Thanks, guys. The fence is to keep my dogs in and the cougars out. There is a little salmon river next to the cabin. A couple steelhead had a huge redd going. I think they got their spawning done because the pot is over a foot deep and they plowed up about 10 feet of gravel. An eagle got one of them and has been sitting in a big alder, going down for lunch every so often.
I've got about 3/4 of a mile of river front -- the last piece of private land where there isn't much private land. It's part of an old ghost city that nobody wanted at the time because it was so far from anywhere and didn't have power. I got it for $15,000. I put the land -- all of it -- into a conservation easement so the trees can grow back and never be cut. No pesticides can ever be used, even by the people who follow me. No more development, except for a small organic garden. Only clean energy. It's state-owned old growth across the river and upstream -- mostly cedar and hemlock and spruce and big leaf maple and some Doug fir about 100 years old. Alder along the river. You can shout in that wood and the moss just sucks up the sound like you never said anything. Elk come though once in a while. I've been working with the local tribe and we've put about a million pounds of logs in the stream to help salmon and steelhead, and we've cleared logging culverts so salmon can get farther upstream.
But now the county commissioners and some shooters have come along and plan to put a giant shooting range in the wetlands at the headwaters where most of the juvenile salmon are reared. All the local ranges that have been tested have polluted the ground and water with lead and arsenic and copper and various carcinogens, so we have to fight that range. But the sad thing about rural counties rich in natural resources is that the politicians are corrupt.
Still, it's nice to have saved a small piece of ground and a little piece of river. Nice to see the salmon return. Nice to work with the native people. Nice to see the occasional black bear or cougar. Me and the bears share a taste for tofu. I leave it in the river to stay cold. Nothing else will eat it, not even the racoons. Just me and the bears. Nice to see the solar tracker turn to face the morning sun -- that doesn't happen until spring. I can watch it turn while having morning coffee, like some big bird getting ready for flight. And at night, I can hear the steelhead splashing about spawning.
I have a microphone set up on the river so I can hear what goes on in the woods. I was up late a couple years ago, just after midnight. I heard a tap..splash...tap...splash then a funny sound, kind of a cry like I'd never heard before. Then the cry got louder. I've got my ear in the speaker straining to figure out what it is. Then I hear it clearly: "Help." I run outside and a beautiful woman, soaking wet, is climbing out of the river, with her blonde hair tangles and water pouring off her and her wet clothes clinging. I think I said, "Howdy," but I may have just started like a braindead idiot. She was a state wildlife tech doing research upstream when she got lost. All she could do was follow the river downstream. But we had all the wood in the stream for salmon and there was no moon. And her hip had a double-joint to it, and it would lock up every so often and she'd fall into the river.
She'd get to worring about bears and cougars and so she'd sing. Then she'd get to worrying that her singing was attracting the bears and cougars and she'd walk as quietly as a ghost, just the tapping of her staff and the splash of her boots. Then she was sure they were watching her, so she'd start singing again.
She walked the river -- and this is tough, hard ground -- for about 7 hours before she saw my one little LED light. Made her pretty happy.
I do like living here.
I only need to tie er down when the winds blow strong and steady in the 'wrong' direction..
