Four Corners U.S.A. 2012 - Part Two

We drove across part of the Navajo Nation to get to Hovenweep National Monument, definitely off the beaten path and definitely worth the effort. Here, the ancestral Puebloans did not create cliff dwellings, but whole towns on canyon rims. Sleeping Ute Mountain in the distance is an important landmark.

Skilled masons built Hovenweep.

We camped along the San Juan River near Bluff, Utah - an area we will definitely return to some day.

Up onto Cedar Mesa and Natural Bridges National Monument. By this point of the trip we were already on the return trajectory, but I felt like I never wanted to leave those desert canyons.

Descending into the paradise of White Canyon on our other favorite trail of the trip - Sipapu Bridge in Natural Bridges National Monument.

Sipapu Bridge

In White Canyon

Wandering the canyon bottom

We said goodbye-for-now to desert ratting in Capitol Reef National Park.

Four Corners U.S.A. 2012 - Part One

Frank and I chiseled out three weeks of October to take our camping rig - dubbed "Truck-a-mo" - to the Four Corners region: where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet in a perfect cross.

As often happens with us, our grand expectations of what territory we would cover shrunk, as we realized that to really absorb the country we travelled through, we would need to see less to see more. Know what I mean?

So we mostly explored southeastern Utah.

Anyway, it has taken me this long to post pictures from the trip, and I have tried to be ruthless in my editing in order to select only the photos that tell the story. Frank has all the photos with me in them, so you will need to bug him about it if you want to see them.

We began by exploring Arches National Park.

Notice the guy atop the arch.

The view from our campsite along the Colorado River.

This road was built by uranium miners.

Island in the Sky District, Canyonlands National Park

A campsite on BLM lands near the Needles District of Canyonlands

The trails were challenging, varied and picturesque. One of our two favorite trails - this one in the Needles District.

Needles District

Needles District

We went to Mesa Verde National Park and learned as much about the ancestral Puebloans as we could absorb. Ask me about kivas.

A reconstructed kiva at Balcony House - sans roof.

A friendly national park ranger took our picture at Spruce Tree House.

(To be continued ...)

A piece of western history rolls into Winthrop

Kim Kenney at home in Winthrop with his new, historic sheep camp.

(This story originally appeared in the Sept. 5 issue of The Methow Valley News.)

Maybe it’s memories of a childhood running around the high desert of northern Nevada. Maybe it’s the photos and stories of his grandfather’s sheep camp in the Colorado mountains. Perhaps it’s the urge to cleanse himself of a life of extravagance and corporate excess.

It is most likely all of these factors, combined with an inquisitive mind and love of western history, that drove Kim Kenney on a quest for his very own bona fide sheep camp - a portable home that in this case can be dated back to 1932, according to its new owner.

Kenney returned to Winthrop recently after a five-day, 960-mile journey to Kinnear, Wyo. to purchase the sheep camp, stopping over in Sheridan to pick up a canvas range tent on the way.

“It’s called a sheep camp [not camper or trailer] because everything a sheep herder needed for summer on the range would have been inside,” Kenney said.

            

He had been looking for a sheep camp for a long time, he said, and finally found his after a worldwide search on craigslist.

            

Upon meeting the camp’s prior owner, Matt Gustin, in Wyoming, Kenney realized he had known Gustin's mother, Ann, when they were children at a one-room schoolhouse of 18 pupils in Denio, Nev., around 1960.

            

“How strange is it that after childhood in the middle of nowhere, we meet up again in Wyoming because of an old sheep camp,” he marveled.

A range tent would have been part of any working sheep camp. 

Still a working camp

Both Gustin, who had owned the camp for three years, and the original owners had been “interested in maintaining the heritage of this vehicle,” Kenney said.

             

It was “a working camp” on the Lazy H X-Bar Ranch near Sheridan Wyo., until being sold in an estate auction three years ago, Kenney said. The camp was listed on estate sale documents at the time, but unavailable for viewing because it was still in use up on the range, he added.

            

Based on his research on sheep camps and how they were used around the west, Kenney believes that it - along with a commissary wagon loaded with supplies - would have been towed into the high country every summer to provide mobile housing for a sheepherder, probably of Basque origin.

            

Kenney carries a circa 1900 photograph of his own grandfather’s horse-drawn sheep wagon, “the original recreational vehicle,” he quipped.

            

His grandfather, Ira Wood, was “steeped in sheep culture,” that the family had brought with them from England, Kenney said. Grandfather Wood homesteaded near Craig, Colo., and left his wife and three children most of every summer to herd sheep in the mountains. “It was a rough way to make a living.” 

