Adventure Log: Wallace Falls

13 Thursday Jun 2019

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

Tags

#adventurelog, Adventure Log, caring for a grandchild, Central Cascades, Gaian Tarot, hiking in the Central Cascades, hiking in the PNW, Joanna Powell Colbert, solo hiking, The Herbcrafters Tarot, Wallace Fall State Park, waterfall hikes, waterfalls

It wasn’t my usual hike. First, it wasn’t in Southwest Washington. Generally I stay close to home, exploring the South Cascades and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, straying no farther north than Mt. Rainier National Park. But the trails my heart and feet itch for are still under snow. I have a list of hikes I’m watching trip reports on for wildflower emergence when the snow melts. I think it might be a year of favorites rather than new explores.

But this week, I decided to head for the Central Cascades and return to Seattle for the night, followed by my the day with my grandkids. It shortened the day not to have to repeat the three or four hour drive to return home.

My first pick was Lake Serene and Bridal Veil Falls, but I was scared off by WTA reports of “it was harder than expected.” Maybe another day. Or not. I don’t usually think to choose state park hikes, but at bedtime the night before my intended outing, I was ready to give up finding any place appealing and stay home, so I latched on to Wallace Falls. I am a sucker for waterfalls, and this hike has three major ones!

Wallace Falls derives its name from Kwayaylsh, the surname of the first homesteaders in the area. If that had been its name, I probably would have been attracted to it sooner.

I was up early, my driving route planned, hopefully, to avoid traffic by staying off I-5. (It’s also, like most hikes in the Central Cascades, popular; and I prefer to hike alone. I-5 and popular are two more reasons I don’t go north to hike.) I was at the espresso kiosk at 5:30; and soon after, road latte in hand, winding east through Tenino and Yelm. An early start from home, though, even staying off the interstate, put me at the one high traffic stretch of road (WA-167) squarely at rush hour. No matter where you go that is basically north, you have to go near Seattle.

There weren’t many cars in the parking lot at 9:30, thankfully. I used the flush toilet and hot and cold running water (nope, not my usual hike) and headed out the wide trail under the power lines.

The trail did cut off then, eventually narrowing; and, sans alpine scent and wildflowers, was more like a wilderness trail, winding beside Wallace River. The babble, sometimes escalating to a roar, of the river and the crashing of water plunging off the mountain— dropping a total of 1000 feet—as the trail approaches the three falls, followed me as I hiked.

I was met at the trailhead by a quote from William Wordsworth, part of which was a favorite of my mother’s, though she didn’t remember who said it first. My hiking day was between the anniversary of her Celebration of Life and what would have been her 103rd birthday. She met me at the trail and I carried her with me.

The trail has many steps, several bridges, a picnic shelter, signage, and multiple fences. I wondered if all that treated lumber gave the trail its somewhat funky odor. The signs warning that falling off the edge and plummeting hundreds of feet “could cause death,” amused me. But when, on my return to the parking lot, I met people in sandals and carrying purses, it became a little more clear.

The middle falls and the valley overlook (I like open places) would turn out to be the highlights of the 5.5 mile round trip trail, but I didn’t know that, so I pressed on up the “more difficult” section with its switchbacks, roots, and large rocks, which certainly earned it its difficulty status.

Many dogs and people accompanied me, particularly on the way down after lunch when the trail became kind of like WA-167. I imagine the weekends are like I-5 through the Tacoma curve. I think I’ll stick to the southern trails, and hopefully one day get back to the far north, staying clear of the middle. I’m a country girl, not a city girl.

As I wrapped up the hike, I met a couple a bit younger than I. (Why is it that somewhat younger people make me feel my age more than much younger ones?) “How far did you go?” he asked. “All the way,” I said, not without a bit of pride—though it was far from the most difficult hikes I’ve done—maybe sensing he thought I looked old enough that if I had done it, he would have no excuse. “How far did she say?” she asked him after they passed me. “All the way,” he replied. It was some 17,000 steps—according to the app on my phone—on 66-year-old legs. I throw that age in because I have only a few more days before I have to advance it. But I have many more hikes.

Before I left home, I took time for my daily card draw from my new tarot deck—The Herbcrafter’s Tarot—to see how it might inform my day. I drew the Adelita of Water, I’m not kidding. The Adelitas (or warriors) correspond to the explorers cards in the Gaian tarot (my other deck). The Adelita of Water is “committed to nurturing her spirit. She knows that time alone allows for the discovery of her innermost desires.” It was affirmation that I chose the right hike.

I’ve been drawing warrior, mother, and healer (explorer, guardian, and elder) cards ever since this deck arrived in the mail several days ago. As I work on my memoir of my mother’s last years and, simultaneously, work to restore this property my family loves, I’m reminded that I am doing good work; that I am where I am meant to be at this time of my life. I am walking through the second half of my sixth decade with one palm face down, grounded in this property; and the other face up, hiking into the unknown, open to mystery.

The day after my hike, I spent my last weekly day of the year with my youngest grandson. It was bittersweet. There are many more days with these little guys, but the three years I spent time with them each week as part of their care team, will forever hold space in my heart. (You can read a bit of that journey here.) As a friend said, who followed a similar journey of caregiving for both a parent and grandchildren, now I get to watch them grow up. And who knows, maybe they will hike with me one day.

Adventure Log: Green Lake & Ranger Falls

30 Thursday May 2019

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

#adventurelog, Adventure Log, Carbon River, Green Lake, hiking in the PNW, Mt. Rainier National Park, Ranger Creek, Ranger Falls, solo hiking, Washington Trails Association

I spent two hours Monday night trying to find a hike that 1) appealed to me (e.g. has a vista view), 2) isn’t snowed in, and 3) isn’t two to three weeks out from wildflowers I want to wait for. This is not an easy time of year for a semi-casual hiker around here. I had nearly given up when I found Green Lake on my Washington Trails Association wanna list. It doesn’t have a vista view, but I was desperate. And I’m a sucker for waterfalls.

