Bear Valley

From Philadelphia, my father and I flew into Sacramento to spend a couple days with my brother and his family in Woodland. There, we also met up with my mom, and one of my sisters visiting from Idaho. We decided to go for a drive through Bear Valley in Colusa County. You can read a blurp about Bear Valley from the American Land Conservancy here. I tried to do a little roadside botanizing, but as patient as my family is, I had to make it quick.











Purple was in good supply. There were brodiaeas (they were everywhere, I don't know why I don't have a picture), lupines, vetches, and even a few penstemons and delphiniums.





I really like this dandelion relative, but I don't know the name. (My botany skills are limited the further east I go.)

Here's some Castilleja with purple Vicia and somekind of yellow boragenaceous plant.

There were a few corrals at the beginning of the road that were filled with tidytips (Layia platyglossa).

Birds-eye gillia was sparse but beautiful.

Some Zigadenus. I told my family that this was death camas, the plant that was sometimes mistaken for camas, the edible bulb of native american and pioneer fame.







There was a sward of them.

Here's a poor picture of a lone yellow Calochortus, for any Calochortus aficianados out there (mmw).

And last on the tour, is a personal favorite: cream cups (Platystemon californicus).

Alas, from this time forth, every California wildflower is bittersweet.

Tsurai

I've been reading a book called The Four Ages of Tsurai, which is a compilation of the European accounts (including one by botanist Archibald Menzies) of the small Yurok village of Tsurai, which was just below the modern town of Trinidad, where I go for internet and library books.

"Olega’ “where they come.” A place near the end of the present wharf which got its name because objects continually drift ashore there."



Trinidad Head is a great place to see plant diversity.

Ribes sanguineum.

The flowers, as you can see, are very beautiful. They're one of the most popular CA natives in cultivation.

I don't know what this litte plant is. Shame.

This is the old lighthouse (but it still lights the way).

Equally exciting is what I can't see.

"Ko’ixkulole’gwo m, “perforated stone where it is covered.” The spot is a cave just below the lighthouse. People took aromatic angelica root (wo’lpei) into the cave and put it into a pool of water in a recess of the cavern. The water would whirl when this was done. If this root (used in many religious and ceremonial connections) was employed by the person in some undertaking,
it would turn out well."

And here's where you get the root, Angelica (lucida?). I wanted to introduce this plant to our property because it's flowers attract pollinators. I had no idea it also attracted luck.

Salal (Gaultheria shallon) is a common plant along the coast. The berries are good in muffins, and have an interesting crunch to them.

This is the silk tassel shrub (Garrya eliptica). The catkins are very showy this time of year and give the whole plant a "mossy bayou" look.

Trinidad Head may be the best place to find Mimulus aurantiacus in this area. I saw it in gardens before I noticed it in the wild. Here's a tiny plant growing on a rock.

Fringecup (Tellima grandiflora) is a common ground cover in the shade, yet we don't have any in Bayside. (Even stranger is our very sparse amount of Oxalis oreganum, the most common redwood forest plant anywhere else.)

There are many beautiful old Ceanothus thyrsiflorus trees here. (They really should be called trees, in Trinidad at least.) They remind me of African accacia trees because of their form and the many little thorn-like branches.

Much of the head is covered in deciduous thickets. Thimbleberry, Twinberry, Blackberry, Gooseberry, and...poison oak.

It seems the Tsurai had a name and story for every rock along the coast. I wonder if today's fishermen have named all the rocks (I bet they have).

Joseph Cambell says, "People claim the land by creating sacred sites, by mythologizing the animals and plants—they invest the land with spiritual powers. It becomes like a temple, place for meditation."

History, hikes, and gardening are great ways to build your temple.

Through intermarriage with whites, disease, and migration to reservations, Tsurai faded away and was completely abandoned by 1914. California has a violent history, especially in respects to the orginal inhabitants. (The Wiyots, the Yuroks southern neighbors who inhabitted Bayside, were massacred nearly to extinction.) But the town of Tsurai faded quietly away.

I haven't confirmed this, but according to the book, the site of Tsurai is grown over, but is marked by a great pepperwood tree (Umbellularia californica).

