Paradise Point, wildlife refuge, Carty section

July-August, 2019

Christmas is wonderful. Christmas is fun. But now let’s get back to my camping trip!

My whole reason for going to the Ridgefield, WA, area and camping at Paradise Point State Park on the Lewis River a few months ago was to visit the wildlife refuge that’s just a couple of miles away from the campground, right on the Columbia River. Kayaking along the outer edge of the refuge was one thing, wonderful in itself for sure … but today I drove to one part of the refuge and hiked the trails inside the refuge, even better. 🙂

There are five sections to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. Two sections … “Carty” and “S” … are open to the public. The other three sections are not open to the public.

Today, I went to Carty, the northern most of the five sections. I spent a few hours walking trails there and took gobs of photos. I’ll share a few of the photos here with you.

Keep in mind I wasn’t there in early spring or late autumn when it’s the MOST miraculous because of birds traveling through on their way to summer or winter habitats. But even so, what I did see was awesome and amazing. Let’s start with a map …..

The green area at the top of the map is the Carty section. The hiking trails along the eastern border inside the Carty section is all that’s accessible to the public, and that’s where I went today.

The orange area in the middle of the map is the River ‘S’ Unit. It has a wonderful driving route through the refuge AND even more hiking trails. I visited the S section on a subsequent day and will share those photos in a subsequent blog post.

But for now, back at the Carty section, I parked and then walked across a foot bridge to get across the railroad tracks.

What a fabulous design! The wire mesh kept people from throwing trash down onto the railroad tracks. They could have built a simple vertical mesh wall, but no, they did this to it … how cool!

The railing was also different than the usual. In the photo above, you can see on the left side of the bridge that there’s a handrail … but on the right side there were no horizontal components at all (see photo below). The upright, vertical posts were sturdy as all get out, and only an inch or two apart, but they didn’t feel right, you know? I felt uncomfortable walking next to that side of the bridge over the tracks, as though I might simply fall through those posts. Maybe I am so used to visual clues, like a horizontal handrail, that I’m uncomfortable without them even when I’m perfectly safe.

Even though those posts felt uncomfortable, I really liked that foot bridge. Somebody did a great job of making a unique bridge for all of us to enjoy.

Right after the bridge, the path took me down onto and into the land of wildlife refuge.

Two women walked out of the refuge as I walked in. After that, for the three or four hours that I was here, I saw no other humans.

Mostly, I walked … and sat … and took photos … and stood and stared … and tried to identify plants … and listened to the birds … and walked … stood and stared and listened.

This area is known for its huge Oregon White Oak trees. Some conifer trees are being removed to allow room for these native oak trees. Check this website for a bit more information about that process.

They were so darn big!!

I’m not sure I had ever seen a live, growing acorn before. There were thousands of them, maybe millions.

And then around a bend in the trail this building appeared (above). From the map I had, I figured this must be the Cathlapotle plankhouse of the Chinook Nation.

 

The small round “door” would have been the only door if this were an old structure. Today, there’s a larger door just to the right.

The entrance painting represents the house owner or head person. The triangle hat represents a traditional cedar root rain hat.

The photo above is of the side and back end of the plankhouse. The side walls on this side of the building were about 2.5 feet tall.

The photo below is detail of the roof. Those wooden shims were tapped in between the roofing boards to allow air to circulate, so the roofing boards would be less prone to dry rot from too much moisture collecting there.

Some day maybe I’ll be here when an event is happening inside the plankhouse and I’ll learn more. I’d like that.

But for now … on I went down the path, around ponds and past small lakes, under those gorgeous oak trees, across open fields, following the path on my map. The bird sounds were divine; the smell of the water and woods and vegetation was delicious. You know me, I found lots of plants that I couldn’t identify. If any of you folks can, please do.

 

 

 

 

 

I’d bet the plant above is Oregon Grape. I loved the deep green leaves with the red edges in the upper left of the photo … and the bright burgundy, autumn leaves in the lower right.

The pond above was so pretty. I stood and watched for awhile, but saw no movement. As I walked on along the path to my left, something caught my eye across the pond, just a tiny, brief flash of “something”. So I stood and watched awhile again. Look across the pond in the photo above. Do you see anything?

Ah ha!!

There it is … can you see it?

On the far side of the pond, to the left of the center, in the greenery right near the water.

Ok, here, I’ll zoom in for you …

A Great Blue Heron, just quietly standing.

I was a LONG way away from it, clear across the pond, but as I walked on along the path I kept my eye on it. As I moved along, it turned towards me, raised its head, and seemed to give me the eye … “are you predator? are you food? should I fly away?” She stayed right there, but certainly kept her eye on me until I was out of sight.

Shortly after that, I headed back across that wonderful artsy foot bridge, climbed into my big white truck, and headed back to the little white trailer. What a lovely day.

[Note added later, after this camping trip was long over … I find that I am still so enthralled by that green, growing acorn. Sometimes it’s the simple things that bring such joy and wonder, eh?]