Did the Puyallup!

Fun time at the Puyallup Fair last weekend thanks to our friends Bria and Michael who invited a big group of people, served as guides, and shared their photos, like the above.

Katrina and Bria enjoying some of the handsome produce displays:

And note Bria's stuffed animal, won at Whac-A-Mole. Emily got one too, thanks to my (slightly embarrassing) victory over a small child...

Nick and Ben:

We didn't actually try anything from this place, but we stood in front of it with Michael, so that's something, right?

Pig Palace was a definite hit:


But the most entertaining activity had to be the "Mutton Busting," a rodeo-ish event where little kids try to ride sheep. Here's the winning ride, featuring a three year-old who seemed to love every second of his 5.5 second ride:

And just for the record: I enjoyed the event, but I'm definitely uncomfortable with the relationship that we humans have with other animals...

What else can you find at the fair? How about the Hobby Hall, where folks share their interests and collections:


And of course the food!


Oh, and I you're wondering about the title of this post, it's a reference to the fair's jingle. Who doesn't like a good jingle?

... Okay, I should go—school starts next week, but in the meantime I have to get ready for the workshop in Victoria, BC, that I mentioned the other day.

Oh, but if you were wondering about the workshop poster, the image is from a Third Century papyrus that contains a bit of Plato's Republic (472e-473d, to be specific).

Some of it doesn't make sense out of context, but I absolutely love this sentence, found toward the bottom of the bit of papyrus:

ἆρ᾽ οἷόν τέ τι πραχθῆναι ὡς λέγεται, ἢ φύσιν ἔχει πρᾶξιν λέξεως ἧττον ἀληθείας ἐφάπτεσθαι, κἂν εἰ μή τῳ δοκεῖ;

Is it possible for anything to be realized in practice as it is spoken in word, or is it the nature of things that practice should grasp truth less well than speech, even if some deny it?

WelcomeAnd, Thank You!

An exciting few days, but we're safe and sound in the new apartment, and don't worry—all of our books made it safely too :)

Dining room is somewhere underneath all of that...

Really could not have done it without the help we had from my dad and from our friends Vince (you might know him as Uncle Vinny), Jen, and Wendy.

I'll fill you in with more photos soon, but for now how about a few things unrelated to relocation?

Actually, the day of the move also happened to be the Seattle U Faculty & Staff Service Day, which I'd signed up for back when I thought we'd wait until October to move...

So, this next comment might be weird, and it's a bit more confessional than I like to blog, but when I was a kid I read Magnificent Obsession, which makes of lot of these lines from chapter 6 of the Gospel of Matthew:

Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.*

I don't remember much of that book (either of them, for that matter), but that sentiment always seemed right to me.

The me I aspire to, in other words, would never tell you he did a service project...
But how can I not talk about how funny it is that volunteering around here always seems to come with a t-shirt?


Anyway, my group spent a couple of hours at the Rainier Beach Urban Farm, a new garden project (on the site of a former nursery) run by Seattle Tilth.



The other funny thing (aside from the free clothes) was that we spent a fair amount of time picking blackberries and bush beans... and then they gave it all to us!

A weird volunteer experience, but who can argue with delicious hand-picked produce?

Fortunately the weekend wasn't all berry picking and book packing—also spent some time showing my dad some of the sites:




All right reader, I had better get back to unpacking and syllabus writing: school starts in just two weeks!

*Translation from the King James Bible—I always liked the way that version sounds...

(Getting Ready to) Change with the Seasons

Starting the move to our new place tomorrow! Better get packing, huh?

In the meantime, here's a look at some late summer and early fall fun...

First, I'll be taking the Victoria Clipper up north for a workshop at the University of Victoria. Kind of cute poster:

And in October, the Sisters of Providence have put together a team for the Heart Walk, a fundraiser for the American Heart Association.

Want to get involved, but not able to make it to Seattle in time? You could help Emily raise money by clicking this badge:

Can't wait to see that line move up!

Marmots Monitored!

Look at that thing! Who wouldn't want to spend four days on a mountain pass looking for more like him?

Our marmot monitoring started with a day of training, led by Patti Happe and Sue Griffin. Did you know that when marmots hibernate their heart rate slows to like 3 beats per minute? Wild. What else? Oh, how about this: when they sun themselves, they're actually trying to cool down, since they have so much natural insulation...

After the indoor training, Sue showed us around Hurricane Hill, where marmots and their burrows were almost too easy to spot.



And then we were off: after a night of camping near Lake Crescent, we headed for the Appleton Pass Trail, via Sol Duc. In case you don't follow that link, let me quote the key word there: "strenuous." 7.4 miles and an elevation gain of 3100 feet—serious stuff, especially with three days of supplies on our backs.

Fortunately, the hike went well. (Feel free to read my trail report on the Washington Trails Association site.)

The hike went well, and the scenery is amazing.

Junction of the Sol Duc River Trail and the Appleton Pass Trail:


By the way, I know this is a long post, so I'm leaving out some of our photos. If you want more, there's a set on Flickr.

Luckily we got an early start, so I had plenty of time to catch my breath on the Appleton trail proper, where you gain about 2000 feet in about two and half miles...


Trail's mostly snow free, but not entirely:

We even got to practice our "route-finding skills"—exciting!

Worth it, though, to camp in a place like this:

Oyster Lake.
(Can you tell that the snow is melting later than usual this year?)

Here's a view of the campsite and Mt. Appleton from a nearby ridge:


Can you spot our campsite? How about here:


So where were we exactly? Well, I posted the map from the Park Service over on Flickr, and I've used their data to create this interactive Google Map, complete with the units that we actually managed to survey and pins marking our campsite and the marmot we spotted:

View Marmot Monitoring: Appleton Pass in a larger map

Here's another interactive map, found at the Hurricane Ridge visitors center:

I'm also hoping to get the GPS log of our surveying, so keep your fingers crossed!

In any case, not many people make it up there, that's for sure.

On Friday we saw four people, a persistent family of deer who visited our campsite daily in search of—ahem—salty patches on the ground, and one bear (from a distance, thankfully).

Saturday, we saw another bear (or was it the same one?)—it was much closer, maybe only 50 yards away, but it starting running away from us before we'd even noticed it. We didn't see a single person Saturday, but we did, at long last, spot a marmot!

No photo of the Appleton Pass marmot, alas, but here's the occupied burrow:


And the bear, from a safe distance:


We kept at the surveying, on foot and with field glasses.


Did some nice day hikes, though a lot of the trails involved snowy patches.

Not sure it shows up on the blog-size photo, but see how that switchback just disappears into the snow after a while? Exciting!

Nice summer colors, though, in spite of it all:


But if you're wondering why we didn't see more marmots or completely survey all of our units, the answer can be summed up by the phrase that we repeatedly wrote on our data sheets, which is also the title I gave this photo:

Snow cover; steep slope.

And for the record: even after three full days, hiking off trail never stopped feeling scandalous :)

But did I mention that we had a beautiful campsite? Here's our breakfast nook:


And maybe my favorite photo from the trip, taken by Emily:


Finally, beyond all expectations, check out the awesome shirts they gave us:

Love it! And just wait until you see the back!