Monday, May 28, 2007

Hunting

At the Ballard Locks, wondrous things. The locks allow boats coming in from Puget Sound to reach Lake Union and Lake Washington, in Seattle. They've also been outfitted with a fish ladder for salmon, and several other mechanisms to let fish through the dam. Fish congregate there in large numbers, some stymied by the barrier, others on their way up or down the fish ladder.

We visited today in the clear sunlight. A kingfisher sat just below us on a concrete block as we walked along the dam. Twice, she dipped swiftly to the water's surface and returned with a tiny silvery fish in her long solid beak. Smack! and smack! she whacked the fish against the concrete, turning it in her beak, and smartly striking it again. Then she arranged it so the head would go down first, and swallowed it.

She wasn't the only creature hunting among the rich pickings at the locks. A small crowd had gathered to point at the smooth dark head of a small seal, protruding from the water in the middle of the canal about 100 feet away. He'd sink beneath the water, and around where he'd gone down, the fish would begin leaping, here, there and again, silver sparks jumping from the foamy water to escape.

Then the most wonderful thing of all. Where we stood, on a concrete walkway along the water, we could look straight down into the greenish canal, where the sun lit a channel of visibility down under the ripples. There, schools of fish swam, their heads pointing upstream into the current. Each only two to five inches long, I'd guess. Suddenly, as we watched, the sinuous form of the seal rose up from the green depths just below us. Then, for fifteen minutes, he hunted, first slowly swimming, then abruptly zooming forward as he'd zero in on a fish, twisting and reversing and swimming upside-down near the surface.

He'd vanish for a time, reappearing at the surface in the center of the canal. But as we looked down, we'd see the neatly lineated schools of fish suddenly roil and become confused. We knew, then, that the seal was near. And moments later he'd reappear, as close as if we were standing behind the barrier at a zoo.

We watched him for a long time, waiting for the fish to scatter into a starry mass, then watching the smooth predator fatly trail through, until he'd suddenly go slim and swift as a porpoise. His big flippers trailed him like oversized bedroom slippers.

I'd never seen a seal so nearby, nor in mid-hunt. This coast roils with life.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

McNaught

Today, in the late afternoon, I emerged from the office to seek the McNaught Comet. At first the sun still blazed brightly, half-sunk. I tromped down the sidewalk by the strip malls, the rushing traffic of 164th Street blasting by me on the snow- and dirt-crusted road. To the traffic light, from where I peered down the hill, to the horizon of tall pines, mountains behind them, and a clear and glowing sky. No comet.

I penetrated the parking lots. Walked past Walmart. Sought a clear view of the horizon, always seemingly obstructed by this or that - a building, a stand of pines. Circled a corporate complex inured from my entry by a fence. Trudged down a road towards more residential climes: found the entry to the corporation, and slipped past the fence, walking down the wooden steps leading to their levels and levels of parking lot cut into the hill, like a cake. I crept along the edge of a building, feet leaving marks in the snow behind me. Then I stood where the hill fell away. Beyond, a grassy, half-snowed field stretched, down towards the pines. A clear wide view of the horizon faced me. The sun had sunk completely; the mountains stood white and sharp against the golden sky.

No comet.

Cold now, disappointed, resigned, I started on my way back to the office. Perhaps I was facing the wrong stretch of sky. Up the layers of snowy parking lot, over the strips of grass alongside. Out onto the road again with its partial sidewalks. Back to 164th. I cast a glance behind me.

Comet.

There it was. Somehow - perhaps as the sun had sunk just so, with the sky deepening in color - it had come at last into relief. A blob of white asserted itself against the sky, with a hazed tail climbing up and a little to the side above it. Higher still, and well to the left, Venus glowed. I stood on the streetcorner amid the strip malls by the traffic light, and gazed at Comet McNaught in its high indifference.

So I crossed the street, plunged down again towards the flanking neighborhoods, and found an empty, dark parking lot wedged between the commercial and residential spaces. There, I could see the comet clearly, in the purpled and orange sky, mountains below it. No traffic obscured the view; just a few power lines; and I could stare quietly. The comet was not bright, nor enormous. But it was strange and distant, shining there, soft in the evening light, with its long history of omens and stories trailing behind it like its tail. It was somehow lovely to look at. I stared for a long time, until the horizon started to creep up toward it. Half-frozen, I went back, those few blocks to the narrow foot-beaten passage between low bushes that led to the office again.

I'm home now, resting, showered and tired. Last night I played ultimate out at a park near here, from 8 to 10 pm in the falling snow. The flakes were tiny dots, millions of them, so that a glance up presented the view with a complex star-scape of dotted, falling white. We ran about on the wet sand.

Omens and omens - a hummingbird's visit, the wandering bushtits, a clear pale comet. Travelers all.