Tag Archives: hiking

Cosmology, Environmentalism, Hiking, Memories, Rites of Passage, Wonder and Awe

OH MY GODS. I FOUND IT.

2 Comments

I know, I know–I’m interrupting the Totemism 201 series. But it’s for a really, really important reason. Forgive the clunky title; I couldn’t come with something better in my overwhelming excitement.

So last year I wrote “Up North“, a bittersweet post about the sense of adventure that I felt in the woods near my childhood home and the devastation when they were torn down for yet another crappy subdivision. Before they were completely destroyed, though, I managed to make my way into their northern reaches and discovered things I’d never seen before–a small pond, new fields and patches of oak trees. This sense of expansion and adventure has haunted me in my dreams for over twenty years now; I’ll dream that I’m back in those woods, heading northward. Sometimes I’ll end up in jagged, wild mountains, sometimes the realm of fey beings, sometimes deep pools of crystal-clear water. But in every single dream, that passage north takes me to new places, and my heart aches every time I wake up.

At the end of the post, I wrote the following:

Occasionally I get to have just the tiniest taste of “up north” in my waking life, and I hang onto those moments like gold. On my most recent excursion to Catherine Creek on the Washington side of the Columbia River, I took the less-traveled trail up under the power lines and then up the ridge on the east side of Catherine Creek itself. There was no one else up there, the trail was tiny and quiet, the views were amazing, and the day was absolutely perfect weather-wise. Although I know quite well that this was far from uncharted territory, the experience of being on this unmarked trail I’d never been on before, with no one around, and with no agenda in mind raised that old feeling of adventure again. (I was even going north, to boot!) It’s been a couple of weeks since that time and I still feel the glow. I intend to go back soon, too, once this latest spate of rain passes us by–it’s a bad place to get caught in a thunderstorm (as I almost did my first time out to Catherine Creek a few years ago).

Perhaps someday when things relax a little more here and I have the time and money to get out for a longer time I’ll go find a wild place I can explore. Not so wild that I’m in danger of getting lost, but remote enough that it can just be me and the wilderness, my feet on wide, open ground ready to explore.

And maybe then I’ll get to go “up north” again.

Today, I went for my first long hike of the year. I’ve not been running for several months so I’m in rather atrocious condition, but I’ve been walking a lot in the past week to start getting my endurance back. I’m not up for a ten mile stomp, but I needed something more challenging than a two mile round trip walk to the grocery store. We’ve been having unseasonably warm weather here lately, and while I’m not entirely happy about it in the long term, I decided to take advantage of it today. I chose to go back to Catherine Creek.

Catherine Creek is a picky place. It’s on the eastern side of the Cascades, which means that storms can suddenly rise up from the south, and the trails are on high ridges with little shelter. This means that, especially in winter, I have to choose my day to go carefully to avoid getting caught in rain or, worse, snow and ice. Moreover, many of the trails become choked with thickets of poison oak from April through November, which reduces the opportunities to explore them. And because it’s an hour drive from Portland, I have to plan an entire day away from home. But it’s by far one of my favorite places to hike, and well worth the coordination.

Today was almost ideal: nothing planned schedule-wise, and a zero percent chance of rain with temperatures near fifty. Even with the unseasonal warm weather the poison oak is well dormant. I had a full tank of gas, and an eagerness to explore the narrow little trail heading north along the ridge east of the creek itself where I’d gone last year. This was my chance.

And it was perfect. I followed the trail beneath the power lines, then up the ridge, higher and higher, gaining over a thousand feet of elevation in less than two miles. I passed through scrub oak groves and wide, open plains, startled a trio of blacktail deer and a flock of Steller’s jays that rasped at me angrily as I passed. I listened to the creek rush down below me, and heard ravens arguing in the distance. Every so often I turned around to make sure I could still see the trail behind me; it was less than eighteen inches wide, but it stood out as a dark line through the pale dead grass.