I hit the coffee kiosk at 5:45 and head east on the Thurston County back roads, cruising past Rainier, Yelm, and McKenna, and on to almost ghost-town Wilkeson and nearly non-existent Carbonado. It’s between McKenna and Wilkeson I have lost my way every time I take this route to the west side of Mt. Rainier National Park. It changes highway numbers several times, making turns with confusing signage. I’m determined not to mess up this time and arm myself with handwritten, detailed instructions. Success!

I wind along the curving road up the mountain after Carbonado. I glance down at the map screen on my dashboard, wondering if I should have paid attention to the detour sign and look back up in time to realize I had narrowly missed hitting a deer, seeing only the blur of white spots. I breathe the second of the three great prayers: thank you. I don’t know nor care to whom or what I express thanks for beauty and bare misses, maybe a greater being, maybe even my parents in the beyond. I only know I am not alone.

I drive past the Carbon River ranger station to the end of the road. My boots are on the trail at 8:15. I’m not sure what happened to the sun that was supposed to break through the clouds right about now. I’m glad it’s not a vista trail, or I would be disappointed. At least it’s not raining, and I’m confident there will be sun at some point.

I’m five minutes behind two hikers leaving the parking lot, but I won’t see them again—or anyone else—until I get to the lake, which they are leaving as I arrive.

The first three miles are on a decommissioned road, official vehicles only. Generally I don’t much like walking on roadbeds, but this one—a soft bed of hemlock, fir, and cedar mulch—is easy on the feet, and flat. It extends through a rainforest I had no idea was here. The WTA says this about it:

[It] is considered the only inland temperate rain forest of its kind, being well beyond marine areas. But just like the valleys of the wet Olympic coast, the Carbon catches showers in its trajectory, holding them longer, and making its own fog when it needs to. In other words, this valley lives and breathes differently from its neighbors.

It is beautifully full of mother logs dripping with moss and licorice fern, the fallen giants embracing the next generation in loving nurture whether lying on the ground with trees growing on their backs, or still-standing hollowed out trunks with new trees growing through their core, or being the core. Others, newly felled by more recent storms, wait to be the umbilicus for new life.

Sword fern and devils club blanket the forest floor in rich green. The Carbon River flows in the distance changing the landscape at will, sometimes near enough to hear it tumbling along to the sea, while Ranger Creek babbles alongside the trail. Otherwise it is so quiet. The mist hanging over the tops of the hills on the other side of the river and down into the trees makes the primordial forest even more eerie. It really does breathe differently, and so do I.

Corydalis

I reach the trailhead and start up. A map of the area greets me with the usual cautionary tales, including “Don’t hike alone.” Why doesn’t it say, “Be aware of the risks of hiking alone”? Like anyone who drives 2-1/2 hours then walks three miles on a road bed to the trailhead is going to turn around and go home because the sign says don’t hike alone. I feel like a scofflaw. Anyway, I rarely feel truly alone on a trail, even when I see no one. Still, I put my bear spray in my jacket pocket instead of buried in my knapsack.

It’s a moderately steep ascent of human-made natural steps as well as some formed by tree roots, linked by easier going trail sections past uprooted old growth trees with beautiful and stunningly huge root systems that I can’t even get in a photo frame without using panorama.

A mile in I hear the roar of Ranger Falls before I see it. “Holy crap!” I exclaim—the third great prayer—when I spot it through the trees. As I stand at the viewpoint, awestruck by its enormity and power, I think for how many eons snowmelt plummeted 172 feet down through this narrow rock slot choked with these same boulders along with felled giants before anything that walked on two legs knew it existed. I am humbled to be standing before it.

I tear myself away from the falls and continue up the trail through long, lazy switchbacks, past last stage trillium, and over a demure section of Ranger Creek that is oblivious to the coming trauma.

I arrive at the small, very green mountain lake just as the sky clears to blue. Tolmie Peak, which boasts a lookout I have hiked to from Mowich Lake, peaks through a crotch at the other end. I am enchanted. I love hidden mountain lakes. I walk out onto the long jam—a little gingerly, aware of my age—and sit down to eat my apple slices and homemade trail bar while fish jump in the lake. The camp robber shows up too late to share my lunch.

Shortly after I leave the lake, I meet another couple, older than I, which always gives me hope that I will be able to do this for a few more years. They and the couple I met on my arrival at the lake are all I will see on the trail (along with a few on the road bed). My favorite happenstance on an in and out trail: knowing there is someone ahead of me and someone behind, but not sharing the trail.

Back down at the road, there are two bikes chained to a structure. I wonder if they belong to the older couple. I wish I had a bike; this hike is almost ten miles and I’m ready to be back at the car. I don’t stop to gawk at mother logs, shaving a little time off the road walk. I’m back home before 4:30, managing not to end up in Puyallup and on I-5 as I have in the past, and wondering where I can go next week.

Adventure Log: Oyster Dome-Lily Lake

23 Thursday May 2019

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Adventure Log, bellingham, Bellingham Bay, Fairhaven Village, Gaian Tarot, Herbcrafter's Tarot, Joanna Powell Colbert, letters from World War 2, Lily Lake, oyster dome, Pacific Northwest Trail, Samish Bay, Skagit Valley, Washington Trails Association

Not all who wander are lost. I did some wandering today.

I’m in Bellingham, writing with my dear friend Joanna Powell Colbert in her new home in Historic Fairhaven Village—a fun adventure in itself, across Bellingham Bay from her old home on Lummi Island, where I have also visited her. For those of you who don’t know Washington, Bellingham is a hop skip from Canada. I met Joanna at my first writing retreat, four months after I moved back to the PNW; which makes it an unbelievable six and a half years ago.

