This is how the Puget Sound looks in wintertime - overcast, with strong possibilities of rain. We didn't let it bother us, and headed out for a hike yesterday.
One learns to carry rain-gear, water boots, hiking boots, everything, so that any option is available. We parked the car at a trailhead, near Woodard Bay.
This bay is being restored by the Washington Department of Natural Resources Natural Areas Program. There are bulkheads along the shoreline that have increased beach erosion and sediment scour, causing damage to the local habitat. In addition, bulkheads can prevent the supply of gravel and sand from reaching neighboring beaches.
Canoeing is restricted this time of year because it is a protected habitat for seals and shorebirds
. (One of our first paddles was in this bay several years ago...we didn't realize it was restricted water, and a helicopter came out looking for us! We got out of there fast!) I saw a little newt (salamander) in rotting cedar chips on the trail. It was a tiny looking thing, brown, with an orange belly. That warns predators that it is poisonous. They are carnivores - eating slugs and worms, and they have the most delicate orange fingers. These newts excrete a poison on their skin that is harmful to predators, like mice.
There were clam shells along a road, away from the water, and we watched the crows pick up the shells and drop them on the pavement, causing them to crack open.
Just a note - the white berrys above(White Coralberry) we call snowberries. When Meriweather Lewis collected the Pacific Slope Snowberry during the Lewis & Clark Expedition, he brought living specimens to Thomas Jefferson. He cultivated it successfully, and soon European cultivators were making it available to continental gardeners. The berries contain two hard seeds each, so when birds ate snowberries then pooped in the forest, Snowberry was assured of becoming naturalized in France, England & many parts of Europe.
When we were kids, we'd put them on the road and pop them with our boot. They make a loud cracking sound. The ones here were dripping with raindrops.
D.H. Lawrence wrote about Snowberries:
"Since I lost you, my darling, the sky has come near,And I am of it, the small sharp stars are quite near,
The white moon going among them
like a white bird among snowberries,
And the sound of her gently
rustling in heaven like a bird I hear."
