Grant Jones
Mike Robinson
48 Poems
Naming Water
Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River
voices for
beaches • marshes • swamps • creeks • rivers
The Stillaguamish River
Creeks are deep as feelings, like mothers. Beaches, like fathers, connect
us with clouds and sky.
GJ
Love a creek. Wade a wetland. Clean your dreams.
MJ
Grant Jones
Mike Robinson
48 Poems
Naming Water
voices for
beaches • marshes • swamps • creeks • rivers
Skookumchuck Press
Jones & Jones, Ltd.
Pioneer Square
Seattle
A watershed is the area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains
off of it goes into the same place. John Wesley Powell, scientist and geographer,
put it best when he said that a watershed is:
"that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things
are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans
settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community."
ISBN: 0-9796495-7-9
Copyright © 2014 by Skookumchuck Press and Grant Jones and Mike
Robinson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
It is an honor to be published by the Skookumchuck Press of Jones & Jones, a
company famous for celebrating places with crafted buildings and restored
natural landscapes that fit together as one; and we wish to thank Emily Fong,
graphic designer at Jones & Jones for her beautiful book design. Scott Goldader
and family at Phil’s Custom Bindery in South Park did the fine perfect binding
of the book.
Skookumchuck Press
Jones & Jones, Ltd., 105 S. Main Street Suite 300, Seattle, WA 98104
This is number…..............of an edition limited to 100 copies.
Grant Jones
Mike Robinson
48 Poems
Naming Water
voices for
beaches • marshes • swamps • creeks • rivers
A Note to Our Readers:
What’s Really Going On
“We share a deep feeling nature feels ignored and appreciates
it when we do not ignore her. She offers her body to give descriptive
names in our languages--not those irreverent peoples' names, joke
names, military names, scrapular mementos of our amputated
fingers and other narcissistic adventures, just simple descriptions
of her memorable and striking features, words that record her
curves and mysterious places, where no historical committee need
be consulted.
Scientist writers don’t write for general communication. The
dry, compromised, relative-to-every-heretofore-collected-fact-ofmeasured-observation, uncertainty, and delayed truth they are
required to produce (more money needed before they can say
what’s really happening) is meaningless to people in their own local
sub watershed.
Situations are complicated and they are just scientists. Poets
can describe the situation of the moment. Scientists and engineers
are not trained to do that. They have to package themselves for
their client base most adroitly—as safety experts, fact monitors,
research leaders--but they have inadvertently stolen the
naturalist’s tradition from the family birder, butterfly netter, tide
pool observer, pond wader and child and grandparent of the
neighborhood creek.
Journalists love specialist fragmentation: they don't have to know
anything, but just ask unsettling questions and wait for the
scientists to figure it out.
But they're just scientists."
Grant Jones
Mike Robinson
Contents
1 Misplaced Grebe
2 Tsun-O-Quah
3 Cormorant
4 Inventing the Mystery
6 Ardnumarchan
7 The Source
8 Poking Around
9 On the Road to Cleggan
10 Driftwood
11 Love at the Right Time
12 Star Shadows
13 Small Boat Appreciation Workshop
14 Song of the Starry Flounder
15 Kissing Cabezons
16 What Water Knows
17 Distilleries
18 Half One Half of Half a Man
19 Whistling for Trout
20 Tributaries Wait
21 Trout Dreaming
22 Building a Meadow
23 Streaming
24 A Wild Bouquet
25 Skagit Flowers for Sasquatch
26 What Fish Know
27 If You Could Ask Me How Love Can Happen
28 Taking a Walk with My Wife
29 When My River Becomes a Beaver Pond
30 Reading the Book of S’Kallam
31 Learning from the John Day
32 Getting Things Wrong
34 A Blessing for the Iowa
35 About Morning
36 Welsh Origins
37 Salvaged from Sleep
38 Ecology of My Heart
39 The Foot Bridge
40 Doe on Pacific
41 Why Aspens Quake
42 Praying for Rain
43 Confluences
44 Indians miss boat in artful exhibit
45 Doors to Heaven
46 What Darwin Meant
47 Sluice of My Eyes
48 A Note for Bill
49 Wet Places to Write Poems and Other Information &
Celebrations
WHAT PUGET SOUND SAYS WHEN WE LISTEN
Look at the imposing square
mileage of the Fraser River
Watershed, or trace the
Skagit Watershed to Canada.
You will find the 10 Regions
that form The Salish Sea
Estuary make it bigger than
the Chesapeake, fed by the
Susquehanna... and of
course, it has no glaciers.
A true estuary requires
replacement saltwater to
restore what is lost when
freshwater leaves the estuary
and disappears over the
continental shelf.
A vast inflow of high speed
salt water gushes up the
hidden canyon of the
Strait of Juan de Fuca, bigger
than the whole Columbia
1 Map of the Central Salish Sea,
Stefan Freelan, WWU, 2009
Our own Salish Sea is fed by, and feeds, 10 Regions, 3 in the Strait
of Georgia. This remarkable estuary is probably the largest in
North America.
Misplaced Grebe
Water lies flat, composed,
Tarnished ochre-white and fog enclosed
Beneath a refractory vision cone.
Cast along a softly wrinkled skin,
Following each and only current’s scratch,
Tracing a placid seam line, the birds wait.
While I, a misplaced winter’s grebe,
Look out across the corruscating line of fog
Where ochres turn the rockfish-red
Under this morning’s warmths of sunbred air.
Then bird after bird throws out its wings
And lifts each its body trembling,
And flies right inside the fog’s whirly eye.
Grant Jones
Written at Richmond Beach
January 1961
1
Tsun-o-quah*
Hull is black
Gunnel red
Evening sea
Sculpin green.
I drift among
Scrolling kelp
And wake to rest
Alive.
My handline slacks
Behind the lead;
Will moonlight prove
My choice?
The sea is still
In ebbing light;
I wait to see
Her voice.
Flood tide wind
Of Tsun-o-quah speaks:
Twelve
Foot
Skiff.
My handline glides
The gunnel's edge
And speaks to me
With fish.
Grant Jones
Written at Richmond Beach, North Central Puget Sound, The Salish
Sea, Washington. *Tsun-o-quah: goddess of the sea and wind.
2
Cormorant
On a windy, blowing crest,
Arched and wrinkled brow,
A darkling wing young-feathered moves the air,
Fans slowly, cools deeply:
Cormorant of my diving mind.
Grant Jones
Richmond Beach, Washington
May 1963
3
Inventing the Mystery
When we wondered out loud
how earth heaved up
those tons of stone,
their snowed heads rising higher
than grandfather’s,
our grandmothers lied.
They said some drowsy god
tossed in his sleep
or up to their elbows
in sudsy tubs, alleged
a vain or cosmic crime:
grand theft of the sun,
a sheaf of lightning hurled
by Zeus with a wounded hand,
Lavelatla, longing
for Klickitat up north,
head bowed in wintry pain.
What could he do but shrug
and wander off into
a world where everything
flickers and catches fire,
ten thousand years of lies,
burning like dry leaves,
our intuition charged,
all our beliefs undone.
4
So our own lives
might melt and run,
leaving us drop-jawed in
some silly god’s deceit,
our agony his joke.
Spawned on this bed
like pups in mud, we sprawl,
nursing a wet belly,
eyes locked against the light,
warm and familiar
with our neighbor’s milky breath :
not wanting it to end.
Mike Robinson
Based on Northwest Indian legends re: Browns Point, Dash Point, Pulley
Point, 2012
5
Ardnamurchan
In Ardnamurchan the stones are splattered with lichen-moldy dried blood and marrow of dead trawlermen
scattered across thighs and faces of rocks,
phlegm of a million bottomfishes,
petrified mold of the great baleen mother.