She is an earth mystic and creatrix of the Gaian Tarot deck and the soon-to-be released Herbcrafter’s Tarot, and I love her. She reminds me not only to observe the natural world, but to honor it; and is a guide to unlocking its secrets.

Like my home in SW Washington, Bellingham is sandwiched between water (Puget Sound with its San Juan Islands and the Pacific Ocean beyond) and mountains (the North Cascades and Mt. Baker, or Koma Kulshan).

Today, wanting to take a hike outside my usual hike zone, but not wanting to take the time away from writing for a drive to the mountains, I chose Oyster Dome, an ascent up Blanchard Mountain to an overlook of Samish Bay and the Skagit Valley, the Olympic Mountains beyond.

Somehow I missed the driving instruction on the Washington Trails Association website for the exit to take off I-5, and thus began my wander. When I had descended into the valley, I stopped and asked directions at a convenience store. The clerk had no clue; I could ask next door, she suggested. That would be either the Joint Store or the Tattoo Shop. I picked the Joint Store. She didn’t know either, but she Googled it and wrote down instructions for me. Guess I could have done that, though my smart car had been no help.

I reached the trailhead parking lot shortly after realizing I had forgotten my homemade trail bar. No worries, I expected to be back to town by lunch time, even with the delay. The view from the overlook parking area was spectacular.

The trail through the forest was beautiful, and the many switchbacks doable because they were in the shade. It’s part of the Pacific Northwest Trail—a 1200-mile hiking trail running from the Continental Divide in Montana to the Pacific Ocean.

Sword fern and bleeding heart were abundant and, with the filtered light streaming through he second growth forest, a favorite kind of forest walk.

The writing project I’m working on is compiling the letters my father and aunt wrote home during WWII. My father began his service in officer training in the canyons of New York City, determined to see and do everything he could while he was there—in part so he would never have to go back. After a childhood in Michigan farmland, he took a first job in east Tennessee and hiked the Appalachians. He wrote home:

“Occasionally the trail will break out into the open on a mountain peak and you can see for miles and miles and thousands of acres. I get a lot bigger kick out of it when I have to walk several miles and then come on it unexpectedly.”

That wasn’t this hike, but I know that experience.

My aunt, on the other hand, was a nurse with the 36th Hospital Unit awaiting deployment to Europe in Colorado. When they weren’t bivouacking on steep trails and narrow ridges, she went hiking for pleasure, determined to see and do all she could while she was there.

“I’m getting tough and rugged. It’s so pretty in the mountains that words can’t express it. Being out here is just like a vacation to me. I’m beginning to feel like a hardened mountain climber.”

I took her with me on this hike.

I reached the overlook, where several hikers—some loud—and dogs sat on the rocks at the edge of the cliff. The view is spectacular, though frankly no more so than from the parking lot, just higher. I didn’t stay long.

I had decided to take the short spur trail to Lake Lily on my way down, and I was eager to get there. Besides, I had no trail bar to enjoy while I looked over the bay. And did I mention loud people? The trail to the lake was lined with the biggest not-yet-blooming skunk cabbage I’ve ever seen, with the slight skunky odor. There was a small marshy pond, and I wondered if that was the lake. If so, quite the disappointment. But it was not.

Lake Lily took my breath away, really. It was utterly silent. People free. I swear I could hear the water striders hopping across its surface. It was one of those lakes clear enough to see the silty bottom. Lily pads dotted the surface in a Monet painting.

I nearly fell off a log at the marshy edge to get a photo of this crazy flower growing in the water.

There are campsites there, and I wanted nothing more than to set up a tent and stay for days. I sat on a bench, and sat and sat, completely overwhelmed with my good fortune to be in the tranquility. But I had to go.

Halfway back to the main trail, I heard voices. Loud voices. The six women weren’t on my trail, but their voices were. Eye roll. The first one immediately said, in some astonishment I thought, “Are you hiking alone?” “Yes,” I said. “Do you like that?” she said. “Oh yeah.”

And then things went a little south. A ways down the trail I came to a sign (signage is good on this trail), and I realized I was not where I wanted to be. Well, I wasn’t where I needed to be. Next time I will skip the Dome and do the Lily and Lizard Lake loop, but not today. Though I was tempted.

I retraced my steps and turned onto a trail that said Max’s Shortcut. I remember seeing something about that on a WTA trip report. There was also a map, and it clearly went back to the parking lot. Still, I was unsure if I should take it, or keep trying to find the trail I came in on.

I took it, and was anxious the whole way. It seemed longer. Was it headed to the right parking lot? What will I do if I get there and it’s the wrong one? Why is it crossing a road? Ach! It was beautiful though, and there were more wildflowers—many of which I even knew the names of—and fewer switchbacks than the trail I went up on. And I did meet a couple of people, I wasn’t alone; and there were blazes on the trees. I wasn’t lost, just wandering. And hungry. And getting a little tired.

A mountain biker on the road I came to confirmed that I was headed to the parking lot. I tried to let go of the niggle of fear. Also my phone was almost out of battery. I sent Joanna a text and told her where I was if she didn’t hear from me again, and just kept walking. I’ve never been so glad to see my orange car. Well, maybe a couple other times.

As I write this, I see I took a picture of that trip report so it would be on my phone. Too bad I forgot.

Adventure Log: Coldwater Lake Ridge, Coming Around the Bend

09 Thursday May 2019

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, #wta.org, Adventure Log, Coldwater Lake Loop Trail, hoffstadt bridge, mountain wildflowers, Mt. St. Helens, pre-eruption Mt. St. Helens, spring in the PNW, volcano recovery

I’ve been whining about nice weather since February. It means I should be outside, cleaning up the gardens, doing yard maintenance, finding early season places to hike. And I’ve not been feeling it. Even last month, I wanted still to be hibernating inside. And, after forcing myself to get out for a nearby hike in March, three people told me not to hike in Capitol Forest alone and I started being afraid of solo hiking. I don’t want to be afraid. What’s the matter with me? Have I lost my appetite for adventure? Gotten too lazy to make the property look beautiful? Getting old and worn?

