Boreal B[l]og

Roy looked over at me and asked, “Are you going back up to the Boundary Waters this year?”

I went mute. I had organized this hike, driven the three of us here, and led the hike from Winberry Creek up to the Divide, climbing about 1200 feet. Jean and I had worked every inch of the trail a few years ago. I got everybody up to the top, we hiked back down, I gave a little bit of unexpected Christmas to Jean, and was ready to drive the two back to their vehicle well outside the forest. To say I was a hike leader or guide for these two was a bit of a stretch, but I had been in control of the route, the time on trail, the gifts, everything. I had been a minute away from having everyone in the car and leaving with no issues.

Until now.

Jean had heard the question, too, and I was still fumbling with an answer which came out as “well, I sure would like to get back up there, but I will have to see.” That wasn’t exactly a clear answer from someone in control, but the two of them were merciful and let the answer stand.

What was I going to do? For the first few days, I didn’t think about the question at all. I was at the end of my radiation therapy for prostate cancer, it was the holiday season (although that day at Winberry was the end of my gift giving), and I had other things on my mind.

About a week later, the three of us took another hike to see Upper Trestle Falls after a heavy rain, 3-5 inches in the mountains. The hike was fabulous. I had thought of the idea to go, organized it on short notice, did the driving, got the three of us up to the falls, where I threw my arms in the air and shouted happily above the roar. We then hiked back down, went for coffee afterwards, my idea, Jean’s recommendation of a place. I had offered to pay for the coffee as a “sweetener” to get everybody to come. Roy mercifully didn’t ask the question again, but I now started thinking in earnest of the answer. I initially went about it the wrong way. It wasn’t an awful wrong way but it was still wrong. I didn’t want to leave Jan, my wife, at home alone while I went up for a minimum of 4 nights, maybe 6, and if only 3, it didn’t seem worthwhile. even going. Jean and I were going to meet for a walk a few days later and I wanted to have an answer.

I finally came to my senses and checked out my concerns with Jan that day. While she understood my concerns, she thought she would do fine. I wasn’t as certain, and we had a heart to heart talk about my leaving her behind and her being left behind. I didn’t want to leave her home alone several days. That is where everything stayed.

The better question then surfaced. Given enough enough time, I usually can find my way to either the right answer or the right question.  

“Do I really want to go to the Boundary Waters this year?”

No, I do not. See, Mike, that’s not so difficult now, is it? 

Two years ago, I said if I didn’t go that year, I wouldn’t go again. I was smarter back then. In the meantime, I had prostate cancer, would complete radiation, still have hormonal mischief affecting my power, hadn’t camped in five years and hadn’t canoed in seven. I bounced this question off Mina, my friend in Germany, with whom I have corresponded for nearly 15 years. She doesn’t camp but gives me spot on advice about everything. She offered the wise comment: “About the Boundary Waters: it seems you asked yourself the right question and found peace with your choice, without trying to push yourself to be like the old version of you.” What I was indeed longing for was the version of me in the old days with a vision of my seventieth trip the same of all the others. I would fly from Portland or Seattle to The Cities (they are Minneapolis-St. Paul to most people, but in Minnesota and for a few other people like me, are “The Cities”), do an airport hike to get a rental car, drive part way up, stay overnight, then arrive in Ely the next morning. I would need to get food, pack everything, get other things I needed, like stove fuel from the outfitter, who now wouldn’t know me, get the canoe, put it on the car, drive to the jumping off place, take the canoe off the car myself and then start paddling. I did not know how my arms, clearly from what I have seen here doing trail work locally, having neither normal power nor endurance, would react to quartering winds and long paddles. I have not set up camp in a long time. It’s work, and more work now with an older, weaker, out of practice body than it was years ago. I think I had a romantic idea of what it is going to be like, and the reality would likely be very different. That old version of me is gone, forever. There is a newer version, not as strong but with some nice attributes that I need to develop.

Years ago, I postponed a trip to the Appalachian Trail because of neck problems. I said a good woodsman would not go hike there with a bad neck. I waited until my neck was better and went then, section hiking three hundred miles  (500 km) with no problem and great memories.

I have been and still am a good woodsman. I’m returning to trail work soon. I am ready for that. I have wonderful memories of the canoe country. I explored it like few do; I was a volunteer for one full season. I left my mark up there with the four scholarships I have created. The country left its mark on me.

I am at peace with this decision, and I feel very very blessed to have done what I have.

At trail work the following week in Fall Creek, recovering a trail after the Bedrock Fire, my first Crew outing in three months, Roy and I were alone by a section of trail we had both worked on. When we took a break, I got to tell Roy the answer. He had forgotten asking the question, but he completely understood my decision.

