texified

          This morning as I walked to the beach on a leaf-covered road that wound through a dripping forest, the normally quiet little stream that paralleled my path shouted as it leaped down the hillside.  It had been raining steadily for about thirty hours, but this morning the rain had let up, although as I walked along kicking the huge yellow maple leaves that lay strewn everywhere, it still sounded as if it were raining as the water dripped from the trees which had been partially stripped of their finery by the high winds.

     Here in the Northwest it can rain steadily for an entire day and not deposit more than a few inches.  You rarely see the intense frog chokers that you see in the rest of the world.

          The temperature was mild, about 56 degrees, which is typical after the great Pineapple Express sweeps through from the vicinity of Hawaii bringing wind and rain and “warm” air, and I expected to see large numbers of slugs.  The only slug that I saw, however, was one that had stranded itself on the pipe railing beside the path that led down the steep slope to the beach.  There were a few earthworms sliding slickly along the black asphalt pavement, but not in the great abundance that I have seen before at other times.

    The beach had been eroded by the rains, and once again I wondered why on earth when they had converted the private property to a park, the stone bulwark that had been there previously had been removed only to be replaced with severed logs with their roots chained to metal stakes that held them in place.   These logs did a sorry job of protecting the beach against erosion and in the few years since the stone had been removed the land had eroded significantly.

         The stream ran down a small spillway onto the sandy beach, cutting a deep trench through the sand, and the brown fresh water pointed south as it ran into the sea indicating that the tide was coming in.

         Most of the mushrooms that I had photographed in the past few weeks had fallen into slimey clumps of mush, but there were a few small ones scattered here and there amongst the fern and moss.   The mushroom season seems to reach it’s height here in late October, and I saw and photographed several species.  I also ate some that I deemed to be safe.  Perhaps I’ll post the photos later.