NIGHTS OF THE SPRING PEEPERS

Spring Peeper, Pseudacris crucifer, male peeping during spring mating season

Spring is nature’s most joyous time to be a naturalist in northern latitudes as the world awakens from its long winter sleep. Near our Michigan home, Amish farmers are out in early March, when they begin to collect Sugar Maple sap from the awakening trees, and they use horse-drawn plows to prepare the earth for planting. Wave after wave of birds arrive from the southland, from Sandhill Cranes to Baltimore Orioles and hundreds more. The land awakens with spring wildflowers before the trees leaf out. The first insects appear, including Mourning Cloak butterflies that have overwintered under bark or leaves, and the Common Green Darner that has migrated up from the south. These are all great stories for a naturalist, but there is also a chorus that, to me, signifies that spring is here.

Video of Spring Peeper calling next to the pond

When night time air temperature rises into the range of about 35 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, each little pool in the forest comes alive with the songs of Northern Spring Peepers. These tiny chorus frogs, each about the size of a thumbnail, peep together around the shores of a permanent or temporary pond–one that has no fish as predators. These are all male frogs trying fervently to attract mates. The calls begin shortly after sunset and end in the early morning hours, before the first traces of dawn light bring predators in the form of birds to the ponds.

Where I live in the middle of Michigan’s mitten, there are numerous little glacial kettle ponds, left as chunks of ice by the last ice age. When the ice melted, it left a depression filled with water, with high banks surrounding the new pond. These ponds are too small to support fish but are just right for Midland Painted Turtles, Common Eastern Toads, and Northern Spring Peepers. I set out on two nights to figure out how to see and photograph the peepers and I chose a pond that I could have easy access to. On the first night, the peepers were calling loudly when my nephew and I slip-slided down the steep hill leading down to the kettle lake. The frogs heard us coming and immediately became deathly quiet. We patiently waited without moving, and the peeps gradually slipped from stealth mode and awakened the heavens again with joyous noise. I spent a long time looking for the source of the calls, and finally found one little peeper calling from under the overhang of a fallen oak leaf right next to the pond. I was only able to get one photograph with a macro lens, a large bulky lens next to these tiny creatures. It was the opposite of stealth.

The setting: a small glacial kettle pond in the forest

Two nights later, I returned to the same pond, this time with my wife, Karen, and with the plan of using a snout wide-angle macro lens, which is about 18” long and only 5/8” in diameter at the lens end, which meant my face could be farther away from the peepers and I could approach them with stealth and cunning, or at least my version of stealth and cunning, which is usually clumsy and loud. 

We were quieter in approaching the pond than on my previous expedition, so the peeps barely interrupted their chorus of desire upon our approach, despite our use of bright flashlights. I showed Karen where I expected to see the frogs based upon my previous night’s work, but that proved to be fruitless, or frogless. In searching around a patch of shoreline where a peeper was loudly calling, we just couldn’t find it on the forest floor. But then I happened to see movement about 18” off the ground, and it was a Spring Peeper calling while clinging to the dry stalk of a wild perennial left over from last fall. Its little vocal sac was expanding with each call–so incredibly exciting to see in real life!

Spring Peeper male calling using air sac at throat [photo shows how sac expands]

Spring Peeper male vocalizing from its perch on an oak leaf

So I set up my snout lens on a tripod and approached to within about an inch of the calling frog. Meanwhile, Karen used a dive light–a powerful LED flashlight meant for deep dives in the ocean–to light the frog. Somehow, it didn’t mind the light too much and I was able to get hundreds of close-up photographs and videos of this frog and two of its nearby rivals in some of the most exciting hours I’ve ever spent (and, yes, I am truly a boring person). If you ever have the chance to experience the sounds of Spring Peepers while standing among them, don’t miss the opportunity!

MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE LIVES OF SPRING PEEPERS 

The Spring Peepers calling in a chorus around a pond are all males, trying desperately to attract mates. Presumably the biggest and loudest male wins the wooing contest, allowing them to mate with the quiet and choosy females. After mating, the female lays eggs in the little pond. Tadpoles are the hoped-for result, and the cycle of life continues.

Spring Peepers are the color of leaf litter on the forest floor: tan or brown or green. Hence they can remain disguised. The second word of their scientific name, Pseudacris crucifer, refers to the large dark cross on the back of each frog. I believe this is part of the camouflage, which breaks up the otherwise uniform color and looks like the veins of a leaf.

A Spring Peeper looks a bit like a dried leaf on the forest floor; the cross marking on the back and other markings on the legs break up the color, making it look more like fallen leaves

These are tiny creatures. In fact, were you so inclined, you could mail seven of them in a one ounce first-class mail envelope, though the USPS and peeps wouldn’t be very happy.

Spring Peepers are tiny in comparison with the loudness of their group

Peepers go into suspended animation all winter, spending the long, cold months hiding behind a flap of bark on a tree or under a fallen log or under the leaf litter on the ground. Their bodies can survive freezing down to about a 17 degree Fahrenheit body temperature because of glucose and other chemicals in the blood that act as antifreeze.

To get these pictures, I used a long Laowa Macro Probe lens with a strong dive light

To make their calls, the males take air into their lungs, then close off their nostrils and mouths. As air is forced from the lungs by muscles, it passes over vocal cords and into the inflated air sac, creating the sound variously described as peeping, chirping, or sleigh bells. The sound is loud enough to prevent sleeping for some people, and is a shimmering shower of sound when it surrounds us next to a pond.