Ardnamurchan, westmost cape of the great seas,
ancestral shape buried beneath scurvy grass,
whinchats shivering in oaks
in whose scaffold your secret hovers...
a kestrel in prayer.
Over the flaming, soggy, tapestral heath,
it hunches with rooks in broken birch coppice
and warbles transfluent
in the throat of a loon.
Grant Jones
Written standing in the wrack on the beach at Senna.
6
The Source
I remember cheekwind hours of peninsular days among
waves
on sands at edges whispering with plover
and love in my eye for spindrift, wavelap,
my tracks in the sand with an incoming tide.
I dream of the dampness of edges receding,
of shoreless shallow and priest heron,
limitless marsh and altar bittern;
of an endless mist and parable of petrel,
bent horizon and rain-pale grebe-a collocation of pebble memories
under a curving, white, cloud-hung light
and no horizon to level these senses
or tilt this moment’s counterpoise.
I dream of whale-blue navel scars
in bloodless depths of prismed skies;
in mediums of silted time,
to spawn with so much ancient fishlove
to wake without pulse, to listen, to rise
to dream with gull, wide eyes
at such heights as tears would form clouds.
Such nights as these, and mornings-pressed against the breath of my beginning-I wake, suspended
among murmurings of my source.
Grant Jones
Written at Richmond Beach, Washington
November 1966
7
Poking Around
Making a puddle,
Wellies up to my knees,
I think I see big life,
stomping a bog.
A bird breaks from cover.
I fumble field glasses.
their glimpse of sky too brief
to catch my eye.
Then gathering
cold metal in my fist
I see why monks
douse their faces
facing East.
Who wanders here for birds
misses what lived here first,
what goldeneyes divide
diving for dinner,
what egrets shuffle up
rummaging mud for lunch.
My hand comes up dressed
in a stemless necklace,
my wet wrist laced with beads.
a quilt no queen would finger,
a gift too green to keep.
Mike Robinson
8
On The Road To Cleggan
On these floodtide mornings of December in Connemara,
Black-mirrored coves get all shimmery and still.
Reflections burst along shores of the lachs
Like technicolor movies playing on a sepia-toned portrait
Of your grandmother’s smile as she brings you your
Porridge with a spoonful of butter melting in the middle.
This afternoon the lapwings skitter and foxtrot
Across the mudflats between shingle-toed beaches
By straggling stone fences blotchy with lichen.
Spinning razorbills ricochet like black-and-white rockets
Through silver passages between islands studded
Out where Cleggan bewitches the Western Sea,
Kissing it where it itches most for Inishbofin.
Grant Jones
Written in Clifden, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland, January
2009.
9
Driftwood
Across the Sound a barge
of lumber vees its way
hyphenated shape
observed by sentinels
40-foot alder and fir
closer to home whose roots
tap deep to sip
what water's left
by April runnels
thick again as if
they own the place
their fingers frisked
all winter, hauling
these hills to the bay.
Mike Robinson
Viewed many times from Three Tree Point, Dash Point, WA 2014
10
Love at the Right Time
If I on the beach while I’m sitting,
lift my foot
and the footprint holding
this morning's yellow shade
harbors a dozen sand fleas
who hop out into bright rays of the sun
and attract dragonfly
whose mate follows
across shallows along the shore,
her shadow coursing over the water
stirring minnows which lure sand dabs
that great blue heron then spears for breakfast,
and if that footprint contains
a shell which reminds me
of the spiral curve of your eyelid
causing me to gulp rasping air
followed by a long audible sigh
which wakes song sparrow in the brush at my back
and makes her careen into the fir overhanging the eelgrass bed
dislodging a fresh green cone which slowly sinks to the bottom
attracting rock crab which otter on the bank then dives for,
and if my laughing breath containing all these feelings
rises to mingle with the summer clouds
whose billowy bellies you can almost touch,
then what is life
but love at the right time
all the way to the spinnakers of the moon.
Grant Jones
Written on Jones Beach, Pole Pass, Crane Island, San Juan County, the
Salish Sea, Washington.
11
Star Shadows
This morning seals
Surface below the cliff
Where this cabin rests in the trees.
I stare at them
Like a captain checking currents.
After they dive, a dozen buffleheads come up.
From Pole Pass
To Deer Harbor
The bay is smooth as glass.
A thousand birds
Are leaving a thousand trails
Like rice paper coming alive.
Sky and water
Mirror images
Islands suspended between.
A bald eagle dives, and
They lift to take flight—
Squadrons and squadrons of cormorants
Skimming across the bay,
Their wakes still trailing
Like long shadows of last night’s stars.
Grant Jones
Written at Mossycliff Cabin, Crane Island, Wasp Islands, San Juan
Islands Archipelago, the Salish Sea, Washington
12
Small Boat Appreciation Workshop
There are laws of water
only boats obey:
kayaks on inches of river
get loose like kites
on busted strings, skid
away like that.
While yachts and skiffs pay dues
to park along a dock,
look, how their hip-shaped beams
and feminine equipoise
flirt with us as we walk.
To love a boat's okay,
even a rowboat; they, too, have lives,
and surge in their moorings
at the water's knock.
Mike Robinson
Based on walks through a dozen marinas: Hayden Island (OR),
Shilshole (Ballard, WA), Des Moines, WA; Bellingham Bay, WA; Thea
Foss Waterway, Tacoma,WA. Written 1988
13
Song of the Starry Flounder
Two arms, out beyond your land,
One fist, thrust in a green band;
Live mass of tide-wrinkled water
Mingles in between in plankton laughter.
Four seals ride the swells in;
Three petrel fly turn spin;
Waves wash in between
Granite cliffs leeward lean.
Six plover dip the wind home;
Five cormorants skip wings trace foam;
And flounder that I am looks on
Below swaying strands of kelp at dawn,
And see refracted cobalt blue,
My upside-down face prism true.
Grant Jones
Starry Flounder: Platichthys stellatus
Written in Watmough Bight below Chadwick Head on Lopez Island in
the
San Juan Islands Archipelago, The Salish Sea, Washington, 16 October
1962 for Theodore Roethke’s Advanced Verse Writing Class in
Parrington Hall at the University of Washington.
14
Kissing Cabezons
for Joe Henke
Bull kelp
swirls down deep
its cadmium ribbons pumping the sun
where greenlings dart like eels.
Just over the curving mouth of the drop off
there’s a cabezon with cobalt-blue lips
sleeping like a cat.
I knew you’d grow up this serene.
Grant Jones
Written on the tideflats of Richmond Beach, Shoreline, Washington in
memory of the summer of 1953. August 20, 2011.
15
What Water Knows
My feet if I could see them
stand on worn stone, a bed
where this river saunters, makes
boulders somersault until
they build a sort of wall
for me to walk. I wade here
after steelhead, tossing yarns
they might believe, but know
before they answer they sigh
a story older than this, one
long skein, held in their bellies
the way I hold hope or your
attention before it drifts
to what you think is your life.
