Where on Earth?!

There was no sign or sound of the wind and rain that had vehemently lashed and pounded the hillsides all the day before and well into the late evening.  Alarmed by a power failure in the middle of the night, the dog had awakened us, as Rocky, the stalwart watchdog that he is, would dive for cover when anything made him afraid or nervous.

All was calm and quiet, and the bright white moonlight illuminated the evergreens outside the spacious bedroom windows overhead.  But the moonlight outside seemed almost too white, and in that moment the silence was broken by loud gunshot sounds.

What was going on?

I rushed through the house and out to the deck overlooking the valley, and to my amazement, six inches of snow coated the deck. It quickly became apparent that the moonlight was extra bright because of a surprising and unpredicted late night carpeting of snow.  It also became apparent that the suspected gunshot sounds ringing out were tree branches snapping and entire trees cracking and uprooting to their thunderous demise up and down the valley.

For the rest of the night and into the white daylight the crescendo of tormented trees continued, as the forests in all directions groaned under the heavy wet snowfall that had accumulated in a few short hours.

Branches still were occasionally snapping as Carlin and I slogged down the short driveway to survey the damage.  At the driveway’s apex with the county road our landmark myrtle tree was wrest asunder, with one of its three large trunks smashed onto the road in a spray of dense foliage.  Fortunately, two other main stems were intact down to their massive bole, which I termed my “wall of wood” because it paralleled the road for fully 14 feet and towered higher than a tall man’s height.

It was the myrtle trees that took the biggest hit, partly because they are an evergreen hardwood  and retain their leaves, and because their long heavy trunks lean out over the open road as their upper branches seek out sunlight.  With this freak storm of heavy wet snow, their tentacles let go of the soggy steep banks and they crashed with roots wads reaching skywards, cleaving great holes from the hillsides.

The valley road was a disaster zone, with the uprooted myrtles blocking travel in both directions, and the neighbor’s house and vehicles had disappeared beneath an enormous canopy of freshly fallen green.  From the steep bank above Mike’s house, a giant root wad with six tree trunks tore away in a mini landslide and draped over his roof and front lawn.

Bewildered, Mike approached us and we discussed the storm and his situation.  Luckily, all his windows and the main roof structure remained intact. We both knew the power would be off for days and we were always prepared for such winter events with wood heat and gravity feed water that ran freely out of the hills.  But Mike’s metal chimney pipe lay in the yard and smoke drifted from the hole left in the roof, making his first priority obvious.

Still in shock from the long night of trees falling, Mike was perplexed and did not think it was safe to tackle reattaching the heavy chimney on the slick, snow covered roof.  I nudged him along with the possibility that together we could manage the task, and offered to scale the roof.

With pruning shears handy, I ascended the pitched roof on all fours and tight rope walked along the roof peak to the chimney area.  Unlike frozen and packed snow, the light and fluffy layers proved easier to negotiate than it appeared. After I snipped away the small limbs that left an array of heavier branches, Mike passed up the chainsaw and scrambled up behind it.  Using the sturdiest limbs for support, he sawed off the remaining limbs as I pulled them away, teetering along on the roof peak.

After cutting through the chaotic tangle of limb draping the front porch overhang, we maneuvered the heavy chimney flue up, and onto the gently sloped porch roof.  Once again, Mike propped up in the heavy branches on the main roof at the gaping chimney hole, which still wafted wood smoke as a gentle reminder of the normalcy of the night before.  I heisted the ungainly flue pipe upwards, and Mike stood it up until he had it aligned with the connector slots, and with some deft twisting, the flue was locked into place.

*                     *                       *                    *                     *

By the following week roads had opened up, and with storm damage everywhere in the county, I knew it was a good time to salvage myrtlewood for my carvings.  I also knew it would be a treasure hunt and a search far afield, for not all myrtle is created equally, and most lowland myrtle grows a plain and unimpressive grain.  But the occasional tree, usually at higher elevations, will go wild with deep rich colorations, sharp contrasts and unusual figure, and of course the spectacular wood grain contributes to finer art works.

Warily, I drove over mountain  gravel roads, dodging broken limbs and muddy slide outs, up and over snow covered ridge tops, one with the title of “Hungry Mountain”, and down into the melted out valleys of only the color green. I scouted out the fallen myrtles along these mountain corridors, but I had an idea of my final destination and the possibilities that it might hold.

