Tag Archives: weather

Renewal in June

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Renewal in June

Have you visited the storehouses of the snow
or seen the arsenal where hail is stored…?
(Job, 38.22)
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In the southwestern U.S. conditions are drier than at any time in the last 1200 years. If Lake Powell drops another 33 feet, the water level will be too low to power the turbines that send electricity across the region. In Los Angeles people will soon have to choose between saving water to drink or watering their lawns. In my region of the country parts of the state remain in a state of severe drought. But around Flathead Lake it rains intermittently for two days and two nights, raising the water level of Flathead Lake over a foot across its 191 square miles, more than 122,000 acre feet of water.

Unable to reserve my own campsite because competition for these spaces is so keen, I ask a friend to let me set up my tent next to his recreational vehicle in space 11 at Finley Point State Park. He kindly allows me and Big Agnes to create shelter next to the picnic table in exchange for an oatmeal crisp made from cherries grown in the orchards above us and the reading aloud of two Kathleen Jamie poems while he drinks his morning coffee. My friend is in the grip of the latest James Lee Burke novel, so I take Bluebird down to the marina and paddle in the rain.

Wary of lightning and the risk of waving a wet piece of carbon in the air during a storm, I plan a short paddle through The Narrows, threading my way in a figure-eight pattern around the islands. But when clouds to the north look particularly ominous, I make a broad sweep, reverse course, head south along the backside of Bull Island and cross back to the protection of the marina. If it is gray above, it is blue and green below.

Since everything is wet when paddling a kayak, it makes little difference if it rains. So I go out the next day too. This time I head north across Finley Bay, the tip of the peninsula and the chain of rocky shark’s teeth disappearing under rising water. I have paddled in many different conditions but never before in a hail storm. This time a trunk of hail drops down to the lake surface and balls of ice pelt my hat, drysuit, bare hands and deck. Though the particles are little larger than course rock salt, they turn the lake surface into a layer of froth not unlike a beer poured too fast or a latté covered in a milky hat. When dramatic things happen while paddling I wish I had the poise to unzip my pfd pocket, reach for my phone and take photos; but the best I can do is hang on, hunch my shoulders like a hawk on a limb and wait for the storm cell to pass. Until the gray column of falling ice advances to the east I listen to the sounds of hail, each sound different depending on the surface it strikes.
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In time I circle Bird Island and begin to head south, eventually finding that perfect paddling rhythm that makes distances dissolve. Along the way I think of our good fortune. Though climate change models still predict a hot, dry summer and the potential for fire, at the moment we are being given the gift of rain and experiencing the release of more water from the storehouses of snow and hail. On Bird Island and the slopes of the Mission Mountains after the Boulder 2700 fire, mahonia, Rocky Mountain maple, chokecherry, arrowleaf balsamroot and cottonwoods rise from blackened ground. The hidden power in seeds is being set free by rain and light; the birds are having families; we will have water to drink and irrigation for our gardens and fields.
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After the isolation and fatigue associated with a pandemic; during the ravages of war; in the aftermath of gunfire in classrooms and shopping markets; after the danger of insurrection has passed—at least for now—we have rain, an unmerited gift from the sky that renews everything that is tired and worn. For a couple of days I visit the storehouse of life-giving water—whatever form it takes—and return with nothing but gratitude, rich in ways that cannot be counted.

And my friend steps out of his camper and says, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”



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Report from the Island, May 18-19

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The forecast was not good—wind out of the northeast at 15 miles-per-hour with gusts to 30, rain, and waves 1-2 feet. Water temperature 39 degrees. I was tired of pulling dandelions so I went paddling. In a year of record snowfall and now epic flooding I knew the island would be green. It would be worth the effort to cross from Big Arm to Wild Horse.

 

When I pulled into my campsite conditions were dismal. I waited for a lull before setting up my tent. The only flat ground was next to the fire pit. It was a good thing I don’t make fires.

From time to time I checked my latest weather app until I had a sense of the pulse of the storms. In the diastole I pulled on my neoprene top and dry suit. I slid Bluebird into the gray water and pulled for the island. It felt good to sink into the headwinds. When gusts approached I ducked and made low angle strokes. In the lulls I returned to more efficient high angle strokes. Two hours later I pulled my kayak over some logs and secured it in the arms of driftwood. Arrow leaf balsamroot covered the hillsides. Walking through the clusters felt like wading through leather. In the interstices lupine, harebells, biscuit root and vetch reached for their share of the light. Climbing the first slope I came across patches of death camas, false asphodel and starflower. On the rocky crest I watched a pair of young eagles make intersecting gyres or hold positions in the wind with only the slightest movement of individual feathers. Knowing my interval would not last I waded back down the hill and let the rolling chop push me back to camp.

Joyce’s Yucatan soup, heated in my WhisperLite stove, and tortillas warmed on the lid of the pot never tasted so good. I was in my bag by 9 p.m.