My little trail continued up and up, until the trees gave out and the summit of the nameless ridge beckoned. By now I had passed far into where clouds had settled on the land, and visibility had gone to just about fifty feet. I could still see my trail, and the deer trails that crossed over it. I noted the prints of another hiker who must have passed this way over the weekend, the hooves of deer and the pads of a small coyote. I checked the time–just about 1:30pm–and debated whether to go off trail to make the last couple hundred yards to the summit. There was little wind, but the mist was thickening the higher I got, and the trail disappeared into the distance.

I wouldn’t go any farther back into the wilderness, but I wanted to see the summit off to my left. So I tied a length of toilet paper to a dried plant by the trail–bright white in the gloom–and made my way through the grass. I got perhaps two hundred feet before the mist obscured anything that wasn’t within about thirty feet, and I was still not quite to the top. No mind; I was close enough for today. I took a moment to savor this new place, though I could see little of it, then retraced my steps, clear in the grass, until I saw my white flag of bathroom tissue in the distance, and retrieved it as I headed back the way I came.

I quickly made my way back down the ridge; though it was still hours before nightfall, the mist was gathering, and I wanted to at least get back to where I could hear the creek; once I had that I could find my way back to the trailhead even if I lost the trail itself. The ridge was kind to me, and within less than half an hour I was back below the clouds with a clear view all the way across Catherine Creek’s deep valley.

I was exhausted, unaccustomed to this level of exertion, and a bit anxious about getting completely socked in so long as the mist surrounded me, but my exhilaration carried me safely through. As I made my way back down through the oaks–so much like my long-gone woods of my youth–I knew I had finally captured something lost to me for over two decades.

And I’ll be going back. The Catherine Creek Day Use Area is protected by the US Forest Service, and because all it hosts are little scrubby oaks and Ponderosa pines, it’s of little commercial value, so unlikely to be logged or otherwise developed. So this beautiful area that has embraced me will be there as long as I am willing to come back. There are so many trails left to explore, too, both mapped and unmapped. I would have long ago outgrown my last few acres of woodland as a child, but this–this is the size I need now, as a healthy, adventurous, roving adult woman exploring the world around me.

This is it–this place has given me what is Up North.

Gratitude, Hiking, Memories, Rites of Passage, Wonder and Awe

Two Nights at Upper Twin Lake

2 Comments

(You can click on the pictures in this post to get bigger versions thereof.)

So last week I mentioned that I was escaping into the wilderness for a bit. I haven’t been backpacking in two years, since last summer was eaten up by a day job plus keeping my self-employed efforts rolling, and I wanted to get at least one good excursion in before the summer was out. My original plan had involved Wahtum Lake to Eagle Creek trailhead over the full moon, but the projected temperatures for those few days reached into the hundreds, and I wasn’t really up for heat stroke while carrying a 45 pound pack. (See? My Wilderness First Responder training did something for me!) Then as soon as the heat broke, a storm system came in, and I had no interest in being up at any elevation with the possibility of lightning (self-preservation is a great sense to have.) By that point a couple of project deadlines were looming, so I needed to put those first–yet another delay.

Finally, though, the clouds (literal and metaphorical) cleared, and last Wednesday through Friday was forecast to be clear and not too hot, not too cold, just right. I decided to change venues and plans; rather than spending all three days slowly picking my way down the path from Wahtum Lake to Eagle Creek, I decided I’d hike in to Upper Twin Lake, set up camp, have one whole day to wander the trails in the area, and then hike back out on the third day. I’ve done day hikes at the lake several times, and it’s really a wonderful place–far enough away from Portland that it’s not overrun by tourists and weirdos, nicely graded trails through beautiful mixed-conifer forests recovering from logging a few decades back, and delightfully free of mosquitoes.

graveSo I had my partner drive me out to the trailhead, which was a bit of an adventure in and of itself. He’d never been so close to Mt. Hood before, and there are some lovely views on the way out, so I got to show him a bit of my life he hadn’t experienced before. We took a brief detour for my annual pilgrimage to Pioneer Woman’s Grave near the trailhead. When the Mt. Hood Highway (Highway 26) was being built in the 1920s, workers unearthed the grave of a woman buried in a wagon box with the remnants of a wagon tongue as her headstone. No one knows her name, but the informational sign near where she was reburied gives a clue. Back in the 1800s, the only road through the Cascades in this area was the Barlow Road, a toll road stretching from the Columbia River to the Willamette Valley (part of 26 follows the Barlow Road). A superintendent of the road met a man who had just lost his wife to illness and buried her nearby, and was comforting their two young children. I usually only head out to this area once a year, so I always stop at the grave and leave my expired Northwest Forest Pass in the caern. (You can see it as a bit of orange and black in the center of the picture.)

