Adventure Log: Snowgrass Flat Revisited

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

Tags

#adventurelog, Adventure Log, bears on the trail, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, hiking in Lewis County WA, hiking with my sister, Mt. Rainier, Snowgrass Flat, sunset, wild huckleberries

Dateline: July 30, 2018
Snowgrass Flat, Gifford Pinchot NF
@10.5 miles

Note to self: Don’t hike when the temperature is forecast at 95 degrees in the closest town. I thought I would pass out several times. Apparently others knew better. There wasn’t much traffic on the most popular trail in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and most of what there was were backpackers. Hence we had little competition for attention from the flies. I read on WTA trip reports they were bad, so I succumbed to a small bottle of Deet. Don’t like it, but I like fly bites less; and I seem to have none on the morning after, so I guess it worked.

I had promised my sister I would take her with me on a hike; I don’t know if that felt like a gift to her or not, she is not a hiker. But she closed her shop for the planned day and got up early. Both sacrifices that felt like a gift to me!

We picked up our adventure lattes and headed for my new favorite trail, as of last summer. I was hoping, two weeks earlier than last year, the wild flowers would be at peak.

I promised her it was a pretty easy hike, with a big payoff.

Okay, so I hiked it after I did Indian Henry’s last summer. Compared to that it is a pretty easy hike. It wasn’t 95 degrees last year; and there were no bugs except when I sat on a log to eat my lunch. The sky was deep blue behind the white Mt. Rainier last year; there was no haze from California’s wild fires, making it more a white on grey view this time. And the signage on the long forest road up wasn’t broken off last year and was this time, causing us to miss the turn off. Twice. It was already hot when we started up the trail. I also lied a little bit about the mileage. Unintentionally of course.

The first two miles through the Douglas fir/cedar/hemlock forest are flat. Well, there was some downhill, but of course we didn’t notice that until the return. It would have been pleasant, but for the hungry flies. Then the up shit started for the next two miles. That’s when the almost passing out part came, when we couldn’t really stop because of, you know, the flies.

We reached the lower meadows, which, I see now, is the destination of the 4.1 miles the WTA lists, but the big meadow is higher up. We ate our lunch by a babbling brook, soaked our hot feet and dirty ankles in the icy water, and noted the flies weren’t so interested in us there.

There are many options when the trail breaks out of the woods to the lower meadows, and I picked the wrong one (didn’t read the minimal signage). We found out the trail with the brook crossing was heading for Goat Lake. I knew we didn’t want to go there, so after lunch—not sorry for the detour to the brook—we turned back through the paintbrush meadow and got on the right trail. More up. I’d forgotten that part of the trail. Rebecca didn’t believe me that there was a bigger meadow, and by the time we got there she was unimpressed.

The flowers were not what I had hoped, and we weren’t clear if they were past prime or still coming. The bear grass, though, was as pretty as I have ever seen it. And anemone (Old Man on the Mountain) always delights. And there was the paintbrush at the lower meadows.

We built a cairn for our mom and headed back for the bypass loop trail that adds a bit of mileage, but different scenery as it descends in full view of Herself.

Shale after it falls off the cliffs and before it breaks up.

Shale after it breaks up.

Last year I missed the bypass trail, and after asking someone coming up from wherever that portion of the PCT comes from, I hiked back a mile to the missed trail. Rebecca impressed upon me the need not to miss it this time and I watched closely, knowing now what to look for. Still, I thought we’d gone too far and we turned back before we headed down another slope we’d have to come back up, if indeed we’d gone too far. Finding another PCT hiker at rest, we learned we hadn’t gone far enough, and hiked back where we came from, finding it this time, looking exactly as I remembered it.

Another icy foot-soaking opportunity.

We thought we would never get back to the car. The bugs weren’t bad up in the Flat, but picked up briefly when we returned to the forest. A beer at Base Camp Grill in Ashford was screaming our names! And the Grill closes at 8. I would have hurt someone if we missed it, and there was a chance. There was still the 12 or whatever miles of washboard road before we got to the 25 miles of winding road between Packwood and Ashford. And we weren’t down the trail yet. (I discovered the next morning the water bladder in my camel back was empty except for what was in the hose.)

Suddenly, as we walked in exhausted silence, there was a loud scuffling around a curve in the trail ahead. We stopped dead. What the hell was that? I knew what it was. There was only one thing it could be, and I raised my bear whistle to my lips. But it had no interest in meeting up with us, so I didn’t blow it. Black bear. One. We hoped. We started singing, “Valderie, valdera…” loudly as it crashed up the hillside as fast as it could go through the bushes and over fallen logs.

“Well, that was exciting,” I said, when the incident seemed good and truly over. We walked on clicking our poles against rocks and roots just in case.

Farther down the trail, we found tiny wild huckleberries. How had we missed them going up? How did the bear miss them? We picked some, until the flies found us, and the beer stepped up its call, tick tock.

Never have either of us been so glad to see a parking lot. Why the heck are trails longer on the return? We reached the Grill at 7:30. I don’t think Rebecca will ever hike with me again.

Last summer I thought I would do this trail often. (You can read about the first time here.) It was like Paradise without the crowds and flip flops. Now I think I’ve done if for the last time. Maybe I should stick with once per hike; except for Paradise, it will always be my favorite, crowds or not. I’m getting older, and there is still so much to see.

I guess if you try to go home again, you have to know it will be different.

Sinking wildfire enhanced sun ball.

Adventure Log: Camping 2018

28 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, Endgame, gratitude, Lake Quinault, Lake Quinault Lodge, legacy letters, letters from World War 2, May Sarton, Olympic National Park, Olympic Peninsula, Pony Bridge, Rialto Beach, solo camping, thanking our parents, Willaby Campground, world's largest trees

Dateline: July 23-16, 2018
Willaby Campground, Lake Quinault, Site 19

It’s an alternate plan after discovering the place I reserved in a timely manner in the Gifford Pinchot NF was not where I wanted to go. I’ve camped at Willaby three times now. The first was the only week it rained that summer, and was also an alternate plan. I had a reservation at Takhlakh Lake, but I didn’t want to camp in that remote place in the rain with no amenities other than a pit toilet. I don’t like camping in the rain, but my sister was coming from Virginia to stay with my mother so I could get away and I wasn’t about to cancel.

Now I think I will make it an annual camping spot; I do love it here. It’s 45 minutes from the ONP beaches, half a mile from the lodge (cold beer/dry and warm if it rains) and merchantile/cafe so I don’t have to prepare all my meals if I don’t want to. Also flush toilets, a light in the bathroom (also, unfortunately, a mirror), and potable water. Takhlakh Lake, where I’m going in September for maximum beauty and solitude with the fishing eagles and osprey, has none of those.

Departure day begins with killing some 50 yellow jackets in my house after I sprayed their nest the night before and drove them inside. I duct tape their access hole into the magic kingdom and leave a key for the exterminator.

