Boreal B[l]og

I should be colder than this, I thought, standing on the frozen dirt road with a thin coating of snow. I’ve got jeans on, 2 shirts, and a thin windbreaker.  It was 27 (or -3 C), and I had my back to a brisk wind that so far had not worked its way through my balaclava or under my hard hat.

One way to Winchester Ridge Trail was downhill to to Swan Lake then climbing out, steeply in places, to the ridge. Others had told me the bushwhack from the parking lot directly to the trail was flat and we’d get to the ridge in about a half mile.  I looked upward at the route and had my doubts, as we gathered our tools and headed east on to a trail that quickly disappeared.  

My GPS showed several contours in our direction, so I assumed the worst—that the contours were real and what I had heard wasn’t—and noted my altimeter.  I estimated at least 400 vertical feet—120 meters— of climbing. Some think that sort of knowledge is not part of the wilderness experience, but I have long used an altimeter when I hike, along with maps, which most definitely are part of the wilderness experience.  I want to know where I am, where I am going, about how far it is, and how much I have to climb or descend. Altitude on a trail can often be a surrogate for one’s location, if there are good contour maps.  The trail was gone, the trees angled up, the bushes scraped my jeans and left a coating of snow. At least hiking uphill, I was staying warm, so long as I didn’t fall.  Fortunately, Winchester Ridge Trail came earlier than what my Gaia app told me, and I didn’t have to cross two more brown contour lines. We were on the trail, heading south towards Waldo Mountain junction, about 2.5 miles away.  We didn’t know what was out there, log-wise, but we’d find out in about a half hour, when we reached the previous stopping point.

I have my watch altimeter and my Gaia contours set to metric. My GPS reads English. My car speedometer and odometer is set to metric. I didn’t think I would keep it that way, but I do. Making a meter of elevation is a lot better than a foot (nearly 3.03 times as better), and I play around with the numbers on the trail, the way I look at the rocks, trees, sky, and wildlife. To me, being in the outdoors is a full mental experience. 

I had all my essentials except for a lot less water than I carried in summer, which was a blessing.  I usually carry a Pulaski without a sheath.  Sometimes, there is one, but it tends to come off if I am going through brush, and putting the sheath on and off again several times, I finally decide it’s easier to carry it without one. If I start to slip, I am supposed to throw the tool, assuming my flailing arm in an attempt to balance me is capable to doing that on short notice.  The first time I was hiking out with the Crew, I threw it on one bounce into the calf of the guy in front of me.  Fortunately, nothing happened, but I felt stupid and apologized. That’s why one should follow well behind on the trail.

We reached the first log, and as I in the rear approached, the two working on it waved us on to the next one, 20 yards further down the trail.  As I came up to the log, I scouted the area using the acronym OHLEC—Objective-Hazards-Lean/Bind (we weren’t tree fellers, so only bind mattered)-Escape route-Cutting Plan. The first log was across the trail, 12 inches in diameter, too long to try to pull it parallel to the trail, but it had promise that with one cut, we could pull the remaining end to the side.  There were no significant hazards, the log would probably have top bind, but not severe, the escape routes weren’t an issue for a log near the ground, and we opened the cut slightly to accommodate our later pushing of the log to the desired direction.  My partner and I, both of us newly certified to do what we had already been doing all summer— the previous year as well— for that matter, bent to the task, or the saw.  

The top bind or compression wasn’t enough to catch the saw, and we cut through the log quickly. I kneel a lot on the ground, because I prefer the ground to bending over, and I think I cut better with the saw closer to eye level.  Besides, my back is happier that way.

We stopped briefly to let the first cutter crew go through on to the next log, and then finished the cut, put a strap around the log, stepped back, and pulled the remainder parallel to the trail. It was done.  I now was quite warm and took off my windbreaker.

We headed on, leapfrogging, to the next log, 20 inches in diameter, in a pile of branches. I call these things a mess. In order to figure out what to do, we had to first remove the branches, some of which had 3 inch trunks of their own and were both difficult to cut and to throw aside. Once we got the area cleared, we looked at the log and decided we probably would get away with one cut, but might need two.  