And then came May, and I crossed the bridge, turned the corner. (Too much metaphor?) A walk around the yard and suddenly I see potential in the gardens, and I’m impatient with having other things to do that keep me from it. Monday I decided on a first mountain hike and I couldn’t wait until Wednesday. Huh. Note to self: next year just let it be okay to wait until the leaves are on the trees. There is no need to force my inner spring. It will come.

Hoffstadt Bridge

It was overcast Wednesday morning when I got up before 5, eager to be on my way. It promised to be another gorgeous one though—on its way to too hot at the end of the week (I might move to Alaska). I knew I would get above the clouds and I fought off disappointment in the onset of the day, remembering I love emerging from the fog at the top of the world. Besides, this hike through the blast zone at Mt. St. Helens—one of my favorites—is exposed and hot, I wanted to get the up part done ahead of the heat.

It did not disappoint.

It’s a long trail, a loop, with 1-1/2 miles on the busy road at either the beginning or the end. With the advantage of experience (I’ve done this trail at least twice), I decided not to complete the loop along the lake. The ridge is my favorite part anyway, and I could park at the trailhead and avoid the road walk. Excellent plan, except the road to the trailhead, which goes on to Johnston Observatory, is still closed for the winter. I had to walk anyway. At least there were no cars, motorcycles, and motor homes zooming past. In the car I would have missed the five elk that crossed the road ahead of me.

The rushing Coldwater Creek.

Alder woods to the ridge.

Early on, I met a young couple coming down. Asking them if they had done the loop—and thinking they must have started mighty early, since it was only a bit after 8am—they said they had done it last night, then slept at one of the back country camp sites. They asked if I was going to. I said I had before, but this time I was going to the end of ridge and back the same way.

“No shame in that,” she said.

It never occurred to me that there was. For one thing, I don’t think it’s any less mileage, 9.72 miles with the 2 miles RT on the road from the Hummocks trail parking lot. Did I look aged? I pulled up my new mantra: “I don’t have to do it all today. I don’t have to do it all day.” No shame in that.

I noted the pocket gopher (I assume) tunnels: the bane of lawns and farmland and the savior of the blast zone. Buried deep in their dens 39 years less 10 days ago, after the eruption they ventured back to the surface (what twilight zone did they think they had emerged to?), pushing and carrying seeds out with them that would begin regenerating the landscape.

Like driving through the heart of America on my cross-country journey home seven years ago, where it looks like the dust bowl was just yesterday, the mangled, rusting logging equipment that was stranded and abandoned on that cataclysmic day are a reminder of the heat and force of the blast that snapped cables like twine and twisted, broke apart, and tossed pieces of the massive machine, the bulldozer, the yarding tower, the truck leaving the bodies half buried in ash and sediment. As if the topless mountain with a gaping hole in her side isn’t reminder enough. It makes my stomach hurt a little bit.

While I passionately love the well-heeled Mt. Rainier, going there has always been like visiting the rich relatives in the city. The less ostentatious Mt. St. Helens was my family’s mountain when I was a child. We can see her from our home, we picked huckleberries on her pumice slopes, and canoed on Spirit Lake. Maybe we camped there, I don’t remember. Someday I will go through the 8,000 slides in my home and find the evidence.

My sisters and me. And the intact St. Helens.

This new lake, Coldwater, is a lake still in process of maturing. This trail along the ridge is not a wildflower meadow. The trip up and down is not a cathedral hike through old growth forest, but alder—the first foliage to arrive after a clearcut or a fire. Or a volcanic blast. In fact, it’s on former timber company land; I suppose the stumps represent trees that would have been logged. Weyerhaeuser did clear the fallen timber that was salvageable and accessible. It’s a scientific study, walking here, remembering the first time I came as close as people were allowed after the event when it looked like an atomic bomb had been dropped. Not a speck of green as far as the eye could see. A landscape in black and white. It was possibly the saddest thing I have ever witnessed.

I’m glad I saw it then and can bear witness to the recovery today. There are birds hopping about and singing in the bushes; ants and spiders scurrying on the trail; a scampering chipmunk and a frightened tiny toad. A grouse beats out a rhythm: thrum-thrum, thrum-thrum. I see a prodigious amount of elk scat and tenacious ground cover flowers are coming on. And, what’s that? A rabbit under an alpine fir!

This is the earliest I’ve been on this trail; I loved seeing the emergence of spring, and that there was still snow.

It gives me hope. We humans won’t destroy the earth, only ourselves. It will take a long time, but the earth will recover.

Returning on the same path with the sun at my back instead of in my face, retracing steps instead of doing the loop, there is a different perspective. I see views I didn’t notice before. It’s like aging, life comes from a different frame of reference. I’m fast approaching my 67th birthday; I know my body will change and with it my capacity for the life I enjoy now. “How much longer will I be able to do this,” I wonder. Exactly until I can’t.

Adventure Log: Woodland Park Zoo with a Two Year Old

02 Thursday May 2019

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, #woodlandparkzoo, activities with grandchildren, Adventure Log, Camp Gigi, childhood speech delays, grandchildren, grandparenting, Woodland Park Zoo

Ok, he’ll be three in a week and a half and how did that happen already anyway? I’ve suggested to his moms that they have another babe, but they have declined. These two are four hands full; I get it. But…

Anyway. My weekly days with the last grandchild is drawing to a close. Another month or so, then I’m taking a break for a couple weeks to store up energy and patience—and have some solitary adventures—for a 12-day Camp Gigi with Adrian and his five-year-old brother Elliot. Did you understand that? Both of them. At the same time. For twelve days.

