again, staying close to Butano creek all along.

Devil’s slide is a smidgen longer than a mile, but it is an interesting one. It is on the edge of a cliff and a carve out from what used to be highway 1. Now the highway has a bypass tunnel, leaving this stretch for hikers and bikers to enjoy. During the trip, we noticed nearly 40 species of native wildflowers.

Edgewood and Filoli are only a few miles apart. Edgewood County park is 467 acres and Filoli estate is 654 acres. The Filoli residence and the English Renaissance gardens stand on 16 acres. It was built as a private residence in 1917 and was opened to public in 1975. This was our first visit. The have some wonderful wisterias and weeping forms of trees like weeping cherry. Their millions of daffodils were all spent, but the nearly 80,000 tulips were in bloom. We meandered around in no particular order. It was a weekday and yet quite crowded.