A catastrophic fire, an expert guide, and a dauntless scabland bird
Before an outing at dawn a few days ago I had only seen my friend Lindell Haggin twice in the past year. Both of those times were on remote video sessions devoted to habitat restoration. Suffice to say, in-person adventures are superior to Zoom meetings. With Covid vaccinations and Spokane’s sunrise dog walkers behind us, the first landmark ahead–just past Airway Heights on U.S. Highway 2–was a field of blooming canola so bright I reached for my sunglasses.
We were headed even further west, passing through shafts of sunlight piercing billowing clouds, the largest of which were throwing down veils of snow and rain. The purplish downbursts had wave-like curls to them, a symptom of a strong jet stream whistling above.
The plan for the morning was to try to find a sage thrasher, a bird somewhat smaller than a robin and far less common. Unlike robins and mallards and magpies, sage thrashers don’t fly into town. That said, I’m embarrassed to report that although I was born in the sagelands and have spent countless hours wandering through them, I had not—until last week—seen or heard a sage thrasher, or at least had never gotten close enough to one that I’d recognize it. It was past time to rectify this and Lindell—one of the inland northwest’s premier bird experts and a widely admired conservationist—agreed to be my guide. (Lindell is also a superb photographer and you can see and read more about her work in this 2015 profile.)
Natural scenes from an unnaturally long winter
The test of winter, both for my spirits and my camera, is the paucity of light. Broadly speaking it’s not just the pervasive gloaming and mid-afternoon sunsets, but the all-too-sudden blanching of the terrain—how suddenly October blue and gold bleeds away to the dun of November, then freezes, melts, and freezes again for three months on end. Throw in the added darkness of the Covid quarantine and, well, you can have quite a bummer on your hands.
One antidote (aside from winter poetry, which is of no use to the camera) is the fleeting miracle of alpenglow with its dazzling spectrum from neon plum to electric tangerine. Another is winter birds and especially the exquisitely-dressed diving ducks: the Goldeneyes, Buffleheads, and Mergansers that are more prevalent in the colder months. I’ll leave it to the biologists to explain why they stay. It’s enough for me to learn how to improve my chances of bringing them into focus, to move gently through the thorny brush, and be willing to laugh and learn from the quotient of failure. All the while counting the days until spring arrives.
It is hard to improve upon the sleek beauty of mergansers, and the regal wardrobe of Great Blue Herons, but by early December I was looking forward to my near daily visits with a bachelor Barrow’s Goldeneye, whom I nicknamed Gordy, just for fun.
Continue reading The Heron’s Bad Hair DayIn 2013 Spokane’s electorate voted overwhelmingly to change the city’s charter to require independence for in civilian oversight of the police. On Monday, the city council voted for the third time not to enforce that mandate.
Police reform is difficult everywhere but in Spokane there was, in the early years of Mayor David Condon’s first term, a jaw-dropping element of dark comedy to it.
Condon, some may recall, was lagging incumbent Mary Verner in the polls in the fall of 2011. He solved that problem by seizing upon Mayor Verner’s signature weakness—her near-complete tone deafness to the anger unloosed in Spokane following the senseless death of Otto Zehm at the hands of Spokane police. Verner approached police reform as if it were a pool with sharks in it. Condon vowed to dive right in. He won the election.
Condon’s pledge to bolster civilian oversight of the SPD was one of the gaudiest deceptions in Spokane political history. The backlash to his duplicity was actually led by fellow Republicans on the city council who worked with citizen groups to bring Proposition 1—requiring independent police oversight—to a special election in early 2013. It passed with 69 percent of the vote. Condon’s response to the vote? He ignored it, just as he ignored the recommendation from his high-profile Use of Force Commission to end the secrecy involved in the city’s collective bargaining negotiations with the Spokane Police Guild.
There are so many waves of betrayal in this saga I have trouble picking out the crest of the farce. But one stinging insult was inscribed right up front in the first collective bargaining agreement composed by Condon’s negotiators and their police guild counterparts. Without including any changes to enact what the new charter amendments required–enabling the police Ombudsman to conduct independent investigations–the two sides simply slapped the Ombudsman in leg irons and stated that the agreement fully complied with the new charter.
