wouldn’t stagger off into
thin air. Small fish your
Without old-growth trees,
parents brought up to
murrelets wouldn’t be
eight times a day ended up
creating quite a crusty edge
able to nest on the West
to the platform that helped
Coast of the Lower 48.
keep you from falling
off. And there were other
dangers too. Steller’s jays,
crows and ravens didn’t
often come here before, but see again, and eventually you’ll nest in
thanks to the nearby road a treetop miles from your watery home.
that now brings campers Remarkable!
and their food, these So, when sailing in Puget Sound,
birds now threaten young the Straits of Juan de Fuca or outer
murrelets sitting exposed coast all the way down to Santa Cruz,
on mossy branches – so keep your eyes peeled for a small and
you instinctively stayed chubby seabird, head held up like a
low. After a month, wings schooner’s bowsprit and possibly with
had grown flight feathers a small herring in its bill. If it’s summer,
and you sensed you were awkward sea landing in Hood Canal. chances are good that it will soon be
ready to explore. It felt I say 30 minutes, because murrelets flying over some of the tallest trees on
like you could fly like your normally fly at about 50 mph. They Earth to hand that little herring over to
parents - but how to learn? have been clocked on radar at over 100, a chick on a mossy branch hundreds of
And where would you go? Then, one so in theory you could make that 20 feet in the air.
evening just after dusk, and with one miles in five minutes, but a first-flight-
death-defying jump into space, flight flier probably wouldn’t do this. In fact, Among other adventures, Larry Eifert
had to be learned in a half second or you’d be lucky to do it at all. paints large murals for the National Park
a much squashed murrelet would have As you learned to fly through Service, locally including Mt Rainier
resulted. Somehow it all came together the giant forest in growing darkness, and Olympic. The Eifert’s 1939 Monk Sr.
to happen properly, and you were on alone and without your parents as sloop, “Sea Witch,” is well-known in the
your way. guides, you somehow steered properly Northwest, having been a subject of Jo
It seems a fairly lame way to survive towards an ocean you had never seen. Bailey’s Gunkholing books and articles for
as a species, but you did it anyway – you In doing this, you were unaided by decades. Eifert paints and writes about the
just walked off that branch and as you anything you’d ever witnessed before, same boat, wildlife friends and sailing in
plummeted at 32 feet per second, you and you began a new life you didn’t the waters off his home in Port Townsend.
figured it out fast – and in 30 minutes know existed, began to catch fish He blogs and shares his work at:
and 20 miles you made your first untaught by parents you’ll likely never www.larryeifert.com
48° No r t h , Ja N u a r y 2010 Pa g e 53
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