Two midnights after a fabulous hike, I’m awake having spent the evening writing about it, still unable to find a specific event that made the hike so fabulous. I quickly moved myself mentally along the mile and a half hike and still couldn’t find anything. What was it? After getting out of bed yet again, I returned several minutes later and closed my eyes. I’m not sure what my conscious state was when I suddenly saw black block letters on a dark green background.

The words spelled “Pounding the Air.” Of course!!! A phrase I have neither written nor spoken perfectly captured what I was looking for! I can still see those black letters. I probably will always remember them. I’ve never had that experience before.

Five midnights earlier, that would be three nights prior to this special hike, time I needed to be sleeping, I was again awake. With radiation therapy, my sleep was broken up into separate short chunks, followed too often with long periods of wakefulness. My mind worked nonstop during these latter times, and I learned to get up, walk into the living room, not to read, but to unload everything I was thinking verbally, giving each snippet brief light in darkness, talking to it, quieting it, putting it into snippet bed so I could then return to my bed and hopefully sleep. The heavy rain that night likely stimulated one of these snippets and back in bed, still awake, much later I thought, “Upper Trestle Falls at the east end of the Brice Creek Trail.”

I struggle to understand what happens in my mind to produce these connections, but the result is remarkable, and I like it. Here, my mind continued with: See the falls, soon. A year ago, I had stalled too long and missed the last big flow by a couple of weeks, but this was an ideal time to go, soon. The only day I had free in this tight interval was Sunday, three days later, and I had to move fast if I wanted company, which I did. So a couple hours later at 6:02, I fired off an email to Jean in Cottage Grove, subject line “Exit 174 visit.” I was unusually terse, only 101 words, which is terse for me, saying I would be at Exit 174 at 8:15 Sunday, heading east to Champion Creek Trailhead. I offered to take her, her Roy and anybody else who wanted to come, and I was also willing to pay for everything at Slabtown Coffee afterwards. I have learned from the many cats I have had that it never hurts to ask for what I really want. I left out the length of the hike. The two knew the distance.

Within an hour, Jean had accepted the whole package except for a time change of 9 am, which was even better, for it gave me a chance to drive to Cottage Grove High School and look at the quarter acre garden many of us Obsidians (hiking club) helped create a year before. I saw that before driving to Jean’s, arriving a little early. Before 9, I was driving east in the rain, Jean and Roy with me.

The rain let up before we reached the trailhead. The trail climbed steeply for a good half mile with many fallen branches of various sizes present. We all knew the route, and I used my walking stick to flick branches off the trail, occasionally picking up a few. The many I didn’t get were taken care of by the pair behind me. We had hiked this several weeks earlier after my 9th treatment; now it was after my 42nd. I felt better this time, encouraging, because I appeared to have avoided radiation fatigue. I was still breathing louder than I wanted to, but the idea of seeing the falls after a 3-5 inch rain moved me along. One 4 inch diameter log jutted out over the trail. I pulled it out barehanded, because I was too lazy to put my gloves on, dragged it across the trail, then two-handed it off the trail. I was acting like I had testosterone, when in fact that steroid was a distant memory to my body’s receptors. I was excited about what was coming.

I heard the falls a good five minutes before reaching them, got what I guess is called stoked, and when I had my first good look, threw my arms upwards and was pounding  the air, I was so happy. I conceived this hike (with the help of a snippet), made the plans, drove everybody there, all of us then hiking in to reach this wonderful cataract to see it in strong flow. We made it!!!  In my case, my body was telling me it was recovering and might be more useful in the coming months. Why wouldn’t I pound the air?

I can remember only two other experiences where was pounding the air. Five weeks earlier on Spencer Butte, I was so exhausted I rested my head on my walking stick six times in a quarter mile and sat down once as well. I thought I was better than that and hiked it four days later, and I was better. When I knew for sure, well up the top steps, I pounded the air. Ever since that time on the Butte, when I reach that same spot, my right fist is pounding the air to say to myself and to the surroundings “I am back, I am still here, I am going to finish this.”

The only other time I pounded air was when I skied a tough, steep mogul field perfectly, hitting every mogul, and only the mogul, all the way down, stopping only when my knees or lungs gave out. 

The 20-25 yard falls was perhaps 3 yards across at the top and closer to 10 at the bottom. We took pictures then hiked back out, clearing a few more branches we had missed on the way in.

As soon as we got into the car, the rain started but we were dry, other than sweat, and a bit cold, which heat could fix, returning to Cottage Grove for tea, cocoa, and cookies, all on me, with great pleasure.
After I dropped Jean and Roy off back at Jean’s house, I felt like pounding the air again. I pulled this off!!

