By Emily Jankowski

“I mentioned there would be bushwhacking, right?”

“Yeah, but you did leave out the rock climbing so…”

I paused to pour sand and gravel out of my boot. We were either following or making a trail through one of our stewardship sites owned by Seattle City Light. It was sometimes hard to tell the difference. The steep and crumbly stream banks we had scrambled up and down however, were definitely not meant to be crossed that way. Or any way that I had seen. All things considered, we had done well just by making it to the other side without either of us falling in the water. As we continued trekking across the site, a sense of high adventure persisted. Any step could lead up to the edge of another precipitous stream channel and almost anything could be lurking in the woods!

A bit later in the day we walked a site that was no less exciting, but actually had a few trails. The thin, winding paths led us gently down toward the river. Under a few tall trees along the bank we found small piles of salmon bones. Although a bit morbid, the bones were a welcome sign of conservation working well, as wildlife apparently made good use of the area, staying well supplied with salmon. We continued along the shoreline, enjoying the cool shade of massive cedars and imagining how long they must have grown so near the water yet never quite being washed out by the fickle changes in the river’s path. A common merganser heard us coming and fled in a noisy rush of wings, bringing us abruptly back to the present. Our path led to a peaceful, muddy shore stamped with elk tracks. In front of us was a calm and wide stream, in stark contrast to the rushing Skagit just to our right. The sun warmed us as we paused a minute to watch small fish swimming in the sheltered waters. Birds sang in the trees and occasionally flew through the open airspace over the channel. The place felt like a secret treasure that I didn’t want to leave behind.

Unfortunately, we did eventually have to turn back. We retraced our steps partway and then turned to cross another section of the site. In a grove under some large trees we found a robin’s egg shell. Suddenly, movement caught my eye. Something small and furry had darted across my path and toward the base of one of the nearby trees.

“I thought I saw…a mouse? Or something fast? But it was…hopping.”

“An Oregon jumping frog?” Bengt asked.

“Well uh, no I don’t think so, it was definitely furry” I answered, volunteering the only visual detail of which I was certain. I moved slowly into a new position to see the base of the tree between the ferns.

“It’s a thing!”

“I believe it’s a thing, but it’s not this thing” I said, finally able to point out what I had only glimpsed the motion of before. Sure enough, a small mammal with dark brown fur and long white back legs clung near the base of the tree. Now that it wasn’t moving, it was clearly mouse-shaped. I took a couple cautious pictures with my cell phone before we scared our new friend away. It’s not every day you see an animal that moves like a frog but looks like a mouse. A quick internet search back at the office identified it as a pacific jumping mouse. So each of our instincts was about one third right.

No longer on a trail, we got hopelessly tangled up in the brush on our way back to the car. Even our most determined efforts made little progress. Sometimes the best way out is through, but often it pays better to change your approach. We muscled our way into a small clearing off to the side of the “path” we had been trying to make. From there we found a much easier way through and it wasn’t long until we made it back to the road. Reaching the truck closed one chapter of the day’s adventures as surely as it opened the next. In one day we bushwhacked, scrambled up and down steep slopes, saw wildlife and its signs, checked up on restoration plantings, decided on future actions to help sites, walked boundaries, and more. It was a busy and rewarding way to spend the day. Outside, helping to keep our watershed healthy.