            

Kenney’s camp has the loaf-shaped domed roof and white exterior that is standard for what he calls “the second generation” of camps that were built after the turn of the century. It is not plumbed or wired, but has a two-burner cast iron wood stove that provides both heat and a cooking surface.

Knotty pine and a ranch brand add to the camp's aura of history.            

The interior is completely finished in wood, with ample windows and a skylight to brighten the space.

            

The camp is loaded with built-in drawers and cabinets for storage. A platform bed - spread with a woven wool blanket from Methow Valley Woolens - is marked with the Lazy H X-Bar brand; beneath the bed is a slide-out table, more storage, and an emergency exit hatch in case of fire.

            

Kenney plans to do some work on the camp, including putting vintage Model A wheels on the single axle, replacing the modern plastic skylight with one of glass, and retrimming the exterior with scrap barn wood offered to him from the Shafer Museum.

            

Essentially, he said, the camp is “in perfect working order” and “towed beautifully at 60 miles per hour” behind his pickup from Wyoming to Winthrop.

            

The single-axle trailer was a big selling point for Kenney because many of the classic sheep camps on the market still come with four wheels - wagon style - and “wag if you go down the road very fast. It’s hard to find one that can be trailered at highway speed,” he said.

A different life            

The sheep camp attracts a crowd wherever he takes it, said Kenney. “I knew it would be an item of interest to people, but it’s really more than I expected,” he added.

            

On the trip home from Wyoming, Kenney found himself camped among million-dollar RVs at Yellowstone National Park. “Somebody [from one of those RVs] said, ‘I think you are having more fun than we are,’” he recalls.

            

Kenney, whose handlebar mustache and broad straw hat belie his “former life of extraordinary opulence,” said that purchasing the sheep camp is part of a new focus on the non-material, spiritual meaning of life.

            

He moved to Winthrop eight years ago to become the full-time caregiver of his parents, Mary and Frank Kenney.

            

Before that he had a varied career, investigating waste, fraud and abuse at the Seattle office of the U.S. Government Accountability Office during the Reagan administration; as a CPA at Price Waterhouse; as a management consultant under three different Washington governors; and working for Craig McCaw - the Seattle-based cellular telephone pioneer - who sent Kenney to Bogotá, Colombia in the early 1990s to provide expertise to billionaire Julio Mario Santo Domingo and set up the Celumóvil company.

            

During his time in Colombia he got to know many powerful people including the Colombian president, and Ingrid Betancourt, the high-profile presidential candidate who was held captive by the FARC for over six years. The U.S. State Department advised Kenney “not to get taken,” he said.

            

“I had a penthouse apartment, armed drivers, helicopter transport, private jets - I was treated like a prince,” said Kenney of his time in Bogotá. “After years of living that way, I decided it wasn’t all that fulfilling.”

            

Having “made the decision to scrap that life,” Kenney has been shedding material and spiritual burdens in Winthrop while “developing a sense of humor” and perspective around caring for his aging parents.

            

“I have gotten to enjoy the fine things in life,” Kenney said. “I no longer want to have my life revolving around material possessions. If I have nothing left but this sheep camp in my elder years, I’ll be completely happy.”

Rapt for raptors

Last night (Aug. 7) Frank and I and perhaps 200 other folks enjoyed the Methow Conservancy's First Tuesday program on a warm evening in Winthrop's Mack Lloyd Park.

Jessica Graham from Washington State University's Raptor Club brought three beautiful live raptors all the way to Winthrop  from Pullman (about 5 hours' drive away) in order to educate, entertain, and help people develop an interest in these magnificent birds.

Raptors are birds that "think with their feet," said Graham. They are birds of prey - owls, hawks, falcons and eagles - that rely on their talons to survive.

Graham brought three birds with her for the program: an American kestrel, a northern harrier, and a snowy owl.

Any bird that remains in residence at the WSU Raptor Club is there because it cannot be rehabilitated back to the wild, generally because it cannot fly, Graham said.

"We are an educational club, not a rehabilitation group," said Graham. Birds that may be rehabilitated would go to an organization that specializes in that work.

The club has 16 resident birds of a variety of species, and many of them travel for presentations to groups like ours.

"Some of our birds will ham it up a little," Graham said. "They love having their pictures taken."

The first and smallest bird - about the size of a robin - that came out of its carrier was Everett, a male American kestrel.