"If aromatic angelica root was burned beneath its branches and a person prayed for rain, the rain would come in two days...Children were warned to stay away from this tree lest bad luck befall them. If an infant died, the mother...hung the cradle in its branches."

The world is composed of sacred sites.

Hidden Road to Patrick's Point

Go alone. Bring a knife. Put food in your pocket (and a cell phone). This is where the hidden road at Big Lagoon begins. Yes, you have to cross a perilous "bridge" where the road has eroded into the ravine on both sides.

Then the road dives into spruce and redwood forest.

See, it's a highway, forgotten.

Many, many paces later the road dissappears completely. Don't think about bears or mountain lions.

You see a trail that sharply veers to the right. Follow this through the redwoods.

After many, many paces, and after climbing over trees fallen by winter storms, you'll emerge on a road. If you look closely through the trees you'll see a Yurok house through the spruce and alders. Find the path into Sumeg Village.

You see no one there. Crawl through the circular door of a house and enjoy the extremely dark and quiet moment.

You emerge from the earth and walk around the village admiring the structures, like this sweat house.

You find a narrow mossy path to a native plant garden. You wonder when it was last tended; it's the wildest garden you've seen in a long time. But would you really want to change anything?

Then the forest opens and you see a vast coastal prairie: douglas iris, salal, native blackberry, yarrow, and pacific reed grasses.

You step onto the Rim Trail because you've never been there.

And discover a meadow of sedges just around the corner.

And notice first flowers of spring: salmonberry barely unfurling their petals.

You wander aimlessly. It's imperative to lose yourself for a while.Tthen you can find the trail back home. Here it is: the beach below the sandy cliffs.

You watch as a few dark figures pick through the rocks looking for agates. You ask the ones you pass if they're having any luck. Just small ones. Then you jog home to give your lungs a stretch.

Not a bad place to live, really.

Big Lagoon Politcal Update

This just in:

"BIG LAGOON -- The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs recently sent a letter to local agencies asking their take on the Big Lagoon rancheria's application to bring a five-acre parcel of land at the intersection of state Highway 101 and Big Lagoon Park Road into trust for tribal housing."

"According to the rancheria's application, three homes are planned for the property purchased in 2004. It is located about one-fourth of a mile outside the rancheria's trust lands."

”We're not interested in taking land into trust with restrictions,” Moorehead said. “We're looking at this as an alternative in case we build a casino.”

(full story from Eureka-Times Standard)

More development at Big Lagoon (especially a casino!) makes me nervous...

Casino on Big Lagoon?

There is a Rancheria adjacent to Big Lagoon, composed of a small group of Yurok and Tolowa tribe members, that has seriously considered building a casino on its shores for some time.

I remember a few years ago a friend and I canoed to that part of the shore and saw the foundation for a large buidling, that had been abandoned, and that had been grown over with blackberry and jubata grass. Well, the foundation was for the casino. According to my dad, the foundation has been around since at least 1996. But nothing has happened so far, and this video explains why.

But the latest word is that the US Department of the Interior is NOT going to let them build in Barstow.

Concerns about impacts on water quality, endangered species and scenery from a
casino on serene Big Lagoon had state environmental agencies and conservation
groups supporting the Barstow compact. With that upended, and the tribe pushing
harder for a casino on their reservation, a battle is likely over who approves
the project. The California Coastal Commission has vowed to sue, claiming that
states which adopt federally approved coastal programs have the right to review
federal projects, like an Indian casino.

(Full story from the Eureka Times Standard.)

A casino and its tourists would be a serious ecological, aesthetic, and personal tragedy. I worry about the Rancheria, but this is not (morally and culturally) the right answer to their problems. I feel it in my bones. While the lagoon is not in immediate danger, I must keep up with story and prepare my war cry.

Expression

Inch for inch, Japanese dry gardens pack a lot of power. But I'm glad that it's contained to a small courtyard because (inch for inch) it's not the greatest space for biodiversity or productivity.

And if it sprawled out, it would lose its magic and become a golf course.

