1

obscura

“This is a nice little glass,” said Mr. Close, looking out his window and turning the screw. “A nice little glass.”

Before I left Seattle, I went to see Mr. Howard Close at Close Scientific Instruments. Just as Dave at Stirling Honda has kept Powdermilk on the road for decades, Mr. Close has maintained one of my other major tools: my binoculars, which I have had even longer than the car. This small, light pair of Leitz 6X24 Trinovids has been with me all over the world, from New Guinea to New Jersey. My beloved binos have parted from me many times, on planes, trains, security checkpoints, and mountaintops, and through grace, goodwill, and good luck, have always come back to me. Many birders would consider six powers of magnification too small, and modern butterfliers use binoculars that focus more closely. But my 6X24s are exceedingly clear, gather good light even at dusk, and serve beautifully as an all-around optic. Fitting my hand like Marsha’s net stick, they’ve become a part of my body, just as much. I feel not only naked but blinded without them.

Mr. Close had recognized their measure when I first took my binos to him after a bad bump had misaligned them: “A nice little glass.” He’s said it every time I’ve gone in, for cleaning or a new strap or a jury-rigged eyecup. In a casting call for Geppetto, Mr. Close would be a shoo-in. His old shop on Fourth Avenue is stuffed with splendid if obsolete confections of glass, steel, brass, and leather, as well as modern instruments awaiting his attention. I like going there whether or not I have need of his expertise.

Now, the specks in the left ocular that had been mildly bugging me, no big deal really, made a good excuse to drop by on my way out of town. Mr. Close said he couldn’t see any specks and recommended that I just use and enjoy my nice little glass. I told him I certainly do, every day of my life, and thanked him. On my way out, he said my beat sandals were in better shape than his. I challenged him on wallets; his wasn’t bad, but it didn’t match my well-traveled, lost-and-found, duct-taped billfold.

A couple of days after I’d gotten home from the last leg, Thea and I topped K-M Hill again, this time together. We had just enough time for a Columbia Gorge butterfly-and-wildflower field trip before heading north for the operation. Margined whites and echo blues crossed sunny patches in the road. At the Kalama Bluffs south of Longview, Sara orangetips flicked over the ditches. Their orange apices looked disembodied, like fire-colored fireflies operating on their own. Silvery blues lit up the verges everywhere we stopped, from Kalama to Washougal Oaks to Beacon Rock and beyond, this northern subspecies in none of the hurt of its at-risk cousin in Palos Verdes.

In the afternoon, we drove up Blue Lake Road above the Columbia. There, in a clearing off Oak Lake Road, we found what we’d come for: a two-banded checkered-skipper, spreading its wings in a nettle patch. Its clean, ivory-on-charcoal speckled pattern stood out sharply at rest, unlike its buzzy gray blur in flight. Later, at the Walking Man in Stevenson, the umbrellas in the beer garden were labeled “Butterfly Freedom.”

“Appropriate name for a western Washington bumbershoot,” I said, “when you think how many days here are butterfly-free.”

“But not today,” said Thea.

Late in the warm day, across the Bridge of the Gods at Wahkeena Falls, we stood on a stone bridge, mist full in our faces, in infinite green and freshness, the antithesis of the desert in drought. We were looking for green hairstreaks on a friend’s advice, and didn’t find them. But that was okay. We never got far enough up the gorge for the drier east-side flowers, but we enjoyed the wetter west-side ones in full glory—larkspurs, tellinas, meadow rues, sorrels, and more—their rich, warm, sweet fragrance filling the air. Just what Thea needed to see her through what came next.

On the sixth of May, as Thea checked into the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance for preop tests and preps, I took the South Lake Union Trolley (lovingly known to its fans as the SLUT) directly to Dr. Branch’s office downtown. It seemed wise to investigate the shape of my oral minefield, which had been sending bomb threats again in recent weeks. David confirmed that Dr. Rembos had saved me some real grief, as well as given me such a great butterfly tip, back in Florida. But the original crown that fell out in January (not one of his) needed replacing; and tragically, the tooth beneath a real beauty of a crown he had laboriously installed not long ago was cracked and dying. That crown even had a butterfly on it—the inspiration of David’s assistant Heidi—though I never got a good look at it until, sadly, it was unseated. But wait, there’s more: one of my two remaining wisdom teeth was ticking to detonate too, and it needed to come out pronto.

So what began as an exam became an emergency extraction. David’s oral surgeon colleague, Dr. Maring, said he could do it right then and there, or else in a month or so. He advised me that, with my old guy’s dense bones, he’d probably have to cut and chisel and said that I could expect quite a lot of pain for a week or so. This alarmed me, not least because I needed to be alert to take Thea for her surgery early the next morning and to support and care for her later. If it meant we were both out of commission at the same time, I wouldn’t be much use for Thea. But there was nothing for it.