Everett's beautiful blue/gray, white and russet markings are the hallmarks of the male kestrel, who "tend to be a little prettier than the females," Graham said. Kestrels are a sexually dimorphic species, which means that the males and females look different. In some other bird species only a DNA test can verify an individual's gender.

Micah, the two-year-old northern harrier, was out next.

Micah's left wing had been amputated because when he was around six weeks old he was hit by a wheat farmer's combine. Harriers are a ground nesting species, so babies like Micah - who hadn't fledged from the nest yet - are especially vulnerable to farm accidents, Graham said.

Finally we met the largest bird of the evening: Tundra, a 3-pound snowy owl.

Tundra was new to the club, having arrived in the Spokane area with a dislocated shoulder during last winter's irruption of snowy owls. Although normally an arctic species, snowy owls will "irrupt" in certain years; many were spotted around Washington state and locations farther south last winter.

The WSU Raptor Club has 50-75 members who actively work with the birds, Graham said.

The captive birds have considerably longer lifespans than they would in the wild. Because they can't fly, they are fed mice and quail, freshly killed by the club members.

Though the birds have it pretty good, Graham thinks they don't really like their handlers. "These guys tolerate us," she said. "Some birds prefer some people over others."

Hummingbird Science

I was recently invited to observe science in action at a home high in the hills above the Methow Valley. 

I've always been fascinated by hummingbirds; Frank and I refer to the feeder as "hummingbird TV." Consequently, I jumped at the opportunity to see how the little guys are caught, measured and banded.  

Thanks to Mary Morgan and Phil Millam for posting photos last year on Facebook, and for kindly introducing me to Dianne Edmonds so I could photograph this year's study and interview master bander Dan Harville for a Methow Valley News story. 

The following is the text of that story from the June 6 issue.

Valley birds part of international hummingbird study

            The deck of Dianne and Rick Edmonds’ A-frame cabin in the upper, Upper Rendezvous, became hummingbird central last weekend when a team of master banders arrived to continue an annual hummingbird banding study that began in 2009.

Homeowner Rick Edmonds operates the trap under supervision of a master bander.

            Hundreds of hummingbirds are briefly captured from the Edmonds’ deck over a two-day period each year. The birds are lured to a feeder within a net trap and each is gently transferred by hand to its own small flannel bag where it waits to be weighed, measured, banded, and examined for presence of body fat, an egg, or signs of molting. After no more than two minutes “in hand,” each bird is set free to fly away and tidy its tiny rumpled feathers.

Dan Harville examines a male rufous hummingbird while Rick Edmonds observes.

            Master hummingbird bander Dan Harville and Jan, Dan’s wife and data recorder, band hummingbirds under the aegis of the North American Bird Banding Program, jointly administered by the United States Geological Survey and the Canadian Wildlife Service. Harville lives in Edmonds, Wash., and is one of two master hummingbird banders in the state. There are fewer than 100 master bander permits in the whole United States.

            Harville said that the Upper Rendezvous is a good location for hummingbird migration study because there are simply a lot of birds there.

            “Hummingbird migration flows over the land like an ocean,” Harville said. “The birds that you’re seeing are just a small portion of what’s out there.”

Male calliope hummingbird displays iridescent neck feathers. 

            Of the three species of hummingbirds that are generally found in the Methow Valley - calliope, rufous and black-chinned hummingbirds - only the mountain-loving calliope and rufous were captured on Sunday morning up in the Rendezvous, although black-chinned would be observed lower down on the valley floor, and around the Columbia Basin, Harville said. Our local species may migrate as far north as Southeast Alaska in the summer. They winter in Mexico.

            A generally non-migratory population of Anna’s hummingbirds has resided year-round in Western Washington since the mid 1960s, Harville said. They are rarely found east of the Cascades.

            Around 110 birds were captured and released from the Edmonds’ deck during two two-hour sessions on Saturday evening and Sunday morning (May 26 and 27). About 15 to 20 percent of those were already sporting bands, and had returned to the same location where they had been banded previously, Harville said.

Applying the band. Harville said, "It helps to be near sighted."

            The federal Bird Banding Laboratory supplies the tiny, numbered aluminum bands that are placed on captured hummingbirds’ legs, and keeps the master database of records that are gathered around the United States and Canada.

            Harville fashions the bands himself from stamped aluminum strips that he orders from the Bird Banding Laboratory. Hummingbird bands are numbered differently from other bird bands because they are so small. A batch letter - Harville was working with batch “L” - is stamped into the metal followed by five numbers.