From two opposite directions the angled ridgelines gradually descended, pinching off the valley floor until they met where the winding river had cut its path.  At this apex where the river canyon formed and before it became surrounded by abrupt cliff walls, a verdant prairie crowded the steep slopes with a maze of creeks that chased the river and turned swamp-like in the wet months of the year. The occasional passerby would never know what sylvan mysteries were present in the imposing myrtle and maple giants that dominated the marshy fringes of the prairie.

Hidden in the soils was a magic mineral mix that infused these myrtles with an extraordinary concentrate of colorful figure.  I knew this from a past experience salvaging wood when the county cleared some of this land to open up meadows.  Lloyd, an ex- logger and my mentor of the myrtle woods, called me about the wood available with one of his pet phrases,  “ It’s enough to make a grown man cry.”  After rushing to the site, he showed me an ancient myrtle tree the cat had scraped up from the forest floor where it had lain for decades, if not centuries, and where the cat blade hit the log, it gleamed like a shiny black shoeshine.  Other myrtles in the same area had yielded a proliferation of tiger stripe, a black streaking on a chocolate brown field of wood.

So here I was again twenty years later, between the river and the marshes, seeking out that magic myrtlewood of unusual color and character that may have been downed by the snow storm.

And there it was; like an elephant carcass of the temperate rain forest, a gigantic tree had crashed across the road.  Its remains were sawed  into sections of immense boles and branching trunks, gnarls and splintered chunks, all pushed aside by the road crews.

With a rush of adrenaline I analyzed the exposed end cuts of the large trunks, and it was enough to “make a grown man cry”.  Bands of gold were interlaced with purple tone designs, alternating with ribbons of red and occasional black layers, all indications of the prime grain colorations that would run throughout the wood.

With two chain saws and the winch on my jeep pickup truck, I went to work, sloshing through a seasonal tributary of Lost Creek and using hillside gravity to my advantage in handling the dense, water logged hardwood. In the shadow of the immense splintered off stump that was once a monarch of the forest, I bucked a 3 foot diameter trunk  into 5 foot lengths, which I then ripped end to end.  These sections and smaller whole logs and random chunks of the larger bole of the tree [where the richest colorations are usually found] were manageable on the chainsaw mill back at the shop.

Three weeks after the dramatic snowfall surprise, I had twenty four  salmon cut out from this prize myrtlewood.  To help prepare for a new edition to be released in time for the next holiday season, the heat of summer will slowly coax out the moisture trapped in the 14” fish, reducing their weight by a third, and when the lacquer finish is finally applied, the colors of these natural wonders will once again leap out.

Myrtlewood Salmon Mural
© Terry Woodall

And so the earth wobbles along on its shaky axis, hurling off its dependents with  unpredictable chaos, and like sharp eyed crows swooping over a corn field, the humble and the proud  pick up the pieces and carry on.

Where on Earth?!  Rock Prairie and Kentuck Inlet

March 2012 in Coos County, Oregon

Where on Earth?!

From the top of the bluffs lining the shore, one could look out over the restless, steel blue waters of the sound to ridges of mountains that receded in the distance and were dominated by one major snow capped peak swelling above the skyline.

To the left, the wide strait makes a sharp, ninety degree corner, and on the corner stands the lighthouse that can sweep its illuminating beam all the way past the San Juan’s to Vancouver Island.  It is around this corner that the orca pods first made their appearance, hugging the rocky coastline and, with their above water antics, entertaining any random viewers.

A young couple passing by the edge of the point were such lucky viewers as a large adult orca fully breached within a stones’s throw of these beach walkers,  which included their barely three year old child and a not so old grandmother in tow.  The awestruck little boy,  in the very beginning stages of speech, shouted out with all the might his young vocal cords could muster, “It’s Huge!”

“They rarely come in this close to the beach here, they almost always pass through on the far side of the sound,” a local marine photographer explained to me.  “These close sightings are quite unusual here, and normally they come through much later in the fall.”

‘Quite Unusual’ he said, and I could not help but fantasize that they were here paging their own art show, for it was the weekend of an annual wildlife and nature art exposition taking place in an exhibit hall within 100 yards of the beachhead.  As a noteworthy feature of this event, a wildlife species successful in the conservation realm was acknowledged each year, and participating artists were encouraged to include this animal in their artworks.