Umpqua NF December 2025

Recently, out at the Arboretum, I was part of a group spreading mulch. I was shoveling it into wheelbarrows until I got tired of turning to my left. I then switched to moving wheelbarrows, dumping their loads on an area of trail needing mulch. Then I returned to shovel some more, and not surprising for me, knelt on the ground on both knees to shovel the last of the mulch into a wheelbarrow. I could have stood to do it, but there wasn’t much mulch left; it was at ground level. I like the ground. I put as much of myself into contact with the ground as I can.

I spent three consecutive trail work days, the first in town, digging out hemlock, the other two out in Fall Creek, recovering trails by digging out the grass and organics on top. The last, nine days after the second, two of us were digging out the grass on yet another trail. All of the other workers on both days in both places stood up to do the digging. I was on my knees, in the first sliding a shovel along the ground to get under the taproot; in the second using a Travis tool to dig. With a shorter distance to the ground, I produced less force, but I didn’t need much and was far more comfortable where I was. The third time I used a Rinehart tool, and while it was wet and I didn’t have ideal knee protection from the wetness. I still was on the ground. It’s uncanny.

Lunch time on the trail, and I am likely to sit or even lie on the ground. Occasionally, I will sit on a log or a rock, the latter still technically the ground. Rarely, I may eat standing up, but I would say at least 90% of the lunches I will be on the ground, eating.

I have a special relationship with the ground, be it the forest or a floor. I sit on it, kneel on it, lie on it. When I practiced medicine and had to examine a patient’s legs, I knelt on the floor to do so. I had two chairs in the exam room, and if the patient and family member sat in them, I sat on the step stool used to get on the exam table. I was closer to the ground and had eye-to-eye near horizontal contact. If I left the stool to look closer at a patient, I knelt on the carpet itself. When I did spinal taps I knelt on the floor, almost invariably. I didn’t try to talk down to my patients, figuratively or literally.

Camping is great for ground time. I sleep on the ground, eat sitting on the ground, or lean up against a tree. I often watch the water or distant hills, sitting on the ground, of course. Sure, I could stand, but I usually don’t. Even in a canoe, I am more likely to kneel than to sit.

It carries over to sawing as well. If the log is the right size and location, I can stand and rock back and forth on my legs to saw. It’s efficient and not difficult. I like doing that. Otherwise, however, I am looking for a way to be in contact with the ground with either one knee or both, occasionally pulling the saw towards me between my legs. People say it is strange, but they aren’t grounded. I am. It’s not a coincidence. This it is likely due to my personality type, which from the book Human Dynamics, is a “Physical,” an uncommon (5%) personality type that fits me. I am well grounded, in touch with the land around me, literally and figuratively, “a slow processor who requires time to gather large amounts of data to understand a situation.” That is so me.

Slow processor. At the end of the third day, the Crew leader mentioned a future trip I would run, my thirty-fifth as a crew leader. He said we wouldn’t need a large crew, looking at me. 

I didn’t agree, but I didn’t have an exact number of the people I would need, but it was 7-9. 

“Can’t hear me?”said the crew leader.

“I can hear you fine,” I replied. “I’m trying to figure out how many we need.” I am a slow processor. I had another interaction that day where I wish I had expressed my unhappy feelings better, but I just didn’t know how…until about 18 hours later.

“Physical…people typically have a prodigious capacity to remember data. They can recollect events from even the distant past in which they were fully engaged in extraordinary sensory detail… and they often convey information through detailed stories.” Check.

”[T]hey gather and assimilate large amounts of data, and think in terms of the interconnections that make up whole systems of functioning. Because of their affinity for the systemic, they may be fascinated by the patterns they observe in the flow of events across time.” Yessir.

The Human Dynamics model had a huge impression on me. It allowed me to understand my slow processing and to treat it as a virtue, a blessing, something to be cherished and developed. It got me through graduate school, when numerous times difficult mathematical concepts became clear after a night’s sleep, and seemingly impossible matrix or integral problems could be solved in a matter of minutes the following morning. Major writing requires my setting something aside for a period of time regardless of how well I think I have explained it. A recent “major ah hah moment” led to an immediate summary of some trail issues I had. A day later, I changed the wording. Two days later, I switched to human factors, which had been the original idea, shortening the letter about 1000 words. It still wasn’t finished but much better. Two more days, and I sent it, getting an immediate positive reply. I learned recently that this human factors paper will be a template for a Code of Conduct for crew leaders, then going to the annual conference of trail leaders and so will become a very big deal.