Olympic National Park

6FPS V5#11: November 13, 2023

chuqvr@gmail.com • @chuqvr@fosstodon.org • chuq.me

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Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

It’s November, the Big Dark is back, and so I’m waking up well before dawn again for a while. The rains have started, we had our first frost, and our summer birds are definitely gone. The feeders are still busy as the winter birds have moved in, although I still haven’t seen my first Fox Sparrow of the winter. The Varied Thrushes did visit to check things out and then left again, but this seems normal for them.

The big surprise for me in October was a Jury Duty Summons. First time this has happened since I’ve moved to Washington, but to the best I can tell, it’s the 10th or 11th summons I’ve gotten over the years. It turned out to be a call-in for a jury for a large, fairly high profile case here in Kitsap County, so I headed in on Monday and spent two days mostly sitting around waiting (as is the reality of Jury Duty), at which point I was dismissed and allowed to go home. So my jury duty is done for at least a year. Along the way I got a chance to read Dan Moren’s new book All Souls Lost, which I really enjoyed and which I recommend.

I don’t mind doing my civic duty — it’s a small way to support the society that supports me, and I see it was an investment in doing that — although in this case, they were going to spend weeks selecting the jury for a trail expected to last well into next year, so… I’m really happy to have been dismissed.

The reason I was dismissed was medical, and that’s something I haven’t talked about here yet, because there wasn’t a whole lot to say until now. I have mentioned that back in 2018 I picked up a virus in my left inner ear, which is how I lost most of the hearing in that year (think “Charlie Brown’s teacher” at best), and after that, I started having issues with dizziness, leading to a diagnosis of positional vertigo.

And so it’s been for the last five years or so. It’s been one of those things that we’ve never been able to quite keep stable and out of the way and once Covid kicked in, the ability to with non-crisis issues kind of stopped for a while, and then I moved to Washington and started working with a new medical team, and with them, we got things to a more or less “good but not great” state.

When I decided to retire, I sat down and spent some time thinking about what I wanted my priorities to be, and I came up with four. One was getting back into doing more writing (which I’ve made a slow start at but still need to spend more time at the keyboard), to get the workshop going again (more on that in a second), and to focus on getting the weight loss going, and to see if we could finally nail this vertigo thing and stuff it into a closet.

Because of the way things are in the medical world these days — we lost so many professionals who left the field during Covid and so everyone still practicing is scheduled to the gills — it took me a month to have a sit-down with my primary doctor to talk this over, and he agreed it was time to talk to a specialist. And it then took me five more weeks before there was any Ear/Nose/Throat specialist with an opening. Because of that, it was the end of September before I got my initial consultation with them in Tacoma, over the bridge from here.

That went pretty well. He wants me to take some tests, which I’ll need to go to Olympia for, and as it happens, I finally got the approval and scheduling info for those this week while sitting in the Jury waiting room (of course), so I can move forward on that. He also recommended making some change to my medications and testing different dosage levels where we’re trying to find the sweet spot between managing the vertigo symptoms and the medication creating it’s own side effect issues. That’s ongoing but overall, I’m seeing improvements. A challenge here is that every dosage change can (and kinda HAS) created some temporary issues, which means I have a day or two where things can be somewhere between off and rather un-fun.

So, October turned out both to be quite productive and a month where I had more downtime than I’d planned for. So things got done, but not necessarily the things I expected to do.

And yes, in case you’re wondering, the vertigo has been a factor in why I’m not out birding more, or wandering with the camera, because there are days where things are just — off — and that’s a big disincentive to going out and doing. That was a big reason why I decided it was time to go talk to a specialist about this. And while it’s not life or death kind of issues, it has been a large quality of life issue for me for a while, one I’m hoping to, if not eliminate, significantly reduce.

Oh, and by the by, on the weight loss part: since July, six pounds, and down to 325, or almost 90 pounds from my all time high. I’m hoping to take at least another 5 pounds before the end of the year. And, for what it’s worth, 325 is the least I’ve weighed since I was diagnosed diabetic in 2009. So some things, at least, are going well.

They’re Changing the Bird Names

After studying the issue, the AOS (American Ornithological Society) has decided to adopt a plan to change the common names of birds that are named after people — so names like Scott’s Oriole, Cooper’s Hawk and Sabine’s Gull are all going to get new common names. There are still many issues to be sorted out here and this process will take a few more years, but it was nice to see AOS grapple with this and decide that yes, it needed to be done.

