Monday, June 9th

...This is when Erin gets mad. And I find I need this. I need someone to be mad with. As we trudge through this wetland area, tributaries spitting out from below us, connecting to a network of water, we stop to take it in at the base of an enormous Big-leaf maple, where the surveyor has also taken advantage of solid ground to leave a Palomar stake with its insidious orange blaze waving like a victory flag. As we make it across the wetland, all told the size of a football field and begin to walk up another hillside of second-growth forest, Erin starts talking strategy. We break at a tributary of Rod Creek, sitting uphill and across from a five hundred foot drop into the creek, too steep for even the native streamside brush to grow. We clamor up the bank and within another quarter mile, suddenly I get that feeling again. Systems clear, we are back in old-growth. I am discombobulated by the change. My understanding was the entire subwatershed had been clearcut and was in need of "restorative" logging to get it back to snuff. We walked up and into a depression of the forest, another wetland...