I had packed up my camera equipment and started to leave because I didn't think the sunset would catch fire.  I took one look back before I headed up the stairs.  Good thing.

It started out as a sunny, clear day.  The empty ferry headed back south, with the Olympics in the background.

The alder trees down at the beach are beginning to sprout catkins, getting ready for spring already.  They just lost their leaves a few weeks ago.  Alders are critical to salmon.  They lean out over the water, and bugs nibbling on their leaves fall into the water, supplying vital nutrition to young salmon.  While I was at the beach this evening, I saw a small fish jump out of the water.  Couldn't tell what it was.  Alders are important to the rest of the forest as well.  They grow fast and die young.  While they are growing, they fix nitrogen in the soil.  A bacteria called Frankia grows in nodules on alder roots, supplying nitrogen to the alder tree and making it grow fast.  Some of that nitrogen is released into the soil.  When alders die, they leave behind fertilized soil to benefit the longer-lived trees.  Many alders along the beach have tipped into the tide, one by one.  They grow crooked on the steep bluff.  You can tell there was a landslide in the 30's just north of the park, because all of the alders in the slide path are the same age, about 90 years old.   Fallen alders are also in important element of a healthy forest.  Coarse woody debris provides habitat for small critters like salamanders, and rotting logs enrich the soil.  An alder may be more alive after it dies than when it was alive.  As alders die, before they fall, they provide homes and meals for flickers, pilleated woodpeckers, and other birds and small mammals.  The rotting wood becomes home to bugs, and woodpeckers rip apart the soft wood to get at the bugs and grubs.  Alders are also a substrate for lichens, when pollution does not inhibit them. 

Stone #8 is pictured with a clam shell, and with an unidentified lichen on a boulder.  Below is one last picture of the sunset.