portraitOnce we got to the trailhead, I slung my pack up, got my hiking poles, and prepared to head in the three miles to the lake. I asked my partner to take a quick picture of me first, next to the informational sign showing the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and nearby trails to the lakes. If I look a little slumped over, it’s for good reason; this was my first time using this particular pack so I was getting used to the weight distribution. And as this was my first multi-night backpacking trip I had more food and water than usual. All told the pack was a little over a third of my weight, and it took me a little while to get used to carrying it, but by the first mile in I was making good time.

trailBecause the trail isn’t especially steep or rocky, it’s easier for me to appreciate the scenery as I go along. (Strained muscles, ragged breathing and rough terrain are all rather distracting.) It’s really one of my favorite things about the trail to Upper Twin Lake; the first half is PCT, which is specifically graded to be more gentle, and then the trail that splits off to the lake itself is equally nice. Both on the way in and out, I was able to get a good look at what was going on around me. The Douglas fir and western hemlock trees were generally in good health, and the fir in particular had been prolific with little seedlings and saplings everywhere there was an opening. I was more concerned about the pines; many of them were sick or dead, some with bark beetles, and some that looked like they’d been attacked by fungus, perhaps after being weakened by the beetles. I admit any time I saw a young pine tree I cheered for it a bit, and wished it well.

campsiteOnce I got to the lake, I chose a campsite on the west side of the water so I could enjoy the first morning’s light a little sooner. I didn’t want to fuss with a campfire, so evenings were mostly going to be spent conserving my heat in the tent, and I figured the sooner I could get sunlight in the morning the better. My ultralight tent is a tiny thing, with barely enough room for me (I have no idea how a taller person would sleep in it, given that I can just stretch out enough at the widest point.) But it was cozy and safe, and it became my home sweet home for the next couple of days.

firstmorningThe first night was kind of rough. I get cold fairly easily, and my sleeping bag was only rated down to about 45 degrees; I really need to see about upgrading if I can find a better-rated ultralight that doesn’t take up much more room. So while I was warm a good part of the night, every so often a chill would slip into the tent and wake me. That and my bladder seemed to be conspiring to wake me every couple of hours, no doubt due to all the water I drank on the trail. So I didn’t get more than a couple of hours of sleep at a time, but since I went to bed at dusk, I had a good twelve hours of resting and sleeping by the time I woke the next morning. And was it worth it! That first time the sun came up over the trees in the east, the lake sparkled and all my crankiness at the nighttime dissolved in an instant.

palmateerI decided to explore some trail-miles I hadn’t been on before. Every time I had hiked to Upper Twin Lake I’d seen signs for Palmateer, which started by the lake and curved along the other side of the ridge to meet up with the PCT. It’s a much narrower and a bit rougher trail than the rest, but still well-maintained and with some absolutely gorgeous views. Some of the signage along the way was missing so I was consulting my map a bit more than usual, but I figured out where everything was and had a lovely day of it. Once I hit the PCT again I decided to hike back to the trailhead because it’s the only place for miles with a port-a-john and has the best phone reception to boot (and 3G internet!) After a bit of a break up that way, I hiked on back to camp, and rested after what ended up being ten miles of stomping around in the woods.

peekabooMy second evening was nice and quiet; I walked a lot of laps around the lake, about a half mile circuit, because I wanted to make sure and remember this place that had treated me so well. I saw the black-tailed deer that had been visiting my camp periodically, and watched the gray jays and juncos and bushtits in their evening activities. I had a nice supper of jerky and oatmeal, and curled up in my tent to reflect on the sights of the day.

