En Contra

I don't live there anymore, but around 20 years back I was out early on a quiet Sunday morning with my camera, standing on the trail next to my tripod in the Capitol State Forest just west of Olympia, WA. I was wondering what my next shot might be when there was a movement off to my right. I turned my head and looked, and saw a really weird brown dog galumphing down the trail toward me.

It was short at the shoulder, its legs only half as long as they should have been, and its head bobbed up and down wildly like that of a hobbyhorse. Nothing about this made sense. It was an animal but put together wrong. I was totally confused.

After a scant few seconds I took a step back to get a bit of perspective change, and the dog-thing-whatever instantly turned itself inside out in less an eye blink and was rapidly retreating the way it had come, still brown, still too low to the ground, still baffling.

But I saw its tail then. I saw that. The tail was long. Really, really long. Brown. As thick as my arm, with that distinctive cat-tail curve.

By the time it reversed course it was maybe within 30 feet of me (9m), just on the other side of a short little jog in the trail. Good thing I moved when I did. It was almost on me.

The whole episode was so strange that I was confused for hours, even though I did inspect the trail and found one perfect kitty-print in the dust, about 4" in diameter (10cm). I finally had to admit that it was a cougar, had to have been, and couldn't have been anything else. Only two hours later, long after I'd left the forest, did fright set in.

This happened in total silence.

I've also seen two lynx, one from my car in Olympic National Forest, trotting nonchalantly down the side of a paved road toward me, and the other in Port Angeles, around 4 a.m. within a block of the Olympic National Park headquarters. Crazy-wild long legs, relaxed trot, fuzzy beer can tail, headed south. Lynx don't live on the Olympic Peninsula. Officially.

You never know.

 

And, a response from our reader...

 

Funny shaped animals on The Trail
Regarding your cougar encounter...

Soon after I moved to the PNW (from Michigan) in 2000, I was living in a furnished apartment in Eastgate waiting for my house stuff to be packed up and moved out to my new house. I was in the habit of going out for an evening jog up the hill behind my house, on a really nice trail that just happened to be there.

One evening, on my way back home I'm jogging along the trail and see a flash of brown cross the trail in front of me. My midwestern brain says, "deer!" When I got to the section of trail where the brown fur had crossed, I stopped to look for tell-tale deer prints, of which there were none. Which I found odd. I walked backwards down the trail towards home for 50 feet, watching for any sign of anything but couldn't see a thing. So I turned and the instant I turned my back I heard a single branch snap. I whipped back around, looking intently for the something that I now knew was watching me, but I couldn't see a thing. So I continued walking away, backwards down the trail.

As I exited the trail, I paid new attention to the sign, noting that I was indeed trail running on Cougar Mountain.

Matt (Wed, Jan 31, 12:39 PM)

 

And then Dave sez...

Cats - you never know. Stuff is out there. Also, yet another reason I'll never go hiking on Brokeback Mountain.

What I've found outdoors is that if you stay quiet and don't move around too much, you witness a lot of things, just by being there.

Probably the strangest for me was seeing a water shrew as I was sitting next to a stream drying my feet after crossing it.

Something exploded out of the water and ran across the surface, then plopped back in. Did that twice more while I was there. I eventually found some info on what it must have been. Before that I'd had no idea that there even was such a thing.

This is pretty good...
Tiny Water Shrews Are the "Cheetahs of the Wetlands".
Nature on PBS: "A water shrew is an insectivore no bigger than a thumb..."
Video (<= Until the link rots anyway.)

 

encounter (n.): Circa. 1300, "meeting of adversaries, confrontation".
From Old French encontre "meeting, fight, opportunity".
Ultimately from Latin in "in" (from PIE root en "in") + contra "against".
Etymonline

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Me? Dizzy. Call me dizzy.

 

Etc...

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definitions: outdoor terms
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Hurricane's Backside

Looking away off west.

 

So, much effort for little result, i.e., this blog post.

