On Thursday, for the first and very likely last time in my life, I visited Mount Rainier and Mount St. Helens on the same day.
No bird could be more fitting for this Cascadian journey than the mountain bluebird.
Before this year, I’d never laid eyes on one.
Along with picturesque meadows and forests, many species of birds and other animals, including the Mount Rainier ptarmigan (pronounced tar-muh-ghin, not put-ar-ma-jin), were wiped out when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980.
After the disaster, Mount St. Helens was designated as a National Volcanic Monument and most fauna made comebacks without intervention.
I’d taken a photo of a mountain bluebird — either a juvenile or a female, judging by the dull colors — at Johnston Ridge earlier this year (three days before the Coldwater Creek-area landslide washed out the road).
The background is gray and brown. The volcanic soil, once closer to moonscape than earthen, has slowly started to prove that line from the first Jurassic Park, “Life finds a way.”
On the other hand, untainted Mount Rainier is still the poster child of Cascadian beauty. Poetically, on my first visit of the year, I saw a bright, large bluebird to contrast the dull, small one from before. It seemed metaphorical.
Both were special to me, and both fit their surroundings perfectly.