I set up camp in a record one-hour, even with the 37 steps down to the secluded site with a view of the lake through the trees. Not bad for a site at the back of the campground, which I usually eschew. As for the 37 steps: I like walk-in sites, usually choosing them because they are closer to the lake or river and farther from the campground road. This one is a little much however, especially when food and toothpaste have to be returned to the car in the evening and retrieved each morning. The tent pad is a balcony, just barely big enough for my tent with a long step out the door, because I insist that the door, which has the only window, face the lake and the hills beyond. Still, I feel lucky to have scored it in the full campground.

I go to the lodge for a beer after I set up camp—late because of the yellow jacket invasion and needing to clean the Airbnb after the wait-until-the-last minute guests leave. I’m in bed early and watch the sun set over the water from my air bed. When the glow fades, I go to sleep with no idea what time it is. “Day is done, gone the sun, from the lake, from the hills, from the sky.”

When I awake with the early light, the lake is shrouded in fog, mist rising from the water. I get up, put my sweatshirt on over my pajamas and make coffee. I take it and my journal down to the lake and sit on a stump. The sun will come soon and burn away the fog as the day slips into another hot one.

My thoughts turn to my mother. She and I stayed at the historic lodge here—where, with great foresight, Franklin Roosevelt signed the Olympic National Park into being in 1938—a couple of times when I came home for a visit after my father died. Sad to say, I saw those visits as duty rather than days to be lived. When she finally lost her vision, those opportunities were lost. I still took her to Mt. Rainier, but she couldn’t really enjoy it. Yes, I do have regrets.

I sit hoping for eagles or osprey to fly over looking for fish, but there are none. A pair of herons come toward me, but I thought they were gulls until they were right overhead. They were flapping, so they weren’t raptors and I didn’t pay attention, so focused on what I wanted to happen that I missed what was happening. Pretty much like living with my mother and missing her essence while wanting her to be a different mother.

I do half sun salutations at the edge of the water then return to my campsite to build a fire and cook eggs with goat cheese and bacon. (Not over the fire; I’m not that ambitious.)

I struggled with what project to bring with me. I’d grown accustomed over the past few years to use my time away from mother care to work on my memoir…about mother care. But now it’s out there looking for an editor and I’m a little lost without it as I struggle to discern the next project. I brought a variety of possibilities.

I pick up the first of two bulky notebooks of letters my father wrote to his folks during his World War 2 service. As soon as I read the first letter, I’m hooked. I was bereft some time back when I finished the 500 letters he wrote to my mother. It was like he died all over. And now here he is again, my funny daddy, long before I knew him.

I sit by my small fire and begin to read. The letters begin after college. He’s working for the WPA in Ohio and doesn’t like it. He’s irked when he files his first income tax returns. After “penny pinching for a whole year,” he owes $19.45. He supposes since he’s “better off than many people, [he] should pay for the privilege. But on the other hand,” he writes, “I owe that to my parents, not Uncle Sam. Taxes would never pay them for what they’ve done though. In fact, I have no idea how they could be adequately repaid.” He thinks he can get a job with the Tennessee Valley Authority (where he will meet my mother). It pays $2000 a year. This is new information, before the letters to my mother begin. I’m elated.

When the fire goes out, I dress, make a sandwich for lunch, and head to the edge of the Pacific: Rialto Beach. I drive through Mora campground, where my family camped, remembering rising early with my father—the breakfast cook, at least the coffee. You can read about and view my beautiful foggy day here.

I sit by the fire again in the evening reading letters. I turn a page and am startled to see my mother’s straight-lined perfect penmanship; the hand that never changed, except, perhaps, for the cocky slant in the cross of her ts, in all the years I knew her. Until the last two years when she lost her vision. She had gone with my father to visit his folks before his induction into the Army. It would also be the last time she sees him for a very long time. She is embarrassed at letting a week go by without writing to thank them for having her.

I go to bed early. For the second night, I’m not staying up for the stars. I love bed. I’ll be up at day break with my father, just like I was when we camped at Mora.

I return to the lake the next morning. I’m later than the day before, it’s cold and the warm cocoon of my bed holds on to me. The fog is already dissipating when I reach my stump.

I’m going to hang around “home” today, on the lawn at the lodge with a book. But I finished the one I was reading last night. I brought three more and reject two of them, settling on May Sarton’s journal “Endgame,” about her 79th year that I found on my mother’s bookshelf. I read most of her journals years ago, then quit when they begin to detail May’s failing health, beginning with a stroke, then—in this one—irritable bowel syndrome. Rebecca gave it to my mother, according to the inscription, for her 79th birthday, 10 days before my father died. I wonder if she read it. Maybe I should have, in preparation for moving in with her.

On page 45, there are underlined passages:

“…doing the daily chores is all I can manage. I am living, I sense, against the tide of life itself. I don’t know how to wake up and get going…” “here I am wading around in oceans of time and wasting it!”

Wasting time was a theme of my mother’s when she wasn’t able to do what she did in stronger years. She never learned to value time at rest in daylight.

I thumb through the rest of the book looking for underlinings. There are a few over the next six pages about Nelson Mandela being released from prison, and Martin Luther King and their beliefs about when non-violent protest can and cannot work. And, finally, this one:

“Eating is hard for me still, and more often than not I settle for dry cereal for dinner.”

Then there are no more underlined passages. I weep for how hard life was for her, how alone she was, how much I didn’t care, and how courageously she kept going.

I have dinner on the deck at the lodge then go for a drive. I’ve never been on the other side of the lake. It’s far longer than I anticipated, but beautiful with the sun slanting across the sword fern through the rain forest that gets 10-15 feet of rain a year. And I just read this: “The largest specimens of Western Red Cedar, Sitka Spruce, Western Hemlock, Alaskan Cedar, and Mountain Hemlock are found in these forests, as well as five of the ten largest Douglas firs. It has the largest trees in the world outside of California and New Zealand.” Many of those largest trees have signage directing visitors to them. I remember going by horseback with my family for an official measuring of a Douglas fir around here, young enough to ride behind one of the researchers on his horse.

Tree on the back of a long-since fallen mother log.

Wild growing hydrangeas.

North shore road.

The temperate zone rain forest.

On the last morning, I build another fire and finish reading the letters. I’m glad there’s another notebook at home; I’m not ready for them to be over. This notebook ends just before he proposes to my mother. Having my father back through these letters is both beautiful and sad. All of the people he talks about, family and friends that I met over the years, are gone. All except my two cousins who were born to his eldest brother during the war years.

It occurs to me that these are my father’s legacy letters: a record of his values and who he was. I’m shocked by the depth of his mysogeny and racism. Was it the times in which he lived and I should just let it go? Did he overcome them? The racism, yes, I think so. Perhaps less so the mysogeny. But I don’t think my mother would have used words like “nigger” and “scrub woman.” I’m also blown away by his outspoken admiration for his mother and his upbringing, which he credits to her and tells her so. My children do not tell me they admire me, or thank me for what I taught them. And I did not tell my mother until the last weeks of her life. Yes, I have regrets. Not the ones she feared I would have, because she did, but my own.

I break camp. I’m ready. Three nights is just right. My reservation at Takhlakh is for four nights. I may leave early. Nice to have the option though. The last time I was there I wanted never to leave. I drive to the end of the road for a hike to Pony Bridge before I go home. You can read about that adventure here.