The slightly bulbous toe pads are designed to stick to wet or dry vegetation to facilitate climbing

Just to the right of this calling Peeper is the warty leg of a much larger Eastern American Toad

A typical male peeper can make up to 13,500 calls per night, though I didn’t do the math and am depending upon scientists for this factoid.

And the most astounding fact of all: a group of Spring Peepers around a pond is referred to an an “army.” A noisy and tiny army, but an army nonetheless.

Video of the calling Spring Peeper right next to the Toad

The photographs below include other inhabitants of this pond: an Eastern American Toad showing off the gold flecks in his eye; Midland Painted Turtles basking on logs; a few more Spring Peepers; and a view of tree reflections on part of the pond. Click on each to make it larger.

GLOWING PINK FLYING SQUIRRELS: Biofluorescence Revealed

Southern Flying Squirrels, Glaucomys volans, glowing hot pink on their underbellies when illuminated by a 365 nm UV flashlight, in a rare phenomenon known as biofluroescence

I awoke last night at midnight to flashes of light from a motion sensor floodlight on our deck. I wasn’t thinking of prowlers, because I suspected the flashes of light were triggered by Southern Flying Squirrels coming to visit for the sunflower seeds I had tossed out just before going to bed.

I crept downstairs and carefully opened the sliding door, letting in frigid February air. The deck light came on briefly, enough that I could see the tiny squirrels dashing up through an opening in the deck around a huge Northern Red Oak. Each squirrel would come up, grab a sunflower seed, then dash down the tree trunk out of sight. This happened so fast that I couldn’t see how many squirrels there were, though at one point I saw three. There may have been more. On this night they were nervous and did not stop long enough for any photos.

We’ve had Southern Flying Squirrels at our home in Michigan each winter, and I’ve photographed them at night several times using incandescent lights on the deck. They made for good photographs, with their gray-brown fur and a cuteness factor of huge bulging eyes and little pink lips, but their coloration was subtle to my eyes and essentially no different from most mammals, which are colored for camouflage rather than display.

Then scientific knowledge suddenly changed. About four years ago a Wisconsin forestry professor, Dr. Jonathan Martin at Northland College, was in the woods at night looking up toward the forest canopy with an ultraviolet flashlight for lichens and other fluorescing lifeforms, when a hot pink missile glided overhead. He identified this as a Northern Flying Squirrel, and its normally white belly lit up hot pink in ultraviolet light. He found this astounding, and asked a colleague to investigate flying squirrel skins in a couple of museum collections to see if the phenomenon could be confirmed. It turned out that in those collections, the bellies of all three species of North American flying squirrels–Southern, Northern, and Humboldt’s Flying Squirrels–glowed bright pink under UV light. Even specimens over 100 years old. Male and female, young and old, they nearly all glowed.

Since we have easy access to flying squirrels at our home in Central Michigan, I decided to observe this phenomenon for myself. I obtained a 365 nm UV flashlight that is powerful enough to look almost into the treetops and began looking at these squirrels on nights they chose to come to our feeding station. They don’t come every night, but when they do I often get up in the middle of the night to observe and try to photograph them. It isn’t easy to photograph little nervous squirrels by a relatively dim (to our eyes) UV light, but I’ve had some success represented by the pictures here.

Southern Flying Squirrel showing biofluorescence under UV light on the left, with the same species illuminated by tungsten light on the right. The belly fur changes from off-white to bubblegum pink when struck by UV light.

Why do flying squirrels glow? That is still unknown. What is known is that at dusk, dark, and dawn, the air is bathed in proportionately more ultraviolet light and far less light from the visible spectrum than in daytime. This UV light–when converted to visible light by fluorescence–makes the flying squirrels more visible to each other. This is even more true when snow blankets the forest, since snow reflects UV light. It also appears that flying squirrels’ eyes, unlike ours, can see into the UV spectrum, so this ability may also be involved.

Again: why do they use biofluorescence and UV light at night? There are a couple of possibilities that spring to mind. Based upon the three flying squirrels I observed on that recent February night, I think it’s possible that the squirrels use their bubblegum pink undersides to keep track of each other at night. These squirrels are highly social, with reports of 25 to 50 Southern Flying Squirrels roosting communally in a hollow tree. So why wouldn’t they follow each other to food sources? Some of my pictures show them sitting side by side, dining quietly together on the sunflower seeds I put out. They seem to enjoy a more peaceable kingdom among their kind than do the daytime Eastern Gray Squirrels and American Red Squirrels we also get in Central Michigan. Feeding together also means more big eyes to look for predators–much as goldfinches and other songbirds feed communally as a strategy to detect hawks.

There is another tantalizing possibility for the pink color. Three large owls that also live in this region–Barred, Barn, and Great Horned Owls–also have bellies that fluoresce hot pink under UV light, though their coverings are feathers rather than fur. These owls are the chief predators of flying squirrels. Do the flying squirrels mimic the owls to fool the predacious birds into thinking they are seeing other owls when in the air? Maybe. I find this possible. The fluorescing fur is mostly on the belly and undertail of the squirrels, with just a minor hint of color change on the back and virtually none on the tail. Once a flying squirrel lands on a tree trunk, its back and tail make it almost invisible to predators because the glowing belly is nearly hidden.