I'm faking it while cleaning out old photo files, and being a little mouse of a blogger way off to the side of what is currently the internet, well shucks then. What more do you need? It's a gesture, isn't it? A gesture to show you that I still love you, even if we'd get along for no more than four seconds in real life, you and I. But since I live in the abstract, gestures count.

 

To the southwest, toward the heart of Olympic National Park.

 

Living in paradise as I'm doing at the moment, wouldn't we expect that there is ever so much going on, to do, to share, to experience? Yep, I think so. But since reality don't give a snit what I think, no. It's dead here. Things were better six years ago when I first got to Cuenca. (That's in Ecuador.) More squirrelly, less predictable, odder.

 

I've never understood this place. That seems right, the way you never understand home.

 

Since I can't seem to keep away, I was back in the U.S. from the start of March, 2018 until the end of July. Had big ideas. Uck fupt big time. Bailed. Figured I'd make up for it here in Ecuador. I've been back over eight months, watching, checking every day, looking, and still have not found a single person wanting to go out hiking. At least there used to be a few people. Maybe they saw me coming.

 

Hikers. One man, two girls. They came in peace and left with no trace.

 

This place is getting settled.

It's a lot more "civilized" than it was in November, 2012, when I first stepped off the shuttle van from Guayaquil, looked around and thought "grubby". My first impression. Grubby. Not quite so much any more.

 

This grassy swathe appears blank or even snowy on the Google Earth images below. Anything but. Lovely, don't you think?

 

Six years on, there is still construction going on everywhere. New buildings. Remodeled old buildings. More traffic lights. Better internet. Retired gringos getting over their wonder and settling into brain-dead old age. Less experimentation, more suburbanization, if we can call it that. (Smells like it.) No hiking groups. At all.

 

From above and to the right of the rocky outcrop in the previous two images.

 

Anyway, I myself am not dead yet, but any day now I could wake up dead, so maybe I'll be back in the U.S. for one very last ultimate try at being a gnarly backpacker and traveling around and stuff. Possibly. Am I just old and stupid? Also possibly.

 

The now free-flowing Elwha.

 

Last year definitely did not work out, though 2014/2015 was not all that bad, when I was living in Port Angeles, WA, right underneath Olympic National Park, and going there quite a bit, and this is where today's photos came from. (July, 2014.)

 

And they, far ahead, prepare to vanish into forest.

 

Drive up to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center, go right for a mile or two, and you get to the Hurricane Hill parking lot and trailhead. Everything in the U.S. has a parking lot, doesn't it? That's how you can tell you're there. If not, then it isn't real.

 

Another view off west.

 

Anyway, hike up and look over the top to the Strait of Juan de Fuca or hike farther west, or do both. Go far enough and first you're on the backside of Hurricane Hill and later on, if you keep going, you're about a mile (1600 m) lower, and just about able to spit into the Elwha River, if that's your specialty. Don't go that far and you don't have to sweat so much, and can sort of noodle around and feel on top of the world because you are. If that isn't enough, and you get bored, you can whistle back at the marmots or take a nap on the grass. Nice.

 

Southwest. Summer here always seems like forever.

 

So here's what I've got out of it. The photos look a little impressionistic because that's what happens when you take a tiny little camera and point it at infinity and then try to make sense of it. But you get the idea. Forgive me.

 

Toward Olympus. I think. Sky and peaks and snow and sky.

 

The start and the end. Start there and hike this way. Lots of "up". And then hike down again when it's all over. And then go home remembering that it's about more than just you.

 

Area map. Hurricane Hill in relation to Hurricane Ridge. Port Angeles is just off the map toward the top.

 

From Google Earth. Looking approximately ENE. The sort of "snowy" area is actually mostly grass.

 

From Google Earth. Looking roughly north. The long left-right light area near the top is Hurricane Hill. To the lower left is the former Lake Mills.

 

From Google Earth. Straight down, showing the trail from way up high down to the Elwha River

 

From Google Earth. Looking roughly west. Where you see "Windy Arm" is the former Lake Mills, now the restored Elwha river. Foreground is Hurricane Hill.