As we started cutting, the saw moved well. Sawdust was being generated, I allowed my partner to take as much of the saw as he wanted, and I pulled back as far as I could. Each stroke counted more that way. Half way through, there was a little bind. I pulled a hard plastic wedge out of my pocket, stuck it in the kerf, or the cut, and pounded it in with the back of the axe.  The stuck saw was resting against my leg, and as I pounded it, I could feel it start to move, as the bind was relieved. 

We cut further, and as we got near the end, we slowed the cutting speed and shortened the arc. The sawdust became reddish, as we entered the bark, and we stopped sawing. While we could cut through, the log might take the saw into the ground, and dirt is one of the worst enemies of a vintage cross cut saw.  I removed the handle, and my partner pulled the saw through the cut, then replacing the handle. 

I finished the cut with my KatanaBoy 500, a one man saw, and while that shouldn’t touch the ground either, it is less easily damaged than a large crosscut and also replaceable, unlike the vintage crosscuts, which were handmade with different steel that no longer exists. The log dropped slightly.  Because of the ease of the cut, we decided to make a second cut, figuring that we could do it almost as fast as trying to rig up a way to move the log. I like moving logs and saving a cut, but I have my limits.

We would later have lunch on a splendid rock overlook with Waldo Lake in the distance to our east and the Eddeeleo Lakes below us.  We would finish the trail in sunshine—although still cool—and split up the crew on the way back, some re-taking the “shortcut” back down to the cars, others, like me, taking two trails, one that descended, the second ascending to the cars. 

Our way was 4 minutes faster.  

Two days after the election, the Crew had a job up on Shale Ridge on the North Fork of the Middle Fork (yes, it is called that) of the Willamette River. This was just outside of the Waldo Lake Wilderness, not far from the Three Sisters Wilderness, so chain saws were allowed.  We had four crews to deal with about five miles of trail.

I knew a guy from the Club who had recently led a hike in that area and asked him what sort of condition the trail was in.  He mentioned rotting bridges over streams and big tangles of logs and brush over the trail. I’m amazed these days that I have “connections” to learn about who has hiked where, who hadn’t put out a campfire, who is doing what in the Forest. I passed the scouting information on to the crew leader, before we all drove up separately and had our “tailgate session” at Constitution Grove. That is where we discuss the day and safety. I was with two crew leaders, one with the saw, the other, like me, a swamper helping.  We started towards the river and soon found plenty of work.  Constitution Grove has many Douglas firs, about the same age as the nation, so they are massive, and have signs on them with the name and state of someone at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. The area was named in 1987, the 200th anniversary.  I saw a John Dickinson from Delaware and wondered whether the high school in Wilmington was named for him.  It was.  I scouted a basketball game there one night, 55 years ago, my senior year in high school, when an injured player from our team spent the season as a scout and asked me to help him.  We’ve been good friends ever since.

It was nice out in the woods. Nobody spoke about the election, not a word.  The vine maples were shedding yellow leaves, when they weren’t slapping us in the face when we tried to cut them out.  Vine maples are small, but more than one guy has said his worst injuries out here were caused by them.  We had to use our arms and legs, logs as pry bars to move some of the cut logs, and I spent part of the afternoon on my knees crawling 30 feet, cleaning up enough branch debris so the sawyer could get in to cut.  As we were walking back to the vehicles at about 3, it started to rain. Perfect timing.  The drive down was almost magical in the rain, trees ablaze in color on both sides of the road, getting dark, the needed autumn rains here.

I needed that day, because I feel like I neither know nor understand America any more. I shouldn’t be surprised. I was alive during the McCarthy era, although I don’t remember, “Have you no shame?”  words that are every bit as relevant today as they were then.  We have endured the last few years with people who have no shame.  Nothing is sacred, and while political correctness has its flaws, there ought to be some verbal lines people in power simply do not cross.