The next morning was gray but not raining. The wind had not had time to build waves so I did it again, this time paddling around the corner of the island and into Skeeko Bay. After signing in at the register and seeing that I was only the second kayak to make it to the island this year, I walked the trail to the saddle with, as Andrew Marvell says, a green thought in a green shade. I continued up the east-west ridge and watched the bronze backs of retreating turkeys. They walk uphill faster than I do. Seeing the birds helped explain the broken feather I had found the day before. Peaking over the ridge I spotted four Bighorn rams lounging in the balsamroot. On a rocky nob where I know to look for bitterroot I found the flowers. This early in the season they were all promise and no bloom.

 

 

 

 

Satisfied that I had again made a deep connection to the island I started back down. On the way I heard a low growling off to my right. As I turned my head I caught a glimpse of a red fox in full plumage leaping between the flowers, unhappy that I had disturbed his proprietary rights to the island. Further down the trail I saw where the fox had excavated a vole, exposing the now-dry root and source of the flowers. Gliding down through the trees it seemed this island belongs to its non-human creatures first of all. They take as much pleasure as we do in all the life brought into the open by rain and light. They have first rights to the air and its breezes, the flowers and their variations.

Back on the beach and while climbing back into my yellow ziplock of a dry suit I noticed a group of paddlers crossing over to the island from Dayton. After they landed I walked over to greet them, a pair of guides with a new paddling business and two clients. They, too, had come to see the island in its green splendor. In Montana after a year of fire, snow and flood, this place felt like our Sistine ceiling, our Louvre, our MOMA. It was ours to visit but not remain.

 

 

Deeper Currents

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Deeper Currents

As everyone in the Northwest knows, the summer of 2017 was difficult. From the first week of July through the first week of September our forests were on fire and more smoke than we had ever experienced piled up behind a ridge of high pressure. Smoke poured into our valleys, filled our lungs, left ash on every surface, and embers in our yards. For many this was also a summer of anxiety and hasty preparations for evacuation. Some of us returned home to the smell of wet charcoal, black fields of devastation, and worse. In response to the casual question, “How are you?” people often answered “Depressed.”

As a paddler I occasionally inserted a trip on Flathead Lake between the darkest days of smoke, encountered locked gates at state parks, and waited like everyone else for the air to clear and costs to mount.

On September 29, I finally found a bright and fresh day for a solo paddle out to Wild Horse Island and a clockwise trip around its perimeter. It felt healing to exercise in pure air, to be reminded that our world is indeed beautiful after weeks of finding it fouled, polluted and threatened. Late afternoon light backlit every snowberry, spider web, needle and turning leaf in the draw above Osprey Cove. A shift in the wind gave me five fast miles at the end of the day.

During this paddle I thought I might feel elevated by the knowledge that our world we love had finally been returned to us. But after this summer I felt more reflective than jubilant. All the evidence suggests that what happened this summer will happen again.

I have always been skeptical of the human inclination to use nature for our own purposes, reducing it to one more resource that we exploit for our own pleasure. I know, it is good to wash one’s mind in the bath of green and blue water. It is good to test one’s inner strength in the face of variable winds and distance. It restores balance to play on the waves. But time in a kayak, especially by oneself, gives a paddler occasion to ask, “What is all this for? What larger purpose does it serve?”

In my post of May 7, 2017, I proposed that we have a responsibility to attend to and behold the things we encounter. But on this Friday in September the currents took me deeper. After this summer it seems we have an inescapable responsibility to address the forces that are making our world increasingly uninhabitable. It is no accident that our forests are burning and coastal cities are awash in water that overwhelms the land and its inhabitants. We are doing this to ourselves and we must undo what we have done. Or, to shift the metaphor, we must change course because the one we are on leads to ruin, especially for the most vulnerable among us.

It is not for me to say what others should do. We must see this for ourselves. But I am clear that I have a responsibility to understand the impacts of what we are doing to the planet and take action in word and deed to promote choices that lead toward better ways of being in the world. A paddle in bright light makes this clear. It is time to do more than sigh with relief or toss up our hands. We have work to do, changes to make, a course to correct, while there is time.

 

Waves Lift

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On the summer solstice my wife and I camped at the lake, finding one of the few sites open for tents next to parking lot full of trailers and RVs. Our “overnight” allowed me to make a long afternoon paddle the first day and a morning paddle on the second day to some of my favorite islands and bays. Both days windy conditions kept other boats off the lake, but I ventured out anyway, my desire to paddle stronger than my fear.

Both days I faced strong headwinds, quartering winds, and less often, a downwind ride, paddle held aloft like a pair of sails, all conditions that made it difficult to relax. One particularly strong gust of wind stripped the paddle from my hands. I immediately plunged my hands into the cold water to arrest my forward movement. Then, I hand-paddled backwards to intercept the drifting paddle before continuing my entrance into a new bay I wanted to visit. After losing and regaining my paddle I decided to pull a leash from my vest. Never before had I felt the need for this precaution.

