Rock stars

Although I’m writing from Michigan, time away from work means time to catch up on my reporting.

It was only two weeks ago that I was in Bellingham, Wash., visiting daughter Meghan and fiancé Eric.  It was a quick trip over a few days – a plane to Seattle, then the short drive north. 

I’m not sure why I’ve had this traveler’s itch lately.  But itching it … fly fishing last month with Zach in Colorado and now traveling to our nation’s most northwestern corner … felt mighty good.

The hike begins.

You see, there was a task at hand.  Meghan, who is doing graduate work in geology at Western Washington University, is embarking on a research project.

At its core, the job is to monitor the movement of rocks and bluffs along the shore of the Cherry Point Aquatic Reserve north of Bellingham. 

And here’s the remarkable part:  Meghan will do it by collecting a family of rocks, drilling tiny holes in them, inserting in each a tiny device, then sealing them back up.  On the three bluffs, meanwhile, she’ll fix three permanent markers – a giant “X” on each hill, essentially – from which she can measure shifts in the bluffs’ walls. 

She will monitor this movement by using a massive LIDAR machine – a box-like unit that employs laser methods to track distance.  I imagine something akin to the fiery rays that emerged from the Ark of the Covenant in Indiana Jones’ first movie.  But I trust it’s safer than that. ("Don't look!")

This is serious business, though. Such studies of shore movement tie into the current debate about global warming, rising oceans and coastal erosion.

Eric has his own research project … at Mount Baker, the towering volcano-formed mountain east of Bellingham.  He reports that his efforts have been slowed by this year’s unusually deep snows, which have yet to melt.

So this weekend we’ll focus on Meghan’s.  In our next visit, next month, we’ll visit Mount Baker.

To the beach!

So I flew in Thursday night, and Friday morning the three of us were up early … grabbing donuts and coffee at Rocket Donuts, then driving Meghan’s Jeep north to the Whitehorn Point.

We were to hike in to the Point, round up the rocks, pack them in backpacks, then hike them out and eventually deliver them to the geology building at WWU.  That’s where the drilling would be done.

Any hike into Washington woods is a step into a lush, verdant world of giant ferns, thick, moss-laden trees and damp coolness.  Slugs of various varieties inch across the path leaving their telltale trail of stickiness behind.  Birds chirp rather than sing, it seems,  their calls muffled by the dense forest.

The hike in was quick.  The last 50 yards took us down a steep hill where we spilled out of the green to the beach below.

And there we saw the objects of Meghan’s affection: Rocks … a bumpy blanket  stretching north and south.  And not just small guys but big ones, too. Some emerged  from the beach like surfacing whales; others towered in water just yards from our reach.

Rocks everywhere!

We pulled off our packs, and Meghan gave us instructions.

“We want them no smaller than 2 millimeters in length or width, and no larger than 15,” she said.  “And get different sizes.  We don’t want them all the same size.”

Oh, and one other important point:  Don’t grab the most interesting or attractive, even though that’s your tendency, she said.  After all, the rocks will return to the beach at some point with their devices enclosed.  You don’t want one or two of them snapped up by a hiker and carted off to, say, Portland, San Francisco or, heaven forbid, New York City.

Decisions, decisions!

We made quick work of the collecting, and Meghan fine-tuned our catch by splitting them into three groups – small, medium and large – and casting out those she deemed less suitable.

We packed them in our packs, but before hiking out we walked the beach some.  Much as a Washington woods teems with life, so do its beaches.  The low tide revealed sea anemones clinging to rocks. Gulls flew overhead. Seals were not far away.

One of Meghan's bluffs.

We visited Meghan’s three bluffs, and she explained the challenge of monitoring their  movement.  How do you fix a permanent marker on something ever-shifting? But that’s for her to work out, she said, and will probably involve conversations with the land owners up above.

We grabbed our packs, now heavy with the chosen rocks, and headed back, arriving safely at WWU. There we deposited the rocks.

This wouldn’t be our only foray into nature this weekend.  Hardly.  That afternoon, we also visited Deception Pass, the blue-green channel of seawater whose entry is guarded by Deception Island.

Deception Island.

If you recall, I wrote about Meghan’s idea of holding their upcoming wedding on Deception Island.  It’s a fine idea, assuming a flotilla and wet suits are in order.

But we found an intriguing alternative. We hiked up Bowman Hill and discovered an isolated beach within walking distance from a parking lot.  Deception Pass, with its splendid bridge, lies to the west; Deception Island is a sentry to the west.

Whether that will be the location for the big event requires more assessment

Meghan tells of a place for the wedding; Eric looks!

Meantime, we circled along the cliffs, emerald blue waters always within eyesight.  Far below we could see scuba divers scouting the islands, and a few boats leaving v-shaped wakes at their sterns.  And at the western-most side of the hill, we heard a sharp “Slap!”  echo off the bluff. Then another.

“Slap!”

It was a mystery noise, until we saw two seals at play, their tails slamming the water, sending the hard sound bouncing off the waves.

It was a good day: rocks and research in the morning, wedding planning in the afternoon.

Tomorrow we would do some serious hiking, up – very much up – the Pacific Northwest Trail to Oyster Dome. 

Happily, I lived to tell about it.

To see photos of this day’s trip, click here for the rock party, and click here for the walk near Deception Pass.. Watch the blog for a second post soon: Tales from Oyster Dome: “Are we there yet?!”