EAGLES, THUNDERBIRDS AND TALES OF THE SQUAMISH AREA

Squamish Valley / Mother of Wind

Eagles, bears and breathtakingly beautiful scenery await those who travel north of Vancouver, British Columbia to the town of Squamish.

Nestled at the head of Howe Sound and surrounded by mountains, Squamish is cradled in natural beauty as only a West Coast community can be. 

Growing in fame as the Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada, visitors enjoy the breathtaking scenery while hiking, climbing, kicking back or participating in the growing number of attractions to explore in this wilderness community.

The area is home to the Squamish First Nation, the Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh Úxumixw and Lil’wat7ul Nations, both descendants of the Coast Salish First Nations. 

Before Europeans came to the Squamish Valley, the area was inhabited by the local First Nations. One of the first contact they had with European outsiders was in 1792, when Captain George Vancouver came to Squamish to trade near the residential area of Brackendale. At the time, the territory of the Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh Úxumixw Nation and Lil’wat7ul Nation extended from present day Greater Vancouver, past Squamish and Brackendale all the way to Gibson's landing, some 6732 square kilometers.

During the 1850s gold miners came in search of gold and an easier gold route to the Interior. Settlers began arriving in the area in 1889, with the majority of them being farmers relocating to the Squamish Valley. The first school was built in 1893 and the first hotel opened in 1902, on the old dock in Squamish.

Squamish means Mother of the Wind in Coast Salish, an homage to the winds that rise from the north before noon and blow steadily until dusk, making Squamish a top wind surfing destination and host to the annual PRO-AM sailboard races.

Stawamus Chief, Squamish

The Stawamus Chief, the second largest free standing piece of granite in the world at a staggering 2,297 feet or over 700 metres. 

It has made Squamish one of the top rock climbing destinations in North America and been the source of inspiration for climbing legends like Peter Croft, Hamish Fraser and Greg Foweraker. 

The Stawamus Chief was formed in the early Cretaceous, 100 million years ago, as a pool of molten magma cooled deep in the Earth's belly.

This majestic peak is said to have been one of the last areas of dry ground during a time of tremendous flooding in the Squamish area. Many cultures have a flood myth in their oral history and the Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh Úxumixw are no exception. They tell of a time when all the world save the highest peaks were submerged and only one of their nation survived. Warned in a vision, a fierce and clever warrior escaped to safety atop Mount Chuckigh — the inactive volcano now called Mount Garibaldi — as the flood waters rose.

An Eagle soars near Squamish, BC

After the flood, Eagle, a spiritual messenger from the Creator, came to him with a gift of salmon and told him that the world below was again hospitable and ready for his return. He climbed down the mountain to find his village covered by a layer of silt. 

All his people had perished, but his gods gave him another gift, a second survivor of the flood, a beautiful woman who became his wife. The couple shared the story of the Eagle's gift. Today, eagle feathers are given as sacred gifts to symbolize courage, wisdom and honour the commitment of relationships as eagles mate for life.  

If you look to the local mountains, you can see another peak that holds the nesting place of another legend. The Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh Úxumixw and Lil’wat7ul Nations share the story of Thunderbird, a supernatural being that causes thunder and lightning, who roosts atop Black Tusk, a volcanic mountain in the local range.

If you love eagles as much as I do, head to Squamish on the first Sunday after New Year's day, you can honour the eagles by participating in the Annual Brackendale Winter Eagle Count.

LINKING TIME: AMMONITE INDEX FOSSIL

Ammonites were prolific breeders that evolved rapidly. If you could cast a fishing line into our ancient seas, it is likely that you would hook an ammonite, not a fish.

They filled our world's oceans back in the day.  We find ammonite fossils (and plenty of them) in sedimentary rock from all over the world. In some cases, we find rock beds where we can see evidence of a new species that evolved, lived and died out in such a short time span that we can walk through time, following the course of evolution using ammonites as a window into the past.

For this reason, they make excellent index fossils. An index fossil is a species that allows us to link a particular rock formation, layered in time with a particular species or genus found there. Generally, deeper is older, so we use the sedimentary layers of rock to match up to specific geologic time periods, rather the way we use tree rings to date trees.

