Showing posts with label like. Show all posts
Showing posts with label like. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
More people should be out on days like this
It's mostly cloudy, windy and cold enough to snow, because it did. The thick dark clouds put a steel blue color on the bay. When the sun pops under at just the right angle, it spotlights the ducks and leaves the water dark. I head out through the east channel next to the burial island. There is still a few extra inches of water in the lake, so I paddle along the edge of the marsh, because you can't do that once the lily pads have come up in the spring. I see a dead beaver back 10 feet in the cattails. Scavengers have just started to nibble on it, so it has probably been less than a week. I cross the bay. I don't see the eagles and I do not find the last two swans - they are probably back up near Skagit Bay. Over by the west islands, I haul a large road construction barrel out of the water. Then, I spot both eagles in a tree on the west shore. The female flies over as I head towards them, she is enormous. Enjoying the blustery day and not ready to quite I head through the cut into Portage Bay and continue into Lake Union. The wind there is out of the west as I paddle south into the lake. The wind is stronger, the waves are bigger, but not yet white-capped. I paddle past the drydock where they are dismantling the Wawona, an old wooden bald-headed schooner. They never got the funds to restore her and she has been slowly rotting in the lake since before I moved here. I remember when she still had her masts up. It starts snowing. I take out and walk up over the hill to home.
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
Its like spring all over again
I put in at the north end of the big lake. I hoped to retrieve some plastic debris from the shoreline, but a 15mph wind out of the south blowing over 15 miles of lake disagreed with that idea. I headed straight into the wind and small whitecaps to round a long fishing pier. Then towards the Samammish River broadside to the waves. The spray is warm, warmer than the 60 degree air. The mouth of the river is busy with birds. Many ducks with ducklings about and a heron every 200-300 yards. I see several kingfishers also. About a half mile into the river I head up a tributary, Swamp Creek. The log jam in the photo is about as far as one can get. It has more jams upstream of this first one. I collect my garbage here, "heading it off at the pass" before it gets to the lake. It is interesting to see what Lynnwood and Bothel youth are drinking these days, mostly little one ounce bottles of liquor and cheap beer. I return downstream, paddle south on the lake shore and out of the wind for a stretch. Then I head out into the middle of the lake and downwind back to the put-in.
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