Myrtlewood Orca, 2' x 4' © Terry Woodall

And, you guessed it, the orca was honored as the year’s featured animal.  A large carved orca, stained in black and white orca colors and leaping over a silver gray driftwood wave, greeted visitors in the exhibit hall lobby.  Behind this orca replica was a table with headsets available for any curious listeners.

Connected to the headsets in the exhibit hall were hydro microphones dangling into the waterway from The Marine Science Center dock, which jutted into the sound directly down the beach from the lighthouse.

In the first half hour of the art show opening, the crackling hydrophones activated with unmistakable sing song pings and squeaks.  The orcas were on their way!  The biologists manning the headsets identified the orcas and the “L” pod, and claimed it was the first appearance of orcas in this part of the sound in months.

Throughout the weekend art exhibit, tremors of excitement ebbed and flowed as orcas passed by and were watched from the nearby bluffs by wildlife artists and patrons alike.

Preoccupied with activity in the exhibit hall while I showed my art works, I missed most of the orca sightings until a corner of blue visible from an exhibit hall window proved irresistible.  Breaking away for a moment, I crossed the parade grounds to the bluff edge and far out in the waterway could see a spotting boat.  With binoculars, I could barely discern the orca pod it was following as they rapidly disappeared to the South.

Suddenly there was some heavy splashing and a dark body appeared in front of a red buoy perhaps a half mile out.   Then it reappeared half again closer, and I can plainly hear its large tail slapping the water.  Two and three times I am treated to the orca antics a short distance south of the science center dock, until the whale activity waned.

Before returning to the art exhibition and with a feeling of elation I mused over  the perfect balance of wildlife and the art that this event had achieved.   This was one of those rare events in the wildlife art world when the outpouring of art and people became fully involved with the actual wildlife experience, all in the same place and at the same time.

Of course the resident pods of the region are well established, monitored and studied by scientist, and observed by hundreds of people on whale watching vessels.  But even labeled a coincidence, the wildlife art show threw a party for the orcas, and they showed.

Where on Earth?!   Port Townsend, Washington State

Where on Earth?! Baltimore

Typical of many urban settings, the historically proud church held its ground as it was slowly engulfed by more contemporary  high rises and electrically charged avenues of modernity.  Its quaint brick tower punctuated with large panels of leaded glass still dominated over the centuries old burial grounds that were its origin.  In reverence to those eternally asleep, this modest cathedral was constructed on brick piers over and above the aged tombs,  creating a mysterious network of catacombs beneath.

Myrtlewood Image, © Terry Woodall

Retreating from the energetic heart of this city, I seek out the grave of one of it’s proud sons in this old church yard, and ponder the tragic course of his life.  He could never rise above the loss of his young sweetheart, who was 14 when they married and 25 when she died, leaving him in an unrecoverable grasp of despair and leading to his death 2 year’s later at the age of forty. Inscribed on his last monument to the world is the name of his wife, mother and himself, as they all lie beneath the one tombstone that rises like a beacon behind the neat iron grill work and brick walls of this sanctuary.

Later in the day I find my way back to one of the finest establishments in the city, an elegant hotel that faces the waterfront with its prominent old sailing ship surrounded by bustling  water taxies.  The retreat to the large cocktail lounge and its adjoining sitting room was a step back in time, into the gentlemen’s club of a hunting lodge, with life sized carved leopards guarding the entry, and the ubiquitous foot stools of the elephant’s feet and arched tusks of the elephant’s teeth accenting the exotic wildlife surroundings.  Carved animals, hides and mounted horns are prevalent throughout, and the spacious sitting room lined with book shelves sports typical over-stuffed chairs and couches, while the large wall of windows hosts seating for drinks and dining.

At the end of the evening and back in the fine hotel room I gaze out at the night lights with the feelings of awe and curiosity that I always feel being at home, however briefly, with a new city skyline.  And with those sensations, I drift off.

I’m on a high speed roller coaster, hurtling up and down and over clouds on a ride one could compare to the Las Vegas high rise with the ride at the top that swings out over the city , and I am very hot, sweating with the thrills.  Suddenly, the coaster car soars into the blackness of space, and I am sailing above frozen mountain peaks and sliding down ice sheets which seem to be in the Andes, and I become very, very cold.