I remember the Civil Rights workers (“outside agitators”) who were murdered and buried at another Philadelphia, in Mississippi.  Here in Oregon, outside agitators came in with guns and took over a wildlife refuge.  Got away with it legally, too, with only one dead, when he tried to run a police blockade and pulled a gun.  Whole thing was streamed.  I remember “activist judges” being decried by The Other Side, before the Supreme Court stopped a vote count, called corporations people, and other courts started practicing medicine.

We had Spiro Agnew, the first in a line of vice presidents so bad one wanted the president to survive: Dan Quayle, Dick Cheney, and Mike Pence, although Quayle now thinks the president should concede. Agnew was the one who coined the “Silent Majority,” which was believed to truly be in favor of the policies promulgated by the Nixon Administration.. 

No, I shouldn’t have been surprised at all by our assault on the environment by James Watt and a host of others, reaching a climax now, when there are oil leases in ANWR, and they now want to log the Tongass. This is insane, but perhaps a majority of the country doesn’t agree with me.

The flag has long been co-opted in that if one wearing it or flying it, especially in the bed of a pickup, he (yes, he) is patriotic, even if he didn’t serve in uniform, let alone overseas in unfriendly territory, doesn’t know the words of the national anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance, can’t name the thirteen colonies, the first state, or hadn’t been to even half the states.  

I didn’t like Nixon, and I was glad to see him go, that August day in 1974, before I returned to the night shift at the Denver General ER.  But Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, and back then there was bipartisan legislation. A few Supreme Court justices nominees got turned down, and stupid things said, like Sen. Roman Huruska’s famous words supporting mediocrity, but by and large the Senate was an important deliberative body. 

Now, we have a rare few senators who think the president should concede, while the majority leader feels he should take all this purported concern about the vote to court and it isn’t clear if the Secretary of State really thinks there will be a second term. The President won’t tell the GSA head that Mr. Biden should now have his own office and get morning presidential briefings, as Mr. Obama did for Mr. Trump and Mr. Bush did for Mr. Obama.  

The guys in camo have already demonstrated in Salem, probably with a few more outside agitators, but I hope they don’t really think that Biden’s nearly 400,000 vote win here should be contested or any of the now six million plus margin of victory Biden had on the west coast and the five plus million nationally,  So far.

I am trying to find humor where I can. Knowing that there is now an unofficial unofficial (not a typo) Fraud Street run (to go with Philadelphia’s Broad Street Run) from Four Seasons Landscaping to the Four Seasons Hotel, is good for a laugh.  

As is McConnell’s saying it was a good election for Republicans, even though he thinks the presidential part of it should be decided in court.

As were the protestors shouting “Stop the Count” in Detroit and Philadelphia, even as they were shouting “Count the Votes” in Phoenix.  Can’t you guys make up your mind?

Part of me is worried that the craziness will intensify, but nobody seems to be counting on Covid’s increase to up the ante.  Maybe the current leaders aren’t concerned, but the people lined up in their cars at Autzen Stadium getting tested for it are. One in 70 in North Dakota is currently infected, 1 in 16 has tested positive, and Covid positive nurses are allowed to care for patients now.  A major hospital in Idaho was recently on diversion, and we don’t yet know how many long haul Covid patients there will be in the country, let alone what exactly they have, or whether it is treatable.  Right now, the country is giving up. I’ve got to be more careful, even in the woods.

During this time, the president said that doctors were making a lot of money off Covid.  Considering that many physicians have had to stop elective surgery, change their whole practice about seeing patients, and hospitals furloughed nurses, there may be those making money off the disease, but they aren’t wearing PPE and risking their lives.

Thursday, we go back up the North Fork to do trail work.  It may rain.  We will get wet and muddy, logging out the trail and repairing tread. Bridges are out, crossings may be dicey, and there are over 200 logs to take out. It will take months to fix.   I’m looking forward to it. It’s November up here, and maybe things are starting to be what they are supposed to be.  

One can hope.