Back home in my own bed, the almost full moon is slipping down the valley. I bask in the glow that lights my room like day. I love where I live. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Rare double moon. 🙂 An odd reflection through the window pane.

Adventure Log: Rialto Beach

27 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, Adventure Log, drift logs, foggy day at the beach, Olympic National Park, Olympic Peninsula, Rialto Beach, sea stacks, wild beaches

On the first full day of my camping trip at Lake Quinault, I head to the coast. It’s just 45 minutes to my usual stops—Kalaloch, Beach 4, and Ruby—but I’m headed farther north this time. The fog hasn’t lifted yet when I get within half a mile of the Pacific. But when I turn east to skirt the Quileute tribal land, the cloudless sky returns.

Highway 101 passes the Hoh Rainforest and Forks, Washington (claim to fame, the location of the story in the Twilight book series) then turns back toward the coast on the other side of the reservation. When I come to the fork in the road, I take the right side toward Rialto Beach. Last time I was up here, I went left to LaPush, separated from Rialto by the Quillayute River. I stop at the deeply wooded Mora campground where I camped with my family of origin. If you didn’t know the ocean was half a mile away, you would never believe it.

Back on the road, I plunge back into fog. It’s eerily beautiful at the beach, the forest seems primordial, the gulls screaming, the bleached white drift logs that look like dinosaurs and whales, the gray standing snags. There’s art, including a mermaid grotto.

It’s been a long time since I was here. I eat my lunch and make a cairn or two, then walk down the beach. I know there are sea stacks out in the water, but they are hidden. I decide not to wait for the fog to lift, then change my mind as the stacks begin to appear. I sit on a log and wait. It’s warm, in spite of the fog and a breeze. The veil slips up slowly and I wait some more, anticipating the glittering waves under blue sky.

Then the fog changes its mind and the veil drops back down. That’s it. There’s an Adirondack chair and a beer in the sun at the lodge calling my name.

Mermaid grotto.

Adventure Log: Pony Bridge

27 Friday Jul 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, Enchanted Valley, Lake Quinault, Olympic National Park, Olympic Peninsula, Pony Bridge

Dateline: July 26, 2017
Miles: 6
Elevation gain: 900 feet

I wait until the last day of my camping trip at Lake Quinault to take a hike. (More about camping later.) After a last fire, leisurely breakfast (pancakes with tiny wild blackberries picked at my campsite), and breaking camp, I head to the end of Graves Creek Road beyond the end of the lake. Way beyond. Including 11 miles of gravel road beyond, following the Quinault River through moss-laden trees, sun rays turning them to gold, past glittering waterfalls.

Pony Bridge is on the way to Enchanted Valley, a backpack trip I’ve done three times; the first and last of them on through the Valley, over Anderson Pass, coming out at Dosewallips. It’s been a long time. More than 20 years since the last, with a party that included my teenage son. More than 50 years since the first time with a tribe of Girl Scouts.

It’s a beautiful little hike—five miles round trip, though my pedometer says closer to six—through the forest. I think there is no place else like the forests of the Olympic Peninsula. Really, there’s no place else like the OP; and I think that is a fact, not just my opinion.

It’s impossible to capture the enormity of the trees on a camera, though I try, then delete most of them when I get home. I continue to marvel at the sound these giants must make as they fall in a storm after standing tall for hundreds of years, eventually raising a new forest on the backs of the fallen mothers. When one tree uproots it thunders to the forest floor bringing others crashing down with it. It must be deafening. (I Googled for an audio recording, but didn’t find one.) There are many storms here, close to the ocean, as evidenced by the huge drift logs on the coast. It’s a wild place.

The diameter of this one is taller than I am. It dwarfed my trekking poles.

There aren’t many flowers here now, save for foam flower that lines the trail with clouds of delicate white. And berries. I eat plump red huckleberries as I walk.

How the bunch berry got its name.

I inch my way down into the river gorge to the bridge. It’s steep and rocky. I dread going back up. The “little” hike means short, not necessarily easy. As it turns out, the going down was more difficult than the going up, at least with trekking poles.

The river thunders through the narrow gorge walls, not at all the placid river with its wide bed along the road in. The rushing water gets to take a little vacation before it hits the sea. The water is deep blue and green under blue sky and beneath the canopy of hemlock, cedar, and fir, surrounded by the sword fern garden.

Down river.

Up river.

While I eat my peanut butter and apple sandwich on a log bench in a backpacker campsite, the pack of mules I noticed getting geared up near the parking area clip clops across the bridge. They are roped together (I didn’t get a good photo) and each carries what look like a pair of triangular metal saddle bags. I venture a guess that they are carrying trail repair tools or maybe something for the historic chalet in the valley. The chalet is hanging over the ever shifting river bed and is closed now, pending a hoped for second move farther from the river. It was moved 100 feet in 2014 and now is in danger again. I remember back to my first trip there when the camp group I hiked with went inside, though we slept in pairs in the meadow under our plastic lean-tos beneath the stars.

I walk up the trail and find a spur to the edge of the canyon for a look back at the bridge. I build a cairn so my mother can find it, then head back down the trail for home.

The leg pain above the back of my ankle started on the hike in. I re-laced my boots several times into different lacing patterns, tighter, looser; nothing helps. I’m really hobbling by the time I get back to the car. My new boots hurt for the first time after last week’s misadventure to Kendall Katwalk. I had to moleskin up for this hike due to a blister from that one. And now this. I Google it, of course. Perhaps the soleus muscle. It had better not interfere with next week’s hike back to Snowgrass Flat. I’m glad to reach the bridge at the parking lot and take off boots and don flip flops for the trip home.

Just Another (mis)Adventure Log: Kendall Katwalk

19 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, Adventure Log, Alpine Lakes Wilderness, Daughter on Duty, family caregiving, hikes at Snoqualmie Pass, hiking in the PNW, Kendall Katwalk, meeting the spirit of dead loved ones, memories of my mother, mothers and daughters, Mt. Baker Snoqualmie National Forest, solo hiking

Dateline: July 17, 2018

I can’t tell you what Kendall Katwalk looks like, because after some 17 miles of a 12-mile hike, and 9-1/2 hours on the trail, I didn’t get to it. But I’m ahead of myself.

It’s not my usual start to a hike, nor my usual region. I spend the night in Seattle with the family so I can get an early start for a hike in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. The Littles get up early, so it isn’t difficult to be on the road at 5:15. Missing my lovely coffee kiosk in Centralia, I have to settle for Starbucks, the only thing open.

The adventure begins with two interstates rather than SW Washington back roads. The trailhead is just 2/10ths of a mile from I-90; and now I know one of the upsides of the miles of potholed, washboard forest service road routes to trailheads: the trails are miles from the madding crowd. The roar of traffic accompanies me for much of the hike, and the stupendous views of the Alpine Lakes Wilderness include the interstate and the Alpental ski resort at Snoqualmie Pass.

I ignore the signage. I’m here, I’m doing it.

