Em's response:

To the question: will you marry me?

Rain

I know it sounds crazy, but it's been raining here. Well, it rained for 30 minutes, but pretty hard. The river went up a couple of millimeters! It's been sort of misting for the last couple of days. The mosses have really greened up.

The forest.

While Justin has been keeping himself busy with sundry activities, I haven't exactly been sitting on my ass. At least not all day.

I've been admiring mountain ranges:





Here's some course woody debris:


Here's some leaf litter:


I've also been thinking a lot about fungi. Here's a mycotroph, the Spotted Coralroot Orchid I found in the woods. Unlike other plants, these orchids get all of there nutrition and energy from the association with mycorrhizal fungi. The fungi decompose wood and leaf litter, giving the nutrients to plants in exchange for carbohydrates. The orchids however take both the carbs and the nutrients from the fungi, so it's kind of like they're parasitizing other plants. Super awesome!

Sunday

Well, I decided to spend Sunday like any good american, I went to town to see Star Trek. I drove 25 miles, it took an hour, and the movie was pretty decent. The best part about going to town is getting food, I like to eat, and I was starting to run low on things to eat. The second best part is seeing the ocean, which I will never tire of. Every time I get through the trees and catch my first glimpse of wave I get excited. I stopped at a very nice highway rest-stop and made contact with the watery underworld. It was a good Sunday.

A little earlier, a little wetter

I'm back at Angelo Coast Range Reserve for four weeks. About ten days ago there was a massive rain storm, the biggest of the winter. It was a little later than usual. Things are green, which is surprising. The water levels are high, but receding quickly. I'm looking forward to how this is affecting the stream ecosystem. The rain brought enough water to scour some of the stream bed, and it might have flushed out a bunch of nutrients from the watershed.

Rocaforest

There are some huge trees hanging around in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. These were in Rockefeller Forest.


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24 hours of madness

I decided that I needed to know what happens in a deep pool in the stream. Not just what happens, but what happens throughout the day, and in 5 different locations: the inlet, the outlet, 4 meters deep, 1.75 meters deep and 40cm deep. I managed to get almost three hours of sleep in-between sampling.

Base camp:


Honestly, I was afraid of the dark. It was very dark, very, very dark. There are cougars, and bears. I had three strategies for cougar/bear defense:

1. Light, and more light. I used a lantern and a headlamp. The lantern formed a bubble of safety around me, and acted as a beacon, so I knew where to land the kayak.
2. noise - I whistled, and I sang. Oddly enough, the only song I could think of was Neil Young's "Hey, Hey, My, My (Into the Black)"
3. Scent marking. Yeah, every time I had to pee I helped build an invisible barrier. Maybe.

Of course, the kayak felt like the safest place to be, but there was no way I was going to try to take a nap on it.


6am: first light. Between 4am and 6am I went from being able to see the milky way, to not needing a headlamp.


This is the Geopump, I use it to suck water up from the depths. I think it's kind of cute.


Morning on the stream is beautiful, but then so are all the other times of day. I would know, I was there.


Evening upstream. This is the boardwalk to Walker Meadow, just upstream of my pool.


10pm. The last sampling. As I'm heading out bats swoop down in front of the kayak skimming the surface of the water for insects.