Mike Robinson
Based on countless flyfishing trips, including Stillaguamish River (WA);
Lewis River (WA): Kalama River (WA); Green River (WA); Wind River
(WA); Washougal & Little Washougal (WA); Yakima River (WA); Bare
Lake (BC); Tunkwa Lake (BC); Tuloon Lake (BC); Pass Lake (WA);
Teanaway River (WA); Rogue River (OR); Umpqua River (OR); Deschutes
River (OR); Hoh River (WA); Grays River (WA); Skykomish River (WA);
Dean River, BC; Willapa River (WA); Satsop River (WA); Big Hole River
(MT); Ruby River (MT); Beaverhead River (MT); Klickitat River (WA); Lost
River (ID); Wood River (ID); Siouxon Creek (WA); Canyon Creek (WA);
Coal Creek (WA); Bumping River (WA); Elwha River (WA); Manashtash
Creek (WA); Cedar Creek (WA); Skate Creek (WA); Cedar River (WA); Cle
Elum River (WA); Methow River (WA); Elochoman River (WA); Chehalis
River (WA)
Fly patterns mentioned or implied include Elkhair Caddis; Muddler Minnow; Prince
Nymph; Bella Coola Bombshell; Lantern; Red Butt and Green Butt Skunks; Woolly
Buggers; Adams; Cahills; Blue Duns; Cutthroat Candy; Skykomish Sunrise;
Irresistible; Hare's Ear; Black, Brown, White & Green Marabous; Polar Shrimp;
Clouser Minnow; Chernobyl Ant; Stone Fly; Joe's Hopper; Parachute Dun; Bitch
Creek; Egg-sucking Leech; Black Leech; Sculpins; Teeny Nymphs; Doc Spratleys;
Halfback Nymphs.
16
Distilleries
Your firs are taking the lead,
their folded-needle flumes
sending billions of cloudwater
molecules down their boles
into the spongey tongues
of moss french-kissing the creeks
with pure water. Each tree
a distillery of hope to your oysters.
Just passing the bigleaf
maple gallery forests
and swamp forests of the South Fork
of the Snoqualmie River
east of North Bend, heading
for the farm. Sorry we had
no time to chat over a coffee
but next time.
Grant Jones
Douglas Fir: Pseudotsuga menzesii
17
Half One-Half of Half a Man
Half one-half of half a man,
Sweet small stalk of a someday man,
He, small man, bird child,
Son of a sometime man child,
My child, lovechild,
Loves seashells: that's all I know.
Grant Jones
Victor Wellington Jones, 1958-1990
In April of 1964 he was then five years old, i.e. 5, of 10, of 20, of 40 of
being a mature man.
Written for Theodore Roethke’s Verse Writing Class
Parrington Hall, University of Washington
at Richmond Beach on the Salish Sea
April 1964
18
Whistling for Trout
I fished the Teanaway
so hard in 1961
my baby brother gave up
and napped in the car.
Meanwhile, a trout the size
of my left arm finned past
my watery foot as if
I whistled wolflike
and she was a hot Italian
woman ignoring me.
Mike Robinson
Teanaway River 1961
19
Tributaries Wait
Now…
when we’re apart, each stronger than the last,
my emptiness expands like a gourd
grows in the evening after sun's warming parting,
leaving a larger breast to fill each morning
as the shadows inch across my bare feet in the sand;
While…
these minutes pump through my heart like the river
remembers how we stood, straight,
hands fluttering like the cottonwoods swaying
at its confluence, leaves trembling in the wind;
As…
it waits for us to refill this tributary pool
with the imprint of our hearts each Spring
here where the Taylor and the Snoqualmie meet,
under the grandfather face of Garfield Mountain.
Grant Jones
Written at the confluence of the Taylor River on the Middle Fork of the
Snoqualmie, where the high rock crags along the granite face of Garfield
Mountain shoot straight up from the narrow valley floor, making it look
like a three-thousand-foot cathedral hewn out of the western flank of
the North Cascades 9 April 2003.
20
Trout Dreaming
Each morning you walk across the cobblestones through the
trees,
Like ankle deep water pouring
Over the rounded stones of a quiet mountain river.
You move as if trout know every pore of your body.
I will come to this place to imagine
Your figure gliding over the cobbles.
I’m a trout in a shady pool resting,
Dreaming your return.
Grant Jones
Written, October 1996 in Occidental Square Park
Pioneer Square Historic District
Seattle, Washington
21
Building a Meadow
I built you slowly
tested your pieces
on my tongue,
weighed your freight
and implications the way
wise animals assess a meadow.
In fact, that meadow's what
I meant to say,
the way it opens, a quiet eye,
a cave where sunlight carves
the afternoons, where pools
of evening
hold their breath,
waiting for morning.
Mike Robinson
Based on many walks, hikes, fishing trips: especially Raymond, WA;
Brush Prairie, WA;
Doty, WA; Teanaway River, WA; Yakima River (WA); Grays River (WA).
Written 2013
22
Streaming
I was born
filial
by boisterous rain
lit
a plate of bark
but fell
deep in moss
stayed growing
becoming fat
saturant moving
through cavities
seasoning
danced downhill
roiled
over stones
falling, laminar slow
fluid swirling
singing
stormy juggler
streaming
at last
done this before.
I’ll be back.
Grant Jones
Fauntleroy Creek Basin, Central Puget Sound Region
23
A Wild Bouquet
The French call them savage, meaning
they need no garden, grow wild on hills
where grape and lily likewise run amok.
Along the Marne, Dordogne, and Loire,
twayblade and tongue fern line the soggy banks,
while woodcock sits up high,
its gingerbread heart embraced
by pink wings, a fragile negligee that trembles
when our fingers fiddle at the stem. Wild rose
means poetry, and saxifrage says grief:
Ophelia must have worn a robe of it,
loveless and fatherless, aching for daisies,
bold blooms: surfinia, frilly agapanthus
or marguerite, its white or blue or pink
petals tightly tucked around the gold
hub like a queen safe in her bower.
That's what I give you, love, when I send
a mixed bouquet to celebrate your beauty.
Like you, these homeless blossoms thrive
outside the bordered, pinched precision
of suburban yards. Seen close, their buttery
eyes refuse to blink, their fuzzy stems stand
at attention all day long, a pretty arm
come to occupy the heads of businessmen.
Mike Robinson
Based on conversation with friend about (her) 2010 trip on a barge in
France; Written 2010.
24
Skagit Flowers for Sasquatch
Walking straight into the sun
I scrambled across the ancient drift logs,
Some as old as the last Indian
Who knew the Sasquatches who lived
Across the delta on the bluffs above Utsalady,
Walking out into the full embrace
Of this enchanted landscape halfway
Between frogs and flounders and dragonflies
Of the ditches and Caspian terns of the mud bars,
Halfway between this year's cedar logjams from the mountains
And the long banks of driftwood across the shores of Skagit Bay,
And I sat down on a log hummock at the head of a small guzzle
Leading into a salt creek that tracks off into the sunset,
To fill my eyes, now that there are these things
Like rippling sun streaks leaping across the delta,
Like rolling swirls of sandpipers in the tide sets,
Like streaming chains of geese across the bars...
Now that there are these times when birds say your name,
Now that there are these times when the thought of you
Bursts from the swaying grass like a harrier lifting the wind,
Now when words spring from my tongue
Like the flowers you’ve seeded in my heart.
Grant Jones
Written out on the Skagit Bay Flats of Fir Island, which is really the
delta of the north and south distributaries of the Skagit River, just
north of Utsalady on Camano Island, “Land of the Berries,” and home of
the Kikiallus Tribe of Coast Salish People and recorded by the
Duwamish to be the birthplace of the Sasquatch, 9 April 2005.
25
What Fish Know
I fished the Yakima
one accidental day
as we headed home
from a different trip,
but saw good water near Easton,
so we waded in,
sidled down to a great riffle
where a widow-maker
broke the river,
making a lacy curtain
where five bright fish hung out
and swung like seaweed
ignoring what I offered them.
Mike Robinson
26
If You Asked Me How Love Can Happen
And so if you asked me how love can happen,
what love can emanate from,
I would tell you that I have seen it come in clouds,
in rivers and from birds and the leaves
on trees, and from...you.