Five years ago, I spent two days a week with baby Elliot. Then, after a year off, two days a week with baby Adrian. Then another year off. This past school year we’ve spent a day a week together with the hope that one-on-one time would accelerate his delayed speech. I don’t know if it contributed, but a year later he talks nonstop, as does his big bro. Who needs the lottery; I won the jackpot moving back here.

Here on out, it won’t be a regular gig—he’s moving from day care to a stimulating pre-K program with an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP), if he still needs it—but just try and keep me away for long. Although my mother’s mother lived nearby when I was a child, my paternal grandmother was far away. I rarely saw her. (My grandfathers died without ever meeting me.) My children grew up far from both sets of grandparents, though we did the best we could to make regular visits happen. Mostly my cousins lived far away from our common grandparents too. My family has been atypically migratory. To my regret, I am very far from my two oldest grands; but they live across the road from their maternal grandparents and they see their paternal grandfather often. Children need regular contact with grandparents, and I am thrilled that my Bigs and Littles all do, even if it’s not with me.

This week I went to Seattle early, to watch Elliot in the second game of his first T-ball season. He was awesome! Totally focused the entire game. (Somewhere he got the notion that the batter lifts a leg, knowledge that has not yet extended to why or which leg.)

It was a gorgeous PNW weekend, continuing through the week, and Monday Adrian and I took the bus to the zoo. “School bus?” he asked. “No,” I said, “the city bus.” It took several reminders, but by the end of the day he announced to his moms without prompting that we went on the city bus.

The Woodland Park Zoo is a beautiful urban habitat 20 blocks or so from home. There is far too much to see in the window of time a three year old and a 66 year old can handle without a stroller or a wheel chair. “What do you want to see?” I asked Adrian. “LULU!” he shouted. Elephants. They don’t have elephants at this zoo, but we headed for the Savannah and giraffes, zebras, and “HIPPOS!” The hippos were sleeping. So were the lions. One of the giraffes is pregnant; due to give birth, after 15 months gestation, any day now. (I think that’s mommy Olivia in front of baby daddy Dave on the left.) In case you were wondering, giraffes are six feet tall at birth.

I think his favorite, or at least my favorite to watch him experience, was the rain forest aviary. He was delighted, as only a young child can be delighted. He would spot a bird and run back to the interpretive sign and find the match. When one landed on the sign while he was standing there, he was awe struck.

He played on the hippo lounging in a puddle, then had the snack his most excellent Gigi brought. Sticking his fruit snacks wrapper in his pocket until we saw a trash can, he spotted someone else’s snack wrapper on the ground. He pointed to it and, looking at me, asked, “I do good deed?” “Great idea,” I said, and he put it in his pocket too for the trash.

The orangutan and the tapirs were sleeping. It was a nap kind of morning, apparently. The rhinos were nowhere to be found. The Komodo dragon was sleeping on a ledge (good grief, those guys are big), but Adrian got up close and personal with the exhibit, with its life size claw and all.

The meerkat met him at the window after standing modestly at attention as only meerkats can do, and the sloth was eating breakfast. V e r y s l o w l y. Hanging upside down, of course. Probably you are wondering what sloths eat for breakfast: carrots, broccoli, peas in the pod. The sloth was my favorite, and probably is a foretelling of how I’ll be feeling by the end of each Camp Gigi day.

We had lunch—which he insisted in his moms report we did not do—then made our way back to the bus stop. It took a while to get there—it’s a big place (94 acres)—but I managed not to be lost and wander like I did last time I was there. The penguins, which must have been sleeping when we went in, were out playing.

And we ran into the “PEACOCK!” Adrian followed it around, with that unparalleled kid delight thing again. (According to an overheard conversation, it had displayed its feathers earlier, but we weren’t that lucky.) It was first on the storying to his moms and Elliot.

The Olympics lit up the horizon across the Sound while we waited for the bus. Gah, this is a beautiful city.

We walked the four blocks home from the bus stop at sloth pace, then collapsed before he took a two-hour nap then another 30 minutes in my lap. It’s been quite a while since he snuggled with me after his nap. I soaked it in. Every experience could be the last of its kind with a child; which is not to say there won’t be many more new experiences ahead. Camp Gigi is going to rock.

Adventure Log: Pilgrimage to the Olympic Peninsula

25 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Memories, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 4 Comments

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#adventurelog, Adventure Log, Big cedar, Kalaloch beach, Kalaloch Tree of Life, Lake Quinault Lodge, Olympic National Park, Olympic Peninsula, Rialto Beach, Ruby Beach, scattering ashes, Stellajoe Staebler

Adventure is not always to unfamiliar places, and the western edge of the Olympic Peninsula is one of the places I have most often been to over my 66 years. On Easter Sunday, my sister and I returned to a favorite place of our childhood to scatter some of our mother’s ashes on this one year anniversary of her death.

As children, we traveled on the sticky vinyl back seats of the one-tone-green ’56 Chevy station wagon, hauling with us whatever out-of-town guests were visiting. My father pointed out the commercial timber forests to the visitors, citing the year they were clearcut, replanted, would be ready for harvest again, while we rolled our eyes from the back.

With our Tucson cousins. A family story of my father being incensed that the boys sat in the far back of the station wagon reading comic books on the drive to the beach, missing his running commentary about forest practices.

Our first stop—Rebecca and I—was at Lake Quinault Lodge, where we spent the night in the oldest part of the hotel. Franklin Roosevelt had lunch in the dining room there in 1937 and is rumored to have decided to create Olympic National Park while sitting in the lodge, perhaps in front of the enormous stone fireplace. The lodge sits in one of the three temperate rainforests in the world and is one of the wettest areas in the contiguous US, so there is a fire pretty much every day.