PHASIANUS CHOLCHICUS

Common Pheasant, Phasianus Cholchicus

These playful lovelies with the gorgeous gold and green plumage are beautiful examples of the Common Pheasant, Phasianus Cholchicus. 

We associate them with tweet shorn English aristocrats jauntily going about the hunt on horseback. 

Pheasants build their nests on the ground and can fly for short distances. They spend their days searching through fields and around streams looking for tasty insects, seeds and grain.

COUGARS CONCOLOR: BADI

Cougars are meat-eating mammals, preferring to dine on deer. 

They are impressive athletes, able to leap 18 feet or more straight upward from a sitting position.

They are the most widely distributed land mammal in the Western hemisphere and yet we never seem to see them. They lead solitary lives and are excellent at avoiding humans. They see us far more often than we see them — boasting a field of vision spanning 130 degrees.

Cougars have a massive range that runs from the mountainous Canadian Rockies in northwestern Canada all the way down to Patagonia in South America. These cats make their dens in mountain crags, along rocky ledges, in dense woodland areas and under uprooted trees and debris. 

In the Kwak'wala language of the Kwakiutl First Nations of the Pacific Northwest — or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala — a cougar or mountain lion is known as ba̱di — with an emphasis on the b.

BOAS, YALIS AND THE RAVEN GWA'WINA CYCLE

On his first night in Alert Bay, after dinner with Stephen Allen Spencer and his two brothers-in-law, each, like Spencer, was married to a sister of Hunt and daughter of Anisalaga — Boas spent some hours in conversation with Annie Spencer (1856-1924), the younger sister to George (1864-1932) and William (1866-1952) Hunt, who regaled him with First Nation tales from her home in 'yalis, Alert Bay, British Columbia. 

“Mrs. Spencer was very gracious and told me many stories,” Boas wrote to Krackowizer, “which I recorded later in the evening.”

Four days later, Boas mentioned in a new note to his fiancée that he had visited Annie Spencer again and asked her to tell more tales. “She relates well and is very gracious,” he emphasized.

 “Unfortunately she is not well or I should really bother her.”

Nevertheless, Boas trod back to the Spencers’ home the same day. There he found Hunt’s sister either improved or doubly gracious, for she was “kind enough to tell me all I wanted to know. . . . The information I obtained from her was the most valuable I received in Alert Bay.”

The stories of Annie Hunt Spencer (1856-1924) daughter to Mrs. Mary Ebbits, Anisalaga, opened a vista on a narrative legacy linking all the peoples from Yakutat Bay to the Columbia River, who, though divided by physical and linguistic differences and by histories of conflict, held in common a heritage of thought. 

The Raven Cycle

A centerpiece of this heritage was the Raven Cycle, one of the oldest and largest bodies of oral literature in the Americas. In the bards who performed the Raven tales, and who daily altered them, were members not of a single school but of a living tradition whose members had innovated a stance toward the world in response to cycles of change from the Ice Age to the smallpox apocalypse. They had created a body of thought about people’s relationships to one another and to the cosmos, the beings within it, and the capacity of humans to right those relationships.

The star of the drama was Raven, scheming, ravenous, bumbling in his arrogance toward ever-greater disgrace, yet always surviving, evolving, and through his accidents and exploits establishing the present state of affairs.

Born before the earth had acquired its form, it was Raven—Old One, Great Inventor, Chief of the Ancients, Heaven Maker, Giving to the End, Going Around—who established the tools and forms of existence.

With the world veiled in darkness, Raven stole the box that held the sun and opened it, lighting the world by his ingenuity. 

He made man from grass and elderberry bushes, brought salmon to the people, fed the rivers with eulachon. He established the shapes and traits of his fellow animals and gave them their present powers and appearances. And though affairs could hardly change as radically in contemporary times as in the days of beginning, by his actions and infractions Raven pointed toward a way of being human. “So many stories are told about him,” Boas remarked during his first visit to the coast, “that they have a saying that human life is not long enough to tell all of them.”