I would tell you that I have seen it contained
in dreams, springing out of sleep
like beautiful tigers from peaceful glades,
and from you in such force as rock becomes river…
as my soul flutters, swimming
with the Dippers
that work the eddies and riffles
flipping pebbles for mayflies,
as these memories tilt time while the river roars by. Grant Jones
Written in West Seattle, 1 June 2000
27
Taking A Walk for my Wife
Taking baby steps
I stir huddled duckweed,
shiver skunk lily while
back at our cabin
you snooze above a book,
though once I watched
from high in a sunlit window
you herking muddy boulders
to make a wall one morning,
rubber-booted, head poked
in your fuzzy shapka
brown body cloaked
in your midnight gown
and thought you must
be rooted somewhere else,
tough-hearted like heather
two-fisted like your Viking
aunts and uncles, until
I saw you rise in the light
look up to see me watching
your sly smile making
its own sun and a name:
my Nootka rose.
Mike Robinson
Based on morning at Bell Mountain (Venersborg, WA)1976; written
2014
28
When My River Becomes a Beaver Pond
I can't explain
your voice
your eyes
your hands
in these back-channel moments
after you leave when
my river becomes
a beaver pond.
Grant Jones
Written in the beaver ponds eastside of the Methow below the
pedestrian suspension bridge downstream of Mazama, North Cascades,
Washington.
29
Reading the Book of S'klallam
Go back three hundred years,
before we took the trees,
watch Sadie and the Twins tumble
into this bay we call Klallam
after the strong people
whose 30-foot canoes hauled
whales across the straits.
Hear how they named the tides,
--incoming, outgoing, ebbing,
named shallow spots, river mouths,
named muddy water, clear water,
named eelgrass, kelp, cedar stump
tree trunk, horsetail-named raspberry, gooseberry, salmonberry,
those old names they lost
a century ago. You'll see,
when we wade here now, we forget
to know why Susie holds back
until she meets the singing
waters a mile from Juan de Fuca,
why she washes the beach on her knees,
under the whirr of the osprey,
the eyes of owls, why the ravens,
crouched near her on the spit,
why they listen so intently.
Mike Robinson
30
Learning from the John Day
It’s not speed but sinuosity
that gives life to the dance,
puts the art in the flow,
takes the hunger out of the river
and puts love back inside it.
Grant Jones
Written on the North Fork of the John Day River
Central Oregon
Sunday May 24th 1998
If rivers are anything like arrows of time, the John Day savors its passage the way I
hope I can lengthen my days by turning slow wide bends, taking in the views as long
as I can.
31
Getting Things Wrong
I tossed a fly
a pinch of brown
pulled from around
some chicken's neck
to feign a look
some rainbow down
among ignorant rocks
that crowd a bed
where a mountain drowned
might surge to snatch:
but I was wrong.
The hatch was green.
Thin things in veils
my brown rode by
as if unseen.
I thought of her,
those times my moves
fetched nothing, not
a wink or tic
to tell me I
should throw again
my shoulder tight,
wrist lifted high,
right elbow snug
against my hip,
all to amuse
or stir like a spoon
my woman's lip.
So kneeling there
I searched myself,
unhinged and thumbed
a tidbit tucked
in a silver box
I keep for this,
and lofted that
32
My damsel's dance swung on a slick twitchy as guilt then sat up straight as if to catch a nap at noon,
and got a kiss, a dimpled ring, then sauntered on the way she shuns a midnight hand. Humbled men acquire the crease that wisdom cuts when nothing works --I have a few--
but none so deep I'd quit the game. The dream I stalk, harder than stone, rises to light's unfinished walk across the same sky where our prayers are sent each day. We could be wrong.
Mike Robinson
Based on 45 years of flyfishing and marriage. Written 2013
33
A Blessing for the Iowa
Let her water words coil round your ears,
Trickle inside your head.
Let the wind in the cottonwoods
Whisper through your hair
Like loved ones calling your name.
Standing under the tall, silver maples,
Let your fingers read stories in the bark.
Hold earth in your hands and let her memories
Sift through your fingers like cloud seeds.
Hear woodpecker tap out her heartbeat
And warblers sing her deepest secrets.
Lean your bones against ancient snags in the channel
And feel the music of grandfather’s dreams.
My heart makes a home on the Iowa.
Sings a blessing for this native land.
Grant Jones
Written on the Iowa River below Misquackie, in Tama County, Iowa
9 April 03
34
About Morning
"Nature has no agenda."
---Lisa Fitzhugh
Over a paved path I hike the dark
to fetch the news where I'll spill
my milk this morning, eating lumps
that grew like weeds before we slapped
them in boxes with bright names.
It's how we live, a redundant parade
we do all day piled in tall tin,
glassy faces beaming at each other
while we pad around, while office plants
assure us we're OK.
Nature, diluted,
is nature, anyhow. If we forget
how it cascaded once, burst once,
churned once, fruited, covered acres
overnight, gave cover, big hugs
to what we once as children gathered
in boxes of treasure we took home
to show our mothers, it's OK...It's OK.
Nature has no agenda. It lives.
It waits. It returns. It revives. It gives.
You can almost hear it now, its pulse
and tremble when we lift our hands
to pat our makeup, adjust our tie.
Mike Robinson
35
Welsh Origins
Our souls seem to settle in mountains;
Though our spirits continue
To flow in rivers and rest along their shores.
Since, like the rivers, we are uncontained
And spill our banks like winds
In canyons ebb and flow.
Our minds and hearts come from our brother animals:
The fish, the birds, the insects,
The worms, the snakes, the frogs,
The slugs, and all the mammals
From the marmots to the mountain lions.
Trees are guardians,
Animals our eyes and ears.
Grant Jones
Written at Dye’s Canyon
South Fork Nooksack River
Whatcom County
Washington
July 1972
36
Salvaged from Sleep
Last night I had no dream but counted
steps as I hiked a track, its ties
a necklace laced with rust.
A killdeer twitched ahead,
returned and cried
when I veered through her patch
of scotch broom, not blooming yet-though soon seed pods will crack,
scatter like ducks where alder and fir
were hung with birds before we came
for Christmas or roared Marine View
to make it home for dinner-but I knew her game, knew
outgoing tides sing up
blue herons who stalk mud flats,
rummage for sulking sculpin,
saw one wade ankle-deep,
hidden from gangs of cranes
whose jaws gaped empty
gawking in awkward applause
when wide wings lifted
as if to signal peace
over the paved acres.
Mike Robinson
Based on dream, March 2014
37
Ecology of My Heart
When, as an otter
finds its mark
among fine reeds
and weeds of swampish worth,
below a universal brackish surface diving,
you,
in osprey plungings
reached down to prey on me,
to search me out of the fish and bittern
dwelling there;
I dived into the mud and sediment
of my decaying past
to find petrified, fossilized,
perfect in all parts:
the shape of my heart.
Grant Jones
Written at Richmond Beach, January 1964
for Theodore Roethke’s Verse Writing Class
38
The Foot Bridge
We built a foot bridge that connects the house to the barn.
Sitting on its rim my boots float
Like ducks in my creek,
Connecting me to the North Pacific’s spinning gyre
Like a battery that can turn the world.
It changes my body’s tide four times a day.
Last night’s moon lifted fresh coconuts
Out of the Wailua River on Kauai Island
And scattered them up Lumahai Beach to shade its lovers.
I’m reborn every time I go to the barn.
Grant Jones
Written at Coyote Springs Farm,
Little Mosquito Creek-Okanogan Sub Watershed, Okanogan River Sub
Basin, Columbia River Basin, Washington.
22 March 2014
39
Doe on Pacific
Today a deer broke down
with stilted gait,
ears rowing air,
Pacific Avenue,
where willow and salal
once comforted
hearts thumping high,
lit up when eagles fell
or mountain lion coughed,
and headed downhill quick
for gullies thicketed,
anthologies of leaves,
not this gray aggregate
this gang of banks
where meadow might have been,
wild berries wet with rain.
Mike Robinson
Based on actual incident, Tacoma WA 2010 Written 2010
40
Why Aspens Quake
My old quakes are flashing messages.