Looking down from the cold onto another place,  there is a funeral procession and the hearse has strange, bronzy- tan  netting draped all around its windows and over the casket, and I know it is my own.

I am not shaken by the dream, and forget it easily enough, as I begin a new day exploring this city with its sea aquarium and colonial landmarks.  Later in the afternoon, in a waterfront area, I browse a gift shop, which I enjoy doing to get the feel and expressions of a new place as is evidenced by postcards and local crafts.  Gazing across a wall of assorted merchandise, my heart freezes as my eyes lock on a long swag of bronzy netting furling down the wall, and the dream of the night before washes over me.  It is the same netting, identical to that draped around the ghostly hearse, neatly packaged and displayed on this gift house wall.

All of history’s great deja-vu explainers fall short in describing this actual sensation of an invisible cord connecting an image of the sub-conscious to that of the conscious in a framework far removed from the confinements of time.  In this conscious space of time, I did not deem it necessary to purchase the mysterious garland of netting.

Where on Earth?!  Edgar Allen Poe’s City of Ravens,  Baltimore, Maryland USA

Where on Earth?! South Africa

"Prancing Eland" ©Terry Woodall

By mid-day the Southern sun at its height found us at ever higher altitudes, with distant pinnacles towering to ten thousand feet. Rocky rubble, slides and precarious cliff edges punctuated the switch backing trail, which occasionally dived deep under ledges, revealing caves pungent with recent primate activity.

Our young guide Raymond proudly pointed out his village far below and away, caught in one of the continuous folds of the lower grassy ridges. At my side, Carlin engaged him with queries as our daughter Astra and her husband Toby surged ahead with their enthusiasm for mountain trekking. From a world unfamiliar to us, Raymond revealed his ambitions for college, but lamented that none of his many, many sisters could even attend school. Their traditions required that they stay working in the household until marrying and establishing their own family.

Young Raymond waved upwards towards the very top of the precipice, and our eyes followed a solid rock wall of ledges to a gaping maw and our destination. As we scrambled up the final ascent, muddy runoff from the caves complicated the remainder of the trail. Throwing ourselves over the final steep cliff edge and scrambling upward, a wondrous world unfolded.

A sea of red and white elands migrated across the face of a cave wall twenty feet across, with human figures arched above and beyond these antelope in a maze of activities. Broken by rock outcrops, three such walls formed this art gallery of the ancients that was fittingly known as Game Pass Shelter.

The ritualistic paintings were created by the San peoples thousands of years past, with the eland, largest of the world’s antelope, at center stage. This is not surprising, as these people were surrounded by herds of these life sustaining animals since time immemorial.

The complex polychrome images also included eland blood mixed in the ocher, imbibing the spirit of the animal onto the cave wall in an ultimate expression of the artist-shaman.  The “trance dance” rituals of these ancients led them into a spirit world through the hypnotic effects of collective circular dance, also depicted in the paintings.

Herds of elands in this vicinity still follow the age old seasonal migrations from lowest to the highest elevations of this Drakensberg range. However, they were nowhere to be seen on these slopes cooking in the afternoon sun, which even drove the prolific baboons into hiding.

Later, these antelope giants presented themselves as we hiked along a cool mountain stream to a waterfall in this rooftop of the continent, and at the very southerly continental tip, where they were grazing on the scruffy, rocky terrain forming the Cape of Good Hope.

Where on Earth?!   Kamberg, South Africa

Where on Earth?! Reifel Island

Careening along like light aircraft tipping wings at the mercy of erratic winds, two large black eagles appeared in a head on profile.  But these two were in complete control as they broke away from each other for their varied pursuits in the brushy, tree lined shore.  Within seconds, the leading bird rebounded from the vegetation with a large, yellow-green branch dangling from its talons.  With the mass of foliage fully twice its length, the eagle landed with ease on an aged pier post jutting from the waters edge and began sorting through its prize.