lakesideAnd then morning came, and I slowly let myself prepare to leave this place. I spent a little time sketching, and a little time meditating, and carefully picked over my campsite as I packed up my belongings to be sure nothing was left behind. I slowly ambled out the trail, taking two hours to hike the three miles back to the trailhead where my partner was waiting. It was a bittersweet parting with the lake, sad that I had to be leaving behind this beautiful place that I probably won’t visit again until next year, but glad to be returning home to a more comfortable bed and a shower.

vanillaleafAll in all, I really needed this trip. 2014 has been a year of challenges, and while I’ve tried to keep to my hike once a week self-care, it hasn’t always worked out that way. I need regular time in wilderness to be happy and healthym and I need a lot of solo time, too. It’s good for me to take measured risks, to remind myself as I get older that I’m still a capable adult, that all the training and experience I have in the outdoors means something, and that despite the media screaming about isolated cases of hikers falling off cliffs and being eaten by bears and attacked by lunatic hermits, I know how to keep myself safe out here. More importantly, it’s good to recharge, to have silence, where there’s no one trying to get my attention, and I can sort out my thoughts on my own. Nature heals, and I am much better for the time I spent in it.

mthoodwilderness

Cosmology, Hiking, Memories, Wonder and Awe

“Up North”

2 Comments

Have I ever told you all about “Up North”? No? Then let me tell you a story about one of the deepest places in my heart.

When I was just past my twelfth birthday, my family moved to a new house across town. The house itself was bigger, the yard was bigger, and as it turned out I had a bigger piece of open space to explore, too. Whereas at our old house I had about a half an acre field of grass and scrubby little cedar trees with rabbits and garter snakes, our new yard backed right up against an old farm. Most of it was cordoned off with barbed wire and “NO TRESPASSING” signs, but one little patch, maybe about an acre or so, was open and sign-less, so I felt okay exploring it.

It was a wonderful little spot, the perfect mix of micro-systems. To enter, I walked down a path, maybe twenty feet long, that wound through young-growth trees and shrubs, with a big semi-permanent puddle in the thick of it. The trail led out onto a ledge overlooking a tiny wetland created by the storm sewer drainage pipe from the street my house was on. The only way to go further was to slide down this ledge and carefully pick my way through the wetland (complete with cattails, which delighted me to no end) and then back up onto a dry, chert-surfaced plateau with a giant black walnut tree growing there. A little further on was the creek that the wetland drained into, a little meandering thing with minnows and crawdads and the occasional water snake or turtle. And past that was another piece of woods choked with heavy vines and a sharp cliff overlooking the creek.

Not even two years after we moved there, this beautiful little place was completely bulldozed to make way for a new subdivision, complete with overpriced houses and winding suburb-style streets. I’ve talked about this destruction before, and how much it hurt me, so I won’t elaborate here. What I want to talk about is what happened next.

For the most part my will to explore was completely shattered by this experience. But just one more time that wild spark flared, for the fence that had kept me out was gone, too. The fields where the cows had grazed were still there, sliced through by one red dirt culvert where a road would be soon built. But for the moment, the wide fields I had looked longingly at over the barbed wire were open to me, and so I took the opportunity to start heading north through them.

Where before I’d had only one acre, now I had dozens. I wandered over more little tributaries to the creek, lined with tiny scrubby trees and mosses, and I walked through high grass spotted with dry cow pats. It was still cool enough that I didn’t need to worry about ticks or poison ivy, and was able to be more free with my attention.

As I continued further north, I came to a small manmade pond. Now, I’ve always been deeply attracted to waterways; I think perhaps it’s because I grew up landlocked and had only very rare opportunities to visit larger bodies of water. But in that moment I felt as though I had found a magical place in this scummy little pond ringed with old hoofprints and dry dirt. Were there any fish in there? What would live there in the summer (besides mosquitoes)? What drank from here? Could I put a tiny boat out on it and float around? The possibilities for this discovery were endless.

But I never had the chance. The weather was beginning to turn, and I had to head back home. Shortly thereafter, the depression that had started when the bulldozer did its damage ramped up, and I lost even the interest I had in this new place. Why bother connecting to something that was surely going to be destroyed? I couldn’t do anything about it; I was just one young girl whose opinions and feelings didn’t matter in the face of development and profit and the business of real estate. Like the rabbits and snakes and crawdads that would be displaced or killed as the houses went up and the creek was dredged (“to avoid flooding”, they said), I was insignificant. I stopped going outside beyond our yard, and the depression took me over for years, my last real coping mechanism amid bullying and anxiety now gone.

