2020 totally sucked between the Coronavirus pandemic, lockdowns, wildfires and finally Lira injuring her knees so I had hopes 2021 would be a huge improvement. As I write this we are pretty much back in the same place we were in winter of 2020 with the new omicron variant raging in Seattle and the rest of the world and the obvious impacts of climate change hammering us with snow and, for Seattle, extreme cold. The year has been full of pandemic canceled plans but has some bright spots with Lira making a full recovery by summer time and taking on new challenges this fall.
The first quarter of the 2021 was totally taken over by Lira’s rehab process. In January we were starting to finally get her out for very short 5 minute walks a few times a day increasing by 5 minutes each week until we got her up to a 20 minute leashed walk twice a day. She went to the vet once or twice a week for laser and rehab treatments plus did about 15-20 minutes of rehab exercises and stretches at home every day. We had a few setbacks during this month and I was really afraid the stem-cell treatment wasn’t going to take. By February she was going into rehab once a week and doing underwater treadmill another day each week to help build back up all the muscles that had atrophied from lack of exercise. In mid-March she had her 12 week follow up exam and things were looking very good so we finally stopped rehab and began weaning her off the sedatives she’d been on all year and we began to slowly ramp up her walking time each week. By summer she was starting to do some light trotting and having a bit of off-leash time on walks and we slowly ramped up the off-leash time and got her doing some real sprints. It was good to have her back in action for hiking and hunting season. So far, so good and she’s back to being full active and even wants to play ball in the house every day again.
At least this year spring wasn’t impacted by a total lockdown so we spent a lot of time trout fishing and got in a few trips for turkey hunting early on. Lira and I went over to the Teanaway on a turkey trip as soon as the season opened and wandered all over finding only a single turkey feather in the three day trip. We were trout fishing most days that weren’t raining trying to restock the freezer with some trout which we were nearly out of after 2020s closure of everything. I went to Spokane in early May for turkeys and managed to limit out in about an hour one morning and spent the rest of the trip hiking around Riverside State Park. We got in another camping trip to the Teanaway for foraging later in May.
We got vaccinated in March/April and that was pretty exciting, I had hopes that the pandemic would effectively be over for us after that. That was a bit naive to say the least, who knew about Delta and Omicron back then. We worked on expanding our garden in the spring putting in better raised beds by the house and building another bed for the backyard so we could grow more food and be a bit more self-sufficient. We foraged greens and mushrooms, caught trout and planted our garden. I’m also still using that sourdough starter and kombucha SCOBY that we got going last year.
Summer brought heat and fires to Washington which caused more cancellation of plans. Catherine did go to Seaweed Camp in late June just when the state got hit with a crushing heat wave. Lira and I had planned on going up to the Methow while Catherine was on the islands enjoying only 90 degree heat but with temps over 115 and our friend in the Methow heading to the high country to try and cool off we opted to stay home and by that I mean hunker down in the AC with all the blinds shut for a week. By the time the heat broke we had fires and high fire danger so most state public land got closed for camping or even access so we ended up not getting out with the NoBo as much as we had hoped.
Summer also brought more bass fishing on the local lakes and tenkara fishing in the local rivers until those dropped to low levels and warmed up too much at which time I pretty much stopped trout fishing locally and focused on bass. I did a salmon fishing trip with Christian & Jenny in early July in Brewster and we came home with a limit of sockeye and a few kings for the freezer. Later in July I did a float on the Yakima with Greg and Brett and we had a fun day catching cutthroat and rainbows only to hit a few wildfires late in the day and on the drive home, fire season had really begun in Washington and the whole West.
