CAMPSITE 3

Back on the trail I back track about a half mile and notice a more secluded spot.  I drop down toward the lake and trees.  A huge tree, fallen over and broken at the root, lays about forty feet along the ground with an area to pass under, four feet high, to get to the other side. I consider for a moment the area under the fallen tree for a camping site but move on to a big clearing where there has been  camp fires.  The tree lies down quite a way from the main trail that continues through the Warm Springs Reservation.  I will return in 2010 with only 36 pounds in my pack and my kitchen in my 5 gallon bucket, which I use to bathe and wash my clothes.  One of the ten essentials!  All hikers laugh at me for this, but I am the one that does not smell.



I clear the campsite of rocks, pine cones and little sticks.  Pitch my tent and go search out a bathroom area.  I stretch my bungee cords across a group of trees half circling this area to dry my clothes on, should I wash them.  I will be there another three weeks, so I will have a wash day, that is certain.   It is early August so there is fire hazard.  I do not build a fire but as soon, weather permitting, as I can I will build lovely fires.  Early in the morning fires and night time fires.  Dry moss hangs from the trees and the big pine that is broken at its base has a chest full of dried wood just waiting for the burning.  What a treasure chest!  I can hardly wait to feel the cold.




I have found that through my life I have a special understanding with animals, particularly the wild ones.  My father had, not the same understanding with them, but one of kindness, of mutual need, and love. My mother had this same empathy of looking at an animal as if it were equal to a person.


During a morning I am doing my business, squatting over my bathroom place, when a huge doe silently comes up on me from a run, I look over my left shoulder, as if I were planning to move into the next lane and spot her massive butt descending through the woods.  This kind of act has happened so many times that I cannot fail to realize the kindness and the protection of the doe towards me.  This act of protection happened when I was working the fields of some rancher in Southern Oregon: the wild herd of cows that were fresh from a summer in the mountains would seemingly stampede me but would part, as a herd, on each side of me to spare my life.  The huge Brahma bull that would raise his heavy body up and move away as I entered his field to search for the mosquito larvae and the black Hershey bull, that, facing me as I descend the other side of a metal gate, my back toward him and unaware of the quiet monster until I turn, and our eyes meet.  These wonderful animals that perform acts of kindness to the human race, are not to be forgotten.