Every First Nation of the Northwest Coast was woven into the fabric of the Raven Cycle through the warp and weft of a storytelling practice that linked speakers and listeners—messengers and mediums—within a pattern of call and response. There were no galleries around the fire, no lines dictating who paid and who performed. There were no observers, no outsiders, no Others. People did not merely listen to the Raven Cycle; they took part, asking questions, repeating refrains, goading the storyteller toward feats of ingenuity.

There was saltiness and sport in the Raven tales, sex and waste, greed and hate. The bards were like Raven: they begged, borrowed, stole, and in doing so created. They were origin poets who fostered possibilities by defying the rules of the system they had made.

The stories they told, often ending in just-so pronouncements—explaining, say, how wolves had come to behave so diffidently around humans (“they really became wolves after this,” one storyteller put it)—wove a fabric of thought that embraced every notable rock, tree, and stream in the neighbourhood, encompassing the human community within an animate cosmos. 

"I remember with the greatest pleasure many trips in colourful canoes with Indian guides who did not stop telling tales,” Boas wrote in one account of this storytelling culture for a German audience. 

“It was that mountain peak which alone reached above the waters during the great flood, and from this peak, the earth was populated again. Here, the battle took place in which the stone giants were outwitted and killed by the brave Indians. A dangerous rapid, formed in prehistoric times in a narrow strait, reminds us of the Son of God, who killed and sank a dangerous sea monster into the ocean at that place. Each strange place is woven into a legend.”

MOON RAVEN TOTEM AT SAXMAN TOTEM PARK

Moon Raven Pole at Saxman Totem Park

Ketchikan is truly the totem capital of the world, and if you want to see the most standing totems in one location, a visit to Saxman Village’s Totem Park is in order. 

The 25 totems here are authentic replicas of the original poles that were left standing in abandoned villages as the villagers moved into more populated cities.

The art of totem pole carving was a luxury that experienced its heyday in the mid-1700s to the late 1800s. 

The fur trade had provided the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples with a renewed source of wealth – and time to focus on the artistry of the totem. 

These poles were symbols of cultural and economic wealth that told glorious, comprehensive stories about the First Nations people and legends of the land.

In the late 1800s, Tlingits from the old villages of Cape Fox and Tongass searched out the Saxman site as a place where they could build a school and a church. 

The site (just one square mile) was incorporated in 1929 and has a population of just over 400 today, mostly Native Alaskans. Thousands of people visit Saxman each year to witness the artistic craftsmanship and stand in the presence of history—both deeply moving and proud.

TRIASSIC OF NORTH AMERICA

In the early 1980s, Tim Tozer, Geological Survey of Canada, looked at the distribution of marine invertebrate fauna in the Triassic of North America.

Tozer's interest in our marine invert friends was their distribution and what those occurrences could tell us. How and when did certain species migrate, cluster, evolve — and for those that were prolific, how could their occurrence — and therefore significance — aide in an assessment of plate and terrane movements that would help us to determine paleolatitudinal significance.

In the western terranes of the Cordillera, marine faunas from southern Alaska and Yukon to Mexico are known from the parts that are obviously allochthonous with regard to the North American plates. Lower and upper Triadic faunas of these areas, as well as some that are today up to 63 ° North, have the characteristics of the lower paleo latitudes. As far as is known, Middle Triadic faunas in these zones do not provide any significant data. In the western Cordillera, the faunas of the lower paleo latitudes can be found up to 3000 km north of their counterparts on the American plate. This indicates a tectonic shift of this magnitude.

There are marine triads on the North American plate over 46 latitudes from California to Ellesmere Island. For some periods, two to three different fauna provinces can be distinguished from one another. The differences in fauna are obviously linked to the paleolatitude. They are called LPL, MPL, HPL (lower, middle, higher paleolatitude). Nevada provides the diagnostic features of the lower; northeastern British Columbia that of the middle and Sverdrup Basin that of the higher paleolatitude. A distinction between the provinces of the middle and the higher paleo-situations can not be made for the lower Triassic and lower Middle Triassic (anise). However, all three provinces can be seen in the deposits of Ladin, Kam and Nor.