So the surgery buddy went into surgery himself. I leaned back in the chair and girded my oral loins, as it were, for agony. But amazingly, Dr. Maring had them both out whole in five minutes. I felt next to no pain . . . and never did. I took an ibuprofen or two for swelling but never touched the Percocet. My one disappointment was the nitrous oxide. He gave me quite a dose, but it failed to register. I’d never had it before, and in view of my pallid drug history, I was looking forward to a bit of a legal buzz. Nothing.

Thea’s operation, however, was not nothing. The tumor was in the psoas major muscle in her back but too near the spine for safe removal from that side. Access from the front meant massive abdominal surgery—the third in Thea’s five-year adventure in cancer. Her oncologist, Dr. Swensen, was joined by a soft-tissue surgeon at the University of Washington Medical Center for the operation. Meanwhile, my stepdaughter, Dory, and I walked across the sunny and flowery UW campus. I showed her shrines and historic sites for her parents, me, and her virtual aunt and uncle, JoAnne and Fayette. This was the habitat we’d all haunted together in the sixties. It helped take our minds off our fears.

The operation went well. Back in the hospital, Thea’s room was full of flowers—forget-me-nots picked by Dory, red alstroemerias, purple campanulas, and many others from Thea’s concerned friends. And when Dory’s brother, Tom, brought his family for Mother’s Day, little Cristina Linnaea came dressed in pink and carrying a big jar of pink tulips. I placed Thea’s wedding ring back on her hand. Out her window in 7SE, violet-green swallows swooped over the Montlake Cut and Portage Bay, where Tom used to cox the UW crew, and a gold light settled over spring cottonwoods along the shore.

While Thea was on the mend, I met the journalist Eric Wagner for a day trip to Hood Canal and the southeastern Olympic Peninsula. He had assignments to write articles on the Butterfly Big Year for National Wildlife and High Country News. I was hoping for Johnson’s hairstreak, a rare, old-growth obligate species that Jon Pelham and I used to find at Staircase in southeastern Olympic National Park. We took the big ferry to Bremerton, then drove north to Lake Cushman. The day, supposed to be sunny, was cold and cloudy; and the Lake Cushman Road was closed by winter landslides in any case. Late-afternoon hunts for Moss’s elfins, pine elfins, and green hairstreaks with the crack butterflier, Idie Ulsh, all bombed. At last up at Mt. Walker, a spurt of thin sun brought out two shimmering echo azures for Eric to see, so we were not completely skunked. The outing might not have gone just as I’d hoped or he had anticipated, but at least it gave him a good sense of the challenges I faced every day.

With Thea comfortable, now out of the hospital, I went to see Mr. Close and then made one more nearby excursion. Fleeing I-5 after Olympia, I ducked into Scatter Creek Wildlife Area, one of the few remaining glacial outwash prairie preserves in the south Puget Trough. These remnant grasslands hold several special butterflies otherwise excluded from Pugetopolis by either forest cover or development. At the North Unit parking lot, a sign announced that catch-and-release of butterflies was prohibited, as well as collecting, never mind that there was plenty of hunting, with shotgun shells lying about, dogs off leash, and so on. This was the first time I’d ever seen a net-and-release rule on game land. But pals of mine were responsible, and I knew their rationale was protecting certain rare prairie species under restoration. I walked among the camas, fescue, violets, and shooting stars, and saw one of those species—I think—a small yellow-orange bit, almost certainly a mardon skipper. This is one of the few places the narrowly endemic, disjunct Polites mardon survives, but it disappeared without alighting. It would take a better sighting than that to count it.

Striding across the prairie, I came upon a big, very yellow female margined white, drinking deep from a blue camas lily—such a sight! Then a female echo blue, spread, showing her charcoal hems and chalky ocelli; and two clear azure males at mud on the shore of slow Scatter Creek. On a fescue mound appeared the only ringlet, richly ocher, not at all like the white ones of the Marin Headlands; something chased it, possibly another mardon.

And then came the new check on the list I was hoping for: a hoary elfin, very fresh, warm hazel above, dark chestnut at the base, with a broad, cool, frosty band, the “hoary” bit, on the outer half below. Many elfins rose and bounced around like jumping beans, all over the numerous kinnikinnick patches and mounds. So if I had so far missed the other spring Callophrys I’d sought—johnsoni, mossii, eryphon, perplexa—at least polios obscura had checked in. On the way out, I met Mary McCollum, a former student of mine, fine naturalist, and hired net for Fish and Wildlife, conducting a mardon skipper survey. She told me that mardons were recorded last season in both the locations where I thought I’d seen them.

I was more than reluctant to leave Thea so soon, to prepare for the next journey. I hated saying goodbye again for a couple of weeks, and I did not feel good about being away at such a time. But Thea was sure and encouraging about it. “Get back out there,” she said, the color back in her cheeks. She was recovering well at Fayette and JoAnne’s apartment by the Ballard Locks, with plenty of good care from friends. I left knowing that this unwonted (and unwanted) but unavoidable detour in our lives had gone as well as we could have hoped. Thea had done this before, and we knew she could do it again. I knew, too, that she would be well again soon.