Alternatively, perhaps the owls are mimicking the flying squirrels, fooling the little squirrels into thinking they are seeing others of their own kind. This would allow the owls to silently approach the flying squirrels and suddenly grab the little creatures.

Or perhaps all three of these mechanisms are in play: bubblegum pink signals the presence of flying squirrels to each other, but also both disguises them from owls and identifies them to owls, if any of that makes sense. Coevolution at work.

Biofluorescence also extends to the Virginia Opossum in this region, but is apparently unknown in other mammals here. It turns out the phenomenon is new enough that the chemical and physical mechanism is still unknown. I suspect this will be studied in coming years, with possible applications for industry. Or not. Knowledge is its own reward.

I will be watching these creatures over the coming weeks and years, both with and without the assistance of UV light. The mysteries of nature are an ingrained part of my life and I find observations and photography endlessly fascinating.

The photographs above are a good representation of the Southern Flying Squirrel in UV vs visible light. The final photograph shows the deck setting at night where all the pictures were taken, and includes one flying squirrel for scale. Click on the photographs to see them larger.

Here are some other sources that examine this discovery:

Ultraviolet fluorescence discovered in New World flying squirrels (Glaucomys) (Journal of Mammalogy)

Southern Flying Squirrel (Wikipedia)

Flying Squirrels Glow Fluorescent Pink Under Ultraviolet Light (Smithsonian)

October at Staircase in Olympic National Park

The pleasant white noise of water running over rocks in the North Fork Skokomish River blends with the occasional warning clicks of a concerned Pacific Wren and the wind rushing through the needles and leaves of conifers and maples. Low angle sunlight occasionally shines through the brilliant orange leaves of Bigleaf Maples along the river’s edge. A family of American Dippers walks underwater through the rapids, searching for insect larvae. A cousin of the robin, the Varied Thrush, has migrated in for the winter and individuals are foraging through the mossy forest.

Each time I come to Staircase, named for an actual wooden staircase that a military expedition built to climb over rugged nearby cliffs, I am enchanted by the exotic lifeforms that populate this rainforest. There are the Icicle Mosses that drape the limbs of maples and dead conifers so thickly that I wonder how the branches can support the weight of this wet mass of moss.

There are Dog Vomit Slime Molds that we encounter in the woods. These are neither plant nor animal and normally live their lives as single cells, but when something triggers them, these cells come together to act as a larger organism that actually oozes through the forest in a search for food.

There is the Methuselah’s Beard, the longest lichen in the world, hanging like Spanish Moss from the limbs of riverside maples and firs. It is the Methuselah’s Beard that attracts me to frequently return to Staircase. There is one special Bigleaf Maple that the lichen has enjoyed living on for years, to the point that much of the tree looks decorated in fake spider webs for Halloween. I thought I was the only photographer attracted to this tree, but it turns out there are many others; on one recent trip two photographers came by while I was photographing and said that they make pilgrimages to photograph this tree every autumn. This lichen species is extremely sensitive to air pollution and is used by scientists as an indicator of poor quality air; it has been declining across much of its range around the world for this very reason. But at this location on the Olympic Peninsula, bathed in moisture coming off the Pacific Ocean, the air is clean and wonderful. The lichen thinks so as well, and looks to be content living here.

Click on each of the photographs below to see them larger. Much more of my work is at leerentz.com. Reach out to me at lee@leerentz.com if you have any questions.

APPALACHIAN TRAIL MEMOIR

The Appalachian Trail winds through the lush forest of the Great Smoky Mountains

Memories of our formative years can remain incredibly vivid into old age. This account tells the story about my hiking trip along a section of the Appalachian Trail with Dowell Jennings Howard III after our spring semester concluded in 1970. Back in the University of Michigan dorm that winter, I had talked with my friend for a long time about how America’s young people needed to incorporate more adventure into their lives, so I pumped him up for the possibility of a May hiking trip along the Appalachian Trail where it passed through Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We agreed to do it, and set the plan in motion.

I was a forestry student, while Dowell was studying mechanical engineering. He came from a family in the Cincinnati area that had deep roots in America, and his father worked for Procter and Gamble. His personality was a contrast to my shy and introspective traits; he was friendly and outgoing and was the kind of person who would run for office in student government. These traits were good for making connections while traveling.

We planned the trip, divvying up food purchases and making sure we had appropriate gear for a spring trip in the mountains. We purchased dried eggs and dried sausage that had to be rehydrated before cooking. There were dried noodles and beef and chicken, some packaged in cans instead of plastic. We packed socks and long underwear and warm hats and hiking boots and rain ponchos and matches and all the rest of the gear we thought we would need. I’m sure we hiked in jeans, which few would dare to do today because cotton is slow to dry and doesn’t keep a person warm when wet, but we didn’t know better.

After the semester ended, I flew from Detroit to Cincinnati on an old propellor-driven commercial plane, met my friend for a ride to his parents’ house, then we headed out on a Greyhound bus trip to Knoxville, Tennessee. The overnight bus ride was an experience in itself. The bus curved around constant mountains in the dark, stopping for a break in the middle of the night at a diner in Corbin, Kentucky. I still remember the clank of china and the harsh overhead lights and green walls that looked like they could have been the setting for an Edward Hopper painting.