Beneath the layers of depression, though, that feeling of exultation in my one day of adventure never quite went away. Just that one time I’d had what I’d always wanted when feeling constrained by half-acre and one-acre plots of scrub woods–I’d had a large area to roam, big enough to get tired in while walking from one end to the other. I’d finally gotten to go “up north”, past the boundary of my little world, and no one could take that experience away from me. Though I was never able to go back, that place and my visit to it ended up being something I chased for years without even realizing what I was after.

Over two decades later, and “up north” still haunts me. Whenever I am feeling constrained and trapped in my life, I have dreams where once again I get to go “up north”. I walk through my little acre of land–miraculously restored to its former beauty and variety–and I cross the downed barbed wire fence and head northward. Where my journey then takes me varies. Sometimes I go back to that little pond, but more often the terrain changes beyond what was ever there in reality. Most often I find myself in mountains, cutting through valleys and scaling peaks. Sometimes the impossible happens and I am even able to fly. A few dozen acres turns into hundreds of miles of wilderness, and I can spend all night dreaming about what’s “up north”.

I don’t know if I’ll ever have that experience again in real life. It’s harder to find places where one can be completely alone in the wilderness, especially for someone as busy as I am and therefore unable to disappear into a place for days or weeks at a time. More poignantly, I am an adult, and there are things a child can get away with that an adult can’t. No one thinks to question a child walking across an open lot to look at some cows. But an adult walking on that land is trespassing–who knows what they may be up to. As a child I could wander through my old neighborhood’s yards at will and no one thought a second time about it; it was just what kids did. If I walked through those same yards today I’d likely have the police called on me. Children have access to places where adults are barred, and I miss that freedom and the assumption of innocence.

Occasionally I get to have just the tiniest taste of “up north” in my waking life, and I hang onto those moments like gold. On my most recent excursion to Catherine Creek on the Washington side of the Columbia River, I took the less-traveled trail up under the power lines and then up the ridge on the east side of Catherine Creek itself. There was no one else up there, the trail was tiny and quiet, the views were amazing, and the day was absolutely perfect weather-wise. Although I know quite well that this was far from uncharted territory, the experience of being on this unmarked trail I’d never been on before, with no one around, and with no agenda in mind raised that old feeling of adventure again. (I was even going north, to boot!) It’s been a couple of weeks since that time and I still feel the glow. I intend to go back soon, too, once this latest spate of rain passes us by–it’s a bad place to get caught in a thunderstorm (as I almost did my first time out to Catherine Creek a few years ago).

Perhaps someday when things relax a little more here and I have the time and money to get out for a longer time I’ll go find a wild place I can explore. Not so wild that I’m in danger of getting lost, but remote enough that it can just be me and the wilderness, my feet on wide, open ground ready to explore.

And maybe then I’ll get to go “up north” again.

Photo by Lupa, 2011.
Lupa, 2011.
Gardening, Seasons

Preparing For Spring

Leave a comment

PNCnature_iconRecently, my fellow writer, Rua Lupa, posted to No Unsacred Place about her goings-on for Transequilux. This is the time of year that many pagans refer to as Imbolc, Candlemas, etc., midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. In her path, Ehoah, the spring equinox (or Equilux) is the new year, which I feel is a more fitting time than the middle of winter. She described a variety of projects she was undertaking as the equinox approached, including a lot of eco-sustainable activities, but also some personal endeavors as well. It reminded me something of the time-honored tradition of “spring cleaning”, in which the detritus of winter is shucked out the door and everything is organized anew to greet the arrival of warmer, sunnier days. And as the land is waking up in here in Portland, this shift to greater activity and improvement seems especially apt.