It's time again for rendezvouses I think
For swaps and stories and eyes that wink
Across the islands, down the braiding bends
Where the Little Mosquito marries the Okanogan.
Grant Jones
Mouth of Little Mosquito Creek on the Okanogan River
41
Praying for Rain
I swear it falls
in drops so fat
those summery drips
from hanging sheets
on dirt beneath
could swamp a pig.
Long walks in rain
temper the heart,
but nobody bottles tears,
so pints of pain
don’t count
unless you mean
the tub of blood
a heart in ruin weeps.
So soak us, make us
moist, you lords
of mystery, dim
our skein of sky,
dump recklessly
these tons of mist
we wander through,
splash us with soup
that spills, make
us run like water
all the way home.
Mike Robinson
Based on a lifetime in Pacific NW, with homage to sudden summer
rain, especially. Written 2008
42
Confluences
Under a rasty, rolling, rain-chorus sky
My aspens quake like the river shakes
When long squalls fetch and riffles fly
Down the sinuating, waltzing bends
Below the Similkameen.
Grant Jones
Sooyoos Bend
Confluence of the Similkameen and the Okanogan Rivers
43
Indians miss boat in artful exhibit
“I suppose some people will miss the Indians, just as some people miss Pluto,” Dr. Whiteley
said, referring to the recently demoted planet.” *
I missed the Indians long
before they were missed.
Their absence in history
museums is nothing new.
And who knew Pluto
was there to begin with?
It probably wasn't
the first place in the first place.
But I missed the Indians, even
when we played them
in our backyard, me
with my fakey pistol out,
two fingers wet
with my spit:
no wonder my brothers
would never die.
They were just like
those damned Indians.
Someday we'll all
turn up missing,
even the museum,
its halls hollow
as the Haida canoe
that hangs in the entry
empty of its owners.
Mike Robinson
Based on 2010 news item and 12 years as managing editor of
newspaper; trips to Vancouver Maritime Museum, Vancouver, BC.
Written 2010
44
Doors to Heaven
To come up the Clark Fork is like finding doors to Heaven…
Up Camas Creek and the Little Bitterroot,
Up the Flathead,
Up Mission and Post Creek, up Crow Creek,
Up the Jocko and up Finley Creek…
The mountains so tall they wrap your shoulders like a
blanket.
The cloud bellies send their warmth to our cheeks.
The sky talks to us in many colors.
And we feel welcome.
Grant Jones
Written at St. Ignatius, Montana. May 2001
The Mission Mountains on the Flathead Indian Reservation grab hold of
your heart. They are not just the Continental Divide of the Northern
Rockies; they are the headwaters of the Columbia Basin; and they
connect you without any mountain passes all the way to the Pacific by
going down the Clark Fork in western Montana and through the
panhandle of Idaho then into the Pend d’Oreille which loops north just
inside British Columbia where it then meets with the Columbia as it
heads south into Washington just west of Spokane and on to the Pacific
west of Portland.
45
What Darwin Meant
Rank on this marshy hummock,
juncus bufonius fruits best in muck:
unlike virginica, the meadow beauty,
his name invites disdain, suggests
a drunk at the emperor's beck
and call, but he won't croak,
not even at shaggy jokes,
or decorate a wedding like Effusus.
Don't look for him tucked
in Hazel's vase when prairie summer
chases her out to the lake.
She prefers hymenocalis,
angelic petals broad as chandeliers,
hyssop (bacopa rotundifolio),
innocent faces peeking up
like collared choirboys,
or eager pasqueflowers
which show before the snow,
then die away to daisies,
milkvetch, prairie smoke.
After they've all gone to seed
tough bufonius hangs around, harbors
muskrats, cotton mice, voles
and whispers what Darwin said:
Death to all specialists!
Eternity's for toads.
Mike Robinson
46
Sluice of My Eyes
My eyes have known
As slender reeds,
As rafts,
This estuary shift of life-Slow and silting,
Eroding, twisting,
Gliding westward always-These most immeasurable layering images,
My own:
Sluice of my eyes.
Grant Jones
Dye’s Canyon
South Fork Nooksack River
Whatcom County, Washington
August 1971
47
A Note for Bill
Your high song fills our house,
holding a note until,
one morning in October,
your daughter thinks she hears
a prairie bird rehearsing,
a signal spirits get
as you did when you slipped
away from earth to go
from the kitchen, to gather corn
or thumb a berry tucked
in a bunch uphill from your old
John Deere, the one your son
could always get thumping, even
when it baffled everyone else,
or maybe you just walked down
in muddy rubber boots
through broken boughs to see
a blackbird tipping teazel,
where your pasture soaks the feet
of Bonny Slope and carp sip
swampwater, a hopeless kiss:
They'll never sing like you.
Mike Robinson
Salmon Creek, Felida, WA
Written 2008
48
Wet Places to Write Poems and
Other Information & Celebrations
McConnell Island in the Wasp Islands of the San Juan Islands Archipelago
Water Places to Write Poems
As students of the most famous poet in the Pacific Northwest, in some
ways we were ahead of him, raised on these waters. They became our
greenhouse, our garden, a very different one from the orchids and
mums of Michigan. We did not borrow his landscapes or his imagery.
He wrote Oyster River and The Rose toward the end of his life. What we
got from Roethke was reverence for the animate world: "Learn the
names of things," he urged. If we learned limpid tide pools and nervous
anemone instead of the erotic orchids, they had their own wisdom. We
learned, as he suggested, by "going where we had to go,” including up
the tributaries of the Columbia into the creeks of the prairie steppes
and marshes of the plateaus and highlands of the Great Basin, the
other half of Washington State.
49
Lower Columbia Estuary Partnership
http://www.estuarypartnership.org/our-work (Skamokawa)
Padilla Bay Conservation Area
http://www.padillabay.gov
Long Island Willapa Bay Refuge
http://www.fws.gov/refuge/willapa
Nisqually Delta Estuary
http://nisquallydeltarestoration.org/nisqually_returns.php
Ancient Lakes Wildlife Area
http://wdfw.wa.gov/lands/water_access/30103
Elwha River Restoration
http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/elwha-ecosystemrestoration.htm
Yakima Greenway Path
http://www.traillink.com/trail/yakima-greenway.aspx
Conboy Lake Wildlife
http://www.fws.gov/refuges/profiles/index.cfm?id=13522
Friends of the Cedar River Watershed
http://www.cedarriver.org/the-watershed/municipal/the-cedar-riverwatershed-education-center
Duwamish Longhouse
http://www.duwamishtribe.org/longhouse.html
Mercer Slough
http://www.ci.bellevue.wa.us/mercer_slough.htm
50
Inventories of Native Plant Communities & Watersheds
Growing up on Puget Sound in the 1940s' and 1950s, we wandered its
beaches from Edmonds south to Olympia, the Kitsap Peninsula, and
many beaches or river mouths from the Olympic Peninsula and the San
Juan's, across the Central Strait of Georgia to Jervis Inlet and up to
Princess Louisa.
Before long we explored the headwaters of the big rivers and
bushwhacked alder thickets and devil's club in hanging bogs below the
waterfalls to gasp at mountain lakes tucked in valleys beneath
mountain glaciers.
Eventually we wandered the upper reaches of the Yakima, Teanaway,
Wenatchee and the Icicle, up Lake Chelan to the Stehekin, up the
Methow to the Pasayten and the Okanogan to the lakes in the
Highlands, or closer to the great Columbia, the Wind, the Toutle, the
Washougal, the Klickitat, the White Salmon, and the Cowlitz.