After a transfer at the Greyhound Bus Station in Knoxville, we next rode a bus to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where we stayed at a motel overnight and were interviewed on the street by a local television station about what we were doing in Gatlinburg; Dowell was a natural for television interviews with his politician’s aura, while I stayed in the background. The next morning we hitchhiked to a Great Smoky Mountains National Park campground. There we set up a tube tent that I had made, since I didn’t have money to buy a real backpacking tent. My tube tent was made from a sheet of clear plastic sheeting. I took a piece of plastic maybe 18 feet long and 8 feet wide and taped together the ends. When we set it up, we ran a parachute cord through it which was strung between two trees. It gave us shelter from the rain overhead, as well as a floor, but the ends were open to mosquitoes and no-see-ums.

At the campground we set up our tent, had dinner and told stories, then strung up our food to keep it away from bears and raccoons. Alas, we were virgins in the ways of clever bears, and the next morning we awoke to find that a Black Bear had raided our backpacking food before we could even start our hike. The cans of dried meat were opened as if with a can opener by the bear’s teeth and claws and there were tooth puncture marks and bear saliva slime on plastic food pouches. Now we had a dilemma: not enough food for our backpack. A kind man offered us a ride back to Gatlinburg to get a new food supply, but he decided halfway there that a convenience store was good enough. So we shopped there and ended up with a big jar of combined peanut butter and jelly, some canned meats, probably Vienna sausages, and crackers. The meals were going to be a bit more haphazard than we had planned, but we were young and adaptable.

After that we repacked our backpacks and started up a steep and rocky trail to where it intersected with the Appalachian Trail. The pack was heavy and the hiking was really hard after a year of studying at college with not much physical activity. It was a relief when we finally reached our first trail shelter, which was a three-sided structure made of ancient logs that smelled of years of accumulated smoke from wet campfires. One feature of the shelter that we both liked was that the front was closed off by ground-to-ceiling chain-link fence–designed to keep out marauding bears. We cooked over a smoky fire from downed wood gathered in the surrounding forest; most hikers at that time cooked this way because few had lightweight backpacking stoves. The Appalachian trail shelter had two platforms inside that spanned the width of the shelter, one upper and one lower, where quite a few people could sleep side-by-sde. We settled into our flannel-lined sleeping bags early and slept pretty well, considering all the mice scurrying around the shelter in the night.

After another smoky meal the next morning, we started hiking the Appalachian Trail, which would take us some 70 miles through the park, doing about ten miles a day. Painted Trilliums and other wildflowers bloomed along the trail on our May hike, and we had frequent glimpses through the trees of hazy mountains in all directions. We had learned that the blue haze was not smoke or pollution, but instead consisted of vapors given off by the incredible concentration of trees: the Indians called it the “Land of Blue Smoke.”

Memories of the vast forest

One guy we met at a trail shelter said that he had organized the first national Earth Day that spring. I told him that I had worked with the Environmental Teach-In at the University of Michigan earlier that same spring, so we had something in common. He was out for a dose of nature after finishing all that planning and coordination.

Along the trail I found out that my borrowed backpack was too lightweight for the heavy load I carried, and the aluminum support structure bent and broke when I repeatedly set the pack down on the ground when we took a break. To salvage it for the long trail ahead, I borrowed two dead spruce branches from the forest and lashed the broken aluminum to them. A bit crude-looking, but it worked. When in the wilderness, invention and adaptability are crucial. 

On we hiked through a forest of deciduous trees just leafing out. We came to Charlies Bunion, a bare block of rock with steep drop-offs that terrified me, a flatlander. That night we stayed at the Mount LeConte Shelter, with the intent of having dinner at the legendary and rustic LeConte Lodge just a short distance up the trail. We dropped our packs in the shelter. Dowell wondered if we should hang the packs but I was tired and said no; we were just going a short distance to make dinner reservations. We walked up to the lodge and got our reservations, then hiked back to the shelter–just in time to see a mama bear and her two cubs biting into our packs to try to get at the food inside. We chased them away by throwing rocks, but Dowell’s pack was pretty bitten up. I apologized to him for not hanging our packs, but it does give me something to write about 50 years later!

The high ridges of the Great Smoky Mountains seem to go on forever

We had our meal at LeConte Lodge, which was hearty and filling but nothing fancy, then watched a sunset from the mountain, where the legendary blue ridges of the mountains go on and on. It was the best view along the trail, and the light was magical. 

The next day we crossed the only road through the mountains at Newfound Gap, where a woman made up like Dolly Parton, and her husband, offered us beer and took our pictures. By that time on the trail we were a pair of grubby young mountain men on an adventure that seemed exotic to the tourists.

On to another trail shelter, this one occupied by two grad student bear researchers from the University of Tennessee and a troop of Girl Scouts from Knoxville. The scout leader, Mary, was a wonderful young woman who was taking the girls on an adventure of their lives. None of them knew how ugly it would get. 

A few minutes after we arrived, half-a-dozen men in their 20s walked up to the shelter. They had been drinking heavily on the trail, with at least one of them carrying a gallon jug of Gallo red wine with his finger curled through the loop on the jug’s neck. Almost immediately, this guy and others started making sexual comments to the young girls, which was among the most inappropriate scenes I’ve ever experienced. It looked like these guys were going to spend the night at the shelter, but the shelter was already full. Were they going to physically kick us out?

These guys, one of them explained to us, had just returned from Vietnam where they had been involved in combat in the jungle. They were tough, and big, and dangerous, and they didn’t like college students, who they would have thought of as protestors with deferments (which we were!). Combined with the alcohol, the discussion among them got ugly. Fortunately, one cooler head among them convinced them to hike on to the next trail shelter, so they left. Crisis averted. 