I like a healthy balance of modernism and postmodernism. I like beauty and the sublime, but there is more to life than aesthetics. There are other things to express, and there are means for expression other than color, form and texture. I don't have to limit myself to expressing one thing either (as cool as that focus is in the dry garden).

Here are some of the things I’m trying to express in Bayside:

1. The value and coolness of local biodiversity. Leave a brush pile for the shrews. Encourage the Scrophularia. Call it performance art.

2. The dark forest myth. (It’s not clear why exactly, but this really resonates with me. The surrounding landscape and those fantasy novels I read as a kid are probably responsible.) This, at least in part, is leaving the creepy side of nature intact and the idea of artifacts.

3. Stewardship. Our need of the land, and the land’s need for us. I became a gardener a few years ago to make everything in Bayside look “natural.” I now like the idea of coppices, crops, and compost piles within the wilder landscape. I am especially drawn to traditional land management techniques like burning and coppicing. Sometimes I use a stick to dig my planting holes, no joke. This is partly responsible.

What I’m really trying to express is my idea of paradise. For me, paradise is not just “pretty.” It’s ferociously beautiful, diverse and productive. And I get to live in it.

Potawot Health Village Revisited

I told you I'd be back at the Potowat Health Village to show you the inside. Here's a quick look at some of the outside first.

Red leaves (Acer glabrum?) and blue green leaves and white berries (Symphoricarpos spp.) make a great combination.

Here's a nice trio: Vine Maple, Giant Chain fern, and that short cultivar of redtwig dogwood.

Beach strawberry (Fragaria chiloensis) is used as a ground cover extensively. A while back I saw them mowing it down, which I'm sure helps keep it dense and low. The larger leaved plant is Garrya eliptica.

There's a creek that runs around most of the building complex, and you can see that it also runs under the complex (it emerges in the courtyard wellness garden).

So I've stepped inside and made a left, through a tall, dark, entry and into this small hallway. Through the window, you can see the wellness garden. (Remember, the garden is completely enveloped by the building.) The banners and canoe remind me of my viking heritage.

Here's a closer view of the garden through the window, and through a young wax myrtle.

So I've stepped outside into the garden and there's the rest of the creek. As far as I can tell, these are all native plants (except for the weeds).

A closer look reveals a diversity of creekside plants, including Darlingtonia, sedges, strawberries, and monkeyflowers.

They have very large, hefty pots along the patio/path areas. I've always liked river rock up against curving concrete. And the irises tucked in here and there are nice. I can see someone's been working on the garden recently. There are less weeds and more mulch.

Here's another view. I think the standing dead trees are brilliant.

Close up of Equistum hymale and strawberry and a bit of water parsley.

Now I'm back inside, on the other side of the building.

Inside there are many paintings, photographs, and traditional crafts displayed, like these baskets. This place has a completely different feel than other hospitals/health clinics I've been too.

And everywhere in the building there is a view of the garden. Feeling better already.

P.S. This was a stop on my job hunt. No, they aren't hiring a gardener. But don't worry, there are prospects elsewhere.

Big Lagoon

Big Lagoon was my family's inspiration for moving to Humboldt County. I always begin my visits on Huckleberry Lane. The huckleberries were cut back pretty hard earlier this year (to give the cabins a better view of the ocean), but they seem to be doing fine. They look a little boxed in, though.

Then I walk along the street to the lagoon parking lot and onto the dock to see how high the water is.

It's high. And definetly too high for some of the silverweed (yellow) and grasses along the shoreline.

This photo is of a photo on an interpretive sign. Big Lagoon was extremely rich in wildlife. It was good to the Yurok. (There's a rancheria on one side of the lagoon.) I saw a man with a bicycle fishing in the lagoon, but he wasn't catching anything. Birds are everywhere. Especially cormorants.

If you turn left away from the lagoon, you see this sandspit, which divides the lagoon from the ocean. I thought about the ocean, but honestly, I tend to prefer the forest, which is in the opposite direction.

So that's where I head. One of the first plants to command attention is this, false lily of the valley. These berries are still young, with gold specks. I saw many older berries too, which are deep red and translucent.

