I left work early yesterday after hearing the hooter on the hill behind the house again. I had an appointment with Laura to pick nettles at 530, and left at 230 thinking 3 hours was plenty of time. I picked devils club buds on the way up the hill, then got up to and around the cliff this time. Spent an hour or two circling the trees the bird was in. Could not see him. Came back empty handed again. I am not 0 for 4 for getting a hooter from this tree over the past 3 years. The devils club buds I found taste like carrots and at least I got a bag of those. Samuel, the 7 year old Sierra Leoneon, joined us to pick greens. We went up to our ski area. It was about a 20 minute walk to the picking area where I had luck just a few days before picking nettles in the small creek beds that came down the mountainside snow chutes. For the first half hour, we could not find nettle 1. Up one creek bed and then another. I couldn’t figure it out. Finally, in an open area near a patch of alders, we found all we would pick for the day in the one spot. I picked a bag of nettles and big bag of fiddle heads. We then went back to Laura’s, where she and Bob cooked us salmon burritos and to top it off- banana splits. Samuel enjoyed himself, and I’m sure was not reluctant to go to bed on a school night when I dropped him off at 930.