Barn Beach Haikus

One side of my family comes from Eastern Washington.  My Great Grandfather settled there in 1908 and started the local bank.  After some success, they moved into a beautiful big house with their four daughters and stayed there until 1964. 

Field Family Home
Field Family Home

The home was then purchased and run as a bed and breakfast, Haus Lorelei until 2003.

One of their daughters (my great aunt), Frances, built a house adjacent to the old home and stayed there until she died in 2002 at the age of 92.  She left me that house, intending we use it as a getaway.  I loved the house and history and the land it occupied, but it just wasn’t feasible for us to keep it.

Enter Harriet Bullitt and a fine fellow named Jeff Parsons, who had a vision for the entire original Field Family property: to piece all the parcels sold over the years back together and turn it into the Barn Beach Reserve.  The home now houses the offices of the Reserve and the Upper Valley Museum in Leavenworth, Washington.

I know all of the original family members would be delighted that the property is now restored, and that my Great Aunt France’s home has been turned into something they call The Barn:

The Barn
The Barn

A beautiful, state-of-the -art classroom for visiting schools to use as a platform for discovery of all sorts of flora and fauna in the area, as well as climate and other global issues.

One such class of 4th graders presented the director of the Barn Beach reserve with a collection of Haikus commemorating their experience at The Barn classroom.  I share them below:

A Chinook salmon

Splashing, swimming upriver

Now lays eggs and dies

Josh & Joseph (H)

 

A leopard gecko

Cautious gecko slowly walks

It is curious

Greta (H)

 

See a stonefly

The little insect can swim

Six legs and two tails

Jack & Reid (H)

 

Microscopes looking

At macroinvertebrates

Close up observing

Raven (H)

 

Eat sweet blackberries

At the Wenatchee River

Black juice on your face

Ranger & Kieran (H)

 

We went fish-tagging

We saw a great blue heron

We felt the water

Riley & Makiya (C)

 

A scavenger hunt

With digital cameras

Spider on a log

Wyatt & Baxter (C)

 

Salmon on a redd

Not eating for many days

Ready to die now

Karina & Gracie (C)

 

Salmon washed on shore

This I see; it makes me sad

Then it struggles free

Gracie & Karina (C)

 

Graceful dragonflies

Fly over the gentle breeze

Beautiful creatures

Jonah (C)

 

Characteristics

Of simple and compound leaves

And more than just that

Jonathan & Colton (D)

 

Black widow spider

Red hourglass on belly

Poisonous spider

Olivia (D)

 

Gopher snake curls up

Slowly stretches out and looks

He wants to get out

Olivia (D)

 

Boots in the river

Lamprey eel, very slimy

Catching bugs is fun

Bryson (D)

 

Guinea pigs are soft

Guinea pigs are very cute

Sometimes they are loud

Taylor & Erin (D)

 

In the morning light

The salmon died by the shore

Life keeps on going

Cody (L)

 

We went to Barn Beach

We looked at orange autumn

Leaves, bugs, fish, and birds

Lydia & Sydney (L)

 

The blood-sucking leech

It attaches with its teeth

And sucks all the blood

Jose & Reiley (L)

 

At Barn Beach Reserve

Salmon spawning, salmon redds

At Blackbird Island

Noemi (L)

 

Golden, yellow trees

Blow in the October breeze

They look beautiful

Kendra & Kessler (L)