Our original interest was simple: we like to play in water. Looking back,
we see a deep connection between our curiosity and the life-giving role
played by streams, rivers and wetlands in the lives of Native Americans
who were here first. We share a reverence for these waters, and for the
wisdom they offer those who pay attention
The names of those wet places are well-known:
Agate Pass (Bainbridge)
Alki Point
Ancient Lakes Marshlands
Apple Cove
Boeing Creek
Bogachiel River
Brace Point
Browns Point
Buenna Creek
Burnt Bridge Creek (Vancouver WA)
Cedar River
Coronet Bay
Covenant Beach at Des Moines
Crane Island Tide Flats
Deer Creek (Woodway Park)
Denman Island (BC)
Des Moines Creek
51
Duffy's Point
Dumas Bay Sanctuary (Federal Way)
Dungeness River
Dungeness Spit
Duwamish (West Waterway, from South Park to Turning Basic
Eagle Harbor (Bainbridge)
Ebey's Landing Historical Reserve (Coupeville)
Fauntleroy Creek
Fisherman's Bay Lagoons
Foster Slough (Snohomish)
Golden Gardens
Hidden Lakes Marshes
Hoh River
Hunter Bay
Hylebos Wetlands
Ilabot Lakes Pond
Joe's Creek (Federal Way)
Kalama River (Kalama WA)
Kelsey Creek (Bellevue)
Lacamas Creek (Camas, WA)
Lakota Creek (Federal Way)
Lewis River/Daybreak Park (Clark County)
Lincoln Park
Little Mosquito Creek Canyon (Okanogan)
Lopez Island (San Juans)
Miller Creek (Des Moines)
Normandy Cove
Oyster River (BC)
Pipers Creek (Carkeek)
Point Defiance (Owens Beach)
Point Evans
Point Fosdick
Point No Point
Point Wells
Port Madison
Possession Point
Poverty Bay
Priest Point
Puget Creek (Ruston Way/Tacoma)
Puyallup River (Tacoma Tideflats)
Richmond Beach
Salmon Creek (White Center)
Salmon Creek (Battleground WA)
Saltspring Island (BC)
Saltwater State Park (McSorley Creek)
Satsop River
52
Seola Beach
Seahurst Park (Burien)
Shilshole
Skagit Bay
Siouxon Creek (Clark County)
Snohomish Slough
Tahuya (Hoods Canal)
Teanaway River (Cle Elum, WA)
Thames Creek (Dash Point)
Theler Wetlands
Tolmie State Park
Three Tree Point (Pulley Point)
Useless Bay (Whidbey)
Wapato Creek
Washougal and Little Washougal Rivers (WA)
Watmough Bight (San Juans)
West Point
Willapa River
Wind River (Skamania, WA)
Woodard Bay
Woodmont Beach
Yakima River (Yakima, WA)
SOME PEOPLE DEDICATED TO WETLANDS & WATERSHEDS
Note: In creating this list, we purposely omit all government, university,
or well-known national environmental groups. We appreciate their
work, but they can take care of themselves. Our purpose is to invite
you to live and act locally, on the watershed(s) near you. We believe the
smaller grassroots efforts are the most nimble, accessible, and least
hampered by regulatory language or internal politics.
We may have overlooked other groups, but if you're concerned about a
specific stream or wetland, ask around. These folks probably know
where to get help.
Bainbridge Island Watershed Council
http://www.biwatershedcouncil.org
Chehalis Basin Partnership
http://www.co.grays-harbor.wa.us
Cowiche Canyon Conservancy
http://www.cowichecanyon.org
Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition
53
http://www.duwamishcleanup.org
Fauntleroy Watershed Council
http://www.fauntleroy.net
Fennel Creek Preservation Group
http://www.fennelcreek.org
Friends of The San Juans
http://www.sanjuans.org
Hood Canal Environmental Council
http://www.hoodcanalenvironmentalcouncil.org
Jefferson Land Trust
http://www.saveland.org
KWIAHT (San Juan Islands Watershed Protection)
http://www.kwiaht.org
Methow Valley Citizen's Council
http://www.okanogan1.com/mvcc/index.html
Nisqually River Council
http://www.nisquallyriver.org
Nisqually Stream Stewards
http://www.nisquallyriver.org/stewards/index.html
North Olympic Land Trust
http://www.northolympiclandtrust.org
Okanogan Highlands Alliance (OHA)
http://www.okanoganhighlands.org
Okanogan Land Trust (OLT)
http://www.okanoganlandtrust.org/home.html
Olympic Park Associates
http://www.drizzle.com/~rdpayne/opa.html
Partnership For Rural King County
http://www.prkc.org
Puget Creek Watershed Alliance
http://www.pugetcreekwatershedalliance.org
54
Sequalitchew Creek Watershed Council
http://saveourcreek.info
South Sound Estuary Association
http://sseacenter.org
Skagit Watershed Council
http://www.skagitwatershed.org
Whidbey Watershed Stewards
http://www.whidbeywatersheds.org
Kettle Range Conservation Group
http://www.kettlerange.org
Skagit Watershed Council
http://www.skagitwatershed.org
Nisqually Land Trust
http://www.nisquallylandtrust.org
Clallam Conservation District
http://www.clallam.scc.wa.gov
Homewaters Project
http://www.homewatersproject.org
Friends of the Cedar River Watershed
http://www.cedarriver.org
Whidbey Watershed Stewards
http://www.salmonadventure.org
Clallam Conservation District
http://www.clallam.scc.wa.gov
Quileute Natural Resources
http://www.quileutetribe.org
Dungeness River Management Team
http://www.olympus.net/community/dungenesswc
The Xerces Society
http://www.xerces.org
55
Water Books
"....men are only fellow-voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of
evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of
kinship with fellow-creatures; a wish to live and let live; a sense of wonder over
the magnitude and duration of the biotic enterprise.
Above all we should, in the century since Darwin, have come to know that man,
while captain of the adventuring ship, is hardly the sole object of its quest, and
that his prior assumptions to this effect arose from the simple necessity of
whistling in the dark."
--Aldo Leopold
Amidon, Jane (2007), Grant Jones/Jones & Jones ILARIS: The Puget Sound
Plan (Princeton Architectural Press, New York
Belleville, Bill, River of Lakes: A Journey on Florida's St. John's River
(especially, "Fire,Water and Friendship in the Night" --essay on Florida's
Mosquito Lagoon)
Dillard, Annie (1992) The Living. Harper Collins, 2009.
Daubenmire, R.F. (1959) Plants & Environment (Wiley)
Eiseley, Loren, (1970) The Invisible Pyramid. Scribners; The Immense Journey
(especially "The Snout"); (1978) The Star Thrower ("How Flowers Have
Changed the World"); The Last Neanderthal; The Inner Galaxy. Harcourt Brace
Enno, Erik Beyond the Outer Tides: The Untold Story of Ed Ricketts
Fairbridge, Rhodes (1968) The Encyclopedia of Geomorphology. Columbia
University, Reinhold Books
Gilfillan, Merrill, Magpie Rising (essays)
Hoagland, Edward, The Courage of Turtles; Early in the Season; Hoagland on
Nature ( see especially "In Okefenokee"); Walking the Dead Diamond River
Jones, Grant R. (1973) The Nooksack Plan: An Approach to the Investigation
and Evaluation of a River System. Jones & Jones
Jones, Grant (2007) What Rocks Know: Selected Poems, Skookumchuck
Press, Jones & Jones Pioneer Square
56
Jones, Grant, Editor (2009) Okanogan Poems Vol. 1 Baumgardner, George;
Jones, Grant; Rylander, Roger; Schroth, Dean; Wolf, Edward; Skookumchuck
Press, Jones & Jones, Pioneer Square
Jones, Grant, Editor (2013). Okanogan Poems Vol 2 Seventeen Poets;
Baumgardner, George; Baumgardner, Patti; Bill, Katherine; Blair, Michael;
Cook, Jessie; Goodwin, Bob; Henze, Walter; Jones, Chonghui; Jones, Grant;
Jones, Victoria; Robinson, Mike; Rosenblatt, Roger; Rylander, Roger; Smith,
Kathleen; Swedberg, Dale; Thorne, Todd; Vaughn, Sandy. Skookumchuck
Press, Jones & Jones; Pioneer Square
Leopold, Luna B; Dunne,Thomas Water Planning
Lopez, Barry (2006), Editor Home Ground,Trinity University Press
McGuane,Thomas, Seasons Through the Net (writing about fly-fishing all over
America).
