We rode together out of
Portland, through Gresham, Sandy and Zig-Zag to Highway 42 and down as far as
the PCT trail head on our way to Timothy Lake, where the kids were meeting
friends to camp for a few days. Sherman
and I said our good-byes yelling at each other, even though he had fixed me up
with his back-pack, tent and sleeping bag, the worry and the stress of me
spending 22 days in the wilderness alone got the best of him. We left him at Timothy, with friends,
and Olivia turned the car around on 42 and headed back to the trail head.
The beginning of August 2008
was sunny, dry and full of woodland aromas.
The mountain images blinded me and the pine smell filled my sinuses with
the pungent, suffocation that is so familiar of the woods. As we rode over the bumpy, partly paved road
I absolutely felt in the right place at the right time in my life. The northern Cascades are friendly, some
years, between the second week in July and the first week in September when the
cold nights arrive and the 30 degree mornings.
My plan was to hike the
Pacific Crest Trail to the border of California and Oregon. My pack felt heavy and I was not in shape for
it but I thought that about three weeks would take care of out- of-
shapeness. My daughter turned into the
pull over and parked the car. We hopped
out and took turns having our picture taken standing under the PCT sign, they
got back in the car and started up. Just
in time I remembered that I had left my food in the vehicle although I had
every thing else with me, the tent, the pack, the sleeping bag and, and most of
all my five gallon plastic bucket that I would find so necessary to all my
hiking trips from that time on.
The year was 2008, I was 58
and had not been out camping for many years.
I ached to be out. It was sudden
urge. Sherman’s gear was thick and
heavy. I had to rest quite often, I
settled on a campsite not far from where Olivia had left me. I cleared the site of rocks and pine cones, a
little chip monk was climbing up a slim stem of a flower, I wonder why the
weight of the little fellow didn’t weigh the flower over. I pitched the tent, a one man tent with a
rain cover. I push the branches of the
pine tree aside and threw my backpack and sleeping bag within the tent. I have covered the ground under the tent with
a ground cover and laid out a mat on the floor of the tent. Done.
I have brought too much stuff and will leave various items at the foot
of trees and rocks. I stretch out, the
light out side the tent is soft and cool. I listen to the sounds in the far away
forest, the water, the trees and the animals.
I had camped close to the trail and two horsewomen come close and pass
by visiting with each other about the rush of the stream next to my site. “It’s higher and swifter than the last time I
rode by”. I wondered when that might
have been, this year or in another year.
They just let me be and rode through the current
.
.
The little chip monk kept
busy, checking the flowers one by one
.
.
I stand facing south with a
marsh before me and the lake after that.
To my left the rushing creek and forest, to the right the trails
intersect and fork one way back to the highway, the other to the horse camp.
The lake is circled by a trail that travels past a commercial camping
ground, a ranger station with a meadow across the highway from it then the
horse camp and back to me. A much
longer hike than this sounds.
I stand at Latitude 45-05’46n,
Longitude 121-44’34”w
Standing and stretching I span the sight before me. On my left, north, the rushing stream and the forest with the trail continuing-to my right the trail leading to a horse camp. Across from me a marsh and then Clackamas Lake, spring fed, with beaver, fish and duck with a commercial campsite beyond it. About 5p, my normal time to make camp, the light behind the trees. My end of day.
The air feels cool against my skin and I am not too dirty as I didn't have much of a day hiking or climbing, still every thing feels wild with intense colour. The green and blue and the grey of the evergreens and the chirping of the birds. I set my mind to my camp and backpack, removing items and setting them on the plastic ground cover. On each side of my pack I stuff my 12" by 15" double weight plastic and fishing pole and garden machete. After spreading the plastic out on the ground, I pitch my tent and leave 3 or 4 feet on each side which I will fold up over the sides of my tent at night to keep the cold out. I unpack the inside of the pack, my clothes come out first,then my 0 degree sleeping bag, my food at the bottom of the bag. All the items lay on the plastic. My kitchen is kept in my 5 gallon bucket, a pot, utensils, water filter, wool gloves and hat. My wool sweater in tied around my hips and my down coat in a stuff bag which I will use for a pillow. This night I will eat raw. Nuts, raisins and canned fish.
