Boreal B[l]og

I never thought my walking stick could support my head, but it did one day, six times. I have used a saguaro cactus rib for 26 years as a walking stick, 1 1/8” rubber stop at the end, so when the rubber has to be changed out and removed, the part above the protection is much thinner than the rest of the stick. The stick and I have traveled over a thousand miles in fourteen states.

Near the summit of the Butte, I reached the top of the first two groups of steps, 13 now in the first, due to subsidence, where there were once 12, 14 in the second, where the trail made a right hand bend and my respiratory rate of nearly 50 per minute became insufficient. I was beat and stopped, putting my forehead down on the stick and wished I could lasso my breath because I didn’t see any other way to catch it. My legs were complaining, too, in a way that I really didn’t understand. I’ve had tired legs, but I had weird buttock discomfort, too, which I haven’t had.

After a short time, I budged then nudged forward a little, trudged a bit more wondering if I could fudge the idea of getting to the top without holding a grudge against the trail. I hiked up the next group of steps, stopped, waited, and then budged. I then hiked, rested, nudged, hiked, rested, and budged until I had used my walking stick as a forehead holder six separate times. My seventh and final stop was still well below the top just before the big tree. I saw a convenient rock and sat down. My prior  time up a few days before, I had to stop once. Two times before that I didn’t have to stop. This looked like a bad trend.

I hadn’t felt great all day prior to the hike. The radiation therapy was affecting my bowel, since the pelvis is deep—I mean in women a baby fits in it—but even in men it is deep enough, and my 27 cc size prostate—an ounce, give or take—was at the bottom. Worse, I had a node that appeared to be involved, so that area as well needed the photon beam, which encountered plenty of bowel in between the skin and the node. At the time I had 18 treatments. When I began the hike I didn’t feel right—well, I’ll be honest— I felt crappy. But even crappy now felt different from crappy as I had known it. Finally, I made the top, seven rest stops to finish less than a quarter mile distance climbing 190 vertical feet that I once did in under 5 minutes. 

At least I no longer felt crappy. I just couldn’t breathe. I began to feel fine after the first five minutes’ hiking. I can’t find the right words for what I felt. Radiation and hormonal mismatching mischief have made my body-speak another language, and I don’t learn languages easily. I thought I was doing fine until the steps.

I descended without difficulty but worried that this profound weakness was a sign of radiation-induced fatigue, which might even worsen for the next two months before slowly remitting. But I wasn’t convinced. I could walk 4-5 miles a day on flat ground with no significant effort. I had been chemically castrated for four months and doing trail work during that time. I wasn’t great, but nobody asked me what was wrong, either.

Five days later, I went back up Spencer on a cold, foggy day. I got up the first 26 steps, and the walking stick remained a walking stick, not a head support. When I reached the fiftieth step, I punched the air with my fist. I wasn’t normal—and I may never be normal again; I am at peace with that possibility—but I was able to get to the top using the walking stick only for which it was designed. Mind you, I still have 4 solid weeks of radiation ahead, and side effects may increase after radiation stops. But the operative word here is “may,” not “definitely” or “will.” And a great deal of radiation is behind me;  actually, it’s in me.

It was really Jean’s fault. Or maybe Daphne’s. Or both. I got an email with a picture of their Twin Peaks hike near Waldo Lake on a perfect day, enough snow on the ground to be pretty without making the hike dangerous. There ought to be a law against sending those sorts of letters and pictures to fog bound gimpy trail workers unable to hike.

The picture of snow on the trail then began to trigger connections. I don’t know how these connections form, but they do for me, day or night, especially often after awakening in the middle of the night, far more common since I started taking hormonal blockers, androgen deprivation therapy, for prostate cancer. It took me only seconds to remember I led a hike to Four in one Cone each autumn. I knew it was in October and before the pandemic, so I started with 2019, and I found the picture. Our hike happened to coincide with a recent snow, so when we hiked up the cone itself, nearly five miles from the trailhead, snow was on a foot wide spot on the entire north facing rim and no more. It took two more weeks and 7 radiation therapy treatments to mess up my sleep enough so that when awake at zero dark thirty, more connections could be formed, and I had yet another recollection.

With of course less sleep.