We made friends with Mary, and agreed to look her up when we passed through Knoxville on the return (which we did, and stopped at her apartment for a nice candlelight spaghetti dinner on her kitchen table–which was one of those wooden cable spools popular among college students at the time). We were impressed by her leadership of the Girl Scout group and how she believed in mentoring girls in outdoor experiences.

On we hiked along ridges with stunning views of the great Appalachian forest, lush with growth. We stayed at the Silers Bald shelter, high along the trail, which gave us a view of dark and ominous clouds. At this shelter we talked for a long time with an old and grizzled mountain man from nearby Bryson City who had hiked up with three young men. Actually we had seen the young men earlier, and one was pulling a two-wheel golf bag cart up the trail–filled with bottles of beer! That explained all the hootin’ and hollerin’ from their campsite during the night. They had a big and blazing campfire that I’m sure was set in the traditional Appalachian manner: dousing the wet wood with gasoline, standing back, and tossing a match at it to watch it explode!

The next morning, a wet fog had settled over Silers Bald and we couldn’t see a thing through the thick sky soup. Another hiker came up to us while we were on the rock; he was thin and maybe 40 years old. He asked us how much we hiked in a day and we responded that we hiked about eight to ten miles a day. He wasn’t impressed. He said that he averaged over thirty miles a day and that his best day was 43 miles. I’ve never had the ability or the body type to do that kind of hiking, and it wouldn’t work with all the times I stop to take photographs, so in retrospect I’m not impressed, though at the time I thought he was superhuman.

By that time on the trail my feet were sore. Even though we washed our socks and dried them by the nightly fires, the trail had done its job on my tender feet. I had a blood-filled blister the size of a half-dollar on one heel, so I limped my way along the trail to the trailhead. We hitched a ride to a campground, where Dowell made friends with an older woman (she was probably 25) who was a teacher, and she took us the next day to go for a hike to a waterfall. That was fun, and this was a more trusting time in America, when people weren’t as afraid of each other. She drove us to the Gatlinburg bus station the next day, where we caught the bus to Knoxville. I distinctly remember the fat bus driver telling us and a couple of other hikers that he didn’t think backpacking was very sporting, so he wasn’t very impressed by us. Oh well.

In Knoxville we had just enough time to walk to Mary’s apartment for a meal, then walk back to the bus station where we boarded the overnight bus to Cincinnati. The atmosphere on the bus was electric, because many of the rural Kentucky and Tennessee passengers had just come off an experience attending a Billy Graham crusade that took place on May 28, 1970, in Knoxville. They felt inspired and chatty, talking about their churches and children and chickens.

We arrived in Cincinnati the next morning, where Dowell’s mother fussed over and treated my blood-filled blister, then we drove out to the family cabin in rural Ohio, which was a rustic place done in the Appalachian style with a long covered front and back porch. Dowell took me fossil-hunting in the nearby creek. In his high school years, he had been an avid fossil-hunter and actually had at least one scientific paper to his credit. The next day I flew home and began preparing for a summer semester in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Epilogue: I just finished writing this a bit over 50 years after the experience, surprised at how much of it still felt fresh in my mind. Early experiences can be like that, imprinting themselves on a still-impressionable young person. I lost track of Dowell a year or two later; I only know that he graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I went on to get my degree in Natural Resources, and later worked in that field and in photography for the rest of my adult life.

To see the photography of Lee Rentz, go to leerentz.com and follow his work at Lee Rentz Photography on Facebook.

MISTY MEMORIES OF THE CALIFORNIA COAST

Boardwalk along the headlands above the Pacific Ocean in MacKerricher State Park

When I was just 19 years old, I drove to the California coast for the first time. I had two days off from my job as a U.S. Forest Service firefighter in the Cascade Range of northern California, and I decided to drive to the coast for the first time. I left the ranger station and drove west, through Lassen National Park, then down into the scorching Central Valley, which was about 100°F in the shade, of which there was very little.

I got out of the valley as quickly as possible in my little fire engine-red Buick Opel, then drove past golden hills covered with grasses and scattered oaks, up into the Coast Range, which was covered with soothing green Douglas Firs. This was California State Highway 36, which turned out to be the slowest road I’ve ever been on. It snaked its way up into the mountains, following closely the contours of the deep ravines and steep mountainsides, with one hairpin curve leading immediately into another. Imagine a really long strand of spaghetti noodling around the mountains, and you get an idea of the playful road. It took most of a day to drive.

In the Coast Range, the roads twist and turn incessantly; making these roads faster to travel would mean moving mountains

When I reached the hamlet of Mad River, there had been an accident in which a man had been thrown out of the back of a pickup. I stopped to help his family lift him back into the pickup, supporting his head rigidly as we lifted. It was going to be a long three-hour trip for him to the nearest hospital while laying with his neck and back badly injured in the back of the pickup. Life was more primitive then; today a helicopter or plane would be dispatched.

I drove on from Mad River through two more hours of twisting roads until I descended from the sunny mountains into the cool and foggy California Coast. It was soothing and new. I saw my first Coast Redwood trees as I approached Highway 101. I learned about ocean fog. I drove north to Redwood National Park on my whirlwind tour, stopping at a roadside cafe in redwood country where burly guys were talking about the huge size of a redwood they had just cut–one of those trees that took up an entire logging truck all by itself.