The forest at Big Lagoon is much different than the one at home. The woods are DARK. It's a Sitka spruce forest that is way too crowded and many of the trees are dying or dead. Still, it's one of my favorite places. It is so quiet and eerie.

And the forest floor is spongy and deep green.

Ah, there's one of my favorite ferns, Polypodium scouleri. They normally grow up in trees, but this may have fallen with part of a tree. It's a good size plant, if I'd wanted I probably could have barely lifted it off the ground. I've often thought that this species might make a nice houseplant, grown in bark like many orchids are.

Speaking of orchids, here are two little Rattlesnake Plantains growing under an orange mushroom.
My camera is good at lightening things up, but remember, it's dark in here.

I can't help but admire the mushrooms. On my way into the forest I saw a couple Boletes edulis and some Wine Agarics. When I saw this one, I was amazed. Evenually I tried lifting it so I could see the underside and realized it was a rusty bottle cap. But I left it there because it's still a wonder to behold.

So was this, the underside of a real mushroom.

And this too. A tiny landscape within a tall forest.

This looks like a nice family.
These mushrooms reminded me of soccer. Some were as large as my hand.

The forest wasn't always so dark, apparently. There are many other trees dead and decaying under the spruces. This, I'm confident to say, was a wax myrtle.

This mushroom had the look, feel, and size of a gumboot chitin. Amazing.

Here's a slimy couple.

Daisy in the pasture.

Sun with radiating twigs.

Perhaps the most beautiful mushrooms were the species below. They were everywhere. They had this ultraviolet look to them and there's something so cool about the fringe around the cap.

I almost always check on my secret patch of Calypso orchids when I'm at Big Lagoon, but they were dormant.

But I did find this objet trouve nearby. It was a lamp.

BIG NEWS:

I may be leaving Humboldt County for a while. I quit my job last Friday (let's just say the business was nuts) and went down to look at UC Davis (in Yolo County). I'm going to be applying for the master's program in horticulture. My brother and his family live in Woodland nearby. I'm looking for a job around here and down there. Davis was nice, but it's a completely different environment (it's in the hot, dry valley). But I'm incredibly excited about the idea of going down there. The facilities look amazing, the people I met were friendly and passionate about what they're doing, and there has always been something about oak trees that has fascinated me.

My parents will still be here, so I'd live close enough to still visit and tend our forest and coastal prairie from time to time.

Well, we'll see what happens.

Frank Lake's Dissertation

With a recommendation from Bob Zynbach and help from mmw, I've managed to find and read a disseration by Frank Lake, who wrote it for Oregon State University, and who is Karok. You can find the dissertation here. It's a very long document and I admit that I scanned over parts (especially the methods section), but I found several ideas and details making it worth the read.

About fire:

The starting of fires was considered a spiritual act capable of
serious consequences. Prayer formulas and other beliefs were associated with
burning. Once lit, fires were often spoken to as to how they should behave
and conduct themselves to achieve desired resource objectives of the igniter (p.
99).

A picture of what much of northern California and Southern Oregon looked like:

Patches and fields were located along trails that typically ran adjacent to rivers
and streams, the coast, and along ridgelines, directly connecting communities, peaks,
campgrounds, waterfalls, springs, and other favored subsistence and ceremonial
locations. Fires were also used to clear and maintain trails; rejuvenate berry patches,
wild pea fields, root and bulb fields, and orchards; for hunting; for weed control; and
to cure large fields of tarweed (Madia elegans Lindley) and grass seeds ("Indian
oats"). Daily and seasonal trail clearing activities, combined with seasonal and
occasional brush clearing, hunting, seed curing, and sprout-inducing burns were nearly year-around activities.

There is an interesting series of photographs in the paper showing that many
meadows traditionally maintained by fire have been lost. One example is at Patrick's Point (between Trinidad and Big Lagoon). When Europeans took over the area, they kept the meadows open with fire and with their cattle. When it was made into a State Park and the ranchers were removed, the spruce and shrubs began moving in. Today I know that there is at least one meadow area that the state burns occasionally to encourage the native prairie
plants.

