record of an herbarium foray, part II

[jinian]

17 July 2010
Slept okay -- felt awake less but woke more achey. Not so sad, but missed Wim. Felt much more competent at camping and collecting, having gotten a little of both under my belt.

Opted for fairly challenging hike starting at Strawberry Campground and heading toward the ominously named Slide Lake, with about 45 minutes of driving each way. The hike was long, even going only as far as we did: about 5 miles and 1200 feet elevation change. I fell behind on the way up due to total exhaustion after the steepest part, then on the way down due to the bad foot suddenly feeling broken again (only about 10 minutes from the bottom! shit!).

I collected some in the very sunny, exposed area where we had lunch and started to feel nauseated, so switched to cleaning up others' samples in the shade for a while.





There had been some disagreement as to how far to hike; when it got to be time for lunch and no collecting had happened, some of us said OKAY NO FARTHER. It is a little embarrassing that the oldest members of the party were so very much hardier than I. Apparently the reason they didn't go to the lake had nothing to do with the young bear they saw, either. Sheesh.

Saw a tiny rock slide, including very plausible death for anyone who had been on that part of the trail.

More Mimulus, including all three from the 16th and one slimy one from the campground that's pressed in my Hitchcock even now.

The stated intention of the foray is to gather the entire flora of the area you go to, but this broke down rapidly on day 2 in favor of collecting mainly the cool stuff. There was lots of that: Dodecatheon, a bright blue Penstemon nobody recognized, Fritillaria atropurpurea, broomrape, and my awesome Scutellaria find (which no one could even ID to genus!). No chance to collect Cypripedium on the side trail at Onion Creek, alas.



Saw three ravens flying, mom domestic turkey and her four babies in the road.

Because I have enough sense to take care of myself, though apparently not enough to avoid injury, I iced my foot in the stream and took ibuprofen. Stream-sitting time also allowed me to wash my grimy limbs, which was nice.

Communal spaghetti dinner had been a concern, but I was totally able to manage eating thanks to random people: pasta, olive oil, kielbasa, cheese (but do not put cheese in camp bowl again!); garlic bread; salad mix; pineapple; bite of chocolate cheesecake.

Threw sticks into the very slimy lake for an enthusiastic large dog, who kept getting worried that HIS person (pictured) wasn't there and running off to verify that things were okay.



Warmer night than before, and I felt a lot more cheerful despite foot worry. Tired from the hike, which was really about the limit of what I could physically do. I wrote: Wimp girl trains to be less weak! :) Also for the first time I liked having enough arm flesh to wobble if shaken about, as deerflies don't like that. Ha. Horrible little bastards.

Traumatic word pronunciation issue about which the less said the better. Speechless due to suddenly perceiving how those sounds could come from those letters. This is what happens when you only ever read a word.