Naturally, windy conditions produce waves, waves that vary depending on lots of factors—the length of the fetch, the deflecting effect of islands, the influence of shoals, the temporary flattening effect of gusts, and so on. Some waves on Flathead Lake are powerful or turbulent enough to overturn a kayak. On both days around the solstice, however, I experienced something I have wanted to describe. When I am in the trough between waves the approaching wave seems like it will swamp the boat or overturn me. While these waves sometimes broke over the boat and sent spray into my face, to my amazement I know that waves also lift. Because boats are buoyant waves slide under and suddenly elevate the trusting paddler.

I have never been able to photograph this phenomenon while paddling. Windy conditions demand my whole attention. Nevertheless, I have come to trust this process and believe it has implications for other aspects of our lives. The forces that potentially threaten us—an unexpected set of demands, a danger or fearful encounter, all these things also have power to lift us. Experience tells me, if we keep breathing (our own form of buoyancy), the energy of waves rolls under us. The waves have power to lift us above the troughs, the trough of fear, tension, or lack of perspective. Nevertheless, I have found it necessary to let this happen. We cannot stop the advancing wave, but we can allow it to roll under us and lift us above the turbulence.

 

Paddling Lessons, II: Learning to Yield

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(May, 2008)

When two great forces oppose each other,

The victory will go

To the one that knows how to yield (Tao 69)

A few years ago my brother and I arranged to paddle together on the first anniversary of our mother’s death. She had been a difficult person in our lives, chronically ill and prone to trying to trying to control her sons. By paddling together on this anniversary my brother and I would celebrate our good health and freedom, two riches she never enjoyed. One day in May my brother drove to Montana from Seattle. The next day we drove together up to Flathead Lake. At this time of the year it was not hard to find a campsite at Big Arm State Park, so we erected his old Sierra Designs Starlight close to the beach. We spent the late afternoon and long evening paddling around Cromwell and Wild Horse islands.

During the night the weather changed. From inside the tent we heard wind in the trees and waves breaking on the shore next to us. In the morning we crawled out to find the wild conditions that made for a restless night. As we stood on the shore wind bore through the strait between Wild Horse and Melita Islands, turning the blues and greens into a froth of white. We knew it would not be a good day to paddle in an area receiving the full brunt of the wind. Hoping for calmer conditions elsewhere, we decided to drive up to Westshore Campground.

Conditions at Westshore were much the same. Determined but with trepidation, we launched at the boat ramp and paddled south—downwind and down wave, hoping to reach Cedar Island about four miles away. On the way conditions become even more severe. The wind blew harder and the waves became more ominous. We drew closer to shore in case we got into trouble. By the time we reached the Douglas Islands we knew it was not wise to continue; the further south we went the more difficult the return trip would be. The water opposite the cliffs at Painted Rocks would have been chaotic and dangerous.

In the narrow channel between shore and Mary B Island we turned around. In the lee of the little island we hopped out of our boats, stood in the shallows and rested. We kept our boats from blowing away by holding onto the combing around each cockpit. We took a few minutes to reconcile ourselves to the work ahead of us; returning to Westshore would be exhausting, a hard beat against the wind. Resigned to the inevitable we resumed positions. Choosing safety over further adventure, we headed north against waves that broke over our decks and swept up and around our skirts. Waves swallowed the upwind arm when we reached for a stroke on the starboard side and ate the downwind arm as they rolled under us. Looking north we saw wind gusts rattle the surface of the lake and then flail us. It took our best effort to make any progress. Someone observing our struggle from his deck shouted at us, but neither of us could afford to pause between strokes, turn to the side, or respond. We never knew whether he was shouting encouragement, offering us a chance to come ashore and rest, or whether he was cursing us for being on the lake. Each wave required our complete attention. Photographs were out of the question. Using my ears I kept track of Jeff just off my stern on the port side. We saved words for later but listened to the sound of each boat meeting the train of waves. Hoping that the peninsula above West Shore would break the wind for us, we dropped into the crescent of Goose Bay and circumscribed its perimeter.

When the dock at Westshore finally came into view we felt a great sense of relief. Three miles of this kind of paddling had been enough. We pulled in next to the dock wanting to avoid having our boats smashed on the rocks adjacent to the ramp. But even as we stood on the dock, waves blew through gaps in the planks and shot into the air. A gust of wind caught Jeff’s paddle and nearly blew it off the dock into the bay. He caught it with a toe. Barely able to control the boats when we lifted them into the wind, we secured them to Jeff’s rack and climbed into his Forrester. Inside the shelter of the car we felt the buffeting of the wind and gave thanks to be out of it. In the warmth of the car we noticed maple leaves beginning to unfold. We began to relax.

As hard as the return trip was for us, Jeff and I learned our own limits and the maximum conditions we can face in our boats. We learned that sometimes it is necessary to abandon a goal, no matter how desirable it seems. In the face of forces far greater than our own strength and determination it was prudent to yield and turn back.

After this day, as much as I love to paddle, I can imagine choosing not to paddle. There are days when morning wind whips the willows and causes big pines along the shore to sway. On stormy days light and shadow shift continuously and each leaf or needle or wave crest becomes a chip in the mosaic of light. On such days I must be able to imagine sitting inside, relieved that I am not contending with waves that break over the bow or lift the boat from behind and spiral it down into deepening troughs. There are days for tea in the tent.