Selway

born to nap forced to fold laundry

Looking south at Mt. Adams at sunset. The peak stands against a pail sky, with glaciers, clouds and haze all glowing in warm pastel colors. Where the ridge in the foreground is in light, it also glows soft orange with sunset. A fir tree stands at the right edge of the photo, and the half-full moon can be seen in the sky above. The very point of Mt. Hood is just visible over Mt. Adam’s right shoulder. Western Washington continues to be fucking glorious.

Backpacking is always a good idea.

#ProtectPublicLands

A small tortoiseshell kitty with blue eyes loafs on an open map on top of a table. Her expression asks what I’m gonna so about it. Is being in a map a crime now?

I am on a map, not the table.

It’s raining. Yuri is losing his entire mind.

tragic numbers, I sampled 15 species last year

sampled four different species of Vaccinium this weekend, which makes the total species of wild berries sampled this year seven, I think?

the view from inside a patch of Vaccinium membranaceum (big huckleberry); green leaves, red stems, delicious big shiny black huckleberries that I am about to put in my face. no bears (except me)-a busy trail, and a friend and her very adorable dog are just on the other side of these bushes.

have big dreams that this year is the year I become a bear

the one thing about a backpacking quilt is that it does not hold the farts in

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.

The look I get if I walk into the bathroom when someone is using the liter box

This ecosystem requires fire to develop; fire adapted ecosystems are so cool.

And yeah, public lands protect ecosystems like this, so as always #ProtectPublicLands

G1S1 means the ecosystem is global rare and also rare in Washington state-it also occurs in the Georgia Trough in British Columbia.

NatureServe description below for nerds

explorer.natureserve.org/Taxon/ELEMEN...

Tall thin beach pine (or lodgepole, if you, like me are a child of the Rocky Mountains) stretch up up up to a beautiful blue sky. You can tell they are old for lodgepole because of the standing snags and because some of the trees have thinning tops. Doug fir saplings are coming up in the understory (not pictured, the lush bracken fern, salal and a few rhododendrons in the ground cover.

This is a beautiful G1S1 ecosystem (Pinus contorta var. contorta - Pseudotsuga menziesii / Gaultheria shallon) that I got to see a few weeks ago. These ecosystems require fire and poor soils to develop outside of the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains in western WA. It was so cool!

Wait, I do know what to say: They lost their soul by singing "The Best Ever Death Metal Band from Tenton, Dexas" at the wrong place and the wrong time. Look. It could have happened to anyone. That "Hail Satan" bit is catchy as hell.

A pencil sketch of a very large orc. They're sitting in a confident and relaxed pose on a rock, with their axe (because of who I am as a person, it's a pulaski, actually), dressed in tall logging boots, loose pants, and a leather armor vest over a flannel shirt with the sleeves ripped off. They have several tattoos: vine maple leaves on their right arm, some Sycthian inspired ungulates on their left arm, and the word "left", tattooed on their right knuckles (Look, you don't have to be smart to be good and kind and smash bad guys). The sides of their head are shaved and on the side you can see is another tattoo, a Scythian-style woodland caribou. Their hair is in a long braid, tied off with bear bells and steller's jay feathers.

Eep! I made an art. This is my D&D character, Will Feral. I don't know what else to say about them, lol.

#TrueRefDT006

There is a crow chorus on the power line outside the window. Yuri is having big feelings about it.

"Ich askid Chat GPT." Well, Ich askid the secret soul of everye yeare that hath passid since the sunne appearid, yn the gorgeous panoplye of their tragedye and joye, and thei saide our fixatioun on our own litel technologyes ys an insult to the facte that we are made of stardust.

I’m still so mad. These creeps get so excited about bullying literal children.

Because I’m apparently getting transphobic campaign texts, let me just say, you come for trans people around me, and I am going to identify as a fucking problem.

Hello, yes, I would like to request one (1) executive function please

A black cat with big yellow eyes peers anxiously from under a dark green couch. His sister stands in front of him stretching her neck so they can boop noses. Or to judge him better, hard to say really.

Bro what are you doing?

Reading in the woods is truly one of life’s great joys.

Just some light backpacking reading. Tidal Creatures by Seanan McGuire in a ziplock bag to keep it safe from the elements, with the Olympic Mountains in the background.

Picked up Tidal Creatures for a full moon backpacking trip last weekend and just finished it today. It’s excellent! (Definitely read the first two books in this series first-but I wholeheartedly recommend everything I’ve read by Seanan McGuire, you won’t regret it.)

A dry rocky fellfield, featuring bright red paintbrush flowers surrounded by white and lavenders phlox and a pink flower I should remember the name of but don’t. A weathered boulder stands in the left mid ground, and narrow fir trees stand in a clump to the right behind the flowers. In the back ground, the Olympic Mountains are still covered in snow and clouds stretch across a pale blue sky. The light is evening gold.

Not entirely convinced that Western Washington is a real place in the world (Buckhorn Wilderness, Olympic National Forest).

#ProtectPublicLand

Goode newes everyebodye, the abyss doth absolutelye deteste eye contacte

A small tortoiseshell cat is fast asleep in an open window, all of her paws tucked up and her tail curled.

Oh to be as worry-free as a small cat sleeping in a window.

A backlit orange lily with spotted petals. The petals all curl back towards the stem, capturing sun and shadows. The large red-brown anthers glow with the sunlight. So do the green Rubus leaves behind the flower.

Please also enjoy some Lilium colombianum catching the light.

Olympic National Forest
#ProtectPublicLands

A pink globe of Rhododendron macrophyllum flowers perched on their distinctive ovate green leaves. In the background, yet more pink flowers and brilliant green leaves. No domestic azaleas, these friends are blooming in their wild native forest, and they are fucking glorious.

I thought I’d missed the rhododendrons due to unexpected work deadlines, but I finally escaped outside yesterday and a few are still blooming!

Olympic National Forest #ProtectPublicLands

But I don’t want to use all trails, I want to use a USGS 7.5 minute quad and a compass as god intended.

I learned today that I remember how to make a roux from scratch. I no longer need to look up a recipe to make homemade mac n cheese, I am unstoppable.