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Writing Down the Story

Writing Down the Story

Tag Archives: Oregon

Adventure Log: Camping at Mt. Hood, part 5

08 Friday Sep 2017

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

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Columbia Gorge, cute animal photos, Eagle Creek Fire, Hoodview Campground, Mt. Hood, Mt. Hood National Forest, Mt. Hood Scenic Loop, Mt. St. Helens, Multnomah Falls, Oregon, Sunrise, Timothy Lake

Not My Mountain, the last day

I coax myself out of bed before the first hint of dawn on my last morning; the coldest of my four days here. The first two mornings were veiled in smoky haze, the third was overcast. This morning, though, I can see starlight through the trees from my tent window.

I slide into my flip flops and zip up my jacket. Wrapping my blanket around me, I slip through the trees in the dark to my chair by the lake. Pinpoints of light dot the sky. I identify the Big Dipper hanging right above the silhouetted mountain, but find nothing else familiar. I look for Orion, but can’t spot it. It’s been so long since I’ve seen the night sky. Even on my hill above my small town—unlike when I was growing up here—there is too much light.

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I sit and breath in the silence and wonder until a weak glow begins to blot out the stars around the horizon, then return to my bed to get warm, reading by the light of the lantern.

At 6:00, I return to the lake. Only the bright planet remains visible in the still-dark sky. Owls call from the forest as dawn come; the mergansers fish. One dives suddenly, and comes up with a tiny forage fish. One of its mates fights for it, while the third floats on, looking for its own. Each time a fish is caught, the duck stands up in the water, perhaps to lengthen its gullet for the fish to slide down. I hope for an eagle or an osprey, but they still don’t show up.

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Upright wisps of mist float across the far side of the lake, like a heavenly host of skaters silently gliding on an ice-covered pond. I imagine them to include my father and his brothers and sisters on their Michigan farm lake, and I weep for longing of those bygone days when they were young and I was not yet here. I feel embraced by their presence, even as they remain distant from me. Do they know I am here? Watching? Perhaps my tears are for my mother, the last (wo)man standing. I wish she could join them, released from the bounds of her own darkness here in this world.

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The sky brightens, and suddenly the glow of the sun—no longer the red ball of the first smoky mornings—peeks above the tree line. The chipmunks scamper out of their nest to greet it, pausing to honor the new day. As it quickly rises into place, they move on to find breakfast.

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With a sigh of contentment, I rise too as the camp begins to stir, to make coffee, then return to the lake edge to bask in the sun’s warmth one more time before I make my last breakfast and take down camp. The ghost skaters have left the lake and so must I.

Every place on the planet is beautiful at dawn.

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These folks were engaged in some sort of photo shoot, sans the drone that annoyed me the previous afternoon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen four adults in a canoe before.

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Found this guy under my tent. Not all of nature is pretty, but it’s all interesting!

I return home around the east side of the Mt. Hood Scenic Loop. I am glad to see “my mountain” across the river.

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Mt. St. Helens from the back side; her gaping hole invisible.

I visit Multnomah Falls with a throng of people. As it turns out, we are one of the last throngs to visit for now, due to the wildfire engulfing the area. Three days later the interstate the Falls sits beside closes, along with the Bridge of the Gods crossing the Columbia River to Washington (which the fire jumped). Today, the fire is only 8% contained, and the highway remains closed pending removal of some 200 unstable trees in danger of falling on the roadway and to check for loose boulders.

The Eagle Creek fire is thought to be caused by teens throwing fireworks into the Gorge. I am sick and horrified, sad and angry at the resulting change in this wilderness; even as I am reminded that it is wilderness. It will return, different, as happens in wild places subject to mischief of nature and of humans.

Mt. Hood is not my mountain, but I’m grateful I was there last week (and not this week).

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Adventure Log: Camping at Mt. Hood, part 1

04 Monday Sep 2017

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

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Mt. Hood, Mt. Hood National Park, Northwest mountains, Oregon, Pacifc Northwest, red sun, solo camping, sunrise through smoke, sunrises, Takhlakh Lake, Timothy Lake, wildfires

I first became aware that I was a mountain snob when my family of origin traveled to Tennessee to camp in my mother’s beloved Smoky Mountains.

“When will we be there?” my disdainful sisters and I teased as we drove through the Park. “These are just hills!” we mocked.