Without any apparent nest building sites nearby, “sci-fly” expert Kim Middleton surmised that “there must be some prey tangled in the sapling that has this eagle’s attention.”  The group of wildlife artists guided by Kim, an accomplished artist and ornithologist, had just traversed fields turned white with multitudes of snow geese and trumpeter swans, and were crossing a waterway bridge by van when the bald eagles appeared.  After this encounter, the van slowly rolled into the migratory bird estuary which was the field study destination.

Herons in Myrtlewood, © Terry Woodall

From the waterways transecting the thick marsh grass to a distant sandy shoreline and up to the foggy mass called the sky, a cloak of gray shrouded the tidal delta.  One could call it mist, or heavy fog, or drizzle, or rain—precipitation is an apt description—but it is all the same thing, a steady permeation of moisture settling over the northwest that birds and mammals weave through for at least 90 days of the year.

Spilling out of the van and into this scenario, the nature artists began their exploration of this reserve rich with waterfowl.  Hundreds of various types of ducks led to stimulant overload in all directions, with a selection of trails following the numerous canals and ponds, and as I began to meander here and there, Andrea Rich’s husband pointed out roosting Black Crowned Night Herons tucked back into some tree branches.  Further along the trail, dozens of ducks crowded together in comical line ups on single floating logs extending far out into the ponds, with the occasional Blue Heron on the fringes.

As I set out with a map and focused on a loop trail, I found Artist Kelly Dodge on the same trail and offered to take photos of her as she was hand feeding a cluster of American Coots, a dark waterfowl with very unusual green-yellow legs and feet. Kelly has an affinity with living nature like no other, as evidenced by her 40 days and 40 nights Artists for Conservation flag expedition to the Galapagos Islands, where she studied virtually anything that moved.

As Kelly continued to attract an ever growing lunch time crowd, I stalked a blue heron in a nearby open, grassy area.   This was a curious challenge since the bird’s approach zone was about twenty feet, at which point he simply strode a few steps away rather than escaping through flight.  I see herons every other day, but they will fly at the slightest movement of a person on foot within 100 feet or more. Obviously, this one was completely comfortable with people.

As we rounded a corner of the trail, barely ten feet away a Northern Harrier hawk perched on a fence post bolted in a panicky crescendo of flying feathers.   After this jolt of adrenaline, the long, straight trail opened up to a wide vista of marshes stretching all the way to the distant shores of the sea.  With harriers fluttering and hovering about on the left, a cornucopia of waterfowl in ponds to the right, and songbirds and flickers scattered in the brush lines in between, our  eyes strained to absorb everything this symphony of wild nature offered.

After this long stretch of trail and around the next corner came another surprise as Kelly made one of the more exciting observations of the birding day.  A Northern Shrike had caught a chickadee and flew with it into some low lying shrubs.  And in one of the more peculiar events of nature that must relate back to the bird’s lineage with the dinosaurs, the shrike impaled the luckless song bird on a thorn, and commenced to pluck and peel away the skin before devouring it.  Such is a common practice of the Shrike, the only predatory songbird.

By this time, the entire group had reached this far end of the reserve, and by calling out, everyone had the opportunity to view this avian action since the Shrike was taking its time and too busy to worry about bystanders.

On the return loop of the trail, our “sci-fly” expert Kim Middleton identified fresh owl activity under the occasional thick, blocky fir trees with foliage so constricted that spotting the roosting owls wasn’t going to happen.   A pair of Sandhill Cranes with their young offspring were easy to observe, however, as they wandered about seeking handouts from the artists.

Well dampened physically from the day’s prevailing drizzle, but not with dampened spirits, the jolly Pierre Pepin, his fine artist wife Patricia, and all the others bid the delta adieu. Upon leaving the reserve, the van stirred up flocks of Snow Geese that rippled from pasture floor to sky and back down again, keeping time with the passing vehicle like notes on a musical scale.

Where on Earth?!   Reifel Island, British Columbia, Canada

Where on Earth?! Palenque

First there were two of them, and then three and then five, maybe six, all in the same posture, hunching forward and snapping their whips in unison.  The short, stocky men in matching sombreros looked almost comical as they marched in a tight circle around and around the stone patio. Snap!  Crack! They whipped the floor of the terrace in a steady onslaught.

Perhaps their aggression was aimed at us, a band of four youthful adventurers openly visible in the palace tower barely 50 meters distant.  “Naw,” assured Charlie offhandedly,” they’re just sweeping off the patio floor.”  Sweeping with whips?