I hiked some short trails in the redwoods and walked the Pacific Ocean beach to explore Fern Canyon in the fog. It was magical. Too soon, I had to hightail my way back to my job, but at least I had experienced a bit of the storied California Coast.

Immense Coast Redwoods form magnificent groves along the northern California Coast

Since that early summer, I’ve returned many times. One summer, my wife and I explored the Menocino Coast while I was stationed in Mad River, where I had helped administer first aid several years before. We saw our first sea stars: this is embarrassing, but we were very young and from the midwest and were so excited to sea starfish that we attempted to take several home with us. Of course, they died and we were left with a stinking mess and a guilty conscience. Live and learn.

Many years later, in 2013, I drove up Route 1 and 101 from San Francisco, after participating in an art show in a redwood grove in Marin County. The road was as twisty and slow as I remembered it, and there didn’t seem to be many more people living out there along the lonely coast than there were before. It is a hard place to make a living, with much of the logging industry diminished.

The old-fashioned tourist industry struggles along this coast; I suspect that Californians spend far more of their money fashionably sipping wine in Napa Valley than in walking among ancient redwoods. But there is still a drive-through tree for travelers who want to show their kids what the tourism experience used to be like.

But there were reminders on the radio that there are alternative ways to earn cash. There was a report of several black SUVs heading north on a back road near Mendocino, with a wood chipper being hauled behind one of them. It seems that the government uses its black SUVs to search-and-destroy marijuana crops, which are then fed through the chipper (maybe the mulch is then fed to pigs; and perhaps it gives the pigs the munchies which helps fatten them up). There is apparently a whole network of people who call in reports of the government agents and where they’re headed. This seems to be a contemporary twist on the moonshiners and revenue agents that made up so much of the popular view of Appalachia.

I camped overnight at MacKerricher State Park north of Fort Bragg. I’ve heard that this park is where the movie set for the house in the great movie Summer of ’42 was built. That film, which came out in 1971, starred Jennifer O’Neill as “Dorothy,” a woman living on Nantucket while her husband was away and fighting during World War II. It was an enchanting story, and based upon a real experience in the screenwriter’s life. See it if you haven’t.

MacKerricher was filled with ocean fog during my visit, so it was wonderful for photography. The roar of heavy surf hitting the rocky shore lulled me to sleep.

Glimpses of my misty afternoon and morning in MacKerricher State Park

The next day, I drove north through the redwoods, eventually reaching Oregon, the words to a Jimmy Webb song so memorably sung by Linda Ronstadt making for an unusually pleasant earworm in my brain:

“Going up north where the hills are winter green

I got to leave you on the California coast …”

And, so, that’s where I’ll leave my memories until my next visit.

The sea stacks of Cuffy’s Cove

Cemetery at Cuffy’s Cove, with Surprise Lilies in bloom in autumn

Monterey Cypress trees have been planted along many stretches of Highway 1

A daring hiker crossing a sea arch in Mendocino Headlands State Park

Ice Plant, an invasive succulent originally introduced to stabilize slopes, has really taken over the headlands along parts of the California Coast

Highway 1 leads over a classic steel bridge spanning the Eel River in redwood country

Redwood grove along Avenue of the Ancients viewed from a fish’s eye

Convergence

Redwoods were used to create these classic old theater and bank buildings in Scotia, a company town located south of Eureka in the heart of redwood country

To see my web site, which includes photographic prints for sale, please go to LeeRentz.com (just ask to email you a small version of a particular photograph you like if you can’t find it on the site; my website is not up to date). 

To see thousands of my photographs in large file sizes for use in magazines or other printed materials or electronic media, go to my PhotoShelter Website or go to my Flickr Photostream.

MUSHROOMING LOVE

Yellow Chanterelles possess a graceful beauty that makes them wonderful to photograph–as well as to eat

This fall, the autumn rains started in late August: our sign that summer was over. It was also a good sign that autumn mushrooms would start shoving up through the damp soil. Heavier rains came in late September, and have been with us off and on since then. The timing of the rains after the dry summer apparently brought a bumper crop of mushrooms.

The chanterelles poke up through the soil, gathering lots of Douglas Fir needles during their brief lives

Chanterelles share the forest floor with mosses and fallen alder and maple leaves

We drove to a favorite mushroom gathering place where we have picked chanterelles for years, which shall, of course, remain a secret, because we mushroom gatherers are like that. It is a tiny place under an old hemlock in a second-growth forest. It is hard to get to, off a steep embankment, so most mushroom pickers don’t know about it. There we have reliably harvested a few Yellow Chanterelle mushrooms for years, but never enough for a feast, unless we supplemented the harvest with a pound of chanterelles gathered from the Costco produce refrigerator. This year we gathered a few more than usual, then decided to spend some time looking outside of our normal favored place.

The forest was alive with mushrooms in bright scarlet, orange, and yellow hues, all of which glowed against the mossy forest floor. Before long, we found a small concentration of Yellow Chanterelles, and harvested several pounds of them. These are distinctive mushrooms, shaped like golden flutes; they have a mild earthy aroma with subtle spicy undertones. We also found a few Plush Purple Pig’s Ears, which is another kind of chanterelle, and took some of those to try. We went away happy, having gathered enough fungal reproductive organs for several meals.