The last connection took me back to the November morning up at Willamette Pass three years ago, 15 November to be exact, when it was 18 degrees, also exact, and not Celsius. I was standing in my snowshoes at the east end of the ODOT shed, Pulaski in one arm, pry bar in the other, a couple of hand saws in my pack, fuel for the saw, and ski poles. This was nuts.

It was really Sig’s fault. All because I said yes to him. He had called me and asked if I could help log out the PCT from the pass to Lower Rosary Lake.

After swallowing my initial reply of “Are you crazy?” I told him there was only one log up there to cut because I had scouted the trail the prior week when I checked my winter trails for diamond markers. I tried to remove the log using a hammer to knock rotten wood off, hoping I could make the log smaller. No great surprise, a hammer wasn’t the right tool for a logout. I then tried to rotate the log and made matters worse, taking another 30 minutes to undo my error. Sig said he went up there after the snow fell, and there were about a dozen logs needing removal, blocking several stretches of trail. The worst, naturally, was two and a half miles from the trailhead that absolutely, positively had to be removed with still another at Rosary Lake itself.

Job security. Two and a half miles in and out, minimum, maybe three. In the snow, 18 degrees Fahrenheit. I’d wait for spring, myself. Or at least Celsius.

Back at the ODOT shed, my first decision before I moved was whether I could carry two poles with a Pulaski, or whether I would use a single pole and the Pulaski as a partial. The pry bar strap went around my neck. I hike with one pole, but not in snow. Back then, my arms were stronger. I used both poles alternating the Pulaski with each arm. I’ve never liked carrying a Pulaski or axe in my pack, but that have might of been a better idea this day.

We snowshoed up the trail about nine-tenths of a mile to the first log, the one I unsuccessfully tried to move. The power saw made the removal a lot easier, hammering home the need for the right tool. The next two logs I dealt with using my hand saw, while Sig continued on up ahead. I knelt on the snow, difficult while in snowshoes, and started cutting. I was successful, although my knees got cold and kept sinking into the snow. Logs cut in winter don’t drop when they would in summer, and they are additionally frozen into the ground, so I needed the pry bar and more effort than expected to break them loose and then move them off the trail. Everything takes longer in winter.

I caught up to Sig, his snowshoes off, at a large log that fell right on the trail. I continued to keep mine on. We pushed the rounds off the trail using our hands, after first breaking them loose from the frozen ground using the pry bar. The next log had many branches frozen into the ground or the log, a messy job, since there was almost invariably a branch that would get tangled up in my feet. I still kept my foot gear on. At this point it was either a point of honor or a measure of stubbornness.

We finally made it to the troublesome log between the tie trail that went steeply uphill several hundred vertical feet and almost a mile to the west of the Rosary lakes and Lower Rosary lake. Indeed, there was no path around the log without removing skis or snowshoes. We stopped for lunch to try to restore our energy. Now 600 vertical feet above where we started, the snow was less tracked and deeper. It was impossible to sit anywhere and eat, so we stood, ate,  and after 10 minutes cooled off so much that we decided to cut the log from our side. My snowshoes stayed on. Finally successful, the trail was now open to Lower Rosary lake. Sig asked me if I was interested in going up to the lake for the last log. Hearing that as a query rather than an order, I answered no. He agreed. Somehow we both got back to the trailhead without falling. Or if we did, we stayed quiet about it.

We didn’t hear any complaints about the logs that winter. I finally removed my snowshoes back at the shed.

It sure was a lot easier hiking on the trail connecting Bechtel Shelter with Abernethy Road in the Gold Lake Sno-Park than it was last spring. Then, I snowshoed on snow 6-7 feet deep interspersed with tree wells, where the depth dropped precipitously and conically more than half to the trunk. If I fell wrong, it would have been almost impossible to extricate myself. I didn’t see any tree markers for the trail and ended up bushwhacking out of there directly on the shortest line to get to the road.  This late summer day, however, there was a well-defined trail, shorter than I remembered, maybe 200 yards angling from the road to the shelter. But there were still a paucity of trail markers.