This is a contentious issue in birding for many reasons. One one side, many (especially older) birders grew up with the names and see no reason to change them. On the other, many (and while not exclusively, often younger) birders find the people the birds were named for to be reprehensible — many were slave owners, others were military notorious for their treatment of the indigenous natives.

Alvaro Jaramillo, a well known Bay Area birder and bird guide, was part of the committee that grapples with this issue and came up with the plan that was submitted to the AOS, which had to grapple with it and ultimately decided adopt the plan. He had a discussion on this episode of the Life List podcast(which he co-hosts) where he goes into detail about the nuance and complexity involved in figuring out what to do.

As someone who supported this change from the beginning of the discussions, I’m thrilled to see the AOS adopted the full proposal — I think many of us felt they would change some names, but not commit to a sweeping update — but when you see the reasoning behind that part of the proposal it’s clear it was the only rational choice, other than “change nothing”. I have sympathy for those who are unhappy at the naming changes (It is still “Mew Gull” in my head, too), but as someone who has spent time trying to foster better diversity in the birding community — and run into “why should I join an organization named after someone who kept my people as slaves” more than once (looking at you, National Audubon) — moving away from a set of species (about 80) named primarily for rich white men with almost no women, much less a diverse population, it’s the kind of change that needs to happen to help us start moving past the bad history attached to a good number of those names.

This also puts the National Audubon society, which decided it didn’t need to change its name, more or less alone out on that limb, especially since another half dozen regional chapters have announced name changes, and I know of about that many more that have stated they’re beginning the process of figuring out what to do.

There’s going to be a lot of yelling about this for some time, with both good points and baseless ranting on both sides, but I think the AOS has made a good and proper decision here, and it’s time to help them figure out how to implement it.

The Workshop

So… the workshop. Something that really interested me when I moved up here and had the opportunity, and which, along the way, stalled and went into hibernation for a while. Some of that was just lack of time. Now that I’m not working, that freed up a chunk of time, and I figured it was time to get back at it.

Early in October, I went and sat in the shop for a while and considered what it was that had made me stop working on it. I ended up identifying four significant pain points:

  • The built-in benches along one side of the shop just don’t work for me; wrong height for me (the former owner must have been taller) and depth for my preferences. They are also custom built and massive, and figuring out a safe way to break them up and haul them out has been a challenge. I do think I have a plan in place I’m comfortable with, so now I need to get going on it. Not having them removed has made organizing the rest of the shop awkward, so this is one of the top priorities.

  • There’s an area of the shop that’s behind one of the entry doors; I ended up putting my sanding station and air compressor behind it, and I realize I absolutely hate that in that location. I realized I needed to re-think that.

  • I also picked up one of those dust filtering systems, and have struggled to figure out a good place to put it. I don’t want to mount it to the ceiling (because: knees hate ladders), but everywhere I put it it’s in the way. I needed to figure out where it should live.

  • My wood storage solution is ludicrously bad.

With a plan in place for that first problem, I spent a few days pondering what do with about the others, and in a “well, duh” moment, I realized the area behind that door should be storage. I have a set of wire racks I’m using to store stuff on that’s on wheels, but it’s in a different corner of the shop.

So I’m adding a set of shelves in that corner; the mobile shelves aren’t wide enouch for that filter unit safely, so I grabbed a set that are a bit deeper and beefier. the filter goes on the top out of the way, my less-used stuff gets stored here in the corner, and I free up a few feet of usable wall area. Feels like an easy win. I’ll put the air compressor in those shelves as well and attach the hole reel to the shelves, where it’s easy to access to boot.

And to solve that fourth, final problem, my first significant project will be a lumber cart. Working on a design for that, now.

Expanding My Social

If you check out the end of the newsletter, I’ve tweaked the social systems I advertise as being on — I’ve added in Instagram and Threads, and I decided after a couple of years away, to get back on Facebook. I’m not super active on any of those three, but you’re welcome to connect to me on any of those. I expect Mastodon to be where I’m busiest still, but I do want to be more active on Instagram, although I’m still sorting out exactly what that means.