My mother and I stayed at the lodge a couple of times in recent years when I came home for a visit. We always sat at the same table for meals, her with her back to lake and the light that hurt her eyes, me across from her watching guests playing lawn games, the hummingbirds at the feeders, and the sinking sun setting over the pristine lake. Rebecca went to the dining room for breakfast ahead of me. When I followed a minute or two later and found she had been seated at the familiar table, my eyes filled with tears.

After breakfast, and some time reading in front of the fire, waiting for the fog to lift, we drove on to Kalaloch beach. It was not our childhood destination, but was the beach my parents enjoyed in later life, staying in the cabins on the bluff. They took the grandkids there when they came to visit, digging in the sand and making sand casts on the beach. My mother’s “Purple Arts Festival” group gathered there each year too, doing art in one of the cabins and on the lawn. I’m not sure why we didn’t visit the so-named Tree of Life, or at least I have no memory of it, perhaps because the riverlette has to be forded to get there. It should be one of the natural wonders of the world.

Three of the grandkids.

Next stop, the Big Cedar. The ancient tree (estimated to be over 1000 years old, according to the internet) is my Notre Dame. It sits in a forest of other large trees, the mother cathedral among the lesser cathedrals. Its immensity, even after losing a “spire” in a storm in 2014, is almost too much to take in. It is not a single tree, making it difficult, I suppose, to determine age; or just how much of it is original. It is a true “mother tree,” pulling to her many children of other ethnic origins and giving them life. The simple sign at the road “Big Cedar” with an arrow, is tantamount to a sign pointing to Notre Dame that says “church.” The park service, just this month, is finally giving her her due, constructing a fence to keep worshipers from climbing on and into her, and improving the trails around her and her fallen spire as well as back to other huge, ancient trees.

A favorite hymn of my mother’s: I know a green cathedral, a shadowed forest shrine, where leaves in love join hands above, and arch your prayer and mine…

Mama in examination mode, age 88.

Rebecca with Mother Cedar.

On to Ruby Beach, the favorite of mine and my sisters. We were greeted on the trail down from the parking lot by the smell of a fire, flashing us back to tiny fires built between the drift logs to protect us and the flames from the wind, roasting hotdogs for lunch, before or after we stacked and leaned logs to build a fort and searched in high competition for the roundest stone. On nicer days we, floated on logs in the river—the water play alternative on these beaches with too strong an undertow to venture into the ocean. We had the best childhood.

Roasting hot dogs with our Aunt Helen. (I’m not sure where the fire is; looks like a posed shot.)

(This is actually Rialto Beach, a little farther north, me waving with sister Jo Ann.)

Rebecca

No place really felt right for scattering ashes, but we wanted to leave some of Mama on this wild coast. We returned to Kalaloch with our collection of heart rocks (none of the round ones we found would have met our father’s strict criteria and the test of his calipers) and set a small shrine in the sand to hold a bit of her. As I write this, it has long since washed into the sea, taking her a little farther away from us.

And now I am the grandmother, passing love for the beauty of this place to my grandchildren. I am hoping to take them at this summer’s Camp Gigi. What lives in hearts and is passed to the next generations is never truly gone.

Adventure Log: Porter Falls & Lake Sylvia

21 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 4 Comments

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#adventurelog, Adventure Log, Capitol Forest, hiking in SW Washington, Lake Sylvia State Park, Olympic Mountains, Porter Creek Campground, Porter Falls, skunk cabbage, Spring equinox

It’s been a spectacular week in the PNW. I had the week off from my usual Monday/Tuesday trip to Seattle for time with grandchildren because my sister from Virginia was in town. We three sisters spent Monday painting trim for our house renovation and, after dinner, going through several small boxes of audio and VHS tapes. I found some treasures to add to my growing stash of material for my new writing project—a video and an audio tape of family reunions—a reel-to-reel that includes footage of my 5th birthday party, which I think was the costume one, and the Weyerhaeuser ads that featured my father shown on NCAA football coverage in the 70s; but most of the rest were non-keepers.

Tuesday, though, I went on my first adventure of the season. It was the last day of winter, and my father’s 102nd birthday. I picked an easy hike to ease my body in, and because it was close by and I wasn’t getting my customary early start so I could see my sister off to SeaTac. (Alas, no Road Trip Latte.)

The Porter Falls trailhead in Capitol Forest is just 45 minutes from home; and the falls at the trail’s end only a bit over a mile in. I’ve driven into Capitol Forest, but never hiked, so the first adventure was a newbie. I had the road and the trail all to myself: just me, the moss and licorice fern covered trees, the filtered sun across the sword fern understory, the birds, and the constant rumble of the tumbling river, er “creek.” Except for the water feature, it is not unlike the woods behind my house, but it was good to be away from the tasks that distract me at home.

I sat at the falls, where two branches of the creek rejoin to continue their downward rush together, and ate some of my lunch—an experimental homemade trail bar (needs chocolate chips, what was I thinking?) and apple slices— while contemplating eddies, then headed back to the car.

I didn’t even notice that spider, or I would have focused on it!

I wound upward for a while through the labyrinth of logging roads, through clearcuts that opened a commanding view of the Olympics. I got a little lost making my way back down toward Highway 12. Capitol Forest is a 110,000 acre trust land that has multiple entrances on all sides, connected by DNR logging roads that wander sign-free around the mountain. One has to pay attention to landmarks at intersections to get back out the same way you came in. I didn’t. I was grateful for my new dependable car.

Back down in the valley after the unintended sidetracks, I picked up the creek that had rushed down the mountain, but here spreads out in a placid meander through pastureland before joining with the Chehalis to become a real river headed for the Pacific.

There was still plenty of day left, so I decided to go on to Lake Sylvia State Park outside Montesano and hike another short trail a friend explored last week. I’ve never been to Lake Sylvia either, or into Montesano—a cute small town with many beautiful historic homes, it turns out.

