This past year I discovered that I had yet another chapter in my relationship to the land. The first chapter occurred during my fifty-odd years when I lived for outdoor adventure, a land shark who needed to keep moving, each trip planned to see a maximum of new country. I often spent hours planning trips, some real, some more fantasy, poring over maps, fingers tracing blue spots of lakes, dotted black lines in between, occasionally with red numbers denoting distance in feet, yards, miles, rods, chains, kilometers, or meters, wondering what was out there. The maps were on my wall at work, dots where I camped, lines where I paddled, portaged, or hiked. I was discovering the “Open Horizons” of Sig Olson, one of the first wilderness writers.
When I reached my late fifties I began to base camp, visiting a familiar, well-liked area—an old friend— more closely, looking more up and down than out, noting birds, butterflies, clouds, flowers, greenery, the Moon, moss, roots, stars. The past eight years I have not camped but done trail work on scores of the same trails each year. I cleared logs and brush, repaired tread, made reroutes, helped build bridges using on site materials. I write about these paths, now my old friends, the Quiet Magic of the land, described by North Country writer Sam Cook.
Last May, I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer, the disease that killed Barry Lopez, who forty years ago in Tucson signed my copy Of Wolves and Men. My androgen deprivation therapy began in July by removing all my testosterone, decreasing estrogens I had, my body larger than I wanted above my waist, smaller than I wanted below, with hot flashes. Work was difficult, although I hid my testosterone absence from others on the crew because of an odd silver lining of plantar fasciitis, a good excuse to hike slower.
Without proof, I wonder whether this hormonal minimization mischief led to a burst of creativity ushering in a third stage of my relationship to the land. I was and still am discovering connections among the close in experiences I have and had in the woods. For example, at the end of a particularly difficult day working Black Creek near Waldo Lake—hot, humid, and ending early due to smoke—a California sister butterfly landed on the shirt of another crew member. I had never seen one before. On the long drive home we stopped near High Prairie Road so a herd of elk with at least three young could cross. That led to my essay “Payment in Full.” A brief glance across a trail after picking blueberries near Gold Lake, seeing one red berry hanging down, led me to identify a twisted stalk plant. A five foot high fireweed on Little Bunchberry showed a downward transition on the stem from blooms through seed pods to open pods to floating seeds, the seed connection occurring because this had been a good year for noble fir and hemlock cones, the latter I first saw a week earlier working at Gold Lake Sno-Park.
I had 45 radiation treatments. Each day, I brought an essay. Some were read, but my writing and bringing them was more important to me. The formal title of essay #23 is “Not Quite by the Book.”
Twenty feet ahead of me were many Cascade asters on the side of the trail. I decided I would work to them—on my knees—then take a break. I adjusted my position and continued hacking with a handsaw at the stems of encroaching thimbleberry, occasionally using loppers. I was in the middle of a brilliant green several acre steep sloping meadow where the forest gave way to low plants.
I was crew leader, not quite halfway up Lowder Mountain trail, which began at FS 1993, the summit 600 vertical feet above. I led the trip to Lowder because I wanted to get in the woods, my sore foot wasn’t going to tolerate hiking up nearby Olallie Mountain, and brushing Lowder meadows was as important as removing logs, since the couple hundred yard stretches of thick brush in several meadows were both difficult to follow and concealed large holes of some so far undetermined rodent.
I don’t like removing wildflowers, but trail work requires it, unless I break the rules. I purposely avoided power brushing a few dozen trilliums last spring on the Middle Fork National Recreation Trail. Three years earlier, I left a large false Solomon’s seal hang over a trail on Fall Creek, because it would have been criminal to cut that beauty out. That story was essay #4.
I finally arrived at the asters and had to decide what to do. They were on the downhill side of the trail, but there was adequate room to hike by. I couldn’t see removing all of them with my hand saw or loppers, because they were really pretty, so I carefully removed a couple and left the others. They would shortly go to seed, their job done, part of which was giving me pleasure.
A few minutes after reaching the asters, I found two tiger lilies over the trail. I didn’t cut them; I bent the stems and moved the flowers behind some thimbleberry safely away from the trail. They could still be pollinated. There is a manual for trail work; it is subservient to my opinion about wildflowers.
Western coneflowers appeared, and I slowed to ensure they were left alone. Their stem has a whitish cast, which I had not previously noted, although I never had been in the position—hiking through a meadow on my knees—to look carefully at one. The brownish cone top with green leafy bracts was a standout. The stems could also be bent so I could move the flowering top away from the trail, hooking one flower around another.
At lunch, a crew member thanked me for saving the “purple flowers,” the asters. Nice my work was appreciated.
Turns out there was a third stage, and who knows, there may be yet more.
Boreal B[l]og 
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