Diatoms / Microalgae dominant components of phytoplankton

If one looks at the fauna and the type of sediment, the paleogeography of the Triassic can be interpreted as follows: a tectonically calm west coast of the North American plate that bordered on an open sea; in the area far from the coast, a series of volcanic archipelagos delivered sediment to the adjacent basins. Some were lined or temporarily covered with coral wadding and carbonate banks.

Deeper pools were in between. The islands were probably within 30 degrees of the triadic equator. They moved away from the coast up to about 5000 km from the forerunner of the East Pacific Ridge. The geographical situation west of the back was probably similar.

Jurassic and later generations of the crust from near the back have brought some of the islands to the North American plate; some likely to South America; others have drifted west, to Asia. There are indications that New Guinea, New Caledonia and New Zealand were at a northern latitude of 30 ° or more during the Triassic period. The terranes that now form the western Cordillera were probably welded together and reached the North American plate before the end of the Jurassic period.

Tozer, ET (Tim): Marine Triassic faunas of North America: Their significance for assessing plate and terrane movements. Geol Rundsch 71, 1077-1104 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01821119

Danner, W. (Ted): Limestone resources of southwestern British Columbia. Montana Bur. Mines & Geol., Special publ. 74: 171-185, 1976.

Davis, G., Monger, JWH & Burchfiel, BC: Mesozoic construction of the Cordilleran “collage”, central British Columbia to central California. Pacific Coast Paleography symposium 2, Soc. Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, Los Angeles: 1-32, 1978.

Gibson, DW: Triassic rocks of the Rocky Mountain foothills and front ranges of northeastern British Columbia and west-central Alberta. Geol. Surv. Canada Bull. 247, 1975.

OYSTER: TLOXTLOX

One of the now rare species of oysters in the Pacific Northwest is the Olympia oyster, Ostrea lurida, (Carpenter, 1864).  

While rare today, these are British Columbia’s only native oyster. Had you been dining on their brethren in the 1800s or earlier, it would have been this species you were consuming. Middens from Port Hardy to California are built from Ostrea lurida.

These wonderful invertebrates bare their souls with every bite. Have they lived in cold water, deep beneath the sea away from the suns rays and heat? Are they the rough and tumbled beach denizens whose thick shells have formed to withstand the pounding of the sea? 

Is the oyster in your mouth thin and slimy having just done the nasty spurred by the warming waters of Spring? Is this oyster a local or was it shipped to your current local and if asked would greet you with "Kon'nichiwa?" Not if the beauty on your plate is indeed Ostrea lurida. 

We have been cultivating, indeed maximizing the influx of invasive species to the cold waters of the Salish Sea. But in the wild waters off the coast of British Columbia is the last natural abundant habitat of the tasty Ostrea lurida in the pristine waters of  Nootka Sound. The area is home to the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations who have consumed this species boiled or steamed for thousands of years. Here these ancient oysters not only survive but thrive — building reefs and providing habitat for crab, anemones and small marine animals. 

Oysters are in the family Ostreidae — the true oysters. Their lineage evolved in the Early Triassic — 251 - 247 million years ago. 

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakiutl or Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, an oyster is known as t̕łox̱t̕łox̱. I am curious to learn if any of the Nuu-chah-nulth have a different word for an oyster. If you happen to know, I would be grateful to learn.

HOLCOPHYLLOCERAS

Amazing suturing on this lovely ammonite, Holcophylloceras mediterraneum, (Neumayr 1871) from Late Jurassic (Oxfordian) deposits near Sokoja, Madagasgar.

The shells had many chambers divided by walls called septa. The chambers were connected by a tube called a siphuncle which allowed for the control of buoyancy with the hollow inner chambers of the shell acting as air tanks to help them float.

They were a group of extinct marine mollusc animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda. These molluscs, commonly referred to as ammonites, are more closely related to living coleoids — octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish) then they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species.