I’m on the trail (part of the Pacific Crest) before 7am, while the temperature is still refreshing. It’s going to be another hot one before I’m done, but I plan to miss the worst of it. It’s a 12-mile hike with 2600 feet elevation gain, both of which are at my limit. Though not super steep, the trail is relentlessly up, for a long time. It’s not the most beautiful forest I’ve been in, and other than a couple of stream crossings, it’s monotonous. The other advantage of FS road approaches: a lot of the upshit is in the car and the trailhead is closer to the payoff point.

It gives me plenty of time for reflection. Of course my thoughts turn to my mother, a relationship that is now frozen in time for the rest of my life. I can’t change it, but I can better understand it. I continue to speculate on her shame at not caring well for her mother (her belief), and her obsession with “helping” me not have the same regrets.

First of all, while of course I have regrets, I know I could not have done better. I can re-story the past—cast it in a different light—but I can’t change it. She was who she was and I am who I am. That doesn’t change because she’s gone. My mother, however, had re-storyed her relationship with her own ancient mother into some falsehood she spent the next 30 years being mired in guilt over. “Someday you will understand what it’s like to be old,” she told me, wanting me to understand right then.

As I walk, one foot in front of the other, the road noise a constant companion, my thoughts return again to how easily I forgot the challenges after she died. What I understood, because I educated myself, was that she could not (or would not) comprehend my attempts to reason with her. (Mostly I was never sure if that was a brain thing or a control thing.) And her brain could not assimilate multiple pieces of information thrown at her at once, i.e. normal conversation. What I also understood was that understanding that did not make it any less frustrating. Probably there are more patient people than I; I was and am, at least outwardly, more patient with people who are not my mother. You can’t ever leave your ancient history with your mother behind. I forgave myself in advance for any sorrow at not being able to do it better that might linger after she was gone.

I’m sure she had the same issues in caring for her mother. Her mother was maddening, and no amount of understanding that she was old could make my mother less frustrated and hurt. Difference was, she turned the re-storying after death into failure and shame at not doing it better.

My mother worked out her shame by telling her mother’s story for the rest of her life: on paper, on cassette tapes, and verbally to anyone who would listen. I suppose I am doing the same, seeking to reconcile any hurt between us, forgiving myself, forgiving her, hoping she forgives me.

Yes, that is the trail.

Surprisingly, the two young women in the parking lot when I left don’t catch up to me until two miles in. By the end of the day I will see several pairs of women hiking together—college students, I surmise. I think of my mother hiking with her girlfriends in the Smokies, until they met men and probably never hiked without them again. It makes me kind of sad.

At one hour, the trail finally gets more interesting as it breaks out of the trees to cross a talus slope with a jaw-dropping view. A solitary pica scurries from rock to rock, but doesn’t let me take its picture. If I squint my ears, I can imagine the highway noise to be a rushing river. I build a cairn to help my mother find her way.

One of the trickiest cairn balances I’ve done, and in the photo it kind of looks like a pile of rocks. When I try to add one more, it topples. No second photo opportunity.

I plunge back into trees after resetting my mother’s pedometer that I finally remembered to bring, forgetting to press start at the trailhead. When I get back to the car I’ll add two miles.

Yes, that is the trail.

I’m more than ready when I finally leave the woods behind for the rest of the ascent. Kendall Gardens, at 5000 feet elevation, is full of heather, bunch berry, penstemon, phlox, columbine, paintbrush, spirea (I’m trying to learn the flowers). Mt. Rainier graces the horizon behind me whenever I look back.

Yes, that is the trail.

Some time later, in a snow patch, I take an overgrown path a few feet off the trail to a sweet overlook. Back to the snow patch, I continue.

I come to what I assume is Kendall Katwalk at what, according to the pedometer, is about the right mileage: maybe a bit over 6 miles. I had no intention of crossing what was described by its name and by the WTA as a narrow path blasted out of the side of a rock face. Though trip reports said it wasn’t really scary, I figured I had no need to prove to myself I could do it.

However, Mt. Rainier is peaking around the curve at the end, and I have that gosh darn curiosity about what’s around corners. It really isn’t bad at all and my aeroacrophobia doesn’t kick in. Or maybe I’ve just learned to channel my inner mountain goat; which reminds me, I really need to clean the roof.

I walk a few yards beyond, until the trail starts down, then turn around. When I get to the beginning side of the Katwalk, I reset my pedometer again, noting that it says four miles, plus the two I missed at the beginning, of course. This should be exactly half way, giving me a more accurate reading than adding on approximate mileage at the end. I pass the snow patch and stop beyond to eat my lunch. The bugs attack when I stop and I apply Vick’s Vapo-rub, which put the insects off but does nothing for the taste of my lunch.

As I walk again, a moth lands on the orange bear whistle that hangs from my pack. And stays and stays, slowly lifting its wings up and down. I begin moving again with it riding along, until a gnat flies into my mouth and I blow it out, blowing the moth off too. It reminds me of the time Mama said she had a stomach ache and told the hospice nurse she might have swallowed a fly, or maybe a lady bug. (She was serious. Read the story here.) Right after that, I see a ladybug on a flower stretching out into the trail. A true deep red ladybug, not those pale Asian intruders that fill my living room windows. Crazy. I think the moth (the first four letters of mother) is Mama’s spirit letting me know she forgives me, and sending the ladybug just in case I don’t get it.

That’s when I begin to sense trouble. It steals in as silently as the beating wings of the moth. Was the moth(er) warning me or reassuring me in advance that all would be well?

The trail doesn’t seem familiar, there weren’t this many snow patches on the way up, were there? I meet two young men who passed me on the way up and I’m more confused. I puzzle over it for the next mile. How could I have gotten to the destination ahead of them? I convince myself that they stopped somewhere or took a detour, otherwise I will think myself mad. But really, was there this much snow?

Then I spot a lake. There was no lake on the way up.

And a wide expanse of snow, which I cross, knowing there was absolutely nothing like this before. And it’s scary. The snow is getting soft and there are melted out holes that go way down to rocks below. It’s an invisible talus field, and the foot tracks across it are not over the solid path that will be obvious in coming weeks.

On the other side I meet another pair of young women.

“Is this the way to Summit West parking lot?” I ask them. They tell me it is. The way they are going. Not the way I am going.

“Kendall Katwalk isn’t that way?” I ask, pointing in the direction from which I’ve come.

“No,” they say, “it’s across there,” pointing the way they’ve come from, across a divide to another slope.

What the fuck? How did I mess up? Surely there were no other trails. They kindly tell me they got a little confused too. They ask if I crossed a narrow place. Yes. With a big lake below? No. I tell them I’m going just around the curve where they tell me there are two lakes; and that I’m not looking forward to crossing the snow field again.

I glance at the lakes and scurry back the way they were going, realizing I don’t want to lose them and spending not a second’s regret that I won’t see the Katwalk and I won’t be back. They’re going where I’m going and I suddenly wonder if I’m having a dementia event. My mother thought I suffered it. They finish crossing the field and feign a need to stop and rest. I think they are waiting to make sure the dotty old woman makes it. I’m not sorry they’re waiting. When they see that I’ll be fine, they leave. I hike fast to keep a visual on them, but eventually they are too fast for me.

