Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
prisoner justice day
it’s prisoner justice day today – so if you know someone inside the prison system make sure to let them know you are thinking about them and say a prayer for their safety inside the machine.
facts about ocean phosphorescence
taken from – http://mips.stanford.edu/public/abstracts/hastings.pdf
“Ocean “phosphorescence”, commonly seen at night when the water is disturbed, is largely due to the dinoflagellates; they occur ubiquitously in the oceans as planktonic forms, responding to mechanical stimulation when the water is disturbed by emitting brief bright light. Light emission may be seen in the wake of a large ship for some 20 miles. About 20% of marine species are bioluminescent and many are photosynthetic. “ Red tides” are transient blooms of individual dinoflagellate species. Phosphorescent bays (e.g., in Puerto Rico, Jamaica) are persistent blooms of this type.
Since dinoflagellates are stimulated to emit light when predators (e.g., crustaceans) are active, predators on the crustaceans might thereby be alerted to feed on crustaceans, resulting in a reduced predation on dinoflagellates generally. Predation on dinoflagellates may also be impeded more directly; the flash could startle or divert a predator, allowing that cell to escape predation. The response time to stimulation (msec) is certainly fast enough to have this effect.”
because a bunch of people have asked me questions about phosphoresence since i wrote about it and i really didn’t know much (so i researched it on the internet of course). i think this basically means that if there is a red tide in the area, you have a good chance of seeing phosphorescent micro-organisms since they are the same thing. red tides are thought to be on the increase due to climate change and human activity in lots of places so it seems as though these would be on the increase (and of course you do know that red tides mean – don’t eat the shellfish right)?
some notes about today
petroglyph of a flower in bella coola – ancient rock art for which there is no local mythology.
I…..
was super-motivated this morning – managed to track down a problem and talk to some people about it (the problem being one unit is using up 80% of the space on our internet server and we need to work something out with them vis a vis data storage needs), answered a bunch of emails that came in over the weekend, worked on a couple other small things….. and then it just fizzled out sometime after lunch… i hate it when that happens. emailed the guy who i was exchanging flirts with on the weekend and mentioned i wouldn’t mind hanging out again sometime. i keep wondering if he will respond or not. am terrible at this whole getting-to-know people thing. it’s much easier just to go to bed with someone and sort the rest of it out later though i recognize that’s not the most adult thing to do either. had to apply today to re-acquire my firearms possession & acquisition licence as i seem to have misplaced it in my move and not having the cert makes the fact i took the courses two and half years ago moot since i can’t prove it without. am often shocked at the number of people who can’t just email a government agent for basic information without also swearing profusely and/or insulting the person behind the machine. do you really think i will answer you faster because you are an asshole? does it make you feel better? am similarly shocked that someone in another unit thought it was okay to upload 20+ gigs of sattellite data onto our internet server without checking in with me – the webmaster – first…. as though we somehow have an unlimited storage capacity just waiting for giant databases to be fit into. have been thinking about learning how to fish lately, and also about writing a cookbook (again) centered around local wild foods. couldn’t fit all of these thoughts into a coherent blog-post which is why you are getting bullet-point fragments rather than lovely prose.
recipe: black salal berry jam
thought i would share this wild berry recipe here for those who are interested in partaking of the season.
1) it’s august. go swimming for the afternoon somewhere the waters run crystal clear through the forest. with friends, or alone, it doesn’t really matter – but make sure you give yourself plenty of time to sun on the rocks afterwards. once you have baked the clean water into your skin and are ready to head back out on the trail, stop for a few minutes to pick 2 or three cups of salal berries and put them in a small container (with stems, this will fill up a nalgene bottle). eat a few to remind yourself that contrary to popular opinion, these fruits aren’t poisonous and actually quite subtle and tasty. when you get home, throw open the doors and air out the house while you rinse and sort the berries.
2) find a blackberry patch not to far away from where you live. preferably one that is not too close to a highway, train track or busy road as there is a high-likelihood these plants will have been sprayed with poisons. be careful of the thorns while you pick 3-4 cups of these tempting beauties and spirit them back to your home. as above, rinse the berries and sort out any stems and other little bits of wild nature that have hitchhiked in the berry bowl.
3) go next door to your neighbour’s house. knock on the door and introduce yourself since you are new to the neighbourhood and this is as good a time to meet people as any. ask if you can have 2 of the small green apples growing on their tree. tart green apples make a great natural source of pectin (as do salal berries). explain this to your new acquaintances and promise them a jar of jam in trade if this experiment in wild-jam making works out.