 

 

Elwha River Restoration

Restoration of the Elwha River

 

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Remember, flies are nature's way of saying that you're still yummy.
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Marmot Olympics

"Marmota olympus". That's what they say, a big squirrel. I didn't know that. Them. Them facts. I didn't know them. Now I do.

 

Just up one side of Hurricane Hill and a little down the other, there be marmots.

Not Hurricane Hillary or Tropical Depression Hilary. None of that. Part-time hurricanes come and go up topside, but no depressions. No depressions because you feel good there, but occasional hurricanes, and not tropical either. "Temperate latitude" hurricanes. They come through every now and then.

 

This would be in Olympic National Park in western Washington state. I didn't know about temperate latitude hurricanes until a couple of years ago. True. Cliff Mass of the University of Washington mentioned it on one of his weekly weather talks, but oddly, the term "temperate latitude hurricane" does not occur on his blog.

 

Maybe he changed his mind about the term, or hasn't gotten around to writing about it, but there have been some big storms blowing through the area. (See link below.)

 

Anyhow, marmots are sleeping by then. Come winter, they sleep. Come summer, they munch grass and whistle. November is usually the stormiest month, but by then there wouldn't be much to eat, and normally there would be significant snow on the ground. Both good reasons to try sleeping it off.

 

"Whistle pigs", "woodchucks", "hoary marmots" — all closely related. I didn't know until yesterday that the olympic marmot was distinct: "it occurs only in the U.S. state of Washington, on the middle elevations of the Olympic Peninsula", according to Wikipedia. But I guess so, it is distinct, a little.

 

Hurricane Hill is off a bit to the west of Hurricane Ridge and its visitor center, which is accessible by paved road from the city of Port Angeles. The trip is about 15 miles (24km), though the direct distance is around a third of that. (A windy road to a windy spot.)

 

From Hurricane Hill there are good views of the Elwha River valley, including part of what used to be Lake Mills behind Glines Canyon Dam before the dam got taken down. You can look at the Bailey Range and peek at Mt Olympus, but I've never seen any gods over there, just more pointy rocks and snow. Might be worth another look some day.

 

Marmots is mostly it. Get out on the grassy parts, see something lumpy moving around, get whistled at, and maybe it's a marmot. If not, then that's a good time to turn around and go home, but so far it's been marmots and they've minded their own business and I've never tried to tickle any.

 

The trail does continue west, down a long slope to the Elwha Ranger Station, and on the day I grabbed these photos there was a group of three or so headed that way. Looked like a dad and two daughters.

 

I followed for a while, but the trail gets really steep after it enters the forest on the west side, and I didn't have any reason to go way down there, so I returned to hanging with the marmots. Might be a fun trip to do sometime.

The Olympic marmot is thought to have originated during the last glacial period as an isolated relict population of the hoary marmot in the Pleistocene ice-free refugia...The Olympic marmot is about the size of a domestic cat; adults weigh from 3.1 to 11 kg (6.8 to 24.3 lb) and are from 67 to 75 cm (26 to 30 in) in length, with the average being 71 cm (28 in). It is the largest marmot...The coat is double-layered, consisting of soft thick underfur, for warmth, and coarser outer hairs.

Olympic marmots eat meadow flora such as avalanche and glacier lilies, heather blossoms, subalpine lupine, mountain buckwheat, harebells, sedges, and mosses. They prefer green, tender, flowering plants over other sources of food, but roots are a large part of their diets in the early spring when other plants have not yet appeared.

And so on. (Info from Wikipedia.) Pretty nice for squirrels.

 

Olympic marmot

Columbus Day Storm, 1962

• Winds exceeding 150 mph and a storm equal to Hurricane Katrina.
• Huge forests leveled.
• Dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries.
• Thousands of homes and buildings destroyed or seriously damaged.

 

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Me? Breathing. Still breathing. Working on that today.
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One Forgettable, One Forgotten

No, really — this is me smiling. (Note happy leg scabs.)

