The first fish

Late Thursday afternoon, 08November2007…

It’s late on Thursday afternoon, one of my all-too-rare days to get down the mouth twice in a day. We closed up the building shortly after 4pm. For a change, I have nothing to run home to do – no soccer, no basketball - and lacking any desire to spend my final working hour in an square white office in the darkening village of Orick, I ask my fellow ranger to lock me in behind the gate…I’m a-gonna take a walk on the beach.

I knew as soon as my feet hit sand that the evening was to be memorable. Pockets of pink and blue have appeared in the formerly solid gray sky. The beach is wet well above the normal high tide line, with several long, bowed damp incursions almost up to the dune grass. Somewhere during the afternoon, the tide had risen incredibly high and at least a couple long running waves had invaded beyond the high point of the beach and running back down towards the vegetation. Sneaker waves possibly? ‘Tis the season.

But now, approaching 4:30pm and very nearly the day's second low tide, the beach lay exposed far below what I’ve seen in a long time. From where I’d walked earlier in the day, the beach stretched westward another 20 or 30 yards. Long expanses of glistening pebbles of gray, green, black, white, and brick red litter this lowest of low tide lines. Gazing north to the creek, the smaller twin sea stacks (occasionally known as “the Sisters”) were exposed to the shoreline, a rocky walkway connects them on the north side of the creek to dry land. If I could cross the creek, I could’ve walked out to ‘em. I content myself with tempting the edges of the now-calm waves at surf, excited to think I can walk today where tomorrow I’d be under several feet of water and crushing 6- to 8-foot waves. A Moses in the Red Sea moment in this mild-mannered bureaucrat’s life.

15 brown pelicans surf the air currents above the surf, single file, playing follow-the-leader over the bending waves. Large clusters of double-crested cormorants sit atop the ocean, ducking beneath the occasional breaker. The waves are a translucent green with the last light of a gray afternoon shining through them. Shortly, a second single-file flying march of pelicans cruise southward, their plump silhouettes gliding in front of a pastel gray-pink evening sky.

At the mouth of Redwood Creek, the wave patterns are a bit more erratic. The creek cuts a deep channel in the now-long channel between estuary and ocean…a giant S-curve, perhaps 100 yards long through rarely exposed sand, and full of downward rushing freshwater. The freshly cut sides of the channel quietly erode into the channel. The water eddies and gurgles inside the channel’s curves.

From the channel’s banks, you witness the force of the onrushing creek. The entire floor of the channel slides into the sea. Anything smaller than a golf ball rolls along swiftly, spinning its way to the sea. It’s geology in action, and easy to imagine how mighty canyons are carved over eons.

Standing on the bank, looking back from the calm, draining estuary to the turbulent sea, I notice a splashing in an otherwise calm section of the current. A flapping tail appears above the water. My first salmon of the season fights its way against the current over the very shallow sand hump between ocean and creek. I follow this lone creature as she struggles against the creek, her strong tail pushing her forward against gravity and friction. As the fish breaks into the deeper channel and begins moving more freely, it turns suddenly, right at my feet, and coasts back out to sea.

“Wait!” I say. “Shouldn’t you be going the other way?” I wonder, did the fish see me, flip out and run scared back to the Pacific? Or did she simply enter the wrong channel, or at the wrong time? Was she scouting the channel for others, ensuring they took the right exit off the Pacific Ocean highway? The thought stays with me though, that I may have scared off the first salmon to return to upper Redwood Creek in years. Sure, she was probably heading to the Prairie Creek or Lost Man Creek tributaries, but what if, after years of logging and over-sedimentation, this one fish had finally decided to head further upstream into Redwood Creek, and because of my long green & gray, middle-aged shadow on these freshly cut banks, she determined to head elsewhere?

Damn. (Or is it, “Dam”?) Either way, I'm damn (dam) glad I chose to wander out here than wander through the morass of emails in the office.

Gray

It's a long afternoon, sitting here tending to visitors who don't come. The sky outside, the sky I can't really get out under since I have to "mind the store", is a uniformly pale gray. Only the slightest deepening of the gray differentiates the sky from the near-waveless Pacific. And the ocean blends softly into an even darker gray sand horizon. The mood is only accentuated by reading graying 40-year old pamphlets advocating for a new national park, replete with 1960s black and white photographs...all while wearing a gray shirt and gray-green jeans. Is it any wonder my beard feels grayer on days like this?