Late summer also brought the Delta surge of COVID just when everyone thought thing thing was behind us. The PNW became a huge mess from August through October which caused me to cancel my planned hunt in Southern OR which had extremely high transmission rates and my muzzleloader hunt in Okanogan County which was also running extremely high rates. More time to hunker down and just get out with Lira to do some bird hunting and spend some time fishing Puget Sound for big, feisty searun cutthroats. We didn’t bird hunt as much as previous years just to be safe but we managed to get enough pheasants in the freezer to get us through the next year. I had several back-up plans for deer hunting but everything fell apart for one reason or another but as I was going to go meet a friend to hunt a buck got hit and I picked it up as it was taking its last breath on the side of the road so we got a deer without having to take a shot. Had a late season trip planned to E.WA for turkeys and pheasant but that also got canceled for a number of reasons. 2021 turned out to be the least I’ve hunted since I started hunting seriously back in 2016 but we managed to get enough in the freezer regardless. Somehow I still got out 100 days of hunting and fishing given the weather, covid and everything else that caused canceled trips this year but this was my lowest year in a long time especially with regards to hunting.
I’ve kept busy through the fall and early winter training Lira to truffle hunt. After watching The Truffle Hunters movie I decided that could be a fun off-season activity for us and signed Lira up for truffle dog classes with Truffle Dog Company in Seattle. We spent October and November doing the Foundations classes and working on getting her used to truffle scent and finally learning to dig to get to the scent. She did so well since she’s been hunting for her whole life so she got to skip Intermediate class and moved onto Pre-Advanced in December and we are signed up for Advanced in February. She’s moved from scented tins to digging up real truffles now though still hasn’t found a wild truffle, only ones that I’ve planted for her. Still waiting for that first truffle so I can make Fagiano Tartufato (Pheasant with Truffles) for dinner. Honestly, I don’t care if she ever finds a real truffle, it has just been fun working together and meeting the other truffle dogs and people from the class.
One benefit of truffle hunting is that we have been finding edible mushrooms while out so don’t come back empty handed. Catherine and I got much more serious about mushroom hunting this year and managed to find and eat quite a few new ones. Spring brought the usual large amount of Oyster mushrooms but as the year went on we found Chicken of the Woods, King Bolete, Admiral Bolete, Matsutake, Chanterelles, Turkey Tails, Reishi and a few others plus identified about 100 different ones that were not edible. Next year we need to figure out these Morels and hopefully find a truffle.
We didn’t really travel or get to see much of family this year. Marshall visited in the summer for a week which was very nice and Cadence was up for Thanksgiving and we got to have dinner one night and take her to the city one morning. I went camping with Christian, Jenny and Nolan and then spent the early part of soccer season going to games on Saturdays before truffle dog school started up. Hoping that 2022 brings an opportunity to either drive to LA or meet Kristen & Cadence somewhere in between.
Also in fall I got serious about getting an EV to cut back on driving the gas guzzling Tacoma everywhere since I’d like the truck to last the rest of our lives for towing, hunting and fishing and driving it all over town was going to make that tough. In September we started looking at what it would take to get a charger installed which led to a total garage clean-out and re-organization to make room for the charger and set up the garage to ultimately be able to charge on either side. Once we knew what needed to be done I ordered a charger and a Tesla Model 3. By early December we had the charger installed and my car got delivered. The Tesla is awesome, I wish I’d done this much sooner. For the last few weeks I’ve driven it almost exclusively and just plug in weekly. Now I want a Model Y to replace the Outback.
Not sure what to think about 2022, it is starting to look a lot like 2021 and so I’m not making any plans really. I got my booster a few weeks ago but already they are talking about a 4th shot so who knows when we’ll have to go in for yet another vaccine boost. I’d like to say I’ll reschedule the canceled deer hunts but I have no confidence any new plans won’t be canceled by the next variant. I hoped to do the west coast turkey trip again but who knows where we’ll be. Maybe summer won’t be so hot that things are closed for fire danger and we can camp more but I’m not counting on it, we seem to just get more extreme weather and fires every year now. Regardless I’ll keep playing guitar, hunting and fishing with Lira, hiking and foraging with Catherine and hopefully get a chance to visit Kristen in LA again after two years, it only takes seven charge stops to drive there.