I come to the first familiar snow patch again. There has been no trail I might have missed. But there must have been. I’m tired now and it’s hot. I’m scared. I don’t know what’s more terrifying: I’ve lost my mind or I’ve lost the trail. There are plenty of people up here, I know I’ll get back, so I just concentrate on where I left my mind.

I turn back the way I came again. I meet a trail runner (he’s not the first one, and they make me think I’m not the only crazy person up here), and ask him which direction the parking lot is. He tells me that’s where he’s headed and assures me I can’t miss it.

I turn around once more, cross the narrow trail I thought was the Katwalk for what I think is the third time, but is obviously the fourth.

I work out what must have happened. At that first snow patch when I briefly left the trail, I wasn’t paying attention and instead of continuing toward the Katwalk, I turned the way I had come from. The narrow chiseled portion of the trail must have looked different going the opposite direction and I didn’t recognize that I had been there.

I think I will never get back to the markers I know are coming: the shade, the stream crossing, the first talus slope, the picnic table just in from the trailhead. I’m exhausted. My feet hurt. Though I’m not aware until I empty the water bladder in my pack at home, I’ve consumed most of my water. It’s a couple hours after I get back to Seattle, that I realize the insects were biters and I itch from neck to ankles. The pedometer says 11 miles, I add the six I figured I hiked before the last resetting. No wonder I’m tired. (I’m not sure of the pedometer’s accuracy, since the length of a stride up mountains and over rocks, roots, and rivers are not the consistent length of those on a track.)

I let the family know I won’t be there for dinner and stop for a salmon burger and beer at the ski resort village. I need to relax before I hit rush hour traffic in Seattle. It’s not Basecamp Grill at Rainier, and Snoqualmie is not the Gifford Pinchot. It’s good to get out, but there’s no place like home, Dorothy.

Postscript: Turns out what I thought was the Katwalk really was the Katwalk. I did get there. And crossed it four times. The lake I almost got to was well beyond my destination. Vindicated.

Adventure Log: Silver Star Mt./Ed’s Trail

12 Thursday Jul 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

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Tags

#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, Anne Lamott, Daughter on Duty, Ed's Trail, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Help Thanks Wow, hiking, hiking in the PNW, Lewis River Region, Silver Star Mountain Trail, Washington Trails Association, Yacoult Burn State Forest

Dateline: July 11, 2018

Help. Thanks. Wow!

The prayer that is sufficient for everything is applicable for this hike in all its essential bits. The impassible road; the belated arrival at the parking area; the soul-expanding, eye-popping majesty of Creation.

The day starts at 5:30 at the espresso kiosk where my favorite barista is on duty. She hasn’t been there the past couple of times and I’ve had to tell the replacement my order. As she whizzes up my 16 oz. extra-hot latte without asking what I want, she asks me about the hike I had been off on last time she saw me, remembering it had been my birthday. (That was three weeks ago.) I tell her about the unexpected adventure and we chat about where I’m off to this time. She asks me if I’ve been to Goat Creek (yes). I give her my blogger card so she can read about this adventure, and I’m off, off to a great beginning.

It is, again, my favorite kind of morning to drive south on I-5: the sun’s promise glowing just above the horizon through the fog, blue sky above as it clears. I’m going three-quarters of the way to Portland, so I settle into Flutterby’s comfy seats (made by NASA, I’ve heard), with my latte and recorded book.

I should have used the exit instructions on the WTA website, but Google Maps had a different idea so I have two sets of directions. It’s probably a short-cut from the north, so I take it, later wishing I had consulted an actual physical map first instead of waiting until I get lost. I have a pretty good sense of direction and a compass on my dash, and I like depending on them. With not much help from Siri, I get back on track eventually. Part of the adventure.

I heard about this trail in the Lewis River Region for the first time from a friend of my sister’s who was there over the weekend. “The road is the worst I’ve ever been on,” she told me. “Worse than Goat Creek?” I wondered. Now that was a bad road. WTA warned of the road to Silver Star too. “Must have a high clearance vehicle and 4-wheel drive.” Check and check.

First you drive 6.6 miles up a bumpy DNR road creatively named L1100, then you turn off onto Road 4109 “a road to the right going uphill.” It’s unmarked, as are several roads going uphill to the right before it. I watch for the clues offered by the WTA and hope for the best.

The “best” cannot be attributed to Road 4109. It’s not just potholes, but abysses. I go .4 of the 2.7 miles to the trailhead and stop at the grand canyon of ruts.

Help!

This is a road?

In spite of all-wheel-drive, Flutterby’s rear wheels are spinning without purchase. She’s digging in her heels, screaming “hell no!” The ravine on the right as I scrape vegetation on the left will swallow half the car if I fall in. Maybe, I think, CuRVy’s wheels—my 20-year-old Honda CRV that is no longer mine—could have hugged the edges, but Flutterby’s wider body is not going to flit by; there will be no return from a missed calculation. Plus I don’t know what’s coming up.

I briefly wonder what other trail I can find in the area, foiled again by a road as I was on my birthday. But, no! The road may defeat me, but the goal will not! There just happens to be room not only to turn around, but to park out of the way right there before the chasm. I will walk.

I lace up my boots, unfold my trekking poles, and take off.

I know I walk uphill at about 2 miles an hour, and I figure this will be all up. But there won’t be any photo ops, so I project an hour for the 2.3 miles. I’m already behind the time I thought I would be at the trailhead, what with chatting with the barista, getting lost en route, and the surety that Google Maps didn’t take the condition of L1100 and Road 4109 into account in their projections. Still, it’s only 8:45 and the hike itself is just 5 miles RT. I can for sure add 4.6 miles, albeit boring ones.

As I walk, my mind strays to my years as Daughter on Duty. I lived with my mother for almost five years before the road defeated me; but the goal did not. There was not a good option then for staying on the road I started off on, there is no option for this road but to choose another mode of transportation. I tried through those 5 years at home with Mama to take the high road, but often found myself on the edge of the rut I kept falling into, never learning that you can’t fight dementia with reason. You just can’t. Moving her to assisted living was not defeat, nor is this, they are just different roads to the same end.

At exactly the one-hour mark, I round a curve and there ahead the road ends in a giant keyhole, and the horizon opens up.

Thanks!

I would have felt the road hike worth it even if I went no farther than the parking lot. There is Mt. St. Helens and the vista that stretches to the silhouetted Olympic Mountains. The Pacific Ocean is out there somewhere beyond the towns on the valley floor and the patchwork of forest and selective clear cuts and reforesting. My father would be proud that I’m seeing the view not as travesty as I once did as a cocky youth, but as using and replenishing for another generation our renewable natural resources.

Someday the bare spots will be spring green with a new generation of trees.

The WTA’s trail instructions are unclear. There are many options here as the two trails wind up the mountain, one on the west side overlooking the valley, the other on the east overlooking the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. But the WTA gave a cautionary tale about a stretch in which a slipping foot would be disastrous on Ed’s Trail, on the east side; so when I arrive at the junction, I will stay on the wide rocky Silver Star trail to the west.