Indians used fire to clear brush and debris from riparian areas and marshes to
stimulate new grass, plant growth, and shrub and tree sprouts. Target
species were cottonwoods (Populus balsamifera spp. trichocarpa Torrey &
A. Gray), willows (Salix spp.), tules (Scirpus acutus Bigelow var. occidentalis
(S.Watson) Beetle), cattails (Typha latifolia L.), sedges (Carex spp.), and
grasses.

At work, I’ve been harvesting bareroot Scirpus microcarpus and water parsley plants. There is quite a bit of grass thatch below, making them difficult to pull up. I use a garden fork and my hands to pull the thatch away from the base of the plants, then use the fork lift the plants. Burning the thatch would save a great deal of time. If it were my nursery and my patches, I might do some experimenting.

I liked hearing about their trails.

Trails were about two feet wide, worn into bare mineral soil, and served as fire
lines in many cases for low intensity surface fires.

There are also many interviews with elder men and women from local tribes. I'm still reading through some of them. But I really should have taken better notes, I know I'm leaving out some important things.

P.S. I'm currently reading Tending the Wild by Kat Anderson.

Hazel

I fell in love with hazel the first time I stumbled upon it in our forest. That was a few years ago, so my plant eyes were just developing. My father and I were cutting a trail and I said to myself, hey this isn't just another alder. No offense, I like alders too.

The leaves of hazel are downy soft, especially in early spring, are more finely toothed than alder, and more ovular. I also really like their arrangement on the skinny flexible stems. Hazels also have very attractive catkins in spring. I think I've seen some female flowers too (they may have just been buds), but I haven't seen any nuts. Never.

In fall, it's especially apparent that our sweet little hazel tree is really a gargantuan thicket probably many hundred of years old. Here's a look at one of it's "stools":

I say "stool" because it is a term associated with coppicing, a woodland management strategy where you cut a shrub or tree to the ground every so often to encourage new vigorous sprouts from the base. Here, I have to put it in quotation marks. Or maybe it should have been a question mark because this may have infact been a thicket coppiced by the Wiyot people at one time. I couldn't find any evidence of burning, but I doubt ashes would still be around because the soil is a mass of compost and moss. How can I tell? And the stools(?) are covered in moss themselves so I just don't know. But because of our land's closeness to the Bay, I think it is very likely their people lived here at one time.

As you can see above, the thicket is pretty extensive and there are at least four or five main stools, and they may be connected (it's difficult to tell because it's a real jungle in there). Which brings me to expressing a quandry I've had since reading Before the Wilderness. I confess that I am a bit on the romantic side about old, mysterious, "dark forest" things, and yet over the last few months, especially after reading BTW, Wendell Berry, and Noel Perry, I'm becoming more and more swayed to the management side. The solution, I know, is to manage some of it and to hang onto some of the truly amazing old things in the forest. Should I do something with this thicket or just enjoy the jungle?.

"Keeping it Living"

Here is an excellent article, "Keeping it Living." that describes some of the native traditional horticultural practices of British Columbia.

Here's an excerpt about pruning:

"Pruning and coppicing of individual berry and
hazelnut (Corylus cornuta) bushes was also
practiced, both on the coast and in the interior:
another means of “keeping it living,” since this
process took advantage of meristematic tissues
at the bases and nodes of the stems of shrubs
that allow them to regenerate easily. The
breaking of the branches of berry bushes has
been little documented, but like other practices,
this may be in large part because people
had not been asked about such practices.
California First Peoples are known to coppice
their basketry plants to produce better, longer,
and straighter shoots (Anderson 1993). In the
interior, too, Plateau peoples talk about increasing
the productivity of their saskatoon
bushes (Amelanchier alnifolia), chokecherries
(Prunus virginiana), soapberries (Shepherdia
canadensis), and huckleberries (Vaccinium
spp.) by breaking the branches off during or
following the harvest. On the coast, this seems
to be a widely known but little publicized
practice. Chief Adam Dick, as soon as he was
asked, started to talk about it: “Especially that
gwadems [red huckleberry, Vaccinium
parvifolium], when they finished picking the
gwadems, you know, they pruned them. They
chopped the tops off. Salmonberries [Rubus
spectabilis] too. So, when the qwasem it’s
done, after you pick... after they get all
tl’axwey’ then we all break the tops off.” [“Oh,
and that makes them grow better?” NT] “Yes.
My grandma tell me that if you let it grow this
high [above your head], then it doesn’t produce
much berries. You know. But when you keep it
down and, she says, the water, it’s hard going
up there, I guess, when it’s too tall.”