Winter has historically been a tough time for me, some years moreso than others. Start off with the fact that I am a warm weather kind of person (despite, or perhaps because of, growing up in the Midwest where winters get harsh), and winter just isn’t the best season for me. And this past winter had a lot of particular challenges; I spent the entire summer into fall working a day job in addition to my usual art and writing schedule, and so I spent a lot of beautiful, warm days stuck indoors. I hardly had time for hiking, and camping was a distant memory; I was going through serious wilderness withdrawal. As soon as I got my time back, fall was settling in, and the leaves began to fall while I recovered from the exhaustion. By the time I was ready to engage with the world again, the skies were gray and I couldn’t go outside without at least four layers of clothing. Add in that I had a lot of other deadlines and obligations to corral and deal with , with not a lot of breathing room, and I was one very knotted ball of stress.

But over the past few days (the chilly weekend notwithstanding), the temperatures have been climbing up into the upper 50s and even low 60s, and the sun has made appearances amid the much-needed precipitation. On the way back from a hike

The Sandy River east of Portland flowed cold and deep the day before Christmas. Lupa, 2013.
The Sandy River east of Portland flowed cold and deep the day before Christmas. Lupa, 2013.
with my dear friend Emily on Friday, we got a good look at Mt. Hood, the sun shining on a coat of snow that draped much lower than it had a month previous thanks to February’s snow and rain. I felt much like that mountain, staving off drought with a longer hem of white–given more leeway than before, suddenly feeling more like myself.

And it’s resulted in a greater burst of energy than I’ve had in months. There’s the push of urgency that I used to get through running Curious Gallery, followed by trips to PantheaCon and FaerieCon West back to back, but so many mornings all I wanted was to go back to bed, dredged up from slumber much too early, and frenetically chasing commitments hither and yon. In the warmth of the first days of March, though, I feel the sunlight soaking into my skin, and the layers of fatigue and angst fall away like heavy clothing off my shoulders.

Like Rua Lupa, too, I’ve been taking that energy and putting it to good things. You’ve seen how I revamped my website, clearing out old HTML whose roots are fifteen years old and paring down links and sub-pages like husks on corn. Offline, when I arrived home from FaerieCon West weekend before last, I came to the realization that I’d let my art room go to utter disarray in the busy-ness of events and preparation and stocking up. So I took the time to not only put things back in their place, but to go through the bins and crates and destash the things that needed new homes, projects I probably wasn’t going to get to, supplies that may be better in another artist’s hands. We’re preparing to do the same to the garage, all of our extra stuff that we do need now and then, probably not valuable to anyone but us, but worth hanging onto despite the space it takes up. In fact, the entire apartment is due for a deep cleaning anyway, and now’s as good a time as any.

One of my happiest seed purchases in years. Lupa, 2014.And in clearing away the old, there’s room for fresh growth. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks saving my community garden plot from weeds, and I’ve been left with full, rich soil that benefited heavily from the minerals and bone meal I put on it last fall. It abounds with life beneath the dead plants; the presence of overwintered cutworms signaled a need to find an organic solution before my fresh seeds become tasty sprouts, and a survey of one cubic foot of soil found fifty-five earthworms when I turned the earth to prepare it for planting, though the opportunistic crows that swooped down to the turned earth as I left probably reduced the population a bit. I even discovered a few daffodils that I transplanted to the northern edge of my plot where a bunch of of mystery bulbs are due to reveal their identities in the weeks to come. (I inherited this spot last summer, once all the bulbs had bloomed and died back, so I’m looking forward to pleasant surprises.)

I rewarded all my weeding with seeding; for roots I have turnips, two types of beets, two varieties of radish, and a newcomer to my garden, parsnips. For early greens I’ve laced the earth with the tiny seeds of spinach, arugula and kale, and rounded out the lot with peas and onions, both personal favorites of mine. I realized too late that I was planting some things in the same spots as last fall–radishes and turnips and kale in identical rows–which means greater vigilance against disease and pests. But it’s only the second time, and I’ll remember to rotate next time through.

So it is that I make my own preparations for changes and developments, and clear away space for growth and evolution. I always look forward to spring, but this year I can almost feel myself growing, plant-like, toward the windows even as I carry about my business indoors, and every trip outside feels like the biggest, most satisfying stretch in the world. I need this shift now, more than in most years, and the sweet smell of cherry blossoms and tender grass studded with little brown mushrooms can’t get here soon enough.