Sky-clad camping, egg rock, avian concert By trane in trane's Diary Mon Jun 25, 2012 at 06:43:58 PM EST Tags: skyclad, camping, hiking, fossils, birds, trees, old growth, nature, solitude, pics (all tags)
	Last night I slept out on an uncovered deck, "stars shone gloriously in my eyes as I went to sleep" (I believe those are words Teddy Roosevelt used, but I haven't been able to track down the source, although I suspect it's somewhere in his diaries). This morning several dozen birds (like an orchestra) sang to greet the sunrise. Robins loudest, towhees providing counterpoint, sparrows twittering in between like the clarinet in a New Orleans ensemble improvisation. I was counting through it, their time was fluid but one towhee (I think) was hitting the one and the four beats consistently of the first bar of the roughly two-bar repeated chorus. (I think their time is much more natural and spontaneous than human music, but counting through it is one way I think about it. I think they're listening to each other, and can, in the early summer mornings, develop a real powerful resonance as they sing in phase. Listen for yourselves...)

Notes from a camping trip, a couple weeks ago: --- Some of the trees were hundreds of years old, thirty feet in diameter or more. Sick of humans, I bid the inside birds a long 'au revoir', asking their permission to fly away for awhile, and try to use the time to better figure out the words to communicate the avian way more effectively in the hope that more humans might become enlightened. Then I drove some 55 miles to the southern side of the Olympic mountains. I found a campsite (Laney Camp?). The first day I hiked around, up to Harp's shelter (where I camped before, just about a year ago). I spent the night (not at Harp's this trip, but at Laney down river), despite the radio forecasts for thundershowers, out on the mossy forest floor. I put down a tarp and thin pad but didn't set up the tent. It didn't rain... The next day was sunny. I hadn't seen anyone, so I took off all my clothes and washed in the river. The easiest river access was maybe 250 yards downhill from the camp. I hiked back up without clothes. Then it was so warm, I kept them off as I explored some trails around the campsite. I ran around along the river, going off trail in the mossy, savannah forest where it had been washed away. I had a shirt tied around my shoulders in case I ran into anyone. I was planning to drape it around my waist and apologize for "naked hiking", but it never came up :) I saw a robin, who sat on a branch backlit by the sun, and pooed a watery poo before flying closer and responding to my calls for a bit. (For the rest of the trip, I found myself pooing whenever I felt like it, using moss and then water to clean myself, so the bird set a pattern that I followed...) I saw a couple curious chickadees, who flew onto branches close to me and chirped. I gave the common chickadee call, "chick-a-dee-dee-dee", and one of them seemed to recognize it and responde similarly (before they had just been giving very short chirps, unlike the cliche chickadee call). I also saw a couple hermit thrushes (or wrens?) who were friendly, flying close to me and making eye contact. However when I went by that spot again with a camera, though there were a few more of them, they remained out of range of the camera's focus... There was also a shy robin I would see near the camp, but he kept his distance. Possibly it was a dove? A duck flying up river, followed by some chirping sparrows... I wondered about the geology of the river rocks. Why do some have very curvy white streaks all through them, and others have very straight fissures filled with white? --- Yesterday, I found this egg-shaped rock. What the heck is that? To me it looks like an egg fossil. See the eye and mouth of the little dinosour, upside-down, in the center?!?

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