The Problem with Ridgefield
If you’ve been following this blog or following me (if so - cut it out, I mean it, no matter what the raccoons are telling you), you’ll know one of my favorite places to visit is Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. Ridgefield is about a half hour’s drive from our house — a hop, skip, and several jumps across the Columbia River in Washington. While there’s a lot to love about the park, it’s not perfect.
It’s main flaw? I enjoy it so much that I don’t go exploring the rest of the Northwest like I should. I’ve been meaning to start hiking the Gorge a lot more, not to mention the local mountain ranges, but something always draws me to Ridgefield.
Take yesterday for example. I woke before sunrise and headed to the refuge, hoping to see the raccoons again. I’ve already set a record this year for “Number of times I’ve gotten up before sunrise to visit a park that isn’t named Yellowstone or the Tetons” — and it’s only February.
I arrived with the dawn and had just started onto the auto tour when I noticed a group of river otters in a side channel. This picture is one of those otters — I missed the focus a bit but it looks OK at web size. I’ll have more pictures to post later and tell more of the story then, but today’s post is about my favorite thing that happened yesterday — but I didn’t get any pictures, so I chose to lead with one of the otter pics.
After spending the morning on the auto tour and then hiking the Carty unit in the middle of the day, I returned to the auto tour in the mid-afternoon. Almost immediately I was sorry I had come back, as there were tons of cars there and a lot of people won’t let you past on the narrow roads. I’m glad I continued around, as once I got to the forested section, I found a nice place to park and wait for something in the channel to swim by — several hooded mergansers and a cormorant had been swimming earlier.
I heard a loud squeaking sound coming from behind and assumed a bird of prey had flown in with its prey, but the squeaking got louder very quickly. I looked in my rear view mirror and was almost speechless — a sasquatch was running towards the car! OK, not a sasquatch, but almost as unexpected: two mink. I figured they’d dart off before they got to the car, but instead they ran right past, literally just under my window.
The one in the back was biting the tail of the one in front, so I figured it was probably a mating ritual — that would explain why they were oblivious to my car. They continued on past, still making a ruckus, before darting off into the tall grasses beside the road. One darted back onto the road a couple of times before they both swam across the channel and out of sight.
I didn’t get any pictures as my camera had powered down and took too long to power back up — the 10D cost me several pictures yesterday. But it was fantastic to witness as I had never even seen mink before, and now got to see not one but two. And not just see them, but see them just a few feet away, and with such curious behavior. That’s one of Ridgefield’s real charms — not just that you get to see so many animals, but you see them up close and acting naturally.
So as much as I’d like to visit somewhere else, it’s hard not to want to return and hope to see the raccoons or otters or mink or maybe, just maybe, my sasquatch …