At the diversion of the trails, my heart expands right out of my chest, my eyes open wide.

WOW!

Mt. St. Helens has company: Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams; the three white queens laid out in a row. And, turning 90º, there is Mt. Hood. Snowy mountains against cerulean sky beyond verdant forests. I’m a little disoriented at first, viewing the girls not from the angle I’m accustomed to; but eventually I figure it out and name them.

I take a long drink of it all, then start up the trail not marked “Ed’s Trail.” Signage will remain sketchy (i.e. non-existent) as the trails enter and leave the one I’m on and crisscross the mountain between the two trails. I expect they all go up, though, to the pointed peak I can see above me. If I hit the scary place, I can always retrace my steps and take another route.

l to r: St. Helens, Rainier, Adams…

…and Hood.

(Mt. Baker could be seen in silhouette.)

“How many stars could you see from here?” I wonder, when I come upon a fire pit on a wide windy spit of meadow.

As I hike, the sound waves are full of the hum of nectar-seeking bees in the profusion of paintbrush, Queen Anne’s lace, tiger lily, columbine, pasque flower, penstemon, Oregon iris, gentian, bear grass, elephant’s head, valerian, and on and on. Butterflies silently flit from bloom to bloom with the same goal. Is this even real?

I turn around when the trail begins to descend into the forest on the other end, backpacking country. After lunch on a rock at the top of world, I head back down the rocky trail until I get to a cross path I saw on the way up and take it. I reach the top and look down on the Gifford Pinchot, across to Mt. Hood. The trail continues both up and down. I wonder if it’s Ed’s Trail, and decide to give it a try for the return to the parking area. I can always return to the familiar safe trail, I tell myself again.

I meet two guys coming up. They confirm it is indeed Ed’s Trail; the best side, they say. They tell me the place “with a bit of a scramble” is on up, beyond where I came from. Yay! They have been here many times, they say, and have never seen the road like it is. They came in a jeep,. They tell me there are two 4×4 pickups in the parking area and more cars down where mine is. I’m not a chicken shit, just wise.

I get back to my car, meeting another rugged pick-up truck, and find Flutterby’s had company, and another car has just arrived. The driver directs me out of my tight parking spot without scraping bottom on the drop off between car and road. He tells me this is his favorite hiking spot. “Two years ago the road was not like this,” he says. If the road gets improved (which seems unlikely), I will go back. If not, I’ll move on to other trails. I have weekly summer hikes all laid out until mid-September with two weeks free for make-up dates or additions. Only two are trails I’ve hiked before. God, I love where I live.

What a day, what a way to forget the horrors of the world for a few hours and bask in the beauty of the way it was intended to be. Thank you, thank you to all that was, is, and will be that my legs can carry me to places like this for now. I think of my parents, who surely never came here, but would have loved it. I carry them with me always.

When I get home and showered, I sit on the deck with an Alaskan amber and the western tanager makes a return. A young one this time, it’s the second I’ve seen since my mother died, and only the third time I’ve seen one in the six years (I missed my anniversary last week, BTW) since my return to the PNW. It sits on the railing post, head cocked, observing me; like it’s looking right into me. Hopping two posts closer to the feeder, it turns toward me again. “Hi, Mama,” I say. It looks a moment longer then flies off, passing the feeder that clearly wasn’t its interest.

Thank you.

Adventure Log: Northwest Trek, Camp Gigi Day 3

03 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, Camp Gigi, writingdownthestory in Photograph

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Tags

#adventurelog, #campgigi, activities with grandchildren, Adventure Log, Camp Gigi 2018, Northwest Trek, summer with grandma

It was an Elliot Adventure Day! Northwest Trek, up toward Mt. Rainier. Rebecca and I had never been there, but our parents took Elliot’s mom and uncle during a Camp Nana and Papa. It was a great pleasure to discover it with Elliot.

Time to take this show on the road. But not at 5:40. (Good color coordination, yes?)

Herself (photo by the passenger)

Gigi’s favorite: river otters

Looking for a bear. Found two, black ones. (The grizzlies habitat is being improved.)

On the tram.

Not on my head! Here to tell you, just half of the caribou rack is too heavy to lift. How the heck?

Ride ’em banana slug!

Okay, this one is too scary. Coming back down.

Helping Aunt Becca

Finally got rid of her.

The big hole side! He was a little squeamish as bigger kids ran up the small hole side and made it bouncy, but he had gained a lot of confidence and he hung with it and got up. So proud of him.

While waiting for me to unlock the front door, Elliot said, “Well THAT was a fun day!”

Over dinner:

“Did you have a favorite thing today, Elliot?”
“Yes, FaceTime with Mommy and Mama and Adrian.”
“Pretty special.”

Second favorite was the playground. 💜

Adventure Log: Kalaloch Beach with My Sister

28 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

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Tags

#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, cairns, Kalaloch beach, Kalaloch Tree of Life, Lake Quinault, Lake Quinault Lodge, Olympic National Park, Olympic Peninsula, Willaby Campground

My sister is a mostly solo shopkeeper; she doesn’t get out much. I’m a solo adventurer, so I don’t often ask if she wants to join me. Okay, never. But it was her birthday and she had shop coverage. I asked, she accepted. Being the locally world famous person she is, she had to be back for City Council meeting, so we couldn’t go far. We decided on Kalaloch beach on the OP, followed by lunch at Quinault Lodge, in the rain forest.

We don’t adventure the same. When she goes somewhere with a friend, they leave home at 11ish in cute outfits, have lunch somewhere, dinner later, and there is usually shopping involved. I leave at 6 in hiking pants, with a granola bar for lunch in my back pack, and there is always a latte involved.

But she wanted to go on one of my adventures, not hers. I promised to take her on a favorite hike when the wildflowers are blooming—we’ll see if that happens—but for this day we agreed on the beach. And she offered to be ready by 8:00 at the latest, after I told her it had to be early enough not already to have had coffee. She outdid herself, and I picked her up at 7:30. With lattes in hand, we headed northwest to the iconic Hwy 101.

It’s a familiar beach: we went to Kalaloch and Ruby, the next beach up, often as children. In later years, Kalaloch became our parents’ favorite, perhaps because of the cabins on the bluff. They took visiting grandchildren there, and I took my mother there several times in the years following my father’s death. I wrote about it here in a visit a few weeks ago just after her death.

I couldn’t quickly find a photo of me and Rebecca, but here is one of me and Jo Ann,

Three oldest grands.

This time I remembered to ford the creek and go north to see the so-called “Kalaloch Tree of Life” or “Root Tree.”

The Sitka spruce is a wonder, seeming to live on air after the ground eroded from under it. It should be dead; it should have collapsed long ago in the wild winters on the Olympic Peninsula that tosses drift logs around like toothpicks and permanently bends trees. No one understands how it survives, nor can I find anything that says how long it’s been like that. One “he said, she said” story, indicates at least 35 years.

We made cairns, filled our backpacks with round stones, agreed that although we love the OP beaches, it’s really the stones and driftwood we go for, not the surf and sun, and returned to Quinault for smoked salmon BLTs (Rebecca’s without the B) and beers on the deck of the lodge by the serene lake.