Lake Sylvia is a small lake with a 35-site campground and a swimming area. Perfect, I’m thinking, for a camping trip with the Littles at some future Camp Gigi. I ate the rest of my lunch on the picnic table at Site 5, my pick for a solo campout, maybe soon!

The hike around the lake was even shorter than Porter Falls, but completely different. The Porter Falls trail is through an old conifer forest, nearly a rainforest, along a fast-moving creek. Lake Sylvia has more hardwood rising up through marsh with skunk cabbage just beginning to bloom and waiting for the promised trillium to show up next to a placid lake.

It was exhilarating to be out again after the long winter. The rains are returning—and we need it, less than an inch in March to date—but I’m already plotting my next adventure when the sun shows up again. I turned toward home past a sacred grove of ancient trees that looked as if, if I placed both palms flat against just the right one, I would be whooshed back in time.

And now spring. Time to start a new thing, adventuring and a new writing project; and let go of the old, the memoir manuscript is out of my hands for now. I wish I could let go of yard care, but I continue to try to see it as a privilege, to see it as lighter than air.

Adventure Log: Roadtripping in North Carolina

26 Friday Oct 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

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#adventurelog, A Place at the Table, Adventure Log, Catherine Kapikian, Celo Community, Dupont State Forest, grandchildren, Hooker Falls, Lake Johnson, Little River, North Carolina, One World Everybody Eats Network, Pullen Memorial Baptist Church, Raleigh NC, sunrises, sunset, Toe River, traveling across America, Triple Falls, Weaverville NC

I traveled across North Carolina this month on the blue highways (well, highway is stretching it for some of the roads), from Asheville to Raleigh via Burnsville and Sparta (near the Virginia border). I visited family, longtime friends, and saw beautiful countryside. You can read the words and see more photos on my post “You Can’t Go Home Again.” Here is the photo journal.

Leaving Seattle at sunrise under the crescent moon.

I love kids soccer, especially when a grandson is playing! Ethan scored two goals. Memories of his father and aunt and times gone by rush in.

White Duck Tacos on the French Broad River in Asheville.

Hooker Falls on the Little River in the Dupont State Forest.

The Bigs and their parentals.

The Little River is an old favorite. It runs through Elkmont Campground in the Smoky Mountain National Park, the place of my first solo camping adventure after many camps there when my children were young and not so young. It was also a place of my mother’s heart when she was a young woman.

Triple Falls

Heart rocks did not abound here, but we did remember Nana.

From the Bigs’ backyard near Weaverville.

Max answering the hooting call from his grandfather down in the holler across the road at sunset.

Scored a visit with my big sister who just happened to be at nearby Montreat from her home in northern Virginia.

The Toe River near Burnsville.

Sharing my friend Katherine’s soul place on the Toe; I’m not the only one who has left Raleigh. She lives in Celo, a communal land trust community established in 1937 to care for the natural environment.

Toe to toe on the Toe with Mama.

Road trip! Traveling north to Sparta to visit Norma, another friend who has left Raleigh.

Dancing clouds led the way.

Sunset from Norma’s front porch.

Sunrise from Norma’s front porch.

New artwork at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, my former church home and employer. They finally got new pew cushions!

Before I moved away, I served on the committee planning for this work by artist Catherine Kapikian. It’s the first time I’ve seen it. Designed by the artist, it was executed by members of the church community and depicts the radical inclusion and values of the current church, complementing the ancient history in the stained glass.

More time with friends.

A Place at the Table is a radical restaurant concept to feed fresh good food not only to those who can pay, but also those who can’t. There are 60 such restaurants. Read about it here.

A walk at Lake Johnson greenway out friend Vickie’s back door.

You’ve heard of bikes that can be picked up and dropped off; Raleigh also has electric scooters! (It’s a little scary, both for drivers and, I suspect, riders.)

Back into Seattle at sunset…

…under the nearly full moon.

Adventure Log: You Can’t Go Home Again

22 Monday Oct 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 8 Comments

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#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, friendship, goibg home, home, Pacific Northwest, Raleigh NC, Seattle WA, you can't go home

I lived in Raleigh proper for eight years, worked in the city longer than that, and lived in the county that contains it for two decades. I’ve been gone six years. Although this week’s visit was my third, I was nearly completely lost. I guess you really can’t go home.

After making multiple wrong choices on the maze of interstate interchanges coming into the city, the next morning I can’t make it from my friend’s house where I’m staying to my favorite café where I wrote my first blog every week—two blocks from where I worked for eleven years—where I’m meeting friends for breakfast. The street names are familiar, but the map in my head of how they connect is completely gone. I drive in circles with no idea where I am or how to get where I want to be until I happen to come to the street the restaurant is on, the name of which I had forgotten. The remainder of my time in Raleigh, I depend on Siri.

It doesn’t help that there are new traffic circles (the first ones went in shortly before I moved and have now multiplied like rabbits); many new buildings; new businesses in old buildings; and torn down buildings.

My favorite blueberry crunch bagel at Café Carolina is now mysteriously too sweet. I’m reminded of my mother grumbling that foods aren’t as good as they used to be, declarations I rolled my eyes at in their predictability. The café and that bagel are among the very few things I have missed since I’ve been gone. I don’t have to miss them anymore. The Panera Bread and its cinnamon crunch bagel, where I write many a blog post now, have become home to me.

After breakfast I wander into the number one place I’ve longed for the past six years: a sweet boutique grocery store called The Fresh Market. I note the new signage as I approach it. I’m lost from the moment I walk in the door as the picture I’ve carried with me evaporates. It’s been completely reorganized; nothing at all is familiar. I wander for the three minutes it takes to quickly walk the circumference and I’m out the door. I don’t have to miss that any more. Of course the FM scone I loved has been long gone, the reason I settled for the blueberry crunch bagel in the first place.