            Over the years, four birds banded by Harville have been captured by other banders, one each in Texas, California, Louisiana and Colorado. Harville himself has captured a bird on Whidbey Island that had been banded in New Orleans, and another in Cle Elum that received its band in Colorado.

            He said he had personally banded over 5,000 birds before one was recorded in another location. Now that the figure has doubled to over 10,000 birds banded by Harville, “exchanges” - having one of “his” birds captured by another bander - seem to be happening more often, he said.

            Banding is a necessary part of the study process, and in an experienced person’s hands is safe, Harville said. He admits that it is inherently dangerous to handle the tiny birds; they could be sick or low weight, for example. But after banding 10,000 birds, Harville says with certainty that only one died during the process.

            “It was an immature bird, slow, and struggled constantly during handling,” Harville said.

            Now if a bird struggles, Harville works quickly to band it and let it go without measuring or weighing it.

            “Banders do it because they like birds and want to know more about them. It just doesn’t make sense not to be as careful as possible,” Harville said.

Paint mark prevents handling the same bird twice.

            Each bird that is handled gets a yellow paint dot on top of its head so that if it ends up in the trap again - about half of Sunday’s birds were “retraps” - it is immediately freed so it doesn’t get handled twice. The paint mark might last until the bird molts, which happens right after breeding, Harville said.

            Each captured bird is swaddled in a customized flannel cloth and weighed. An average adult calliope weighs 2.6 grams; a penny is 2.5. The bill length, tail length and wing chord length - distance from the wrist to longest primary feather - are measured.

A stream of air exposes the skin to check for body fat and/or an egg.

            The presence of eggs or body fat - the latter indicating the bird is storing energy for migration - are determined by blowing a stream of air onto the bird’s chest feathers to expose the skin. Age can be determined in the first and second years by the presence of hatch-year feathers and striations on the growing bill.

            Harville figures that one cup of nectar per day feeds 50 to 60 birds. At one busy banding location - Hyak at Snoqualmie Pass - they went through two gallons of nectar one day.

            “Sitting there among the feeders was like being in a bee hive,” he said. “There may have been 10,000 birds at Hyak on that particular day.”

            Because hummingbirds ingest so much water in nectar - many times their body weight per day - they may have the most efficient kidneys of the animal kingdom, Harville said. They also eat bugs - aphids, gnats and small spiders - for protein.

            Hummingbirds in the Methow are breeding now. The adult male leaves as soon as the female is on the nest in mid-June. The female busily brings bugs to her growing hatchlings until they have fledged in mid-July; then she leaves. The young birds eat and store up fat until they start to leave on their southern journey around the middle of August.

            If a banding station elsewhere in the United States or Canada captures a banded bird, the number is reported to the national database so migration patterns can be established. And any person who finds a dead bird with a band can report the finding at reportband.gov, and participate in ongoing research.

Measuring tools dwarf the little hummers.

Sports photographer for the weekend

Presidents Day weekend is a big weekend for the Methow Valley. While it's a three-day weekend for us, many Seattle area schools have the whole week off, so hotels and cabins are full, and several fun sports events keep things interesting.

 I ran around the valley photographing the snow sports (not normally my beat) because the sports editor was over in Tacoma covering the state wrestling championships.

I shot folks getting on the bus for the Tour of the Methow:

Loading up the school bus before a day of skiing.

The Tour of the Methow is a Nordic Club event that celebrates some of the best ski trails in the valley. These folks were taking the bus up to Cub Creek to start a minimum 30-kilometer ski. I met some of them on the trail heading for Winthrop later that afternoon - (when the weather had changed from snowy to warm and sunny) - on the tail end of a 60-K leg. They had been moving, with some rest stops, I'm sure, for around six hours by that time.

Just for the record, I am NOT one of those skiers.

Next, I shot photos of the Snowshoe Softball tournament.

Making a dive for third base.

Snowshoe softball is ALL about the running, diving and fielding.

These teams come back for the tournament every year. Most are from the west side of the mountains, so they are delighted to be getting all snowy.

Second base action

Rad first base woman

The third - and final - fun photo assignment was on Sunday morning at the Doggie Dash. You pretty much can't take a bad photo there. Here are some fun ones:

Some of the costume finalists (after the heats were skied, so I'm going backwards here).

Kristen Smith in roller derby garb with Kurt Meachum as referee.

Kelly Schuh, young winner of Best in Show award. She gets to keep the Golden Poodle statue for the year.

Kelly becomes painfully aware of the hazards of having dogs on the sidelines during her heat.

I love that the dogs get into it as much as the people.