Birding at Cabelas

   A quick photo essay from my first excursion to the Cabelas store on Saturday. I was there only to provide moral support to my husband who was on an assignment to purchase a cookstove for our local rowing club. Once we realized I was not the right person to be giving him advice, I plucked my camera out of my pocket and started wandering this warehouse of stuff designed to to help us enjoy and outsmart our environment.


This counts as art at Cabelas.

   Hunting birds with anything but a camera is not one of my pasttimes, though I once volunteered to carry two recently shot pheasant through a field of corn stubble in Iowa one bleak day November. The only warmth I felt that day was in my hands--the ones around the birds' necks. (The pheasant meat, by the way, was eaten by another than myself who, having not stored the meat properly, feasted on the flesh then became violently ill during a business conference the day. But I digress...



   With the number of Canada Geese I've seen around Olympia and elsewhere, it is hard to imagine they would be challenging to hunt. In fact, I am pretty sure I could walk up to one of the Canada Geese resting on the trails at  the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, put a collar around its neck, and take it for a stroll. As it is now, I just hug the far side of the trail and pass by hoping not to get honked at. Hunters and the folks at Cabelas want to make it even easier with an alluring assortment of decoys. Being a word person, I was amazed to discover that you can't sell decoys in boxes simply labeled "decoys." To successfully lure the hunter-shopper into making a purchase, you have to bait them with jargon.  



Who is Big Foot--the goose or the guy? B2---huh? And what's with the word order-- Generation Next?

 

Make sure you get the Pro Series...and the ones with the Life-Like Appearance. These decoys are not for amateur hunters who either don't use decoys or use ones that look like Donald Duck. Totally unrealistic.



I guess these are the Big Foots.

 

Yup.



If you are no planning to hunt or trade your pink flamingo yard ornaments for a pair of Canada Geese, you buy these refrigerator magnets at the check-out stand. They could serve as reminders that you have game meat that is "probably still okay" in your fridge.

 

Fog Blog

What a glorious spate of weather, so beautiful that it is almost heartbreaking. After our unremarkable summer, every moment of these autumn days presents something to write home about. For these days, I believe, we have the fog to thank. October, according to meteorologist Cliff Mass, is the foggiest month in Olympia. To celebrate, I am posting this fog blog--some photos, some science, some encouragement to trying to enjoy the lack of horizontal visibility that this type of stratus clouds brings to the landscape.

Last September, as my devoted readers may recall, I went swimming in the fog early one morning when Ward Lake was all but invisible. This year, the scene was the same (above), but I decided to photograph the fog moving over the city rather than swim in what was hanging over the lake. So I went up to Overlook Park in Tumwater with my camera. A water tower (below) marks the hilltop location of the park; this is the only time I have ever seen the color of the sky match the "camouflaging" paint color of the water tower. This is the view to the south.southeast. 

And this (below) is the view to the north./northeast Just to the right of the large tree is the ghostly capitol dome. . The fog was rolling in from the northwest. The photo below was taken at 12:15 p.m

 

This one at 12: 39 p.m.

This one at 12: 48 p.m.

  

And this one at 1:03 p.m.

   Fog is precipitation, formed of tiny water droplets, that takes the form of a stratus cloud--one that is in contact with the ground and that reduces horizontal visibility to less than 1/4 mile (1 km). If you went outside early in the morning this week, when the fog was the densest, you could see the individual droplets of the fog and watch them moving and swirling and falling.

   There are many types of fog--ground fog, ice fog, frozen fog, freezing fog, fog smoke, sea fog, Arctic sea smoke, Bora fog, steam fog, valley fog, caribou fog (caused by warm exhalations of herds of caribou!), frontal fog, upslope fog, advection fog, and radiation fog. I could go on...

   But let's talk about radiation fog. This is what we are experiencing in Olympia now. This type of fog forms on clear, cool  nights (you have been seeing the stars and moon, right?) and usually after a sunny day during which the ground absorbs the solar heat. At night, that heat radiates from the ground into the air; the ground cools sharply after this loss. The warm air radiating from the ground comes in contact with the cooler ground. The water vapor in the air condenses and creates visible fog. A whole night of this and the fog builds into a thick layer that rises over the treetops. 

  Why does the fog hover over Ward Lake and other area water bodies? Two reasons. Our lakes are located on low ground and fog, which is heavier that the surrounding air, settles in low spots. And, because Ward Lake itself is radiating it's summer's worth of trapped heat into the surrounding air. I like to imagine the lake's fog as its slow release of summer into the crisp fall air. As long as there is fog on the lake, I know the water is still warmer than the air. In November, the water temperature is closer to the air temperature and the dense fogs are mostly gone.

  Here is a wonderful illustration of radiation fog by my favorite American author-illustrator-meteorologist-painter, Eric Sloane. This is from his 1952 Weather Book (a 2005 Dover reprint). He's my hero.

   And, finally, because I had heard than rain was in the forecast (putting an end to morning fog), I went out my favorite really low spot--the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge. I was hoping to find myself wandering around for hours looking for my hand in front of my face, being attacked by Canada Geese I tripped over, or falling blindly off the dike and into the muck but, alas, I was too late for such Accidental Naturalist fun. I did get to enjoy the thick fog hovering over the still-warm waters of McAllister Creek (below) at low tide. The photographs show the long boardwalk (under construction) that will take visitors half mile out into the estuary. Click here for info on the refuge and for news about the new boardwalk opening.