Three of us were placing blue white reflective plastic diamond markers on trees in order to mark the trail for winter use. The idea was to be able to see the next diamond in either direction from anywhere on the trail. Additionally, we had a pole saw to cut away branches that might hit faces if there were 6 feet of snow on the ground. In a bag, I carried a hammer, aluminum nails and a stack of diamonds. The diamonds could be angled to show a change in the trail’s direction. Diamonds on trees degrade over time; others disappear. Trees fall. The person who would be in charge of the trail was learning from me how to mark it, and he did just fine. He would return this winter to move the diamonds upwards by standing on the snow by a marked tree, assuming there was not a significant tree well. If the diamond was well above the snow level, I told him to leave it alone. Many who maintain winter trails use a ladder in the summer to move diamonds, but I’m old, ladders are dangerous, especially in the woods, and with several feet of snow on the ground, I’ve been able to move the diamonds up the trees on trails I’ve worked. 

I started to nail one diamond in when I again looked up little more carefully  and there was already one there. One can tell my marked trails by periodic double diamonds, where either snow depth or carelessness on my part led to extra placement.

I have been to Bechtel Shelter many times, often going from there nearly a mile further to Midnight Lake in the Diamond Peak Wilderness. On a good day I’ve gone a mile and a half beyond to Arrowhead Lake. Everything looks different in winter. The bottom of the descent from the shelter in the other direction forks left to Marianne Way, a three-quarter of a mile loop returning uphill to the trail near the shelter. The right fork leads to Pengra Pass and then the parking lot. The right fork is easy to traverse in winter, but alder growth at the junction made it almost impassable in summer. Last year, two of us opened a still visible trail through the alders. Six months later, in snow, I could easily navigate through several scattered branches poking up, as if nothing were below. Now, we widened the trail to about 5 feet, crossing a small perennial stream, perfect for alders, along with direct sunlight, at least now. We cut several sub-inch diameter trunks that supported growth ten to twelve feet high. Clearing them took about an hour, for alders are brushy.

We backtracked, continuing on Marianne Way, where we needed to deal with a smaller patch of alders and then climbed, placing some diamonds, but generally the trail was in good shape. We looked for logs that would be a problem for winter users, removing a 5 inch diameter one 5 feet over the trail, a problem in winter, whereas one 2 feet over the trail would be snow covered.

Later on, we encountered a small log arcing over the trail. We spent more time than necessary cutting it, as I saw a chance to practice making efficient, safe cuts on smaller logs. The cutter started from the top, and after sawing perhaps a third of the way through, I had her start cutting from the bottom in two places parallel to each other. This would reduce the compression below so that the cut log would not suddenly open up on top and slab off, meaning much of the cut log would hang off the bottom when we were done. She finished the cut, and the log quietly dropped without slabbing. Learning a cutting technique on a small log makes it easier to do a larger one.

Near the end of Marianne Way, one of the others found a plastic bag full of nails. They had to have been mine from last winter. Nobody else had been out here checking the trail, and I had worked in that particular spot trying to place a diamond while standing in a tree well, not a good position. I couldn’t even remember whether I knew I was missing nails, but I could still use these.

Ten days later, across Highway 58, I used the nails on another of my trails, and failed to watch where I put the bag. I also managed to leave the same bag, with now only a few nails, on that trail. Maybe I should use a bright red pail to carry them. Next summer or fall, I hope to find it without fail and end this tale.

My morning walk through Alton Baker Park was abbreviated because of foot issues, so I took a shorter route through a quiet neighborhood. I could do laps if I felt better than usual, but I missed walking further in wide open spaces I could see just a quarter mile away. I passed by a shaded curb at a corner, heading west….

And stopped. I turned around. There was a yellow flower on a stalk, not a common mullein, because it had four petals; however, it was definitely, not a mustard.  I smelled it but didn’t notice anything, although my nose was a little stuffy. I wasn’t totally sure what it was, but if I had to make a call, I would have said it was an evening primrose (Oenothera biennis.)

I hadn’t seen a primrose in years, and I don’t know what limbic system-visual cortex-association cortex process made me so sure I knew what the flower was. I sensed it, and after I went home and looked it up, turned out I was right. I returned to smell the primrose, this time finding the slightest hint of a lemony odor. A few days later, 100 yards away, along a path leading to the park, I saw a second plant. I had walked there numerous times, including recently. I had to have gone by the primrose but didn’t notice it. I hadn’t even sensed it. But rather than beating up on myself for my lack of noticing—after all, I think of many things on a walk—I eventually noticed. That’s better than never. It took me decades to learn when my wife asked me about a problem, she wasn’t necessarily telling me I must fix it. Sometimes, she only wanted me to listen. Imagine that. I eventually figured it out. Yes, I’m slow, but there are some who never figure it out. I was late arriving at the show, but at least I got there. Some never do.