Charlie was always nonchalant  about almost everything, but I was not so sure if  we were welcome here at this early hour.  However, we chose to ignore them from high above the scene,  and they seemed to ignore us as the sun continued to rise and the new day unfolded.

Warrior Profile, 100 % natural image in myrtlewood grain ©Terry Woodall

On  the day before and late into that evening, our trek of  exploration had followed the jungle perimeters of this ancient site of a past civilization.  Breathing in the lavish scent of flowering plants and reveling in the cornucopia of life with frogs and birds chiming away, we had clambered along the banks of a rushing jungle stream, and as  night approached, our light chatter articulated the haunting threats of the local jaguars and added urgency to our quest.

*                  *                          *                    *

This stream of abundant water was in stark contrast to our trek days later but not so far in distance.  Following a trail of fate with a dry and dusty ride  in the back of a rock hauling truck,  we disembarked as it left the main rode for a distant limestone quarry that undoubtedly served the ancients in building their cities and shrines.  At this junction we found only one humble dwelling in a sea of flat jungle, and the occupants offered refreshment from their rain barrel of green, algae corrupted water.

“Why not strain the water through a tee shirt?” I suggested.  Although  gagging signs were the first reaction of  my comrades, we commenced with the process and quenched our thirst as necessity dictated on this hot and dusty occasion.

Exploring the trails at hand behind this modest homestead  brought us to surprisingly intact ruins of temples elaborately carved and overgrown with jungle.  They were of moderate size, but of excellent quality and condition, and we were amazed that they were devoid of signage and unmarked on the detailed and extensive maps which I carried.  Thrilled with the sense of discovery,  we followed the trails and found more extensive structures of stone long ago resigned to the smothering leaves and vines.

At a village cantina further down this jungle road, the ceiling fans lazily coaxed away the heavy tropical air from a scattering of bar tables, as a veteran jaguar hunter ignited our imaginations with tales of stalking the jungle for the powerful beasts.  Having explored for jaguars since 1956, he proclaimed “there are still plenty of jags out there, and the locals hold them in high regard, with an affinity that goes back millenniums.”

That affinity manifested itself in Mayan lore as their nocturnal jaguar god,  which every evening replaced the sun god of daylight, since the jaguar god was of the dark underworld and hid the sun from the eyes of man.  And to this day there are still jaguar masks worn in village jaguar festivals highlighted with wrestling and fighting.

Jaguar in the Night, 100% natural image in myrtlewood © Terry Woodall

Seeking out more Maya lore brought us to a nearby dwelling where a mysterious elderly woman spoke of the Maya past in her native tongue while a younger woman translated for us into Spanish.  In a gifted moment, she revealed to us crude, translucent, quartz crystal lenses paired as eyeglasses.  The elder claimed that these were used by Maya shamans of ancient times as she gave us the privilege of peering through  their milky and mottled views.  But alas, no extraordinary visions seemed to appear.

*                            *                          *                       *

We left the stream as  twilight fell on our jungle exploration and  the prevailing darkness drove us to our chosen sanctuary for the night.  It loomed high above us as we entered the plaza in its shadow, and in youthful haste we navigated the ruins of stone and begin ascending the ziggurat with steps resounding like drumbeats to an ethereal anthem. In our ascent we followed in the footsteps of the great lord Pacal, the builder and emperor of this city and its temples, and whose eternal slumber was beneath our feet under tons of limestone,  deep within his Temple of Inscriptions.

Maya Chieftain Profile, 100% natural image in myrtlewood grain © Terry Woodall

It was at the top of the pyramid and in the protection of its alcove that I reflected on what I had come here for, to be immersed in  the underworld of the classical Maya priest kings.  For one starlit night I could fully appreciate those ancients who had mastered the sciences of the heavens.

Throughout this starry night, as my mind opened up to the black sky,  purple hieroglyphics streamed down like lightning bolts, interchanging between my eyes and the furthest depths of the ageless constellations.  When  this deluge from the heavens subsided, I peered through the haze at an earthly level, and to my right appeared a surreal scene of urban life as it was, an intact vision from the past  appearing like a snap shot of activity in an ancient time and place.