We can see the edges of this specimen's shell where it would have continued out to the last chamber, the body-chamber, where the ammonite lived. Picture a squid or octopus, now add a shell and a ton of water. That's him!

AMMONITES OF THE CAUCAUS MOUNTAINS

A very pleasing example of the Ammonite Acanthohoplites bigoureti (Seunes, 1887). Lower Cretaceous, Upper Aptian, from a riverbed concretion, Kurdzhips River, North Caucasus Mountains, Republic of Adygea, Russia. 

Geologically, the Caucasus Mountains belong to a system that extends from southeastern Europe into Asia and is considered a border between them. The Greater Caucasus Mountains are mainly composed of Cretaceous and Jurassic rocks with the Paleozoic and Precambrian rocks in the higher regions. 

Some volcanic formations are found throughout the range. On the other hand, the Lesser Caucasus Mountains are formed predominantly of the Paleogene rocks with a much smaller portion of the Jurassic and Cretaceous rocks. 

The evolution of the Caucasus began from the Late Triassic to the Late Jurassic during the Cimmerian orogeny at the active margin of the Tethys Ocean while the uplift of the Greater Caucasus is dated to the Miocene during the Alpine orogeny.

The Caucasus Mountains formed largely as the result of a tectonic plate collision between the Arabian plate moving northwards with respect to the Eurasian plate. As the Tethys Sea was closed and the Arabian Plate collided with the Iranian Plate and was pushed against it and with the clockwise movement of the Eurasian Plate towards the Iranian Plate and their final collision, the Iranian Plate was pressed against the Eurasian Plate. 

As this happened, the entire rocks that had been deposited in this basin from the Jurassic to the Miocene were folded to form the Greater Caucasus Mountains. This collision also caused the uplift and the Cenozoic volcanic activity in the Lesser Caucasus Mountains.

The preservation of this Russian specimen is outstanding. Acanthohoplites bigoureti are also found in Madagascar, Mozambique, in the Rhone-Alps of France and the Western High Atlas Mountains and near Marrakech in Morocco. This specimen measures 55mm and is in the collection of the deeply awesome Emil Black.

ANCIENT OCTOPUS: KEUPPIA

A sweet as you please example of Keuppia levante (Fuchs, Bracchi & Weis, 2009), an extinct genus of octopus that swam our ancient seas back in the Cretaceous. 

The dark black and brown area you see here is his ink sac which has been preserved for a remarkable 95 million years.

This cutie is in the family Palaeoctopodidae, and one of the earliest representatives of the order Octopoda — and perhaps my favourite fossil. It was this perfect specimen that inspired the logo for the Fossil Huntress brand.  

These ancient marine beauties are in the class Cephalopoda making them relatives of our modern octopus, squid and cuttlefish.

There are two species of Keuppia, Keuppia hyperbolaris and Keuppia levante, both of which we find as fossils. We find their remains, along with those of the genus Styletoctopus, in Cretaceous-age Hâqel and Hjoula localities in Lebanon. 

For many years, Palaeoctopus newboldi (Woodward, 1896) from the Santonian limestones at Sâhel Aalma, Lebanon, was the only known pre‐Cenozoic coleoid cephalopod believed to have an unambiguous stem‐lineage representative of Octobrachia fioroni. 

With the unearthing of some extraordinary specimens with exquisite soft‐part preservation in the Lebanon limestones, our understanding of ancient octopus morphology has blossomed. The specimens are from the sub‐lithographical limestones of Hâqel and Hâdjoula, in northwestern Lebanon. These localities are about 15 km apart, 45 km away from Beirut and 15 km away from the coastal city of Jbail. Fuchs et al. put a nice little map in their 2009 paper that I've included and referenced here.

Palaeoctopus newboldi had a spherical mantle sac, a head‐mantle fusion, eight equal arms armed with suckers, an ink sac, a medially isolated shell vestige, and a pair of (sub‐) terminal fins. The bipartite shell vestige suggests that Palaeoctopus belongs to the octopod stem‐lineage, as the sister taxon of the Octopoda, the Cirroctopoda, is characterized by an unpaired clasp‐like shell vestige (Engeser 1988; Haas 2002; Bizikov 2004).