On the way out, we stopped at the Willaby Campground where I made a reservation last week for camping in July, not at the favored lake-side sites, but at the only site available for more than one night until mid-September (I suspect I caught a cancellation). I had cancelled the one I made months ago in the Gifford Pinchot, having checked it out in my own birthday adventure last week and found it seriously lacking. The new one is nearly perfect. I’ll be back next month, after Camp Gigi! Stay tuned for that!

Rebecca and I agree if we ever have to live together, which would challenge us, we should just travel. We do that well. But I might have to stop for shopping more often. She did buy a t-shirt in the gift shop. Adventure on.

(Mis-) Adventure Log: Sunrise Peak

21 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

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Tags

#adventurelog, #ilovewhereilive, Adventure Log, adventuring, death of a parent, Gifford Pinchot National Forest, hiking, hitchhiking, Mt. Adams, Pacific Northwest, Sunrise Peak, Takhlakh Lake, Trout Lake, Washington Trails Association

I had an uneasiness about Sunrise Peak in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, that the last review on the Washington Trails Association website was two years ago (virtually to the day). Gone are the days of choosing a hike from the description in a 10-year-old book (or 60 years, if you live in your parents’ home). I’ve grown accustomed to up-to-the-day information about trail conditions, snow and wildflower status. It sounded like a great hike, though, and it was to be a beautiful day. And it was the first day of my 67th year; an adventurous spirit was called for on this of all days.

Isn’t not knowing where the road will take you the very definition of adventure? What twists, turns, redirection, and road blocks might reach out to meet and challenge you? This day, as it turned out, would meet the criteria.

The day before the day, a friend dropped off a birthday gift that included a gift card for my favorite adventure latte coffee kiosk! Sweet!

On the way down the hill at 6am (30 minutes behind my hoped for start time), a dear friend from Raleigh calls. I pull into the drive of Avenue Espresso, but not up to the window, to finish chatting with her. When I get to the window, the barista has my 16-oz-extra-hot latte, ready to hand me. I feel known and special. The day is off to a great start!

The forecast is for a hot day, and I’m eager to get to the trail ahead of the heat, so I take I-5 south to Hwy 12 rather than the more scenic route. I must say, I love the interstate’s 20 miles either side of Centralia where the sun rises with Mt. Rainier driving north and St. Helen’s driving south.

Mayfield Lake bridge

US Hwy 12 is a deadly stretch of two-lane, for no real reason other than cocky drivers on the long straightaways through the verdant valleys of Lewis County. But it’s one of my favorites. The long bridge across Mayfield Lake—a major water source for the area—the strawberry and blueberry fields, the now fallow fields of the DeGoede Bulb Farm, taciturn cows munching breakfast, the misty foothills in the distance and peek-a-boo Rainier.

Addicted to my camera, I take a play from a friend’s book and see what I see through the lens without the lens, forming word pictures in my head. It’s harder not to write down the words than it is to let go of the desire to take a picture while I’m driving (see previous paragraph about cocky drivers).

The clouds look like the uneven patches of lettuce in my garden, then morph into more neat even rows like my overachieving friend’s garden. (Next year I’m going to have neat even rows.) There are three bent pickers with wide-brimmed hats in the vast strawberry field. I feel their pain. Commercial strawberry picking is hard work. I did it for three days in junior high, then quit getting up to catch the bus to the field. It’s a lesson in concentrating on what is right in front of you and not looking too far into the overwhelming future. We live this life one day—or one strawberry—at a time.

This is the first year ever my mother, who was there to hear my borning cry, hasn’t told me happy birthday I realize with a stomach-clenching, eye-watering jolt. I play it in my head: “Happy birthday, my smiling daughter!” I hope she has forgiven me for asking her to stop calling me that. I haven’t forgiven myself.

I turn off the highway at Randle and a mile down the road take the left fork into the Gifford Pinchot. The right fork goes to the east side of Mt. St. Helens and is still closed by snow on the road. I’m immediately plunged into the forest with bouncing brooks, roadside waterfalls, primitive road surfaces. Where the road narrows, the vegetation leans into the single (but paved!) wavy lane. It could use a good buzz cut.

I chose the Gifford Pinchot for the day because I want to check out the sight-unseen campground at which I have a site reserved for next month. I decide to save it for after the hike. I miss the cut off to the road to the trail and turn around in the middle of the road.

Five miles on this? My initial skepticism about this choice of hike returns.

Barely a 10 of a mile in though, my plans for the day change. No wonder there were no trip reports. Why the WTA had no alerts is more puzzling. I was not prepared to add ten RT miles to the hike, especially with no trip reports. I’m adventurous, but I’ve never been foolhardy.

There’s not really a place to turn around, and I am not a good backer. I move a large rock out of the way, then maneuver Flutterby up the berm on one side and jockey her around and head back out to the paved road. I don’t want to go back to the campground yet, so I decide to go to Trout Lake, thirty some miles on down the road; reigning monarch: Mt. Adams. I’ve been on the road it’s on before, when I camped at Takhlakh Lake in 2013, but I hadn’t been to the lake.

Flutterby is turning out to be a good adventure partner, and we soldier on as the odometer hits a milestone.

I continue on Forest Road 23 through where the Pacific Crest Trail crosses the road, and see two women in the shade next to a bridge, their large packs beside them. I vaguely wonder if they want a ride somewhere, but they don’t move so I drive on.

Ahead of me I see two more people who had been sitting near the road with their packs, scramble to their feet. Briefly the man sticks out his thumb. I drive by then see his hand drop in my rear view mirror, not sure it was really up. I put on my brakes and back up, knowing that even as I do so without really making a conscience decision to pick them up, I am committing myself. A man and a woman, they don’t look like ax murderers.

They hustle up to the car. I power down my window, not really believing I am doing this. But it’s an adventure, right?

“Is this the right direction to Trout Lake?” he asks.

“I think so,” I hesitate. Is it? Yes, of course it is, but maybe I don’t want to fully commit.

“Great. Thanks,” he says, they look both relieved and crestfallen as they back away.

“Do you want…” I say.

“Can we get…” he says turning with resolve back toward the car.

“A ride?” we say in unison.

Oh my god. I’m picking up hitchhikers.

“I’ve never in my life picked up a hitchhiker,” I say through the window. “But you don’t look like ax murders.”

“I’ve never in my life hitchhiked,” he says.”

“We’re definitely not ax murderers,” she says. “I was hoping you weren’t.”

“I’m definitely not,” I say. “It’s my birthday, and it seems made for adventure.”

They are effusively grateful as they put their packs in Flutterby’s roomy rear and climb into the seat. They were hiking the PCT from Walput Lake to Mt. Hood while their boys toured Europe. (They don’t look old enough to have boys touring Europe. A fourth grade field trip maybe?) They kept getting thwarted by snow, and like Cheryl Strayed were a bit unprepared with no snow cleats and not enough food for as long as it was taking. Two days (three?) to go 18 miles, during which they saw three people. Crossing snow-covered rivers, not knowing the first was a river until they saw the “DANGER” sign on the other side, hearing water rushing under their feet as the crossed the other.