I still have reservations about how toxic social systems in general tend to get, but so far, I’ve been able to stay out of the way of the worst of that, so I am finding they all add some value to things enough to admit that I’m actually using them again…

What’s New From Chuq

Olympic National Park

I did — finally — head out to Olympic National Park, staying three nights at the Sol Duc Hot Springs Lodge in one of the cabins. October is end of season, and that can make things interesting as they start losing their seasonal staffing and can run short of supplies since they won’t be re-stocking until spring. On this visit, one morning the breakfast cook didn’t show up, so they scrambled (heh) to get the kitchen going that morning. They were also out of breakfast potatos, and you could see the fruit bowls devolve, going from a full mixed fruit to some melon with a single blackberry on it, to a chopped up orange.

The lodge is a small facility, maybe 25 cabins, along with the hot springs. The restaurant had four entrees on it for lunch and dinner, an elk burger, a beef burger, fish and chips and a veggie plate. Breakfasts were the fairly typical fare. All of it was pretty good, with the fish and chips being outstanding.

There’s, of course, a small gift shop with drinks and food items. The lodge advertises a small grab and go area in there, but when I was there, the grab and go refrigerator had failed and so was empty. The nearest place to stock up on room goodies is Forks, about 25 miles away: also the nearest non-lodge food, and gas stations.

The lodge itself is well-maintained, a typical national park lodge. Facilities are basic but were clean and kept up. The main attraction are the hot springs, a few pools of differing temperature. Lodge guests have unlimited access to them, outside visitors can use them for a fee — towels extra. The pools are made available for 90 minutes in a 2 hour window, and despite it being 45F and raining, every time I looked there were a dozen or more people sitting in them each session. Some where holding umbrellas.

In my case, I decided not to use them.

Overall, I enjoyed the stay at the lodge and I’d stay again. I’ll likely stay at Lake Crescent Lodge next time, to explore it and that area a bit more. It should be noted the lodge has no internet or WIFI, and for me, at least, no cell coverage. I had to drive about 3-4 miles towards Forks before I could connect in and get a signal again. The quiet was quite unusual for me, but I rather enjoyed it. Got a lot of reading done, did some extra sleeping, and overall, it was a nice break from routine.

Much to nobody’s surprise, spending 3 nights in a rain forest in October means I spent 2+ of those days with it raining. I didn’t do much hiking, because, well, rain and grumpy knees, and instead spent the time driving around and exploring.

Emphasis on driving — this park is a lot like Yellowstone in that the major locations are interest are widely dispersed, so you put in a lot of mileage getting from here to there. Sol Duc is to the northern side of the park (Lake Crescent even further north), so expect to spend time shifting locations.

I ended up mostly exploring the coastline, getting down to Rialto Beach and Ruby Beach, and some of the areas around La Push. One of the weird things about the park is that on the southern coasts, there are areas known as “Beach 1” through “Beach 4”, where further north near La Push, you have “First Beach” through “Third Beach”. Not confusing at all.

The weather was pretty wet and the light was terrible, but I did spend some time birding in a few spots with some success.

In terms of photography, the only thing that caught my eye was some of the fall color; this park isn’t known for fall color, but it does have patches of Alder and in the northern areas around Sol Duc there were some rather nice looking stands; as I went south, the alders were still primarily green, but there were some areas with potential. Of course, in 40F rainy weather, when I went back the next day to scout them out, they’d all shifted past prime and were dropping and browning rapidly. I never did find a patch in a place I could safely park that was worth hauling out the camera for.

So this ended up a scouting trip, not a shooting trip, but I have no complaints. I had a good time, and when I go back, probably in the spring, I have some ideas of what to look for in terms of possible compositions.

As I create new images and re-process older ones, I post them on my site in the Recent Work area. Additionally, every Wednesday is Photo Wednesday on the blog, where I post one of my non-bird images, and the bird images are posted on the blog each week as part of Feathery Friday.

For Your Consideration

Birds and Birding

Photography

Science and Technology

Interesting Stuff

Where to find Chuq

GoodReads

Glass

Instagram

Threads

Facebook

Mastodon (@chuqvr@fosstodon.org)

American Birding Association Community\

Twitter/X (turned off. thanks, Elon)

And with that, I'll see you in the next issue. I'd love feedback on this, what you like, what you want more of, what you want less of. And if you have something interesting you think I might want to talk about, please pass it along. Until then, take care, and have fun.

Chuq