The Candelabra

Friday January 31 2014

We pass through the Candelabra Gate when we ride up onto the northwest flats. I've never even asked why there is a candelabra perched on that gate. It must have been perched there by the guy who owns the property (and never has lived here). I like to think he had a sense of humor.

Mother Nature in winter not only has a sense of humor, but an exquisite artistic flare. While hoar frost in itself is a fascinating minor miracle, the 2-inch long hoar frost shards that Mother Nature sculpted on the Candelabra (particularly on the western sides) during the weeks of freezing fog was absolutely spectacular.

Smoke on the Water

Tuesday July 9 2013

It is a regular presence near the mouth of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean, where Lewis and Clark camped in November of 1805, near the end of their 2+ year expedition across the newly-purchased Louisiana Territory, over the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.

It is also the interpreted name ("smoke on the water") of Skamokawa, the chief of the Wahkiakum band of Tsinuk Native American Indians, whom Lewis and Clark met while wintering on the ocean at Fort Clatsop in December of 1805. This was back in the days when whites and Native Americans had friendly relations, and when the land was still wild: road-less territory, undammed rivers, untouched old growth forests, wild and prolific wildlife.


It is also a small town on the Columbia river near the Pacific (the Columbia river bar is "the most dangerous in the world to navigate"), and the site of 1 of my marbled murrelet surveys.


As I observe, the fresh-water tide falls down from the sandy beach, a fog bank floats along the upper reaches of the forested hills; bald eagles cavort, and great blue herons rove, and ospreys fish, in this Smoke-On-The-Water Lewis and Clark trail.

Owyhee Fog

Monday February 1 2010

Scientists can give you all kinds of scientific explanations for fog and its behavior. Wikipedia can tell you all about dew points and vapor and condensation, but I can tell you how it behaves here in Owyhee.

Here, fog is a free spirited erratic Being with a sense of adventure and humor and artistry.

Here in the Owyhee high desert, with drainages and canyons and hills and mountains to play in, fog thinks for itself. It molds itself into different entities and travels on its whims.


It passes through in an hour. It stays for days. It arrives in force, fast, thick, and serious, and settles like a heavy blanket. It dances in whisps, gliding up random washes, changing direction on impulse. It crawls over ridges; it creeps down drainages. It flirts with clouds over the Owyhee mountains, then tumbles away down the hills.


It teases the sun. Fog veils the sun, lets it emerge through, obliterates it. The sun, that mighty burning star, the Earth's energy source of life, has no power over the ethereal fog.


It can allure you; it can charm and captivate you. It can stalk you. It can intimidate you. It will make you swear your compass is wrong. It can induce a strangling panic in you. It will bring you cowering to your knees and it will smother you into tears.

Fog wears a chill cloak. In winter it paints with ice, chiseling hoar frost, carving ice crystals on manes




and tails. It draws silhouettes of the horses against a touch of morning light. It delicately sculpts the tiniest twig with ice, and brazenly devours the biggest horse.


Its heavy silence calls the horses, luring them deep into its layers, swallowing them up.

Step into the fog. Let it lure you in. Let it engulf you.

Fabulous Four

Sunday January 25 2009

The Owyhees did it - they made a very brief appearance yesterday morning, just to let us know that they really are still there, waiting behind the veil of clouds and fog that has moved in and staked a claim here for weeks.

And then they disappeared again, the clouds moved back in, followed by the fog, followed by a whiteout.

And this morning - another fabulous four inches of snow.

Fog II

Friday January 16 2009

We've been cloaked in frozen fog for 2 nights and days now, a gray-white veil that comes with hoarfrost. It looks like fine white lace sprayed everywhere, or a snowfall that didn't quite make it onto the ground. An enchanting wonderland, another version of winter. What is it about ice that is so fascinating to me? The hoarfrost is choosy where it decorates: it has disregarded the fences, the ground, rocks, buildings and non-live plant material except for tumbleweeds; it has grown on and completely covered every living plant - tree, grass, weed, single-stem blades; single horse-tail hairs hanging off fences,
horse tails on horses,
halters and lead ropes.
And it grows more on one side - as if the fog snuck in from one direction. The west-facing sides of the plants have a few millimeters of ice, while the east-facing sides have a quarter inch. I haven't seen the hills that rise on either side of this canyon for two days. Sometimes the fog is so thick I can't see the horses 50 yards away.

It's only about 25*F, but at 80% humidity, it's a biting cold that stings your nose as soon as you step outside.

There's a unique quiet that fog brings, like a blanket thrown over everything. It's quiet out here in Owhyee anyway, but under the fog everything is muffled. A bird calls and it is immediately silenced. A horse chews a mouthful of hay then it's muffled. And you get a sense of waiting between the silent spaces... waiting for the next hoofstep as the horses move along to graze, the next single Raven caw, the slight trickle from the creek (if you are right next to it).


I've been lost in fog before. I could possibly get lost out here on a ride if I stray from the washes and trails that I know well, or if I don't pay attention to what trail I'm on. I wonder if the horses would still know the way home, with their internal compass? I bet they would. The forecast is unchanged for the next week. Maybe I'll go test the equine compass theory tomorrow.

Fog

Tuesday January 6 2008

The evening walk in the snow up Bates Creek reveals storm clouds - snow and fog and wind - hanging over the peaks of the Owyhee Mountains ahead. A strong steady breeze tumbles down Bates Creek into my face.

Behind me, there is a presence... something stalking me. Massive, quiet, gray, ethereal...


Sometimes fog rolls its way down the canyons, sometimes it snakes up the canyons, sometimes it rolls over the tops of the mountains and hangs there like a tablecloth. Sometimes it defies or ignores the wind; sometimes it uses it. Sometimes it moves in and settles overhead for a while, cloaking and damping the earth's surface with stillness; or sometimes it just passes right on through with a purpose, on a mission, blotting out the sun only for a brief moment in time, continually rolling and moving. Sometimes it covers a large area; sometimes it singles out a lone canyon to travel.

Tonight it works its way southwest from Oreana up the Bates Creek drainage - shielded from the wind - and when it comes to the junction of Bates Creek and Pickett Creek - where Bates Creek turns northwest and tunnels in the wind - it simply ignores the wind battering it from the side and continues on, choosing to skip Pickett Creek, and instead picks the next wash to travel up. There it continues its silent southwest uphill glide, its fingers sending up little wisps just visible above the ridge, marking its progress. As I walk to within one hundred yards of the fog, the temperature drops 10 degrees, as if I were passing through a physical barrier. This fog carries its own temperature zone.

It's not a living creature... or is it? It is a Thing, a phenomenon with a life of its own, no rules that govern it, other than the whims of Nature. It's like floods (read any of Craig Childs' wonderful books on floods in the desert) or tornadoes, only it's the non-destructive variety.

It's a quiet little gift of nature passing through this evening if a lucky human is there to witness it.