They finally gave it up and were going to the Trout Lake café where his parents would drive them to another part of the trail. Their feet were burning and they had just taken off their shoes when they heard Flutterby coming on the not-well-traveled road and slammed their shoes back on jumped up, grabbing their packs.

“He told me to stick my thumb out,” she said. “I told him I’m not sticking my thumb out! And no one is going to pick us up!”

I save them ten boot miles to Trout Lake. I am really loving how this day is turning out. I didn’t get my hike, but I rescued desperate hikers. Best. Birthday. Ever.

“Where are you from?” I ask.

“Chehalis,” they say. Five miles from where I’m from.

I go into the cafe for directions to the lake. When I come out Trisha hands me $20.

“Happy birthday!” she says. “Get some lunch on us.”

“Thank you so, so much,” Shawn says.

I go to Trout Lake. It barely qualifies as a lake, more of a wetland. I don’t stay.

I ask about hikes in the ranger station then decide not to go on a hike. I return to the café and sit outside with lunch. I had been wishing I had packed more than granola bars—and I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t. And then lunch came to me.

Drama queen

I visit my favorite place in all the land—Takhlakh Lake—dreaming of my stay there in September. I haven’t been back because of a road washout they didn’t fix for two years (and a forest fire in the area the year before that). Not only have they repaired the breach, but the road has been improved from the bone jarring washboard and axle clunking potholes.

My home for four nights in September. I picked a good one. Presumably the new table will not be in the tent pad by then.

I promised myself a rubber boat next time I came. I better get on that.

Flutterby’s first snow.

I stop at the July campground before turning toward home; it’s the worst I’ve ever seen. When I get home, I cancel the reservation, losing $20—$20 in, $20 out. I’m looking for a new destination, and I had done so well getting an early reservation.

All in all, not a misadventure at all. It was just what it was meant to be.

Happy Solstice! Here’s to another trip around the sun. My mother has been gone for two months today, it seems longer; my father for 23 years, also today. My sister says I’m a story gatherer. Christina Baldwin uses the term Storycatcher in her book of the same name. I am gathering my family’s stories and catching my own. I love sharing them with you; mostly I love writing them.

Cheers, Mama. Thanks for borning me.

Homeward bound.

Adventure Log: Mount Zion

16 Saturday Jun 2018

Posted by Gretchen Staebler in Adventure Log, writingdownthestory in Photograph

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

#adventurelog, Adventure Log, Hood Canal, Mt. Zion, Olympic National Forest, Olympic Peninsula, Olympic Peninsula hikes, rhododendron, rhododendron hikes, solo hiking, Washington Trails Association, wildflower hikes

It was a long week. My mother’s memorial service was Saturday and there were guests in the house for a week. When everyone left, I knew I would have to turn my attention to the abandoned house and garden projects. I needed a break, so I took a friend up on her offer of the family vacation spot on Hood Canal, offered when my mother died six weeks ago.

The weather wasn’t great so I just did what my body told me it needed: three naps in one day. But before I left for home, I went to Mount Zion.

The hike in the Olympic National Forest just north of Quilcene has been on My Backpack list on the Washington Trails Association site for a long time. It’s claim to fame is rhododendrons and I’ve been waiting for them to be in bloom. There hasn’t been a WTA trip report since mid-May, when they were not blooming yet.

It was an overcast day, and I’m a fair weather hiker, but I was halfway there from home, so I decided to go for it. It was the rhodies that was the draw after all, not views.

The trail head is 10.5 upward miles of Forest Service road from Hwy 101. The potholes weren’t too bad; Flutterby took them with ease. I saw no other cars as I climbed into the clouds. I did start seeing rhododendrons along the road though, a good sign. But I was feeling increasingly isolated, and I had forgotten to tell my sister where I was going. “Maybe,” I thought, “I’ll just go to the end of the road, eat my lunch, and head back down.”

But when I arrived, there was a car in the lot! It never occurred to me that the sole party on the trail might be an ax murderer, because I don’t think that way. I just knew I wouldn’t be alone. The long-abandoned pickup truck hanging off the edge of the parking area was a little ominous, I admit.

I suited up: boots (I’d forgotten my boot socks, only had shorties and wasn’t sure how that would work), knee straps, poles, driver’s license in case my comatose body needed to be ID’d, and camel pack and headed across the road to the trail head. It was chilly. I have never taken my jacket on a hike, but I left it on. As it turned out, I never took it off.

Of course the trailhead signage included the cougar warning and what to do in a rare sighting. Tell that to the hiker who was killed by one a few weeks ago, a story I chose not to read. I took my newly acquired can of bear spray out of my pack and put it in my pocket.

There were rhodies right away! And, true to the WTA report, the trail headed “up” right away. It’s a short hike, just 2.3 miles to summit—another half mile if you go beyond to a vista overlooking Puget Sound, the Olympic mountains, Mt. Baker—with a 1300 foot elevation gain. People use it for quick workout, the WTA says. People are nuts.

Did I mention it was chilly and damp? Mist hanging about in the dripping-lichen trees. And quiet; very, very quiet. “Maybe,” I thought,” I’ll just go for a little ways, then turn around.” But the rhodies were oh so pretty next to the trail and through the trees, just short of prime with some still-closed buds. My feet kept walking. “I’ll turn around a half hour in,” I thought.

I came upon a view point over the valley, but low hanging clouds obscured the horizon. Maybe it was the damp—I’m used to sunny hikes—that gave it a creepy vibe. I started thinking about cougars, forgetting the part about how rare it is to see one. And where was that other hiking party? I started thinking about ax murderers.

I checked my watch. The half hour had passed. It really wasn’t as steep a trail as I’d anticipated; I’ve been on far more strenuous. The socks were good, my knees were good (they’ve been bothering me a bit lately). And it really was pretty. Lots of rhododendrons. “Okay, I’ll turn around at the one hour mark,” I promised myself. I’m not a quitter when it comes to hiking. And I was feeling a little less uneasy.

Then I heard them. Voices. I rounded a corner, hoping not to startle them. My bear bell was tinkling, but it’s not very loud.

Two young women. Not ax murderers! We chatted. I asked them if it was much farther to the summit, said I had never been anxious hiking alone, but was a bit today, thinking about turning back. They said I was brave, and agreed that the weather cast a bit of a creep factor. “It’s not much farther at all!” they said. “The rhodies are beautiful. There’s not much view, but the shifting clouds are pretty. Maybe it will clear for you.”

Their “not much farther” and my “not much farther” are different. But I arrived. I did not use the outhouse. I walked most of the way out the point, beyond the summit. The rhodies at the top were short of prime, another week maybe, but beautiful in the mist.

There was going to be no view though, so I finally turned back. I’ll have to come again in the sun for the view. But this time, there were rhododendrons.

The parking lot was empty when I got back to Flutterby. And I met no one on the road going down. I was very glad not to have to worry about my car breaking down. When I got to the highway I started breathing again. I think I’ll stick to sunny day hiking.

Writing Down the Story

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