Lake Yahoo

Lake Yahoo is a backcountry camp adrift in time.  Once, the large pond-like lake nestled on an outlying ridge of the Olympic Mountains was a working stage-camp for the first Forest Service crews in the early 20th C., then CCC gangs during the Great Depression, and then explorers & workers in nearby Olympic National Park, after it was formed in 1938.  This place is in the southwestern quadrant of the Olympic Peninsula, and just outside the SW corner of the Park.  It’s in deep timber-country, in the Clearwater River watershed, at a headwater of major tributary Stequaleho Creek.

Major logging roads lead into the general vicinity of Yahoo, and minor roads come within a short hike.

Conservative

Conservative attitudes, positions and behavior emphasize and prioritize stability and safety. If it’s not really broken, it’s not really urgent to fix it. Look before you leap. While changes may recommend themselves, there are always transient implemention costs, and not infrequently there are losses & losers, and even permanent drawbacks & downsides.

Liberal is not a strong or accurate antonym of Conservative. The Progressive associate of Liberalism (typically seen as a one hypenated word) makes more of a specialty of Change (sometimes verging to ‘change for the sake of change’). Liberal politics, with its emphasis on the Person and Individual, is allied with Conservatives in prioritizing generalized ‘Bill of Rights’ factors … while some Progressive threads are less so.
(and ultimately, Politics) are reflections of caution and safety.

Political Conservatism as we know it emerged as a concept from the French Revolution, and somewhat coincidentally but ultimately very significantly, from the American Revolution and the founding of the United States.

Mountain Beaver an unusual rodent-animal of West Coast North America

Mountain Beaver skull, top view
Mountain Beaver skull, top view

Mountain Beaver, binomial Aplodontia rufa, is very familiar to country residents of the coastal Pacific Northwest, but less so in the towns and cities, or on University campuses, where it may have an aura of mystery (or misinformation). Though many rural citizens rarely see the animal itself, they are well aware of it from the abundant holes and dirt-piles it excavates (and its landscape-depredations). The general country can seem saturated with the tunnel-warrens of mountain beaver. Continue reading “Mountain Beaver an unusual rodent-animal of West Coast North America“

Mount Mueller Trail, US Forest Service, Olympic Peninsula

Mount Mueller Trail is a US Forest Service project just outside Olympic National Park, near the west end of Lake Crescent along the main US Highway 101.

The trail is a loop from its Mount Mueller Trailhead.  The main attraction is a high, sharp, forested ridge (with Mount Mueller itself about midway).  The other side of the loop runs along the valley floor of the Sol Duc River, a few tenths of a mile back off the highway, through classic valley-floor rainforest .  US 101 runs right down the Sol Duc valley for miles, almost to the town of Forks.

Superhuman emergency strength

Superhuman emergency strength is most often illustrated in the lifting of automobiles off victims pinned underneath, by a rescuer who is not a powerful person, and not athletic. The lesson taken & offered is, that when it is really needed, ordinary people are capable of extraordinary strength – which is not in itself a remarkable, much less Supernatural – assertion.  In the nowadays classic example of lifting a car, it is however underreported that cars have springs, and that normal strength is sufficient to ‘lift’ the car several inches, at least, and that the top of a car is typically rounded, and that when upside down it is rather easy to rock it back & forth quite a bit.  Just shifting the car like this, will often suffice to pull someone out from under it.

Nuclear Quadrapole Resonance

Nuclear Quadrapole Resonance, NQR, is a science tool, technique or instrument of the same family as the more-familiar MRI or Magnetic Resonance Imaging.  Both probe the nucleus structure of the atom or molecule using radio waves and coils attached to electronic circuits.

NQR equipment can be built in elementary forms that are simple, undemanding and inexpensive – yet useful.  MRI, however, generally requires a larger commitment in engineering, support and financing.

NQR resembles the Fluorescence of minerals under a ‘black-light’ or ultraviolet illumination, which has been used as an exploration tool.  This type of ad hoc fluorescence works very well, is easy & cheap … but it does not give the same results for the same materials & substances, in different conditions.  Variations of impurities or chemical and environmental factors can lead to different results for different samples of the same material.  (This sensitivity can of course also be useful…)

MRI, on the other hand, is not influenced by incidental complications, the way NQR is.  This allows certainty that NQR can’t give, and in cases like medicine this can be the difference between acceptable and not.

Quadrapole resonance has received attention in the late 20th & early 21st C, as a practical method of detecting buried landmines. Princess Diana was famous for spearheading the landmine initiative.  The high variant-sensitive of NQR, which can impair its formal scientific utility (or disqualify it in medical applications) means that it can detect an arbitrary object in varying ground-materials, and may even detect that specimens of the exact same model of explosive device were made at different (specific) factories, which can then deprive makers, providers and users of plausible deniability.

 

Deer foot-Vanilla leaf a ground-cover of North America's central West Coast

Deer foot vanilla leaf, Storm King
Deer foot vanilla leaf, Storm King

Deer foot-Vanilla leaf is a delicate spring-flowering perennial of moist & shady woodlands, characteristic of coastal zones with marine influence … and stream-valleys and lake-sides.  The leaf is a triplet, with a shape more like a duck or goose foot; the hoof-analogy is a stretch … but the leaf-edge shape is distinctive.  It has a narrow, erect stalk that bears the flowers and seeds; about shin-high.  They grow & spread in patches from a rhizome-runner, in loose, well-drained woodland soil.  The rootstock seems like it would be worth a try, transplanting; easy to collect.  The soil is often like a friable-compost lightened potting soil, which is fairly common in the woods it likes.  Very tender, the plant crushes underfoot. Continue reading “Deer foot-Vanilla leaf a ground-cover of North America’s central West Coast“

Lake Ozette, Olympic Nat’l Park

Lake Ozette is regarded as a premier destination of the Olympic National Park, both for the large, remote & isolated lake set in the coastal rainforest, and for the seashore trails that branch out from its visitor center.  There is a conventional boat launch on the east shore, and docks by the Ranger Station and campground, at the far north end.  Ozette is well off the mainstream roads, and takes roughly an extra hour to reach, along and finally at the terminus of deadend roads – undoubtedly part of the attraction.  There have been reservation systems advertised in recent times, but they have not been in evidence lately.  Do check with WIC Wilderness Information Center.