I mention to my friend that though the Nissan dealership washes my new car for free, I’ve missed the car wash where I used to get my Honda CRV washed, hand-dried, wiped down inside, and vacuumed for $10. She tells me it went out of business. Don’t have to miss that anymore.

Before I head to the airport on the last day of my visit, I drive to the last two beloved places: my dear house and the historic cemetery where I watched many a sunrise before I went to work.

My neighborhood is barely recognizable. More houses have been renovated, some torn down and replaced. New neighborhoods surround the old one. My house looks mostly the same, other than yard improvements I saw several years ago. My prized banana tree—that the new owners moved—is a thriving grove. The front door is still Global Purple, and that makes me happy. The lawn is still weeds. Then, as I drive on by, I realize they have removed the fence with the purple window pane door my son Nicholas built for me. It was my pride and joy, and that makes me sad It’s not mine any more.

I expect property values have gone up and I wonder for a micro-second if I should have hung on to 609 Edmund. The wondering doesn’t last long, though once home I check the city deeds records online and confirm my suspicion.

The last stop is the Oakwood Cemetery. Old friends there are right where I left them. There are some shiny new stones scattered among the ancient ones, but otherwise at least one neighborhood is unchanged. I can breathe there.

Heading out of town on the way back to the Charlotte airport, after making wrong turns on what I thought would be a simple Siri-free drive to Hwy 64, I decide to drive through the first neighborhood, in Apex, my family owned a home in when we moved to North Carolina in 1988. I get lost somewhere between a new Costco shopping center and where the high school Nicholas attended was but now is not. I never get to the house, but end up in what was a decrepit tiny town but is now super cute.

I love the friends I had when this was my home. I felt loved and cherished spending time with them again, just as they always had made me feel. I miss what we had then. But, like me, they have moved on with their lives and the lovely evening we spend together is more time travel than reality. I look forward to hosting them at my home someday (some have already been). I will lavish hospitality on them as I share my new familiar. But while I will continue to visit my grandchildren at the other end of the state, I will not return to Raleigh. I am a stranger in a strange land there.

My American Airlines flight flew close to Mt. Rainier in the glow of the setting sun before making a wide circle over the entirety of Seattle and its islands as the moon cast a ribbon of light on its waterways. I usually fly American, but only one other time in the more than 40 years since I left home, do I recall it taking that same long eye-popping loop. We were 40 minutes early. Maybe the crew was eager to be home too.

“Are you home?” my seat mate asked as we touched down. “Yes,” I said. “Oh, yes.” Good and truly home.

Bonus Adventure Log: Lakes and High Lakes Trail

29 Saturday Sep 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 6 Comments

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#adventurelog, Adventure Log, grandchildren, letters from World War 2, Louise Lake, meeting the spirit of dead loved ones, Reflection Lake, Stevens Canyon

My adventure season is officially over for 2018, which in no way means adventuring is over! But it’s time to differently prioritize. And really, it’s all adventure. I have returned to weekly 24-hour visits to my second home in Seattle for a one-on-one day with the littlest Little. This week’s day was so much fun.

My women’s writing circle begins on Wednesday (legacy writing) and I’m going to a writing workshop on Lummi Island next weekend (legacy writing). When the rain begins (and it had better), I will return in earnest to slashing 50,000 words from my memoir as well as begin my next project: reading and transcribing three 3-inch binders of letters my aunt wrote to her folks during her years as an overseas nurse during WWII. Then figure out what to do with them and the hundreds of letters from my father. When my sister finishes transcribing my mother’s taped life stories, I will finish her book too. All of this is legacy work, the task of the phase of life I am in. Putting it all together, honoring my ancestors, may be mine.

Meanwhile, oh my, the outdoor work that needs to happen to get ready for winter. So, you see, adventure of the traveling variety must play second fiddle for a few months. But not before I go to North Carolina in a week and a half to visit the Bigs and travel some familiar byways to see old friends.

It was an epic adventure season. In the past 26 weeks, I took 24 explores of my vast little corner of the country, including 13 hikes—11 of them new to me. I am pretty pleased with the achievement. Thank you for traveling with me; it wouldn’t have been the same without you. Next year, with a freedom I hadn’t been expecting this summer, I plan to begin expanding into a larger corner. Another winter project…making lists! Camping in the Redwoods is already on it.

I took a last unplanned hike after my trip with Mama to Paradise this week: I drove out the Stevens Canyon Road to Reflection Lakes and hiked the Lakes and High Lakes trail. I was only going to the Louise Lake overlook (it was my second hike of the day, after all), but when I got to that high spot, I realized I had done the hard part of the trail, and—what with my 4:30am start—the day was young. What the hey, I did the whole loop.

It wasn’t a top ten trail, but it was lovely, with Herself peeking in and out, small meadows and ponds. I startled a doe and two babes. I watched them a bit then moved on. One little one cut solo through the woods and met me around the corner. Like the chipmunk at Paradise, we stood silently heart-to-heart for several moments. The spirits of our loved ones are everywhere, when we are paying attention.

Au revoir extrovert summer, welcome introvert winter.

Louise Lake

Stevens Canyon

Unnamed pond

Writing Down the Story

Tag Archives: Adventure Log

Adventure Log: Wallace Falls

Adventure Log: Green Lake & Ranger Falls

Adventure Log: Oyster Dome-Lily Lake

Adventure Log: Coldwater Lake Ridge, Coming Around the Bend

Adventure Log: Woodland Park Zoo with a Two Year Old

Adventure Log: Pilgrimage to the Olympic Peninsula

Adventure Log: Porter Falls & Lake Sylvia

Adventure Log: Roadtripping in North Carolina

Adventure Log: You Can’t Go Home Again

Bonus Adventure Log: Lakes and High Lakes Trail