There are several other lessons. Curiosity about the surrounding world enhances life, and it’s like reading, nature, languages, music, art and so much else. The younger you are when exposed, the better the development. Sometimes a minor observation doesn’t become important until much later, perhaps a connection occurs at 2 a.m., which it often does for me. It helps to believe a routine outdoor walk may turn up an interesting surprise or observation, without expecting such to occur.I spent time on Isle Royale one night looking across Feldmann Lake in vain for a split second wolf sighting. A few hours later, I had a wolf in my campsite for 5 minutes. A seemingly unimportant occurrence may become the beginning of an unexpected chain of events, when remarkable subconscious associations form. Eight green leaves on a dead, burned log eventually led to my writing about how chlorophyll and heme have a chemically identical key structure with only the central metal different (magnesium vs. iron). One can’t force this; while some days are—let’s face it— routine, seemingly empty of notable occurrences, it is possible any day can provide a not-yet-appreciated key observation that combines with a future event to produce something special. Experiences are not wasted.

In my walks, I have seen maybe 30-40 species of birds; I’m not a great birder. Still, some of the birds were a red bellied sapsucker, Pileated woodpecker, a heron’s trying unsuccessfully to swallow a fish, a rough legged hawk, and a turkey vulture on the ground a few feet away finishing off a squirrel carcass. I spent fifteen minutes one day watching a crow up in a tree drop nuts on a quiet street to break them.

During the pandemic, I took five mile walks, and in spring and early summer, routinely counted fifty species of wildflowers. One day, I saw a Fawn Lily growing under a bench right by the Willamette River. I had seen them only up on Spencer Butte. I do better with flowers than birds, maybe because as an amateur astronomer I like things that don’t disappear just as I get them focused on my retina. 

À propos to disappearing birds: recently, I went to see the semiannual Vaux Swift migration. This is my fourth year and wish I had started sooner. For several evenings, across the street from Hayward Field, home of Track and Field championships, Agate Hall, an old building with a defunct chimney, is a migratory stop for swifts. Twice a year, fall and spring, people gather for a chimney vigil. There was no guarantee anything would happen, in which case it still would have been a pleasant evening with a crescent Moon very low in the sky, as autumn evening crescents are. But this night the birds came, swirled and called out for 15-30 minutes in a huge circle high in the sky. Then, like the bottom of a celestial funnel, entered the chimney, black drops rapidly flowing into a container. Some birds didn’t get it right or for some reason only a swift knows, and did a go around. Within several minutes, nearly all the swifts were in the chimney. Their disappearing into a true Airdnb (dinner and bed) was the why we were all there. There were probably one to two thousand, but I’ve been there when nearly nine thousand entered. The migration is easy to see, fascinating, and describes exactly what writer Sam Cook said: “You don’t go out looking for cool things to happen, but you go out knowing cool things could happen any time. You have to be there.”

Get out. See you out there.

Cool things can happen at any time. I saw another primrose this morning. 

The seeds were floating everywhere when we exited the vehicles at Little Bunchgrass trailhead; nearby fireweed plants, the reason, were loaded with thousands of cotton-like floaters. Our first time working at this end of Bunchgrass, we were going to continue to restore the trail which burned over badly in 2022. We had worked a mile at the other end last year, seven miles east. There, it was 100% burn with residual powdered soil, difficult to work, especially where parts of the trail could not be found. Today, two of our crew would hike in over a mile and remove downed logs; three would use two power brushers to clear the trail of encroaching plants the first mile; the other four would work on the tread in several places to improve drainage. I started one of the Stihl brushers, strapped it to my hip, and starting at the trail entrance, began to walk slowly on the trail, swinging the brusher back and forth.

I immediately passed a 5 foot tall fireweed with husks of open seed pods, a closed seed pod zone, and finally the last pink flowers at the top of the plant. I love fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium). Four petals, perennial, tall, it is the calendar of summer in burned over areas, common in the high country. The first blooms are difficult to notice in early to mid-summer with all the other flowers, but late summer fireweed is a major show. The blooms begin at the lower portion of the inflorescence, above the spiral leaves that define the stem, and gradually continue moving upward to the top over several weeks. They become darker pink before turning into long, narrow dark pink seed pods. As summer progresses, the seed pods open in in a four-sided arc away from a common center to release the seeds, but not all at once. The inflorescence then becomes white with a tinge of gray. Each plant may produce thousands to tens of thousands of seeds that float in the air maybe a half hour, scattered to the four winds. “When you see cotton, summer will soon be forgotten.” I picked some leaves to take home to try to make fireweed tea. I made it on the Nahanni River in ’85, but then I just put a leaf in hot water, and it tasted like…hot water.