The Longest Silence (especially his account of fishing beaver ponds).
McGuane is a Riverkeeper in Montana
Matthiessen, Peter (1959) Wildlife in America
Matthiessen, Peter (1986) Men's Lives: The Surfmen and Baymen of the South
Fork
Matthiessen, Peter (1992) Baikal: Sacred Sea of Siberia
Roethke, Theodore, The Rose; "A Meditation at Oyster River (Collected Poems)
Stegner, Wallace (1954) Beyond the 100th Meridian: John Wesley Powell and
the Second Opening of the West University of Nebraska Press.
Thoreau, Henry David, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; Walden
(especially the chapter on Spring)
"Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we
find ourselves shedding shoes or garments or scavenging among seaweed and
whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war."
--Loren Eiseley
57
“The Twenty-Glaciers River of the Pacific”
10 regions, 40 sub regions and 100+ Rivers
(parent rivers of each sub region appear in Upper Case letters and those
rivers inhabited with their own glaciers are marked by an asterisk*)
The West Strait of Juan de Fuca Region
neah bay sub region:
SEKIU
port san juan sub region:
SAN JUAN
clallam bay sub region:
PYSHT
west coast sub region:
JORDAN
crescent bay sub region:
LYRE
sooke harbor sub region:
SOOKE
port angeles harbor sub region:
ELHWA*
victoria harbor sub region:
ESQUIMALT
The East Strait of Juan de Fuca Region
cordova channel/saanich inlet sub region:
COWICHAN
smith island sub region:
CLOVER
dungeness bay/sequim bay/discovery bay sub region:
DUNGENESS, JOHNSON and SALMON
The Hood Canal Region
lower hood canal sub region:
THORNDYKE
dabob bay sub region:
BIG QUILCENE* and TARBOO
north central hood canal sub region:
DOSEWALLIPS,* DUCKABUSH,* HAMMA HAMMA and SEABECK
south central hood canal sub region:
JORSTAD, LILLIWAUP and DEWATO
great bend sub region:
SKOKOMISH, TAHUYA and UNION
58
The San Juan Archipelago Region
Bellingham bay/padilla bay sub region:
NOOKSACK* and SAMISH
boundary pass sub region:
COWLITZ
central san juan sub region:
MASSACRE, SWIFT and DOE
rosario strait sub region:
BURROWS, HORSESHOE and STRAWBERRY
haro strait sub region:
SAN JUAN
The South Strait of Georgia Region
alden bank sub region:
DAKOTA
point roberts sub region:
SERPENTINE
gulf islands sub region:
FORD
nanaimo bay/fraser delta sub region:
SQUAMISH, FRASER*
The Central Strait of Georgia
courtney harbor/jervis inlet/princes louisa sub region:
SKWAWKA,* DESERTED,
The North Strait of Georgia
desolation sound/bute inlet sub region:
HOMATHKO,* BISHOP*
The North Sound Region
admiralty inlet sub region:
CHIMAKUM
possession sound sub region:
QUILCEDA, SNOHOMISH, SKYKOMISH* and SNOQUALMIE*
port susan sub region:
STILLAQUAMISH* and WHITEHORSE*
sarasota passage sub region:
ELGER, RACE and CRESCENT
skagit bay sub region:
SKAGIT,* SAUK* and SUIATTLE*
59
The Central Sound Region
north central sound sub region:
DEER
mid central sound sub region:
BOEING, PIPER, SAMMAMISH, LONGFELLOW, GREEN, FAUNTLEROY
port orchard/dyes inlet sub region:
BARKER, CLEAR, CHICO, GORST, BLACKJACK
south central sound sub region:
SALMON, DES MOINES, LAKOTA, JOE’S, CALEDONIA, HYLEBOS,
PUYALLUP,* WHITE,* CARBON*
The South Sound Region
nisqually reach sub region:
CHAMBERS, NISQUALLY,* MASHEL, MUD, HUGE, BURLEY,
ARTONDALE
case/henderson sub region:
COULTER, ROCKY, SHERWOOD, SHUMACHER, WOODLAND
pickering/squaxin/budd/eld sub region:
DESCHUTES, PERRY
hammersley/little skookum/totten sub region:
SKOOKUM, KENNEDY, SNODGRASS, GOSNELL, MILL, DEER, JOHNS,
CRANBERRY
60
Water Words
The first word is not water....though wetlands begin and end in
water...The first word is life, because in watersheds is where our
ancestors
crawled ashore . Both poets got their feet wet first in one of
the boggy
acres north or south of Seattle along the rocky beaches of
Puget Sound. We
try to hold those places in mind even now when we
walk a wet place.
There is a technical flavor to many terms attached to
watershed science and
wetland management, a lingo common to
bureaucrats and sometimes shaped by
the regulatory tone of legislation
and the guilt of mitigation. We respect that separate language and
its
use, but believe it stifles the sense of reverence we both find in the
well-known poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
"What would the world be, once bereft,
of wet and of wildness? Let them be left."
alluvial fans: similar to deltas, they are broad fanlike collections of
sediment that form as streams emerge from rugged terrains onto flatter
surfaces. The fan is built by continual braided stream action. Larger
alluvial fans have graded patterns. The coarsest material is deposited
at canyon mouths, while lighter material flows outward, creating a fan
shape.
arroyo: ravines, from big to little, cutting the flat layers of valley
deposits, often home to seasonal or fulltime streams
61
artificial nourishment: beach or sand replenishment to replace
sediment (usually sand) lost through longshore drift or erosion.
Replenishment may shelter upland structures and infrastructure from
storm surges or high tides. Examples include seawalls, breakwaters or
revetments.
backshore: area lying between the average high-tide mark and the
vegetation, affected by waves during severe storms.
backslough: a permanently inundated marshy or boggy area.
bar: material deposited along the banks of a stream at points where the
velocity slows, leaving some of the sediment load. Bars are often made
up of gravel or sand particles. Seasonal flooding will disrupt them and
redeposit the material.
barchan: a crescent-shaped sand dune formed by tidal action at a delta;
also may occur in deserts, formed by wind.
beach: the zone above the waterline at a shore of a body of water,
marked by accumulation of sand, stone, or gravel deposited by the tide
or waves.
bog: An area having a wet, spongy, acidic substrate composed of
sphagnum moss
and peat in which shrubs and herbs sometimes grow.
ETYMOLOGY Irish Gaelic: boggan for soft
fen,
low land overflowed, or
covered wholly or partially with water from springs, producing sedge,
coarse grasses, or other aquatic plants..
ETYMOLOGY: Proto-IndoEuropean: pankas, mud
braidworks: in braided streams, the water has lost its main channel
and flows through a wandering network of rivulets around sandbars.
The channels are usually wide. Braiding results when a midchannel bar
splits the flow, diverting the stream, which erodes stream banks.
Braidworks are the consequence of high bed loads moving through
softer materials. Distributaries in a delta also are braided.
canyon: (see also arroyo, ravine): a narrow chasm of steep walls, cut by
running water.
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cattails:
popular name for various perennial rushes or flags of the
genus
Typha latifolia, having long straplike leaves and a dense
cylindrical
cluster of minute flowers and fruits. Also called "reed
mace".
cobbles: stones rounded by the action of water, often used in rockery
work or paving. Smaller cobbles are pebbles; larger ones are boulders.