 

"It usually takes a rainbow, a thunderstorm, or some of of atmospheric antic to make us look upward and take note," writes Eric Sloane. "But if that gives us the habit, it is worth while. And I'll wager you will see a lot up there that you never dreamed of."

Cloud Convergences

A month ago I was handed a photocopy of  page from this book (above). I had never heard of the book but immediately tracked down a copy at my local public library because the pages I was given were about clouds (below). This type of cloud is quite common around here and are most often seen hovering above Mount Rainier. They are called altocumulus lenticularis--the flying saucer cloud, the "lennie."  

   This type of cloud is not, however, common in Los Angeles where one particularly shapely "lennie" appeared one November day in 1976. According the Lawrence Weschler, "Anybody who was in town that day and happened to look up remembers that cloud," one he describes as a "great-dreamy-somnambulant blimp of a cloud...floating, pink, langorous, bulbous and surreal..."

   Weschler, a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker and prize-winner author of many works of non-fiction and creative non-fiction, was obviously quite taken with this cloud. But not because it was a rare meteorological event, but because it bore an uncanny resemblance to a 1933 painting by Marc Chagall (below) that Weschler had seen in a catalogue of the artist's work.

This is "Nu au-dessus de Vitebsk" which may or may not remind you of a lennie. Certainly the nude is reposing on a cloud-like sheet, she is floating in a cloud-like manner, and her curvilinear "bulbous" shape is more like an altocumulus than a cirrostratus or, heaven forbid, a cumulus congestus. Weschler doesn't think Chagall's composition is happenstance, but that this artist is expressing some universal form that arises from the common human experience of nature or art. Chagall may have thought he was being original, but Weschler purports that he was likely influenced--perhaps subliminally--by another artist, Man Ray. 

   This is A l'Heure de l'Observation: les Amoureux. Because of their size, the lips are meant to represent not a mouth, but two joined bodies floating above the earth against a sky dotted with altocumulus perlucidis clouds.

    Weschler considers these images--rising subliminally or intentionally from our conscience--convergences. Some of the images grouped together in his book undoubtedly share common sources of influence, but I am not convinced that the convergences are not simply the result the Weschler's clever ability to recognize "similar" images from what must be the enormous stock of images he holds in his memory or encounters in his daily life. In a slightly oddball lecture posted on YouTube, Weschler matches images of a partically prostrate body of woman just recovering from swimming the English Channel, St. Theresa in Ecstacy, and Christ being taken down from the cross. It's hard to believe there is any mimickry going on here (life imitating art, or art imitating art), but you've got to wonder--do human bodies in extreme states take on a particular posture or form?  Or are we just looking for similarities, the way the defunct Spy magazine did so brilliantly in their "Separated at Birth?" feature back in the Eighties.

    I do not need to be convinced that Weschler's convergences are meaningful to be amused and fascinated by his book and the way his mind works. This book is good for the synapses and great for people interested in learning new ways of looking at the world around them.   

   

National Gallery of Clouds

I cannot tell you the name of the artist who painted this masterpiece. I cannot tell you the name of this painting or any of the paintings I have posted here from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. My head was in the clouds. I was blind to everything but clouds. And I was pretty obnoxious about it.
   As I toured room after room of masterpieces with my friend Amy last week, she would lead me to her favorite works in each room, tell me why she liked it, and I would say, "Nice clouds!" She would look up from where she was reading the placards of information placed beneath each frame and say, "Oh, I never noticed before." An hour later, she was saying "Stop it! You are ruining these paintings for me!"

What horses?

What nudes?



What fields?



Too much foreground greenery.

Looks like a front moving in. He better hurry.



Look! The happy clouds--cumulus humilis!



An actual artist copying a dynamic skyscape (some would say seascape) where beatifully illuminated cumulus congestus loom threateningly over a wave-tossed sailboat. Though it seems the sailboat is the focus of this painting, it is actually the dark cloud rising above it. It's hard to imagine all of these paintings without clouds. A clear blue sky would take all the oomph out of them. Clouds set the mood, the season, the weather, and sometimes the location of the land- or sea-scape. Clouds bring a strong dynamic element to each painting. They mean something is happening in the painting--the clouds are rising, lowering, moving on unseen winds. In certain paintings, clouds compel the viewer to regard the subject of the painting--be it horses, riders, frolickers, sailors, meadows--as alive and interacting with or responding to the weather. The horses must be wet and the riders cold. The skin of the summer nudes must be sun-warmed; the luscious clouds are body-shaped. The crops and fields will soon get a drenching rain; everyone will relax. Villagers are enjoying lunch inside their cool stucco homes, seeking refuge from the baking sun on this nearly cloudless day. The rider on the long path needs to hurry. The bees pollinating the flowers in the field do not; they have all day to buzz in the hot sun. Alas, I did not. I wanted to linger in the galleries, revisit all my favorite paintings to see what role clouds played in them. But I had a plane to catch the next morning back to Olympia. As much as I hate to leave, I enjoy my flights. I always chose a window seat. I spend most of the long flight with my nose pressed up against the window wondering what these clouds and their shadows mean to the people going about their lives below.