4) wait until the house is a bit cool, or open up the doors as making jam can get warm. get the boiling water canner ready and dig out the canning jars ready to go from last year’s jam-making. prepare the jars by bathing them in the boiling water for 10 minutes and the seals for 5 minutes. while you are doing this, crush one layer of berries at a time in a saucepan with a potato masher or like-device. once you have a nice jammish consistency going, turn the heat on to medium and add the apples (cut up into little pieces). cook until everything boils and the apples get mushy. add sugar to taste and 1/2 a cup to 1 cup of water. don’t add too much sugar as it will drown out the subtle tastes of the berries and they have enough natural sugar to preserve without a ton of additional sugars. boil some more until the jam gets stiff (if you are nervous about the jam not setting – if it appears a bit too thin – add a bit of pectin but you probably don’t need it).
5) once the jam is ready and cooked through (and the right amount of sweet or tart) pour it into the prepared jars. this recipe fills about 5 250-ml jars. bathe them in the boiling water canner with the lids on tight for another 10 minutes and then pull them out to cool for a half a day or so.
6) once you have determined the jam to be the goodness it is, commence giving a jar to your neighbours and to the friend(s) who helped you pick the berries. you should be left with a couple of jars for yourself to go in the winter-larder as well as a small dish of jam for using right now. later, when there are no berries left on the bushes, you will be glad for this small taste of summer wild.
a perfect weekend
another bella coola wildflower picture, this being one of my favourite flower pictures from the trip (the colours are much-more vivid when not “web-safe”)
of course we are in the full-glory of that which is the sunshine coast summer – warm days and swimming and wild berries and beach fires and visitors galore. as a part of my scant days up here in-between travelling, i just had what can only be described as a perfect weekend.
a few good friends have been here over the weekend which gave me an extra excuse to explore more of the community in which i live as well as get out and show them the favourite things i have found already – so here is a recap of a perfect sunshine coast summer weekend (and if this doesn’t make you want to live here, i don’t know what will):
friday evening – got home on the ferry, went for a swim at high tide at secret beach in the late-afternoon heat. went for dinner at opa, the japanese restaurant in gibsons. ate tons of food. went for a walk on the docks and looked at fish boats. sat out on the deck, drank beers and looked at stars before bed.
saturday – went to visit a friend after a leisurely breakfast and we all drove up to the chapman creek swimming pools which are in the community-watershed above davis bay. talk about the most beautiful place i have ever been swimming in my life! chapman creek has flowed this path for thousands of years, creating several pools and waterfalls which are carved out of the granite into giant canals and bowls. the water is clear and cold (really cold, this is a place to visit only in the afternoon sun on a hot day if swimming is the goal). dozens of large trout from the hatchery swim around and bump into you. locals know about this place, but i’m pretty sure that few other people do which makes it a really special spot (i need to take my camera back there so i can show you how amazing it really is). i swam for an hour, significantly lowering my body temperature in the process…. then my friend david and i picked salal berries from the bushes overhanging the creek. in the evening i met up with some other friends at the gumboot for dinner where we feasted on organic food and conversation.
sunday – my visitors were off in the city, so i had the morning to myself and got some house chores done. i picked several cups of blackberries from in front of my house and then made jam from those and the salal berries we had picked the day before. i did some research on the internet and found out that salal berries are extremely high in pectin so i believe that if i make salal berry jam in the future i won’t add extra pectin. after that i made a bunch of potato salad and cooked up a mess of steelhead that was in my freezer (the last of the big fish caught by my friend george for me). in the evening we went to the beach and i had a swim while my friends made a fire on the beach after which we ate yummy food and drank wine until two other friends joined us as the light was fading. once the stars were fully out a couple of us took another swim in the phospheresence-filled waters. (in case you haven’t seen this phenomena – phospheresence is caused by the disturbance of certain algae-critters that glow neon green when you stir up the water. when you swim in it, it looks like thousands of stars are all around you each time you take a stroke. diving into it, all you can see is light within the dark black sea….)
came home around midnight last night which was fine because i am working from home today so i didn’t have to get up uber-early to deal with the commute.
as an added side-attraction on the weekend, there was a subtle, possibly romantic subplot that i haven’t quite determined the full extent of yet. one of our friends was staying with someone i had met a few months back who lives in roberts creek and so he was a part of last night’s picnic on the beach and the dinner at the gumboot. there was some definite flirting going on – and now i am intrigued about the possibilities. we’ll see if that goes anywhere – as it was, it added a nice undercurrent to my perfect weekend.
Red Cedar 