In stream erosion cobbles often are dislodged. As they are carried
downstream, they dislodge other cobbles. The process is called
"saltation" (cf. somersault).
coulee: a gulch or small dry ravine carved out by water erosion and
crumbling rock; this includes larger dry canyons forged by melting
Pleistocene glacial floods that leave underfit steams seeming too small
for now dry valleys.
deltaic cusps: the triangular projections, often in layered series, formed
by depositing streams along sandy beaches
depositing stream: sediment load is deposited, eroded, and redeposited
many times along a stream, as bars or floodplain deposits.
distributaries: a channel or stream that branches off and flows away
from a main stream, a common feature of river deltas. Distributaries
occur as a stream nears a lake or the ocean, but can occur inland, on
alluvial fans or when a tributary stream bifurcates as it nears its
confluence with a larger stream.
drops: (see falls)
duckweed: popular name for various small, free-floating, stemless
aquatic
flowering plants of the genus Lemna, growing in close, often
carpetlike
colonies on the surface of quiet water. Also called
"duckmeat".
eddy: a current of water that runs back, or in an opposite direction to
the main current. Often a circular current, a whirlpool. Eddies
commonly occur where stream and tidal action mix, or where subsurface obstacles or landforms are located.
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equilibrium beach: beaches are dynamic; waves generally diffract near
a beach when the beach is in a state of static equilibrium. Dynamic
equilibrium occurs when the beach sediments are deposited and eroded
at approximately equal rates. Unstable beaches are usually a result of
human interaction, such as a breakwater or dammed river. Unstable
beaches are reshaped by continual erosion or deposition.
estuary: the mouth or lower course of a river flowing into the sea,
subject to tides; enlargement of a river channel near the mouth, where
tidal movement is prominent; often marked by salt marshes; an
incubator for fish; vital habitat for shorebirds. Etymology: aestus (tide,
surge, heat)
falls: interruptions in river flow. Over time, rivers erode irregularities in
their flow. A waterfall indicates the progress of erosion. A cataract
involves large volumes of water. Falls of lesser height are cascades,
sometimes meaning a series of small falls.
gallery forests: rows of overhanging trees along a stream in the middle
of a savanna grassland or prairie steppe. Their intertwining canopies
form green tunnels, corridors over shady water. For wildlife they
connect wetter places by providing links across open dry expanses.
glades: small, open though protected light-filled clearings in the woods,
ideal for bedding down by animals or lunching humans.
gorge: a deep, narrow passage with steep rocky sides (see arroyo)
gulch: small canyon or ravine cutting through hill-slope materials.
gully: small gulch through hill-slope materials
littoral drift: the littoral or shore zone of the sea refers to a belt of
prevailingly shallow water near the coast; it varies in width from 50 or
60 to a few hundred miles, and carries deposited material from streams
along the coast.
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looped-meanders: a meander is any sinuous, repetitious pattern of
bends in the flow of a stream. In some cases rivers with exaggerated
circular loops develop secondary meanders; that is, meanders on
meanders.
marsh:
a water-soaked or partially overflowed land without trees; wet,
miry, or swampy
ground; a piece of low ground usually wet by reason of
mature stream: a late stage in the development of a stream (see young
stream)_
old stream: (see young stream)
overflow, or
scattered pools; often nearly or wholly dry in certain
seasons; Low land subject to overflow by the tides.
> ETYMOLOGY Old
Dutch: maersc for Meadow.
oxbows: (see meander): a stream bed is shaped by erosion on the
outside of a curve and by deposition on the inside. This forms a gentle
curve into a hairpin shaped meander. Meanders change location,
shifting back and forth across a valley or migrating downstream. An
oxbow is formed when a meander begins to close on itself and the
stream breaks through. This cuts off the meander, leaving a body of
water shaped roughly like a U (the shape of an oxbow).
percolation: the slow movement of water through permeable soil or
rock
pollywog: another term for tadpole. "Pol" meaning head, and "wog" from
wiglen, "to wiggle."
rapids: sections of a river where the bed has a relatively steep gradient,
causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence. Rapids are rated
in velocity between a "run" and a "cascade."
riffle: a rocky shoal or sandbar just below the surface of a stream.
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rill: a narrow, shallow incision in topsoil, resulting from erosion. Rills
often are early signs of erosion. They may lead to larger features like
gullies, streams, or rivers. Sandy soils are susceptible to the formation
of rills. Dense clays resist rill formation.
rip channel: rip channel development happens when jet-like rip
currents develop in random locations along a coastline. They are sharpedged, trough-like channels extending across the surf zone. Their
plumes may extend beyond the surf zone if sediment transport is not in
equilibrium with local conditions.
roche moutonnee: a rock hill shaped by the passage of ice to give a
smooth up-ice side and a rough, plucked and cliff-girt surface on the
down-ice side.
saddle: concave drop in a skyline ridge, or a smooth pass between
humplike summits that resemble breasts, the low point along a divide
between two watersheds, where water can trickle in two directions.
sand spit: when a stream entering the ocean is unable to carry the full
load, much of the sediment is dropped, forming sand bars. This allows
longshore or littoral drift, which carrie sediment in the direction the
waves are breaking, forming an above-water spit. Spits occur when
longshore drift reaches a section of headland where the turn is greater
than 30 degrees. They will continue into the sea until water pressure
(from a river, etc.) is too great to allow sand to deposit. The spit may
become stable enough to support vegetation. A salt marsh may develop.
sand waves: large, ridgelike structures resembling a water wave on the
upper surface of sedimentary beds formed by water or wind.
skunk cabbage: popular name for symplocarpus, having a reddish
hornlike
spathe in earliest spring, followed by a cluster of large
cabbagelike
leaves. It exhales a disagreeable odor. Also called swamp
cabbage.
stable stream: one that remains in equilibrium as to the amount of
water and sediment it carries. An unstable stream can no longer
handle the load it carries. Braided channels often indicate excessive
sediment load. An unstable stream becomes wider over time.
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stacked meanders: a pattern found on flatter surfaces, where braided
channels form, distinct from individual meanders storm beach: a beach
affected by fierce waves, usually with a long fetch. The resultant often
very steep--up to 45 degrees and composed of rounded cobbles,
swash line: upper limit of an active beach, the line reached by highest
sea level during storms. The lower beach margin is beneath the water
surface.
tadpole: larval stage of a frog. Etymology: "taddle" for frog and "pol" for
head.
thalweg: the line indicating a natural watercourse, having everywhere
the direction of greatest slope; i.e. the path a stream is most likely to
follow.
toad rush: popular name for Juncus bufonius, a low-growing annual
rush common
on damp, low-lying ground.
washes: cuts through flat layers of valley deposits (see arroyo)
wind gaps: gorges abandoned by parent streams
young stream: streams have a profile that begins with steep gradients,
no flood plain, and little shifting of channels. In their initial stage they
are "young," but evolve into streams with low gradients, wide flood
plains, and extensive meanders. In the later state they become a
"mature" or "old" stream.
stream load: the solid matter carried by a stream . Erosion continually
removes mineral material from the bed and banks of the stream
channel, adding this material to the regular flow of water. "Bed load"
refers to the gravel and sand deposited along the stream bed.
swamp: a forested wetland, partially or intermittently inundated. The
two main types of swamp are "true" or swamp forests. In Canada, the
term is muskeg. Water may be salt or fresh.
zone of saturation: the area below the water table, in which all pores
and fractures are saturated with water.
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The Authors
Grant Jones
Mike Robinson
Skookumchuck Press
Jones & Jones, Ltd.
Pioneer Square
Seattle
ISBN: 0-9796495-7-9