All Manner of Nonsense!

The rainy part of fall came back for a while. Now we are weathering through an unusually long cold snap with temperatures not rising much above freezing in the day. It's so dry my hair could make it's own snap crackle pop advertising. With that much static electricity floating around my head I'm amazed I can still use electronic devices.

Anyway, I snuck one more mushroom hunt in before the cold hit and froze everything solid.

I think these grey guys are oysters, but that's from someone who has never seen one in real life.

This slimy stuff pops up everywhere.

 One of my favorite spots, Racehorse Falls

North Fork of the Nooksack River

Can you tell which are cottonwood leaves and which are actually Chanterelles?

 I went back to that secret mystical place where we found Chanterelles, to look for more. Turns out if we had headed right instead of left the first time we were there we would have found pounds and delicious pounds of prized edible fungi. These were all a little too far gone to be comfortable eating... but now we know for next year!

 This one is just cool looking. That's it.

I haven't talked much about my job... I am the volunteer coordinator for the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association (NSEA), a Regional Fishery Enchancement Group (RFEG) that I volunteered with in college. The position is funded through AmeriCorp, so I'm getting that whole experience wrapped up in one neat package!

The Nooksack River basin supports all five species of Pacific Salmon (Chinook/King, Coho/Silver, Chum/Dog, Pink/Humpy, Sockeye/Red) as well as Steelhead, Cutthroat... Its a beautiful place to live and work, especially when you get out in the nature business with some regularity. 

My job is to coordinate community members who are interested in being involved with NSEA. We are lucky to live in a city with three colleges to draw student interns and volunteers from, as well as a community with higher than average environmental awareness. One fun aspect I mentioned before, is that I got to hire interns.

These interns help me run volunteer work parties, and thus far have been very fun to work with. Our last work party of this season is this weekend. I'm trying to plan a cute sendoff, but its posing difficulties for me. For example, what to feed a collectively vegan gluten free group of people? I love making food (surprise!) but I don't own Xanthan gum, egg replacer, tapioca flour, coconut sugar (who knew this was a thing!?)... So far I've arrived at Chili and oatmeal cookies. But then the oatmeal needs to be certified gluten free... I grow ever more grateful that my body doesn't attack itself when I try to feed it the more I research.

Anyway. Remember how I said everything was frozen solid? I meant it. 

These are from our most recent community work party, one out in the county right next to the Nooksack. It looks like there is a light dusting of snow, but that is actually extremely heavy frost. We got to our site and set up probably 40 minutes early... So we wandered around and looked at things.

  Icicles formed on moss, enormous ice crystals on a bracket fern. Those were my favorite.
 

These are serious frost-cicles. That's barbwire for perspective.

 Did I mention yet this is a beautiful place to be?

 Its a dipper! I've been seeing a fair number of these lately. They are fun to watch, if you've never watched a dipper bounce around, you're missing out!

 This is Will, since you can't see his face, I think it's ok for him to be here. He's one of the more gung-ho interns.


I asked him to take pictures that day. This is what he came back with.


These are Chum, easily distinguishable by their green and red tiger striping.

 I am unabashedly jealous. We have cameras that work underwater, but I have yet to achieve anything better than fuzzy bubbles. Will got it though.

Darkness arrives shortly after 4 now. Its a tough adjustment to make, no time to play in the sunshine (or dreary grey light more typically). So you come home, sit down... And knit and crochet.

With the growing chill I started in on the heavy winter comfort food. Cardamom bread has always represented Christmas time to me, and its December now...

And a pot roast that has since morphed into tacos. Yum!



This is the mango I started growing somewhere in the realm of two months ago. Its doing pretty well considering I thought it was dead for about a week.

Next Time on Phoebasaurus: Salmon Science! Rar!

Finally following through!

With the horrible sounding hair-cleansing method dubbed 'no poo'. That's right ladies! (And gents?). After finally running out of conditioner, I washed my hair with baking soda and vinegar. It was weird, it felt weird, my hair got extra silky (fine by me... the cold air is doing its frizzing thing), and to you skeptics it smells like... nothing. It passed the Brandon sniff test with flying colors. He even re-tested a day later to make sure the results were the same. Real scientist I've got here.
It just went straight into the old shampoo bottles...so visitors beware. Its not 'real' soap in there.
And if you don't believe me about the 'no-poo' movement... look it up. There is a Facebook 'support' page that totes its own acronymed-for-no-reason phrases, a whole developing culture of the self righteous who do it the 'natural' way. Too cynical? How hard is it really to type 'water only'? I just did. And I'm fine. Two legs, ten toes, two eyes.... I think I just need to accept that some things I will never fully understand, like why develop a culture that inherently excludes newcomers while acting holier-than-thou over the common brain-washed shampooing hordes (Who may be interested in this concept for other reasons, say environmental, than to become a pure true human). Ahhh. Now that I've way over thought that whole concept... Moving on!

In other hippy/crafty news, the coconut oil/baking soda/cornstarch deodorant works! Ha! If only those fancy deodorant tubes had arrived, I would show you that, but all in good time. I have genuinely converted the Otter there I think; sometimes I'm not sure if he's just smiling and nodding or he's actually into the lotion and chapstick and hodgepodge items I churn out and immediately attempt to test on him. That's a hazard of dating me I guess. But I make him things he likes... Like chicken fried steak.


I have been in a fog the last week and it caught up with me the day I (re)attempted the art of yogurt making. The first time nothing came of it but sour milk. But after the demise of a candy thermometer, Tupperware, dishcloth, and an additional quart of milk (can't have broken thermometer in my yogurt now), I got it! Real, live (haha seriously!) yogurt that tastes remarkably like the stuff from the store.
Right now, Martha is thinking "Gosh Phoebasaurus, more pictures, fewer words!"

Anywho, the adventures have dwindled to pretty much moving the kitchen/dining/game table to dance and working out with jugs of milk. My vehicle needs a little mechanic love (its been a whole 5 months since the last visit!), I harbor the suspicion that Bucky the Trucky is a hypochondriac. Maybe, this time there's something palpably wrong. This time.

As luck would have it, I did find Chanterelles! They were too old to eat, but find them I did! Mission accomplished. Fuzzy picture proof! Cream of Chanterelle soup above.

We saw other pretty mushrooms on that outing, and found a beautiful spot on one of the forks of the Nooksack. Whatcom County is the place to live!

 This picture like totally represents my brainspace lately man... You know what I mean...?

 Spectacular valley formed by/around/whatever part of the river, grey at the bottom of pic is the river.
As promised, mushrooms...

Brandon spotted these amanitas while I dawdled along. Pretty little life suckers

 There were oodles of them (several doz.) This guy on the right (not an Amanita) would have been massive while intact, am regretting not using something for scale at the moment, but truly dinner plate to platter sized cap based on what was left of the fat stalk.

Red Osier Dogwood has beautiful red/gold leaves in the fall. They're pretty much gone now, but they're little sparks in the senescencing landscape while they last.

We found a beautiful spot, there were a few dead Chinook. Very picturesque.  

 Brandon wishes you a Marvelous short week, yay!