Discovering coots

Thursday, 08 November 2007…

For the past couple of days, I’ve been seeing large bunches of dark water birds – dark gray, chunky bodies, black heads, and obvious white bills. They’ve been all over our lagoons, estuaries, and even out in the ocean just beyond the surf line. Now if the ID is obvious to you already, don’t go minimizing my naturalist skills, cuz I do enough of that myself. I’m still learnin’ my ways around the birding thing. This morning, on the way into work, I stopped on the roadside at Freshwater Lagoon to make sure I had a good idea of the markings before consulting the bird books once again.

Scaup? No…it has the white bill, but the body is all dark vs. the white-backed scaup. Scoter? Again no, cuz the body is entirely dark, and there’s no apparent color to the bill as with the scoters. Too big really to be a duck, and none of the ducks match the description anyways. So I gave up on the books, and asked our wildlife folks. Didn’t take them long to figger out my obvious ignorance.

An American coot. How’d I overlook that one in all the books? Too painfully obvious with Mr Sibley’s nicely illustrated picture of an all dark bird with a bright white bill and a squat, round body. Now I know. And now I’m revealed to the rest of the staff as an idiot. But really, I’m ok with that.

So I learn.

After checking in at the Visitor Center (and before heading to the office to do some real work), I spent a few minutes out at the end of the boardwalk overlooking the south end of the estuary. A list of what I saw that I could identify, again, painfully obvious to those of you with proper bird credentials, and becoming more obvious to this untrained eye with 20-year old, minor league binocs:

A sizable number of Canada geese, who dashed away as soon as I appeared on their horizon,

A lone great egret, brilliant white, wading in the middle of the shallow water,

A cluster of mallards, both green-headed guys and brown mottled girls, and perhaps a couple other types of ducks that I was too far away from to make sense of, or maybe they were all mallards,

Lots of the aforementioned American coots,

A couple of great blue herons – tall, dark gray birds, white headed with a dark black streak above their eyes and bright yellow bill. One strolled the grasses along the shoreline while the other waded along the muddy shoreline before lifting off and disappearing in the haze.

Two river otters appeared near the southern edge of the estuary, slipping in and out of the water’s surface. They disappeared for a couple minutes into the grass, then re-appeared, one of them dragging a duck carcass behind him. They swam together with the carcass out to a log in the middle of the estuary. Perched atop the wet log, one munched down, pulling out long, bloody strings of duck parts for breakfast. The other cleaned himself next to his dining partner and occasionally dipped into the water for a brief swim. Very cool…wild lives in action.

Oh, to be a pelican.

05 November 2007, Monday (though not etched in electrons here 'til a slow Wednesday afternoon):

I walk out the back door of the office to a red-tailed hawk coasting slowly over the dune grasses, only looking at the moment -window shopping - and apparently not finding anything of real interest.

The food's in on the ocean however. Several brown pelicans float on the waves just off shore, perhaps two dozen in all between here and the mouth of the creek. Several males with brightly shining white heads glide in and out...a sign of impending mating season? A few of the pelicans are finding food whilst sitting atop the waves, nary an ounce of effort extended in dipping their pouched jaws into the water and coming out with a mouthful of slender surf fish.

Others hover hawk-like above the brilliant blue ocean and pure white wave crests. Groups of two or three soaring cruise together 'til one, with a keener eye than his comrades, suddenly turns and crash dives into the turquoise blue. The others quickly follow his lead, each of them coming to rest with a fish bouncing around inside their yellow bills.

Oh, to be a pelican. Such an ungainly and awkward looking beast. Certainly not designed not for our People Magazine vision of beauty. Round in the gut, long skinny necks, huge feet, a large sagging jowel. They search for food, twisting and turning on the breeze, scanning the blue surface below. Their dives are clumsy, spinning, twisting, collapsing falls ending in a shallow and noisy splash. Even in eating they appear off-kilter, nodding their heads back and forth, up and down, turning a slippery, squirming fish into position inside their beak before jerking their head backwards and tossing it down like a worm in the bottom of a tequila bottle.

