Driving out 58 to the North Shore Road by Lookout Point Reservoir, light rain I encountered in Eugene became heavy, which in Oregon I define as having the wipers on steadily. Trail work in the rain? The Dierks Bentley song, “What was I thinking?” ran through my mind. I hoped as I went further east the rain would let up, and indeed when we all got to the trailhead, there was mist and only a few drops.
Chris, Alex, and Dave C. drove 6 miles further to work the other end of the trail. Tom, Jeff, and MaryAnne worked first on a nasty muddy stretch, finding suitable rocks, a common refrain these past few months, the need having increased due to the recent weather growing a bumper crop of mud. They later cleared drainage under a bridge which 5 days earlier had been underwater. Jean and I continued brushing further up trail.
I don’t see much other than trail when I am brushing. I am swinging back and forth, come up from below to get ferns, maybe angle to get them and blackberry bushes, use the high lift to try to cut small woody branches, chest high horizontal mash to try to cut through something thicker. I soon had my rain jacket off, and for an hour I worked, two of us leapfrogging and alternating moving fuel and our packs along. We didn’t set up a formal system; when we encountered gear on the trail, we moved it.
I suddenly noticed the cold. And darkness. Time for the rain jacket and hood, the latter fitting over my hard hat, a must. It started to rain, which I noted by the dripping water off my hardhat, or into nearby puddles, and after about 30 minutes, wet gloves. The pin attaching the shaft of the brusher to me sheared off, leaving me with having to steady the brusher on my thigh while I tried to cut. That wasn’t a long term solution, and I didn’t have any line with me. I finally “MacGyvered it,” Tom’s term, that you need to be old enough to appreciate, running the throttle cable through the chest buckle of my vest. Then it worked fine, and the fix got me a half mile further to lunch and as it turned out the rest of the work day.
Jean and I ate standing up by a stream. After noting the stream sounded louder, I spent the time watching the increase in flow upstream as well as the width of the stream across the trail. River runners routinely put sticks in the beach at water level to learn what flowing water is doing. I like before and after pictures, but the rain made it difficult to take a picture of the rising stream.
There were other before and after moments: puddle size before and after drainage work, the amount of water in the drains. Last weekend, when I scouted the trail, as I drove out from Lowell, the road was blocked with branches and small trees at mp 3.5. I joined two others to open up a lane, and we all went on. Today, the spot just had scattered green. After I left the upper trail, on my way back to the North Shore, there was now a tree angled over the road that I could fortunately drive under, not there earlier. It reminded me that a few years back, Jim drove past lower Fall Creek Road about ten minutes before a rock slide covered it.
On the same abandoned road up to Winberry Divide where I had solo hiked just five days earlier, Chris and Alex, who had finished logging out the trail below, turned around when Chris “heard something growling in the brush just off the road. I was a bit ahead of Alex so retreated to check in with him. We walked back up the road, both heard the growling, assumed it was a cougar, possibly guarding a kill and decided it was prudent to not proceed further.” Wise choice in wild kingdom.
Boreal B[l]og 
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