The weeks news. A proud mamma, and digging up fossils
It’s been an interesting week up here on the mountain. My little slice of heaven in the great northwest.
The lovely wife has had a busy week driving the after school program here. She doesn’t normally do an entire week’s worth of activity runs, but this year ,she volunteered for the entire week. Monday turned out to be a bust, as it was raining, and the group was supposed to go to the nearby state park. Tuesday, while she was gone, our mamma moose brought her week-old calf right up to our porch, as if proud mamma wanted to show her new babe off to me. Unfortunately, the dogs got a whiff of moose, started barking, and scared her. She took her youngling down to the lower lot where the mineral licks are, then moved on from there. Her and her calf looked healthy, so another generation will grow up near the cabin. Our Dusky Flycatchers are back, and I think we have two pairs this year. One pair seems to have built their nest in the log shed, while the other pair has built theirs in the eves of the porch roof, once again. Their first attempt was blown out by the wind and rain, but they started another one soon after, and I think there might be eggs in it already. The cycle repeats itself once more in both beast and bird.
I think every young boy, as well as a few girls, wants to be paleontologists when they are in grade school, and I was no exception. We lived in Castine, Maine, at the time, and I attended a four-room schoolhouse, with two grades to a classroom. I drew dinosaurs on everything, as did a few of my classmates. My obsession even went so far that my parents bought me a four foot tall T-Rex skeleton made from Styrofoam, one Christmas; I believe the year was 1968, and I would have been seven at the time. I used that T-Rex in the next summer’s 4th of July parade, calling him the first patriot, (I’m pretty sure my mom had something to do with that) and even got my picture in the local paper. And since then, my love for old fossils has never really abated.
Every year, one of the summer programs for the kids goes to a local place not far from us called the Fossil Bowl, where they can dig up 15 million-year-old fossils of leaves, and the occasional fish, from the clay shale. I had been wanting to go since I found out about the place, but every year, something has prevented me from tagging along. Well, since this is our last year here, I managed to put everything else aside and follow. From what the guy giving the kids a lesson said, there was a lake in this spot 15 million-years-ago, created when a trench volcano erupted damming off a river. With all the rain we have had, the place was a muddy mess, and everyone was coated in mud by the time the teachers called a halt. The kids, being very young, were pretty much covered in the stuff, while the lovely wife and I had some up to around our knees. A few times, I wished I had worn my boots instead of my loafers, as the mud tried more than once to remove them from my feet. Two of the kids did find fish fossils, but myself and the rest found only leaves. The lovely wife and I wrapped ours up as best we could in newspaper where they need to dry for at least two months, then we will keep the best of them for display later on. I felt like a kid again, my dream of digging up old bones coming true, even though the “bones” were only those of leaves. I would like to try my luck once more before the summer is over, and after it drys out a lot more. Who knows, maybe I will hook a fish fossil.
That is all the news for the week, bye for now.