Everything about the pelican looks awkward...except for its magnificent, low-altitude coasting inches above the the Pacific. Gliding effortlessly, head craned back over its shoulders, legs tucked in behind, wings outstretched and curved to expertly shape the air currents above and below. There is no more magical animal show on the coast (in my silly opinion) than the flight of the lone pelican, or the tight formation of three or four of these magnificent creatures on a quiet, hazy afternoon.

Further down the beach, a large gathering of western and California gulls spans the sandy horizon. Occasionally, the entire flock lifts and takes flight, circling a few times before returning to their original plots of sand. Is it the odd, faster wave that makes panics them into these sudden aerial escapes? An unseen visitor? Jumpy juveniles?

A handful of dark, slippery seal heads pop up sporadically between the running waves. As soon as they notice me notice them, they disappear beneath the foam making me guess where they'll apppear next. This game of hide'n'seek continues for my entire saunter this morning...as, I guess, it does every time I'm out here.

There's the beginning of small sandbar at the creek's mouth this morning. A raised platform of sand just beyond yesterday's waterline, an elevated wedge that creates a second small outlet for the creek's freshwater and ocean's waves to mingle. Two gulls perch bravely atop this small mound ignoring the shallow waves washing over top, seemingly holding their claim to this private beach from the masses on the safer footing of the beach.

A handful of double-crested cormorants float just a few yards beyond the breaking surf.

Why do I have to go do "real work" when I really just want to sit here on the beach all day!?

The morning fog lifts

Thursday, 01November2007...1:30pm, about an hour after low tide:

Thursday morning, the first day of November, started off cool and foggy. Overcast, steely gray skies and low fog hinted at a long, dark Humboldt wintery kind of day. Though the forecast called for clearer skies by lunchtime, there was nothing in the air at the beach to raise the hope of anything approaching of blue and clear.

Then, at precisely 10am, as if on schedule, the flat silver curtain lifts and the world opens up around us. Gray turns white that slides into pale blue. A wispy mist hangs high above us reflecting the new-found sun creating a bright glare and squints my unprotected eyes.

The surf is high today. The waves running farther in and out than has been usual. In fact, I can count 7 or maybe 8 sets of cresting and running waves in the first quarter mile or so offshore. The roar of whitewater surrounds me as I walk the wet sand at the surf line.

There is no even wave line this morning. Several times, waves chase me and my government-issue cordovan boots back up the slope. It's a classic, sneaker wave kind of day , each wave deciding where it's own journey ends.

Every surge of ocean leaves behind a curving line of thick white foam, carbonated sea water churned and agitated by their long runs. The low angled winter sun creates mini-rainbows in the foamy bubbles.

A collage of multicolored pebbles flushed from the creek into sea, are pushed back to dry ground, their weight finally halting their return voyage below the tide line.

There is so much motion at water's edge this morning it's almost disorienting, as if I can feel the movement of the water, the movement of the earth.

A large flock of gulls - almost exclusively western gulls today - gather at the crest and ocean-side slopes of the beach near the mouth of the creek. Higher moving waves scatter the gulls in squawking gaggles that circle and return to the very same vulnerable spots moments later.














The combination of low tide and a few days without rain have narrowed Redwood Creek's channel into the Pacific. The force of downhill-moving freshwater into the onrushing saltwater waves creates a cup, a "C"-shaped bend in the powerful surf. Though the force behind the ocean's waves travel thousands before meeting higher ground, the relatively short, 67-mile gravitational force wins the day in this spot. Even though occasional strong wave will override the open channel and send its saline waters deeper into the estuary, dislodging the small group of bathing gulls, the salt water eventually ebbs and the ever-driving river channel is revealed again.

In the middle, where ocean and creek collide, swirling eddies and erratic white splashes send lines of water in all directions. The push and pull of the Pacific and the creek's rainwater continues as it has for eons. Two seals bob in and out within the tumultuous transition zone, watching me, happily fishing (or maybe just playing) in the swirling waters.

As the tide rises, large waves enter the channel more frequently, overrunning the creek's force. The mouth slowly widens. I hear the honking of Canada geese from the southern backwaters of the estuary, enjoying a rest from their long southerly journey. A few pelicans cruise past, surfing the air currents just above the breaking waves. A lone cormorant joins the seals at the mouth, ducking beneath the running white foam of each incoming wave.