I used to be this person. Once, and upon a time.

Fifteen years back, now, in 2003, September. September 27. Fifteen years, and even another two months beyond that. A while.

I was sick. It was the year that I was sick. I don't know. Something. Maybe giardia, starting at the end of May, just after a routine trip around Mt St Helens. Nothing memorable about that except that was the trip that my spoon broke, so I used a stick. Maybe it was the stick.

I used a stick to finish just that one meal, then realized that I could do without it, and without a spoon, so the end of May, 2003 was the last time I took a spoon backpacking. But maybe it was the stick. I'm careful, and I can't see how I could have infected myself in any way, but I developed something, and it kept getting worse, and then eventually, in October sometime, it got much worse for a day, and then it was over. Over after I spent a whole day sitting on the floor with my back to the wall, trying to hold on to the carpet while intense intestinal cramps fought each other for the rights to my gut.

That was it, except for two days of diarrhea and a couple following weeks of vile outgassings to finish up.

But it wasn't all fun.

And carrying one of my early packs. The very first weighed 9.8 ounces and still hurt. Duct tape is a pack-maker's tool they never mention. But hey — it works.

That was the year that I was sick, from the end of May to the middle of October, and that was the year that I wrote a sample letter that my gastroenterologist thought was so good that he just signed it on the spot. And then I wasn't working any more. No one said good-bye.

I submitted the letter the next day and within about four hours (or a bit less — maybe it was two hours) I was free. Leave-of-absence for medical reasons. By a trick of the personnel system I was able to submit a thick sheaf of leave slips up front and retain my medical insurance, by gradually using accumulated sick leave over a period of up to a year. But I didn't need a year. I lucked. By the middle of October I had a different job — came out of the blue with a fat jump in salary attached, a two-year data-warehouse project, and I could continue working, for more money, and be asshole-free as well.

Done.

In 2003 I set off just a day or two ahead of the July 4th weekend on a 14-day, 200-mile trip through Olympic National Park. Even with rumbling guts. Several things did not go quite right and I began backtracking just shy of halfway through. Then in early August I took a week off on medical leave (Hah!) and picked up the route about where I'd abandoned it, and finished the second half of the trip.

Then I got my letter signed and quit. "Quit", in quotes, since I was still an employee, but no longer working. I had a year's worth of nothing, with free health insurance, and money in the bank besides, so I did more hiking, not knowing what would come next. Which, after another eight weeks or so, was a better job at the state agency where I had first started doing computer work, and not the zoo I'd just escaped from. Shortly after that project ended (successfully, early, and under budget) and I reverted to my previous agency, I quit. A "hard reset". I decided I'd rather die than keep working there, so I submitted a resignation with my two-weeks' notice, and a leave slip for two weeks, and walked out. My more-or-less temporary boss at the time was himself off on vacation but he handled it well, and I never did get charged for those last two weeks of leave that I took, which amounted to roughly an extra $2000 in the bank when I cashed out my unused leave. Decent guy.

I always felt bad about suddenly bailing out like that but there was nothing for me to do. They had me just sitting there killing time. Even though management was different from when I went on my leave-of-absence, and they weren't actively hostile, they still had their heads up their butts and there was nothing to do, and then my position was going to be eliminated, and I couldn't stand the pure waste of my life, so that's why I quit, on July 7, 2005.

I haven't worked since.

I made the shirt too. Found the cap on the trail one day. Photos shot with my first digital camera, a Kodak DC4800 (3.1 MP).

Got lucky.

I squeaked by. Now that I'm old enough, I have two separate governments sending me money every month to stay away and not bother them again, which I'm good at. Like a quiet little mousy-mouse. I even have health insurance such as it is, which is better than none, etc.

Last year my high school class had its final reunion. I didn't go. I didn't go to any of them, but I did look them up. I sort-of wished I'd been able to make it last year but I know it would have turned out hellish. I read the programs from previous years with insufferable and stale activities planned out to the exact pointless minute.

