Before making the drive back to Seattle, we stopped at Fairholme for a last swim and sketch. Tara and Jack climbed into a gargantuan maple and hung out up there for half an hour. Tara said she could spend the rest of her life in that tree. But all too soon it was time to say our last good-byes and start the long journey home.
So many types of lichen at Olympic National Park! These ones were just on the ground near where I sat.
One of the camp instructors was Debby Kaspari, who encouraged us to draw birds FAST without looking at the page, then clean up and correct our initial blind gesture sketch.
The temperate rainforest of Olympic National Park is extremely rich in bryophyte species. I was happy to find one ‘sporing’, because it’s a bit late in the year for most of them to be reproducing.
The last full day of the nature journal retreat was perhaps the most thrilling. Some of us spent about an hour watching a river otter go through a range of behaviours, including swimming, catching a fish and eating it, rolling around on its back on the sand, scratching, clearing its throat (ack! ack!), and pooping. This last one was preceded by a vigorous up-and-down bouncing of its rear end, which was kinda hilarious.
Back at the parking lot, another nature show—a great horned owl posed for us for fifteen minutes before flying off. I was sitting on a nearby slope eating my lunch, and my binoculars were under the tree. Retrieving them would have risked spooking the owl, so I just sketched the gestures I could see with my naked eyes. It really felt special to have this huge nocturnal bird clearly visible in the day time.
In the afternoon we were at yet another scenic location. I goshed my way down to the lagoon, checking out all the pollinators on the poppies. Continuing the insect theme later, I had the chance to draw a robber fly. It was big, maybe 4cm long. Eventually it took off, and as it zoomed past me, it dropped a poop onto my journal, right beside the sketch! What are the chances? Exciting stuff!
Thursday found us at Chimney Rock, where we first observed juvenile harbor seals down by the lifeboat station. They were particularly adorable, with their big black eyes and wiry eyebrows. Then we climbed up to the highest point of the headland, where most folks sketched the view, or the wildflowers, or the seabirds … but I somehow used all of the allotted time drawing a rock.
Back at the ranch, Roseann showed us how to make wild watercolour paint from local dirt, and Jack gave us some instruction on drawing mammals, before we headed out again for sunset at Drake’s Estero, where once again I ignored the big picture and instead focused on the golden dung flies. Another full and happy day!
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