Scaup hunt

January 7, 2025

Today is nothing like yesterday’s gorgeous blue stunner. It’s solidly overcast when we wake up, and cold and quite windy on top of it. Its an easy call for Rachael, who heads off to the gym for a bout on the stationary bike and returns later aglow with the fact that she made a new friend - Georgia, an avid hiker who wants to go hiking with Rachael someday. There’s not time this week, but it’s something for her to look forward to when we return in March.

While she’s out I dedicate myself to the storage unit and the Archival Project until about noon when I decide that it’s time to head out to the Columbia River. My excuse is that I’m going on a scaup hunt, but part of my intent also is to see how I do behind the wheel of the Raven. Now that I’m legal and have wheels I’m anxious to put myself to a test. If this goes well I’ll plan on driving over to Hillsboro to look for my Pendleton next.

To my satisfaction, the drive is no problem at all. My distance vision straight ahead is fine, and I’m pleased to see that when I turn my head for a quick glance in the right hand mirror it’s perfectly clear. I don’t expect to be doing any long drives soon or maybe ever again, but I’ll be fine for short local outings, such as to Sauvie Island. I’ll change my driving behavior though, avoiding freeways and sticking to the right lane.

And actually, I’ve still got a lot going for myself as a driver and I suspect that even with one eye I’m still better and safer than most of the other drivers out on the road. I’m calm, not prone to panic by the unexpected. I’m observant, and plugged into what the driving perspective looks like from the other driver’s point of view. I don’t take chances or drive aggressively, and I’m constantly alert for what might go wrong. And locally, it helps that I have internalized a complex, detailed mental map of the inner city from all the times I’ve biked through it, which means I don’t really have to think about or get distracted by navigation. None of that went away with the loss of my right eye. Dad was an excellent driving instructor sixty years ago, and my years as a cyclist taught me a lot that’s relevant to driving also.

Today I follow one of the standard routes Rachael and I used to follow when we biked to the river: across the Broadway Bridge, north on Williams, right on Decum and then across Lombard on the 33rd Avenue overpass. We eventually dropped this route when 33rd became too scary - a third of a mile of unbroken encampments of broken down campers and tents and junk and parts of enough bicycle frames and wheels to make it look like every stolen bike in town ends up here lined both sides of the road. It’s like traversing a war zone, and the few times I came down this way on my own I biked the center stripe.

Now though, it’s totally clear. It’s unbelievable that they’ve all gone - all of them - and it looks like it will be totally fine to bike again.

I’m only out at the river for two hours, but it’s enough because the wind is really blowing out here and raising up white caps and it feels bitterly cold when I walk east into it. I get the scaups though, and drive home a happy man.

At the boat launch. Ordinarily there’d be cormorants and gulls out there, but it’s too windy. I’ll see nothing but a few crows out today, with one important exception.

This part of the riverside path is a little rough and slows me down. My depth perception is off now and I have to take care with my footing.

Way out in the middle or the river is a raft of scaups, the only birds other than a few crows I’ll see today. I was lucky to spot them (and with my eyes and glasses, not the zoomed camera). They just look like a thin dark line, but it’s enough to be worth checking out.

Here’s a shot I definitely couldn’t have gotten with the Lumix. It needs a stronger zoom to see enough detail to identify them.

#41: Lesser scaup on the left, and #43 Greater scaup on the right. At this distance the head shape and bill size are the distinguishing features.

Rachael and I have biked this path into the face of yonder mountain so many times.

Remarkable. I heard recently that this is the region’s wettest winter in 15 years. I believe it.

A cold but visually splendid day to be out here.

With a 20mph wind blowing up their backs, they’re flying.

A large bird flies my direction from straight ahead, looking like it could be a raptor, so I quickly open up the camera and just pan its flight space without focusing. It’s just another crow, but if it had been a marsh hawk I think I could tell. I’m impressed.

He looks like a fighter jet coming in for a landing.

I return to the car at 2:30 and call Rachael so we can coordinate the rest of the day. We have tickets at Living Room Theater for the 3:45 showing of the Bob Dylan film Like a Complete Unknown. I’ll arrive in town at around three and park the car in Elizabeth’s spot, so we agree that we’ll just meet at the theater rather than have me come home first.

We borh find the film to be completely remarkable and are moved by it over and over again. For myself, the film becomes the nexus for a flood of memories, nearly all related to life music performances. It resonates with my arrival at the zoo MAX station yesterday and the memories of the zoo concerts that invoked. And this morning I was folding into the Archive the brochures from the three years we attended the Sisters Folk Festival. In addition though it flashes me back to the summer of ‘65, the same time as the 1965 Newport Fok Festival that climaxes the film was running.

In the summer of ‘65 I was a camp counselor at what was then Henderson Camps on Sperry Peninsula. After the Hendersons retired the camp continued with essentially the same character and spirit as Camp Nor’Wester until 1996 when Paul Allen bought the entire peninsula for his private residence and ended a 50 year tradition overnight.

My time at Camp Henderson was a unique and in many ways idyllic time in my life, the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college. I was a counselor for the 10-12 year old boys group, the Indians, and we slept in canvas teepees supported by alders we’d cut and peeled with drawknives at the start of the season. Many afternoons we’d lie on our cots with the sides of our teepees rolled up, watching the herons wading in the mudflats.

Every morning and evening though, the entire camp would congregate at the lodge for meals, ceremonies and music. And the music was the music of the day, American folk music performed by the resident camp musicians. Many of the songs we sang at dinner were ones by Woodie Guthrie sung in the earlier parts of the film: This Land is Your Land, Roll on, Columbia Roll On, The Grand Coulee Dam Song. I think this was really when I first even became aware of folk music as a genre. So the film sucked that period of life too into this memory vortex I’m caught up in at the moment.

Back at the ranch, a special treat awaits. Safeway was out of the Black Butte, but this looks very nice,.

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