It seemed an eternity passed before the dawn again closed the door on the celestial night ruled by the jaguar god and opened to a  new day.  Slowly the blazing tropical sun began to emerge,  illuminating the jungle tree tops that were hugging the flat plain spread out before us. In unison with the increasing glow of light, a hum of insect and bird life grew in intensity.

In the new light the old stone walls  came alive with their sculpted chieftains and warriors, jaguar gods and feathered serpents.   Stelae after stelae lined  the courtyards in a magnificent display, and I pondered over the intense labor, the painstaking chipping and chiseling by legions of artisans,  that was never fully described in the history books.

Like four sets of wide open lemur eyes absorbing the morning light, we peered  from the open cubicle at the top of the four story palace  tower high above the jungle. Down and to my left, a group of short stocky men in sombreros began whipping a nearby terrace in unison….

Where on Earth?!   Palenque,  Mexico   1971

Where on Earth?! Lake Baikal

Flames shot into the air and bright sparks twinkled into the night sky as I tossed another arm load of Siberian larch and pine onto the growing campfire. To my new Russian friends this was more like a bonfire, but for me, with the resinous branches on the fire and its showers of sparks, it became a substitute fireworks celebration for this Fourth of July evening.   And I mused that there was lots to celebrate, since I could hear the nerpa colony slapping the water as I gathered wood on the bluff above camp.  These reclusive animals were the objective of an Artists for Conservation flag expedition, and with my expert guides I had found them in their very remote summer haul outs on the other side of the globe.

Nerpa Sculpture in Bronze, Terry Woodall ©

Its not every day that you see seals swimming around in a lake, and you won’t see the seal [nerpa in Russian] in just any ole’ lake.  This 7th flag expedition and artistic field study brought me to a wilderness island in the middle of Lake Baikal to study this unique species.  Baikal, the oldest and deepest of all lakes, holds a fifth of the earth’s unfrozen fresh water in its far reaching  realm of southern Siberia.

The cold, calm waters surrounding the island are crystal clear, varying with aqua colors of blue and green, with the rocky bottom visible to thirty foot depths.  The beach of our camp gently curves to the north, and the ever present nerpa scouts curiously eye us from a safe distance.  Ten miles across the water  from our camp,  the Svyatoy Nos Peninsula’s majestic wall of peaks fill the horizon, and the very distant sawtooth ridges of the snow capped Barguzin Range are visible to the Northeast.  We are surrounded by a vast wilderness as Lake Baikal is about thirty miles wide here.

The following evening the campfire was even bigger as the crowd grew unexpectedly.  From literally out of nowhere a small catamaran sinking  low in the water struggled ashore  with an enormous load of goods and people. I imagined that these sea gypsies could have been on a Kon Tiki type expedition if Thor were still alive. As they pulled up and anchored to the white marble boulders found everywhere, we welcomed three Russians and one Finn who were on a month’s long filming venture.

The very knowledgeable and English speaking Finnish explorer  expounded on the subject of freshwater nerpas to include Lake Saimaa and Lake Lagado of his homeland.  Yes, I had heard of his nerpas and while defending the Baikal nerpa as the only distinct freshwater seal species, I pointed out that the lakes harboring Finnish seals were close to saltwater seas, and in some cases even connected to the sea by canals, while the nerpas right here were over a thousand miles from the nearest ocean.

As the animated discourses in three languages died down with the campfire, our new  acquaintances on adventure expressed a desire to film the nerpas at morning light.  “The nerpas are all around us,”my Russian guide Eva explained,  “It is as easy as hiking over this bluff behind us to the island’s north shore.  But you must go quietly and stay low, hidden behind the cliff edge, as the nerpas are very shy animals.”

Chuckling, I recalled our first endeavor of observing the nerpa colony, having crawled on all fours over  the lush, extra thick carpet of Siberian moss to peer over the cliff edge, only to have them scatter at the slightest sound or movement.  Later, after they had become accustomed to our presence, it became a game of cat and mouse; sometimes we were ignored while we sketched and photographed, other times they slapped the water and scattered .

In that first encounter, we counted sixty aquatic individuals, and later, double that number.  Altogether, with hours of quiet observation, there was  more than enough nerpa activity to satisfy my field study goals in this isolated theater of nature.

Where on Earth?!   Lake Baikal,  Siberian Russia