They were the same people I had known decades ago but older. No other changes. Older — that's all. The same games and blind mediocrities. The same. The same tiny samenesses.

They had posted the photos from the class yearbook online. I looked through them. There was a separate section for the deceased. I was surprised to find too many holes in my life in the shape of people I'd once known. And my photo was there too. I sent them a comment saying that I was surprised to find myself deceased but that it wasn't all that bad being dead and not to worry, but there was never a reply, so that's about my last contact with all of them, I guess. Even all these years on they still ignore me. Well, you can judge by the photos. One forgotten.

One more.

Me again.

 

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It may or may not help.

Skyline Ridge, August 2016

It was an odd year.

I went places I'd been before, often many times, but many of them were barely recognizable.

Maybe it's my memory. Maybe it's time and weather. Or a combination.

Maybe I'm an impostor.

It could be that this is what it's like to infect a human and take over its body. I could be a body snatcher, and not good at it. If this is the reason, my inexperience shows.

I have control of the body. It goes where and when I want. And the mind is mine, with its memories, with its knowledge, and its understanding, but the match is not quite right. I can drive the mind around but the memories are off. Skewed. Warped. Inexact. Clumsy. Sloppily glued together.

I go places that this body has been, and there I am, but where is that? The edges don't match. Things are not right. Not quite. It seems that they should be but they are not. Not right.

The map says I'm there. My memories say I'm there, and I'm not there. The land is not right. Things go missing. Lakes. Mountains. Trails. Whole forests. Everything is off.

So it was with the Skyline Ridge Trail in Olympic National Park, and its connection with the trail along the North Fork of the Quinault River. Off.

It was off.

Good weather, clear trail. The aftermath of a low-snow year. I had decent hiking, wasn't in a hurry. Everything was fine at first.

I left my car at the North Fork Trailhead a little north and east of Lake Quinault, a nice place. I'd spent the night off the road near Bogachiel State Park up north. It has a great shower, at least on the men's side. Can't speak to the other half. With the state parks it's a real crap shoot. And it was not only a working and good shower, but I got a deal.

I bought tokens at Millersylvania State Park near Olympia at four-for-a-dollar, and used them at Bogachiel at the rate of two-for-a-dollar. And had a great shower too. Almost a good enough deal to make me settle there permanently. Few state park showers are any good. Some are deceitful. They take your money and don't give water. One with reliable hot water is worth marking on the map and returning to.

But that was yesterday. This was today. I was there to hike. So I hiked. Things were fine.

Up north, by the time I got to Three Prune or thereabouts, I camped. Difficult. Few trees good enough for a hammock, but I found a spot. Not great but it served. Spent a quiet night not far from a little stream. Left my food in an Ursack and hoped it would work. Was alone. Fine.

It worked. OK so far.

But I didn't recognize a lot of the trail. The broad outlines, sure, but not the details. I was looking to revisit them and they'd gone off somewhere.

Like the spot I'd stopped about a decade ago, speculating on lunch. It was a nice spot. A small circular meadow surrounded by willows, near a stream. Here? Over there? Closer to the stream? I stood, thinking it over.

I was wondering if maybe I should go past the stream and sit in the sun a hundred yards or so farther on, or not, when I saw a bear looking back at me. From beyond the line of willows, over by the stream. A quiet bear. Brown. Large and brown. Sitting, looking at me through a small gap in the willows like the resident of a small old village eyeing the tourist from a window. Casually.

I stood. Right where I was.

Before long the bear decided to be elsewhere. Me, I wasn't sure. Couldn't go on, not with the bear parked on my route, couldn't go back, because. Because I'd just been there. I wasn't going that way. So I waited.

The bear pulled its head down. Vanished. Only willows again. I waited. I saw bear again, circling around me, moving away from its spot on the stream to my right, crossing the trail, heading off left. Up ahead now, peeking through another window to check. To see if I was behaving.

Yes. I was.

I waited, an uninvited visitor in the bear's living room. Trying to be polite. Unsure of exactly what to do. So I waited. To see what the bear thought. It pulled its head down again, still going left.

