Month: July 2011

Olympic Flowers

The beautiful flowers found on the trail to Enchanted Valley helped to alleviate the fatigue that invariably accompanies carrying a 40 pound pack uphill for 13 miles.

These beautiful Mountain Daisies

Mountain Daisy

were found from the lowest elevation to the highest.

Huge bushes full of Tilling’s Monkeyflower

Tiling's Monkeyflower

crowded river gravel at our first Campground and at several places where we stopped beside the river to rest.

Several varieties of wild roses

Wild Rose

were also found at our campground and along the trail.

I loved this striking white flower that we saw several times in dark shade, making it difficult to get as sharp of image as I’d like to get.

White Flower

Though I found several similar flowers in Mountain Flowers of the Cascades and Olympics, I couldn’t really pin it down exactly.

Luckily, I got several chances to capture this picture of a Columbine,

Columbine

another favorite that I haven’t seen much since I moved away from the Columbia Gorge area.

The Quinault River

I’m recovering from a five day backpack into Enchanted Valley, so I’ve spent most of the day installing Apple’s Lion and polishing up photos taken on my new Powershot SX230HS. The trip was my Christmas present from Dawn and her family, as I’ve said I’d love to do at least one more backpacking trip with my grandkids before I have to give it up for car camping. Luckily we had lots of people to share the weight because I found trudging 13 miles generally uphill for two days with a 40-pound pack, day hiking another 5 miles and returning the last two days as challenging as I’d like.

Unfortunately, I knew I wouldn’t be able to carry my usual cameras with all the other things needed to survive comfortably so I purchased a small camera to take as good of pictures as I could. Since it was new I didn’t take full advantage of its capabilities, but enough of the pictures turned out that I’m pleased with the results and glad I made the purchase. Who knows, since I survived this trip I might even manage a few more in the next year or two — the awesome views inspired me that much.

Although the trip is often referred to as the Enchanted Valley hike, the Quinault River and its tributaries dominate the hike from the very first crossing.

Gorge

So much so, that it brought back fond memories of long-ago hikes in the Columbia Gorge’s moss and fern covered banks.

Fern-Covered Cliffs

As we walked up the valley we constantly crossed small streams that fed the river, losing

Stream

and gaining elevation

Bend in the River

even at our highest point in the hike.

Crosssing the Creek

Despite forecasts of rain, the five days were rain-free even though it sometimes seemed that we were living in the clouds. Several nights awoke to the sound of rain, only to realize it was really the sound of the omnipresent waterfalls.

Patricia Donegan’s Haiku Mind

Tom’s recent comment that ” When I buy a book of poems, it’s like buying a bottle of single malt. It’s a rare event and I enjoy it very slowly over a long period.” seems rather appropriate to the next book I began reading haiku mind: 108 poems to Cultivate Awareness & Open Your Heart.

It’s the kind of book with commentary that almost demands a daily reading, something, I’ll have to admit, that I’ve never been very successful at. I bought a book several years ago entitled 365 Tao: Daily Meditation and I don’t think I ever got much beyond the 5th day. I am many things, but methodical certainly isn’t one of those things. I’ve always been better at totally immersing myself in a a subject than tackling it one piece at a time.

So, this might well be the only entry you’ll ever read on this book, but despite the fact that I plan on several outings in the next few weeks, I’ll try to read one entry a day as long as I’m home. It might help that I’ve liked the first few haiku, and the commentary following those haiku.

It begins with a haiku that explains the author’s motive in writing the book:

1 Pausing

pausing
halfway up the stair-
white chrysanthemums

ELIZABETH SEARLE LAMB

Pausing is the doorway to awakening. This haiku epitomizes a moment that occurs naturally in our lives, but that we often hurry or gloss over. Haiku awareness is a simple way to slow down and tune in to this fleeting moment, to appreciate what is right in front of us. We pause not only with our body but also with our mind. And sometimes we can be attentive and sometimes we cannot, but that is all right, for the next moment always brings us the fresh possibility to pause and be present again. There are no steps to follow, there is no enlightenment to work toward-there is only the simplicity of relaxing into this very moment that is complete in itself. This naked moment is the only guide that we need to relax our mind. We need to trust this: in the midst of our daily life activities, the possibility to slow down, to stop, and then to appreciate naturally unfolds. For a fleeting moment we pause and note the sunlight on the sheets as we make the bed, note the warm sun on our cup as we sip tea, or note the fading light on the curtain as we enter the room. And we let out a breath or sigh. Pausing.

ELIZABETH 5EARLE LAMB (1917-2004). The foremost American haiku poet living a life dedicated to haiku, called “the first lady of Ameri- can haiku” Lamb was one of the founding members in 1968, along with Harold G. Henderson, of the Haiku Society of America and editor of Frogpond, its journal. She was also an early president of HSA and an honorary curator of the American Haiku Archives. Her last book was Across the Wind Harp: Collected and New Haiku.

As noted above, I tend to be a Type A personality, so pausing, except in the summer when I wasn’t working, has never been something I’ve done very well until I retired and took up Tai Chi and, coincidentally, birding. Perhaps this new found “awareness” is why I’ve become more and more fond of poetry that employs concrete images.

Unexpected

Although I go back to the Pt Defiance Rose Garden to see the rhododendrons, iris, rose, and dahlias, often times it’s unknown flowers in the surrounding beds that take my breath away.

Thursday was no different. I have no idea what these flowers are, but I love them when they first open,

Rusty colored flower just opening

and even more later when they are fully opened.

Rusty colored flower open

On the way out of the garden I noticed this striking flower,

flower

also unidentified.

Although none of these are more or less beautiful than the dahlias or the roses, their newness struck me in a way that the flowers I expect to see often don’t.