After cutting this chanterelle, I laid it on the forest floor to illustrate the graceful lines of the ridges on the underside

This is what a salamander sees when it looks up at a chanterelle

The next weekend we went back, and ventured further into the forest. This time we really hit the jackpot, coming away with about ten pounds of fungal gold. The only reason we stopped gathering is that gluttony is a sin. Otherwise, we would have stayed until dark and doubled our fortune.

It was a great year for Yellow Chanterelles; here Karen is demonstrating how we cut them off far down on the stalk

This is a particularly beautiful specimen

After a couple of hours, we had picked about ten pounds of chanterelles; this photograph shows about a third of the harvest

At home, we spread the chanterelles out on towels to dry them a bit, which helps keep them from molding; then we refrigerate them until we need them for cooking

Here I am cooking Plush Purple Pig’s Ear mushrooms, as I do chanterelles, by sauteing them in butter

When it comes to Yellow Chanterelles, I keep the cooking simple. I chop them up, not too coarse and not too fine, but like Goldilocks, “just right,” then put them in a hot cast iron skillet with butter, adding a bit of salt and pepper. Then I sautee them until most of the moisture has evaporated out, and they’ve browned nicely and gotten a bit crisp on the thin edges. Some people like them moister; some drier. Then I serve them on lightly browned toast, not too toasty-crunchy, which serves as a carrier for the mushroom flavor without overwhelming it.

Beef is also a good accompaniment, but the mushroom flavor is delicate and good beef can shove the chanterelle flavor aside. Sour cream mixed into the chanterelle and butter combo is also good, but my favorite is just plain butter. However, now we have so many chanterelles that I am going to try some recipes I haven’t used since 1991, which was another great mushroom year. Mushroom pie and mushroom stew and mushrooms with eggs and whatever else I can come up with will be on the menu.

While looking for chanterelles, I became preoccupied by photographing mushrooms of all sorts, which left Karen to do most of the harvesting. Here, I show a scarlet coral mushroom.

This Woolly Chanterelle–a different species than the Yellow Chanterelle–is iffy for eating, and I won’t try it because of potential liver toxicity, though one classic mushroom book author said it was among the best mushrooms he had ever eaten.

When the Woolly Chanterelle starts growing, it looks like something we might imagine from another planet

An orange coral mushroom with a Douglas Fir soaring above

The next day:

As I write this, sitting on a ferry crossing Puget Sound away from Seattle, I can still smell the essence of mushrooms from the spores lodged in my nostrils. Since it was a great mushroom year, we decided to go to the Wild Mushroom Show in Seattle, hoping to learn a few new wild mushrooms. This annual event, organized by the Puget Sound Mycological Society, attracted thousands of people this year to The Mountaineers building at Magnuson Park. The place was packed with people in this bumper mushroom year. And the scent of mushrooms hung heavily in the air in that exhibit hall; I found it overwhelming, others probably thought it was ambrosia.

The highlight of the event is a grand display of live mushrooms, organized according to their taxonomy, and identifying whether the mushrooms are poisonous, edible, or somewhere in between, using the three colors of a stoplight. Visitors can sniff and look and photograph–but not poke or prod the delicate creatures. I learned what legendary Matsutake mushrooms look and smell like (fish, and the ocean, in a good way).

Live mushroom display at the Wild Mushroom Show in Seattle

Karen checking out the amanitas; the red tag color indicates poison

Lobster Mushroom is actually a parasite that takes over another kind of fungus; I’ve never eaten it, or even seen it in the woods, but it is purportedly delicious, with a meaty texture

Cauliflower Mushroom is another one I’ve been looking for in the forest, but haven’t found

There is also a cooking area set up so that people can sample wild mushrooms prepared by great cooks. I tasted a mushroom desert soup made with Matsutake and Chanterelle mushrooms, with coconut milk, and tried another way of spicing Chanterelles with soy sauce–both dishes prepared by gourmet mushroom chefs.

At the show I also purchased a new book by author Langdon Cook, titled The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America. I’ve just started reading the book, so I can’t give a full review, but the first part of the book I’ve read is terrific. Langdon Cook embedded himself in the culture of professional mushroom pickers, who travel around the West and up into Alaska, harvesting mushrooms for the international gourmet trade.

This is a secretive culture that remains on the edges of society; members of the culture camp out and spend their lives in the field searching for morels, chanterelles, and other wonderful mushrooms in the damp, old-growth forests. In the introduction to the book, the author describes a surreptitious foray into Mt. Rainier National Park with a picker who hoped to get two hundred pounds of lobster mushrooms in a day. He only got a hundred pounds, but then had to hide his bounty far from his beater car, and pull up after dark to quickly load the bags of lobsters into the car–while watching carefully for park rangers.

I was interested in the culture of the professional pickers after seeing so many of them camped early this summer near a forest fire burn from last year. There is a species of morel, known as the Fire Morel, that pops up out of the ashes the year after a fire, and these mushrooms are worth a fortune. Karen and I gathered about a pound of them, but the professionals get hundreds and thousands of pounds. I saw them priced at Seattle’s Pike Place Market this spring for $60 a pound.

Lovely Yellow Chanterelles on display with other species

The boletes are a favorite prize of mushroom hunters, but I don’t yet feel confident enough to properly identify them. As with many groups of mushrooms, some species of boletes are edible, and some are poisonous.

Another view of amanitas and other gilled mushrooms

Mushrooms are both big business and a fun tradition here in the Pacific Northwest. I hope to be out in the damp woods again this weekend.