Several minutes later I slowly moved toward the stream, going opposite to the bear. All quiet. I tanked up on water, looking around, staying quiet. All quiet all around. I moved on, had lunch farther down the trail.

I wanted to see that same place, see what it was like now, and walked over the same ground but did not recognize the place. Not even once. Odd. Things didn't seem to have changed, but they had, enough so I couldn't recognize landmarks, couldn't orient.

Anyway. I was headed to Lake Beauty. I'd been there the previous year during a long-smoldering fire season in the Queets Valley, which is over the ridge to the northwest. A hot year then. Smoke blew over the lake all night. No one else was there. Just me. Decent place to camp. Fresh clean water flowed out of the lake through a ridge on its northwest side, filtered by tons of earth. No need to drink green swarming lake water.

Anyway, I was headed there but didn't make it. Got lost.

Not lost. The trail went away. Up in the area shortly after Kimta Peak and long before Lake Beauty. The land gets rocky. You follow cairns. No problem. I'd been through there before, at least four times, in both directions, as recently as last year. I had a picture of the route in my head, the head I'm occupying. The memory is there for me to use, whether it's my actual memory or the memory of the body I'm temporarily making use of. Regardless.

And I had a map.

Going west to east: Start high and angle down toward the southeast. Going east to west: Emerge from the woods and angle northwest while climbing over moderately rocky ground. Simple. Do it once, or twice at most, and you can close your eyes and sail along.

Didn't work this time. Somehow. Didn't work.

The cairns were sketchy. Shouldn't have been, not after a mild winter, not with so many people out on the trails. Cairns should have been robust, sharp, frequent, and clean, built up afresh by many helpful hands.

No. Nope. Not.

The farther east, the farther across this rocky reach, the flatter and more disorganized the cairns. Scattered. Spread. Splayed. Random. Tricky going. Time was getting on. Voices.

I heard voices shortly after the last cairn gave way to random pebble collections. Voices. Someone knew where they were going. No problem now. I met them. Three guys from Boston out for a big adventure. They were ahead of me, had found the trail that I needed.

It didn't go where I expected. Didn't match the memories I had with me. Dead end, the guys said. Led down to a camp spot on the top of a cliff. That didn't sound right. The trail definitely didn't skirt the cliffs hanging over that little hidden whatever stream way down below somewhere. Stumped.

I backtracked. They backtracked. We looked. Everywhere.

Then I found a different cairn trail that went up instead of down, northeast instead of southeast. I followed it. Nope. Dead end. Just higher than the other dead end, but still dead, and an end.

Getting late. All hands frustrated. Stymied. Four of us. Three guys who'd never been here before and I, who had, and should have known how to walk through it, humming happily no probs just follow me.

Nope.

I checked every whichway and could not remember where the hell to go and could not find the trail.

We camped by a meltwater pond surrounded by old snow. I put up my hammock fly and stretched out on the ground. The night was calm. A little breezy, a little damp, but calm. Quiet again.

The next morning the three of them went back to looking where they'd left off. I headed west, planning to find the trail again and to try following it a second time. I did. After a huge detour way up high. Have to get back there. Never knew what fun landscape there is way up high there far off the trail.

They were right. The mess of cairns, followed a second time, pointed me to a camp spot on the cliff, the one they had found. And then there was a vague trace of trail, and then a little more, and some more again, and I was past it all, back on the trail again, definitely.

Eventually it became familiar. But I didn't see the other guys. Kept expecting to bump into them from behind. Did see a different hiker coming the other way. He hadn't seen anyone. No guys from Boston ahead. Only a bear.

Scuffling along the gravelly trail in a shrubbery tunnel I walked into that bear's personal space. It was around a shallow bend, standing on the trail's up-side, looking downslope across the trail, and exploded when I broke its reverie. Boom. Gone. Racing down the mountain before I knew what from where or why.

Ok, that wasn't good either, was it?

But it was over. I kept going.