Trifolium wormskioldii, the clover I introduced to my garden, turns out to be a species that was cultivated in fields alongside Pacific silverweed. Rhizomes from both plants were actively propagated, harvested, cooked, and eaten by peoples of British Columbia. (Yes, I would like to try preparing the rhizomes, but I need to let my plants grow for a while.)

The article also documents how plants were transplanted and traded by native peoples, raising interesting questions about the native/nonnative dichotomy AND helping to deepen the idea of sustainability, the idea of "keeping it living."

Native Horticulture

Native californians have been gardening with california plants for thousands of years. Hmm, maybe I could tap into that knowledge to the benefit of the land and myself.

I've already mentioned coppicing, but how about cultivation practices that improve berry production, seed germination, mushroom production, and what else? (And reducing fire loads in our forests). Knowing when and how much to take. AND how to encourage native biodiversity. I really have everything to learn.

Kat Anderson's "Before the Wilderness" is a book about this idea on a larger, land management level. Haven't read it yet, but it's at my library and hopefully I can get to it this week.

This is one of the most radical and potentially beneficial gardening ideas I can think of. It would strengthen the human/nature relationship and put deeper meaning into a garden.

At least one of the gardeners at Gardener Rant (see link at far right) rants about the idea of the "yardeners," I'm guessing those that want a no maintenance yard, instead of a garden they are actively engaged with. Well, maybe the ornamental garden isn't that far ahead of a "yarden." Maybe the next step would be to pretend there is no fence around our garden and plug our garden into the larger landscape. Blend the line between cultivated and noncultivated a bit. Maybe this is a way that nonnatives, like recent human migrants, broccoli, and what not, can become native. I don't know, these are just the beginnings of thoughts.

Potawot Health Village

Yesterday I visited the Potawot Health Village in Arcata. I love going here because the building and landscape are beautiful and the plants are all native. Minus the weeds, of course. "Potawot" is the Wiyot name for the Mad River, which runs nearby. The building is a health clinic for the native tribes of the Pacific Northwest.



Acer circumnatum with Fragaria chiloensis ground cover.



Patio area with containers of Deschampsia caespitosa and Sisyrinchium californica. Informal hedge of Loncera involucrata, Rosa californica, and Myrica californica. I love the creek systems they have running in the landscape and the dead trees that they've erected (buried? Reebarred? I'd like to know how they did it).

Megan trying some berries of Sambucus mexicana. They were too tart. The rosehips and currants weren't that great either (dry/bland and bland/seedy, respectively). The black huckleberries, however, were excellent. With the taste of muffins still fresh on my tongue and dreams of huckleberry jam, I think I'd like to grow 30 or so huckleberry plants from seed and have a proper huckleberry patch in the yard one day (it would take many years to have plants large enough to bear fruit). I'd better get reading.

At the far end of the health village, there is an impressive community vegetable/fruit garden with an orchard (couldn't capture the expanse in this photo).

Even the parking strips have native shrubs and trees growing in them. The Symphoricarpos shrubs are cut like boxwood hedges. I'm not sure I like the way they are pruned or not.

There are also interpretive panels along the trails surrounding the building. Tule's scientific name has been changed to Scheonoplectis acutus FYI. And some of the plant signs don't have scientific names, but I have no other complaints. The signs are nicely done.

Since we visited on Labor Day, the main building was closed. I thought it would be. Sometime I'll have to blog about the inside. It's amazing! And it even has an all-native courtyard garden...

Take a look at this (United Indian Services) and this (Architecture and more). Oh, and one about the plants.