Subject: [Tweeters] Searching For Gold
Date: Sat Nov 24 13:34:50 PST 2018
From: Jeff Gibson - gibsondesign15 at gmail.com

On Monday I left Port Townsend : Searching for gold.

Actually gold found me, along hwy 101 on the way to Sequim to do an errand,
where I was surprised and pleased to find bright gold in them thar hills
above the road. Cottonwood gold.

Now Port Townsend has some fine gold things going on also, but Sequim was a
bit brighter in the gold department, tree-wise that is. Sort of a amateur
color connoisseur I started noticing somewhat brighter colors the farther I
got from PT. The thimbleberry's, salmonberry's, willows, etc all noticeably
brighter. Finally, nearing Sequim many real bright cottonwoods. Even the
Scoulers Willows and other willows were a brighter hue than in PT. Sequim
is so quirky.

The real reason for my being in Sequim was to pick up my resurrected iphone
which died in a horrible work accident (I sat on it while crawling around
on a boat). I'm kinda slow to transfer to the digital world, so don't have
a digital SLR camera - I have depended on my iphone camera which is quite
good for most of my needs. It even works well for bird photography - as
long as the bird is dead or otherwise available for close-ups.

Back in October 2017 I got some great photos of bright gold Cottonwoods
lining the Dungeness River, so I thought I'd check out that scene. Well,
the Cottonwood were mostly done there, but did provide some cool fallen
leaves. A Great Blue Heron was lurking about on the river. A river,
something else you won't find in Port Townsend. As I was leaving the River
Bridge Park a big Vee of funny-sounding geese flew over heading West;
roughly 80 White-fronted Geese, a bit late for so many I thought.

Back in Port Townsend, I thought I may have been giving short shrift to PT
with my color comments, so I searched around town awhile lookin' for bright
gold and found some. For one thing, there are darn few cottonwoods in this
town, there being a dearth of surface water around here. But I found a few
- fairly bright. Then I went to Chetzemoka Park, home of the Mother Of All
PT Cottonwoods - a huge ol' thing, a huge specimen with a trunk near 6' in
diameter, growing straight up to at least 100' tall or so. You can see it
all the way from Pt. Wilson; a truly impressive vegetable, which was going
a not so bright gold. I suppose it's achieving it's great size by slurping
on spring there.

Now that I've enjoyed real bright gold elsewhere, the subtler golds of PT
seem just fine. Some pretty bright really- lots of willows are.

In my search for gold I did find some yellow here in town. First the
Western Meadowlark down at Pt, Wilson toodling away. Thanks to Hank
Heiberg's video of this bird recently posted, I no longer have to go out
there to listen to it. But I probably will anyhow. And nearing the last
cottonwood on my search, down on the Larry Scott Trail, I noted 8 or so
Goldfinches, which were gold in name only since they were in winter drab
clothing.Some will be yellow one day, and not real gold which is good since
they'd be too heavy to get off the ground.

What is gold the color anyhoo? It's sorta an orange - yellow. In the
hedgerow across the street a willow (sp. unknown) is turning a respectable
gold, while right next to it a Douglas Hawthorne is turning an orange-red,
brighter than I've ever seen it, in a sorta subtle way. You get to dance
with the one your'e looking at, so to speak. Watch the thorns.

Jeff Gibson
miner
Port Townsend, WA
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