We were growing up in the shadow of mountains in the Cascade range capped with snow year round, the tops of which were unattainable by mere mortals such as ourselves. Even the Olympics, with no year-round snow-covered major peaks, holds a rugged reputation and old growth forest. In the Smokies, on the other hand, you can hike to the top of Mt. LeConte (and we did), and drive to Clingman’s Dome, the highest point in Tennessee (and we did). (Later, one of my partners—I forget which one now—would call me provincial. “The Pacific Northwest has bigger mountains, bigger trees, bigger slugs,” I bragged. Neither partner was from the western half of the country, I might add.)

Never did I dream that one day I would move to the East coast, where for 36 years the Appalachians were the only mountains in my life; and for most of those years, I would have to drive great distances to get even there. I learned to love those mountains as my mother did, though it was a gentle affection, not head-over-heels rapture.

I cut my teeth and learned to walk at Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens; but since I moved back to the PNW five years ago, I have camped at Mt. Baker and Mt. Adams, and in the Olympics. I have hiked at all those places and more, and loved every trail.

I decided it was time to stretch my legs beyond the Washington border. In late spring, I made a reservation at Hoodview Campground on Timothy Lake, near Mt. Hood—yep, all the way to Oregon—the last of the well-known mountains within a day’s drive of home.

I had visions of Takhlakh Lake, the remote Mt. Adams lake I fell flat out in love with on one of my first camping trips after my pilgrimage home, and returned to for a day trip in autumn. Mt. Adams reflected in the water, the morning mist, the moonrise behind the mountain, fishing osprey and soaring eagles. I was so enamored with the lake, for five days I left it only for the two hikes I could get to without getting in the car. Next time I’ll go a little farther afield, I promised myself. But I’ve been foiled in attempts to return by (1) the only rainy week of the summer, (2) fires in the area, and (3 and 4) last summer and this, a washed out road—unless I go all the way south to the Columbia and then back north from the other end of the road, reverse and repeat to get home.

So, last week, as August marched dry-eyed into September, I packed my camping gear and headed south in a drought. “It’s just a giant tittie,” an online writer-hiker-photographer friend said of Mt. Hood. I tried to keep an open mind, determined to shed my label of provincial.


Not My Mountain, the First Day

Once I get to the lake—which is two or three times the size of Takhlakh and, despite the long drive to get here and the fact that it’s the first day of school in Oregon, is hopping with activity—there is so much smoke in the air from wildfires to the east, I have no idea where to look for the mountain. Smoke fills my nose and burns my eyes, and blots out the blue sky and the sun. There is a ban on campfires, and it’s too hot for one anyway.

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More mountain than I could see the first evening, but that was a boring photo.

I set up camp, then take a nap before I fix dinner, which I had planned to cook in the coals. When I take my plate to my chair on the lakeshore, I find the wind must have shifted and the mountain is visible. I’m startled. I’m startled by how unimposing and unimpressive it is. My friend’s description of its shape is spot on—Lady Gaga type—but the “giant” is a stretch. I knew it wasn’t a big mountain—I’ve seen it from a distance, of course—but somehow I thought close up it would be, well, bigger. And it isn’t where I expected it to be: front and center in the V of the foothills. This lake isn’t situated right, I catch myself thinking; or the mountain isn’t; like someone messed up the design.

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Photo from a later day, after the smoke had cleared.


I’m up early the first morning to watch the sun come up, after lying on my airbed in the dark listening to a distant owl hooting and a band of coyotes yapping. There’s no color in the sky, and I can barely make out the mountain—and only at all because I know where to look—but I wait patiently with the ducks that swim back and forth in front of me.

Suddenly, there is the deep crimson ball, sliding up from behind the trees. It’s a color only achieved when there is smoke in the atmosphere. And it is breathtaking. Its wavy reflection stretches across the lake, not for the mountain, but straight for my chair, as if begging me to dance, or maybe pointing a smiting finger at me for wishing I were at a different lake by a different mountain, turned golden by the rising sun, where fish leap and ospreys plummet from the sky, hoping to catch one.

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A man standing at the end of the nearby dock lifts his bass recorder and accompanies the dawning day; but, as if afraid to disturb those who are still asleep in their tents deep in the trees and missing what will surely be the best moments of the day, sounds only a phrase or two. The deep, haunting notes are a perfect accompaniment.

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I am complete.

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Gretchen Staebler

Gretchen Staebler

I am a Pacific Northwest native transplanted to the southeast for 36 years. In 2012, I returned to my childhood home to live and care for my then 96-year-old mother. I am a writer, a hiker, and a back roads wanderer.

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