Eventually, the next day, the Low Divide came along and then the North Fork of the Quinault River, and way down south, the Wolf Bar area, but other hikers were there already, so I couldn't stay. Way off the trail downstream I found a quiet empty spot, decided to stay, and committed a crime.

I found a decent camping spot near the river, but there was really only that one spot, and the space between the two trees I needed for my hammock was occupied by a third tree, a young conifer, right where my hammock would hang. I used a length of spare line and a toy carabiner that had come with a bottle of sunscreen. Tied back the young tree, severely. Hung the hammock. Ate. Bathed. Went to bed.

Left the next morning. But only after a rough walk back through brush to the trail did I remember that I'd left the little tree tied up, bent way over. Go back? Well...

No. Naw. Not worth it. So far back. Crap.

Stopped a few minutes later. Thought it over. Same decision. Kept going.

All the way back to the car. Stop. Think. Shrug. Continue.

By the time I reached the car it was way too far to go back. Easier to live with the guilt, I thought.

Another guy drove in and parked. Had a jeep. I didn't tell him about the tree. After a few minutes he headed out for a hike. Left his vehicle's windows full open. Before he vanished completely I hooted and asked if he wanted to do that, leave the windows open. Jeep full of stuff, bicycle on the back, all there for the taking.

Yep. No choice. No glass in those windows, he said. No way to roll them up or lock it. Always open.

I tried anyway. I told him. I'm not all bad, I thought.

Yes, I am.

I need to get back to that tree and untie it. Undo my crime. Some day. I will. No way out of this one. I will remember that, at least, clearly. That memory won't be false. I know exactly where it happened and what I did and how I did it. The little tree will wait there, tied, until I go back and let it go and say I'm sorry.

Even a body snatcher has a conscience about some things.

Plying The Tubal

So then, all good things come to an end. Sometimes a bad end. In this case, not. It was mostly down hill from there...

...after a few hundred vertical feet of uphill. That is.

Things are often like that in my world. I don't know how yours works, but I get a lot of uphills. Fortunately, I'd rather go uphill. (Insert happy simile here.)

They're called switchbacks because they switch on you and send you back, but on a higher plane, if you're climbing, or lower if you're sinking. And some of them go on a long, long time before they get switchy, so you grunt. I do, anyway. I grunt happily. I am gruntable. Gruntled. A gruntly sort of person.

Anyhow, this is a good place to do it. There aren't many people out here, especially since this area is a bit off any major roads. And then there is all the uphill stuff involved in getting there. And not much to see. Officially. Unless you like mountains and rivers without end, as Gary Snyder put it. Mountains and rivers and sky and dirt and air. And quiet.

But going back north, on the way out, first you see a lot of emptiness after a bit of climbing. I don't know about you, but I like that. Maybe it's having grown up on the plains. On the plains, it's all horizon, and no matter which direction you look in, there it is. You get to like that. That way nothing can sneak up on you. It may still come, and it may still kill you, but since you can see it coming, you have time for another beer first. That's nice too.

So after I got up to the top (with a little grunting to help me get there), I got a good view, and then prepared to hold my grunts and coast down into the Silver Creek Valley. Way down there. Which looked like it would be pleasant enough. It was.

And like that woman who insisted that the world existed on the back of a turtle, and who could no be cornered by being challenged by the question of "OK then, what does the turtle stand on," said that "It's turtles all the way down."

In my case, in this place, it was views all the way down, and I have the pictures to prove it.

I even saw a bear. From way above. As I was scoping out the area for a campsite.

So, there's a small lake (which doesn't show up on the map I've linked to), and a camping area there, and there was a bear too. So I decided maybe I'd stay somewhere else.

But I did see a bunny. And the bunny saw me, but didn't run away right away. "Why?" you may ask. "Because it was a dumb bunny," I'd say. But who can say, really?

I guess I was maybe more excited than the bunny, because my photo is a little blurred. Or maybe it was a magic evil bunny and it cast a little spell on me. Or maybe I'm just a lousy photographer.