Remember, mushrooms can also be deadly poisonous, with the toxins in some species quickly doing irreparable liver damage, so it is essential to know what you’re doing. If you want to pick mushrooms, it is good to go into the field repeatedly with an expert. A mushroom identification class would also be a good way to start. Either way, you should purchase a good mushroom field guide that has recent information about toxicity. True story: several years ago I was jogging on a trail near the town where I live, and I saw a lot of orange, gilled mushrooms. The problem was, at that point I did not jog with my eyeglasses on, and I really couldn’t see what I was picking. When I got home and showed them to my wife, she immediately saw that they weren’t chanterelles. So, wear your glasses.

Another possibility is getting lost in the woods; it is all too easy to keep your eyes glued to the ground, and oblivious to how far you’ve come. I don’t recommend going out alone: one elderly and expert mushroom picker disappeared in the Cascade Mountains this year, and searchers never found a trace of her.

But, for all my warnings, don’t let fear intimidate you: mushroom hunting is fun and is safe, once you know the essentials of identification and take precautions not to get lost in the forest.

A bumper sticker seen at the Seattle Wild Mushroom Show

To see my web site, which includes photographic prints for sale, please go to LeeRentz.com (just ask to email you a small version of a particular photograph you like if you can’t find it on the site; my website is not up to date). 

To see thousands of my photographs in large file sizes for use in magazines or other printed materials or electronic media, go to my PhotoShelter Website or go to my Flickr Photostream.

If you have any good mushroom recipes to share, please feel free to add them in the comments section!

OLYMPIC NATIONAL FOREST: Hiking the Upper Dungeness Trail on Father’s Day Weekend

The Dungeness River rushing through the forest

Our weekend backpacking trip led into Olympic National Forest, located on the Olympic Peninsula west of Seattle. This is a lush place, with mosses and every shade of green, as well as a river tinted aqua with glacial flour. It is also a place of silence, where the occasional sounds are the rushing of the river and the dreamlike songs of Hermit Thrushes high in the towering Western Hemlocks and Douglas Firs.

Our hike took us about three miles in, where we set up our tent at Camp Handy. The next morning, we hiked up 1,800 vertical feet to Boulder Camp, then later hiked back down to camp, packed up, and hiked out. Rather that give a sight-by-sight account of the trail, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Giant Western Hemlocks tower above the Upper Dungeness Trail

I would, however, like to give a shout out to all the Dads who took their families backpacking on Father’s Day weekend. At Camp Handy, there were four other groups in addition to Karen and me. One was a Dad with a teenage daughter, who stopped and chatted with me about where his daughter could learn photography. The second were two men with four young daughters. The third were two men with two young sons. And the fourth was a father with a pre-teen daughter.

This was wonderful that all these Dads were teaching their daughters and sons about backpacking in a beautiful place. All these kids would have come away with new skills and a healthy attitude about experiencing the great outdoors.

I think back to my own father, and all the weekends he spent on Boy Scout trips with his three sons. He was a scoutmaster for several years, and he influenced scores of boys with his interest in nature and his leadership. Thanks Dad: wherever in heaven you are!

And a hearty thanks to all the Dads we saw bringing their children into the wilderness!

Blooming Pacific Rhododendrons line the trail; these are as elegant as the garden varieties that flower so beautifully in the Pacific Northwest

These aren’t rolling stones, because they’ve gathered a great deal of moss

Boulder Shelter is located in a place where giant boulders have tumbled down from the cliffs above (not seen in this picture) and where avalanches have repeatedly mowed down a wide path of trees. It must be a place of uneasy sleep.

In Boulder Shelter: a riff on the old Rolling Stones tune, and an unhappy lady hiker!

Karen led in the making of snowman “Boulder Bob”

A rustic log bridge using a giant Olympic Peninsula tree spans the Dungeness

Oak Ferns all turned at precisely the right angle to the available light–like the precision solar collectors that they are

Avalanche path below Boulder Camp, with Mt. Mystery and Mt. Deception distant in the upper picture

The shape of the leaves echoes the shape of the rapids, at least to my eye

Slime mold Leocarpus fragilis growing on the forest floor among hemlock needles; these little yellow sacs will eventually turn brown, crack open like eggs, and release the spores that bring more little slime molds

Green mosses and the bluish wood rot produced by Fairy Barf lichen (lots of little chunks, you know) on an old log

Shelter at Camp Handy; good for those many days of incessant dripping on the Olympic Peninsula

Looking out from the Camp Handy shelter across the meadow to the willows lining the Dungeness River

Shooting Stars were in full and glorious bloom

Vanillaleaf in bloom; this lovely ground cover is said to have a strong vanilla scent when it dries out; alas, my nose cannot detect this supposedly delicious fragrance

Western White Pine

Emerging leaves of Cow-parsnip

The Dungeness River plunges rapidly, and with beauty, from the Olympic Mountains toward its desired union with the sea

Royal Creek rushes down from Royal Basin, where we’ve had some wonderful alpine experiences in the Olympics

The trail leads through the beautiful forest between Camp Handy and the trailhead

To see my web site, which includes photographic prints for sale, please go to LeeRentz.com (just ask me to email you a small version of a particular photograph you like if you can’t find it on the site; my website is not up to date). 

To see thousands of my photographs in large file sizes for use in magazines or other printed materials or electronic media, go to my PhotoShelter Website.