It is from the comparisons of Canadian fauna combined with those from Lebanon and Japan that things really started to get interesting with Octobrachia. Working with fossil specimens from the Campanian of Canada, Fuchs et al. (2007a ) published on the first record of an unpaired, saddle‐shaped shell vestige that might have belonged to a cirroctopod. 

Again from the Santonian–Campanian of Canada and Japan, Tanabe et al. (2008) reported on at least four different jaw morphotypes. Two of them — Paleocirroteuthis haggarti (Tanabe et al., 2008) and Paleocirroteuthis Pacifica  (Tanabe et al ., 2008) — have been interpreted as being of cirroctopod type, one of octopod type, and one of uncertain octobrachiate type. 

Interestingly Fuchs et al. have gone on to describe the second species of Palaeoctopus, the Turonian Palaeoctopus pelagicus from limestones at Vallecillo, Mexico. While more of this fauna will likely be recovered in time, their work is based solely on a medially isolated shell vestige.

Five new specimens have been found in the well-known Upper Cenomanian limestones at Hâqel and Hâdjoula in Lebanon that can be reliably placed within the Octopoda. Fuchs et al. described these exceptionally well‐preserved specimens and discuss their morphology in the context of phylogeny and evolution in their 2008 paper (2009 publishing) in the Palaeontology Association Journal, Volume 51, Issue 1.

The presence of a gladius vestige in this genus shows a transition from squid to octopus in which the inner shell has divided into two parts in early forms to eventually be reduced to lateralized stylets, as can be seen in Styletoctopus.

The adorable fellow you see here with his remarkable soft-bodied preservation and inks sack and beak clearly visible is Keuppia levante. He hails from Late Cretaceous (Upper Cenomanian) limestone deposits near Hâdjoula, northwestern Lebanon. The vampyropod coleoid, Glyphiteuthis abisaadiorum n. sp. is also found at this locality. This specimen is about 5 cm long.

Fuchs, D.; Bracchi, G.; Weis, R. (2009). "New octopods (Cephalopoda: Coleoidea) from the Late Cretaceous (Upper Cenomanian) of Hâkel and Hâdjoula, Lebanon". Palaeontology. 52: 65–81. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00828.x.

Photo one: Fossil Huntress. Figure Two: Topographic map of north‐western Lebanon with the outcrop area in the upper right-hand corner. Fuchs et al, 2009.  

SAN JUAN ISLANDS

The San Juan Islands Archipelago, a group of 175 named islands located in Washington State is in the heart of the Salish Sea, just north of Seattle.  

If all the exposed landmasses were counted at low tide, the number would rise to 700. 

Eighty-four of these islands are designated as National Wildlife Refuges and are mostly made up of Mesozoic bedrock.

People come to the San Juans from all over the world to enjoy the remote island lifestyle, to soak up the natural world, both in sights and sounds and to have the chance to be closer to what wild places can gift them.  

Hike or bike the trails and roads, watch both sea and terrestrial birds, spend time observing whales, seals, sea lions, dolphins or porpoises from a land or water base. Opportunities to experience and learn begin as you step onto the ferry or land at the marina or airport. Natural beauty abounds and where words might fail, the sights and sounds fill in the frame. 

There are only four ferries serving the islands. The islands were formed by massive geological events, mountains moving, land shifting, volcanos erupting and glacial ice carving.  The result produced the Salish Sea, a body of water encompassing: West in the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Pacific Ocean, North to the Georgia Strait and Canada and South to Puget Sound. 

They were formed by massive geological events, mountains moving, land shifting, volcanos erupting and glacial ice carving. The result produced the Salish Sea, a body of water encompassing: West in the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the Pacific Ocean, North to the Georgia Strait and Canada and South to Puget Sound.

Reference:

Western Prince Whale & Wildlife Tours: https://orcawhalewatch.com/san-juan-islands/