"What's more likely," I might ask, if I had time to ask, and time to think about it, but I'm a lazy bastard and so that question may never be answered, or even asked, even though technically I've just asked it. But even so, I refuse to answer it, so there — another mystery for the ages.

Yeah, so even without evil bunnies there was lots to think about, like that woman I saw about the time I sailed over the high point of the trail. You don't see that many solo hikers, and fewer solo women hikers, but there she was.

She probably knows a hundred times what I do, 'cuz I pretty much a doofus anyway, so, being a doofus on top of everything else, I probably can't figure out anything. So I cleverly said "Hi" and she said "Hi" and then I was all alone again, with that bear down there somewhere.

And then there was that guy I also saw. Looked like an older guy. I think he was on a day hike, coming in from the east (Highway 101 side). He looked like he was headed right up to the top of Buckhorn Mountain. That might be fun, though the trail was wicked steep and just kept going up and up.

But that was really about it for excitement. First I left the Constance Pass area, and then climbed up to the Buckhorn Mountain pass, and headed down into the Silver Creek drainage. Pretty standard hiking around, but for some reason it never gets old.

Beyond that, I saw a bunny and a bear, and some old snow melting out. Hey.

And then eventually, after passing the camp site (with a bear in there somewhere), I made it down to the creek, and the site of the Tubal Cain mine. There were a few pieced of metal lying around, which was sort of not-interesting in a sort of uninteresting way, as these old dump grounds usually go.

But it was a killer place to camp. And there was no one there, and no one came in later, or in the middle of the night, or the next morning or anything. And no bear. Not even a bunny. It was really quiet.

Sheltered, flat, full of agreeable trees, with a few bits of old boilers and gears and pulleys and things from the failed Tubal Cain copper non-mine, with a lazy clean flat stream flowing through it. And I loved it.

So I ate, cleaned up, hung my food, and went to bed. What can I say?

Maybe, if I was the sort of person to get excited about flowers, it was a good place for flowers too. Rhododendrons. It's odd.

It's odd to me to see flowers in the forest. Maybe I'm odd. Could be, but somehow I expect flowers to be in flower gardens, in town, but then there are these flowers. Out in the woods. And the flowers out in the woods look just like town flowers.

Sure, it's just me. But again, maybe it's having grown up on the plains, where you see grass. Lots of grass, leading up to the horizon, which is out there, right on the horizon, surrounding you, and no flowers. Flowers are in town, in gardens, but not out there. So I haven't gotten over that either. The flowers.

The flowers are all over. Were all over. This was last year. Maybe it was the weather. Mild, dry winter, dry early spring. Thus flowers? I can't say, but I had to keep stopping to photograph them. Because.

Because you don't see big flowers on bushes where I come from, so when you do, you have to stop and photograph them because maybe, just maybe, you're the first person to ever see anything like this. Not, I know, but I can't get over it, and the bear wasn't around to liven things up so I had to do the best I could with what I had.

So where were we? Day three I guess. I got up, scratched a lot, mooned around, found my food hanging in a tree, had breakfast and so on, and continued hiking lazily downslope.

And I saw what? Forest, flowers, sunlight. Can't complain. It was fun if you like that sort of thing.

Almost forgot — I had more excitement. Two bicyclists. Headed downhill.

OK, maybe not too exciting to high-powered thousand-mile hikers but for me? Hey. A Pretty Big Deal. Kinda. Nice people anyway. Intelligently going downhill. Maybe it was a trend last year.

And eventually I crossed that spur of road and hit a disconnected bridge, and then it was back upstream a while and I found my car right where it should have been, and all that was fine and good.

And after that I drove home and had some beer and wondered what to do next.

And now a year later I finally decided to look at my photos, and did that, and then wrote this stuff up and have been thinking of going out backpacking again, somewhere, when I have equipment again, and am someplace where I can go backpacking. So simple. It seems. I'll have to try that.

Part 1.

Part 2.

As always, Effort or Eff it. No sniveling then, eh?