I eat my fish, nuts and raisins and I stir a quart of milk for calcium. I find an area encircled by trees, dig a hole and do what is necessary, I turn my head while I am squatting, just in time I see the rear end of a huge deer. Apparently she saw me in the nick of time or I would have been trampled by hooves and venison. The intense colour of the day becomes the pastel afternoon light before darkness becomes the forest. I am a new visitor to the forest but I feel a calmness, a quietness. I knew how it is to be in the forest because I lived in the forest when I was a child and I had no fear walking into the forest on a trail alone with my little dog. My parents hadn't a clue that their little girl felt secure on the mountain. But how can I express my relationship with the forest?
I came to realize, in retrospect, that the area that I had chosen to claim as my camp was actually a small, circular, community at the base of the Warm Springs Reservation, which I would hike in 2010 I think of it now, horses circling round, the camper's from the Clackamas campground, strolling outside the campground and finding beautiful hidden places next to the lake to explore. August, beaver had deserted stumps of trees, huge shelves of fungi grew on the bark of trees. From the entrance of Warm Springs, thru hikers from the border of Mexico or Ashland came through the forest. "Four months," yelled one proud hiker. "We have been on the trail for four months!"
If I had carried too much to hike I had at least landed in a social and beautiful place to camp my 22 days.
The following day I packed up my tent and sleeping bag, passed the swamp, crossed the rushing creek, climbed up the forest trail into the dark and cool shadow. Being August the weather was dry and hot. I looked to the branches, high to the tops of the trees, looking for resting cougar, my eyes constantly moving, my ears listening. A Woodpecker at work, he would be my forest companion tapping out a mysterious Forest Morse Code. He probably was pecking for bugs or drilling a home. I came to a fork of three trails, the one to the left led to the Warm Springs Reservation, I swerved to the right nearing my Woodpecker friend as I proceeded I came closer to the public camp site named after the lake, which was fed by two springs. I found a trail leading down to the lake at quite an incline and I found a cozy spot where some beaver had worked their gnawing teeth marks, then disappeared for a season. I found level ground and took out my plastic sheet. I lay it over the ground and pulled out the tent and started pitching. Once it was up I spread the cover over the floor of the tent and then my foam pad. I zipped my backpack and threw it inside the tent. Then I opened my 5 gallon bucket and spread my kitchen on the plastic sheet on the ground. My backpacking stove, pot, water-filter, flashlight and matches for lighting a campfire I tucked along the side of the tent. I hiked a short way to the lake with my bucket and got water for camp. I felt the green and the pure air and I felt that I was just beginning to merge with the forest primeval.
LONGFELLOW:
- THIS is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
- Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
- Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
- Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
- Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
- Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
- This is the forest primeval; but where are the hearts that beneath it
- Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman?
- Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers --
- Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands,
- Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven?
- Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!
- Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
- Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean.
- Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand-Pré.
- Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,
- Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion,
- List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest;
- List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.
- Evangeline
- Down at the water's edge I met a hiker-NingaTortoise by name. Trail name. He showed me his solar water filter. He had taken it out of his pocket as if it were a pen. " It purifies a quart at a time. This is my second time to hike the PCT, he said." "I am Huckleberrieblue, I said." I had been Tree Girl, but I had changed.
- I had a water-filter, a cheap plastic water-filter that I bought at Fred Meyer for $24 but for most of my camping that August I used the water provided at the commercial campsite and didn't filter. The last campsite and the one I stayed in was a nine minutes walk from my site. On one of my hikes I found a little skull on the side of the trail. It was bleached white with a hole in the top of the skull, maybe from a bullet or a tooth. The tooth guess was correct. During the fall I took it to the taxidermy. He said it was a fawn and a cougar tooth had killed it.