After brushing a couple hundred yards in an 80% burn with a few live trees, I entered a meadow that may have burned but recovered in the three years since the fire. I shut off the brusher. Others worked on the tread, just below the ill-defined summit of Little Bunchgrass Mountain at 5300 feet. I continued walking a couple hundred yards more until I reached a mostly burned over woods where more brush awaited me.

Just three days prior, 10-12 miles to the southeast, similar elevation, at Gold Lake Sno-Park, I reached up to grab a branch, pull it towards me, and cut it off. I was working a trail in preparation for winter recreation. There had been no recent fires in this area and was no fireweed. As I pulled the cut branch towards me, I noted two small cones together at the end, each maybe an inch long. I hadn’t seen that before. The needles, small and horizontal, were consistent with western hemlock (Tsuga heterophyyla). There were hemlock trees of all sizes here, tall, mature ones in the woods off trail, and on a winter trail that gets limited summer use, many smaller hemlocks, some only a foot or two high. The ground was mostly bare with dirt and some grasses, a bit eroded. The small hemlocks were left alone. They would be covered by snow in a few weeks and remain such for seven or eight months, especially on this north facing trail. 

Back on Bunchgrass, I restarted the brusher and continued work until I ran out of gas. I then traded jobs with another, who ran the brusher while I swamped, meaning I raked behind him and also carried our packs and fuel forward so the person cutting carried no extra weight. Here, bear grass (Xerophyllum tenax) had long since bloomed, large, beautiful white flowers covering the landscape, each with a definite pungent odor. Brown, brittle stalks remained, easily removed, but the tough perennial grass itself would not be as easily removed, due to a thick rhizome. Only the last few inches of the thin, perennial portion was easy to cut. I felt sorry for the tread workers who had to remove in-trail bear grass. Their job was unusually difficult. Three of us brushing reached a rocky stretch after a mile, which was as far as we needed to go.

I carried the now quiet brusher back back to the vehicles, using the over the shoulder technique, although carrying it strapped on, like we use when we are working, is reasonable. I returned through the woods, full of fireweed in some spots where cutting it made look like it was snowing. Eventually, I reached the meadow, finishing a few minutes later. I had time before the others returned, so after changing footgear looked around, finding some yellow Scouler’s Woolyweed  (Hieracium scouleri). I lay down for a few minutes noting the dramatically deep blue sky a quarter circle arc from the Sun. The variability of the intensity of blue in a clear sky is worth observing, especially at altitude. Something else caught my eye as I looked over at a group of surviving conifers.

There were several large cones at the top, easy to see, even from a distance, light brown, almost fluffy in appearance. They were Noble fir (Abies procera), and I had never seen the cones before. This was perfect habitat: decent moisture, good elevation, plenty of sunlight. Fireweed and fir; seeds and cones; the first will die off above ground and return the next year from the rhizome; both seeds will drop to the ground and start from there after a period of cold with moisture, cold stratification, required for germination.

The day didn’t start well. Our third day working three years post-Cedar Creek Fire Black Creek trail in the Waldo Lake Wilderness since getting permission, and we had a new detour. Our drive was now 35 miles from Oakridge; 7 miles north through High Prairie plus another 8 on 1931, 4 on 1934, the latter two dirt roads through the burn and dust, just to get to paved FS 24, a few miles east of Oakridge. Then we had to go several miles through the staging area for salvage logging, by stacks of logs and heavy machinery before the final 8 miles on 2421, dirt with potholes to the trailhead. At least the final part was not in a burn.

We need permission to work in the forest; we needed special permission to work at Black Creek. Burned areas are dangerous; roads may be busy with heavy equipment, there are falling trees or limbs, maybe silent; treacherous ground with hidden holes; sloughing of the trail; rock slides. During the first two outings we cleared  0.8 miles and 0.4 miles respectively. If the geometric series continued, today we would clear 0.2 miles. Black Creek Trail, 3.7 miles, goes by Lillian Falls before climbing steeply to the west shore of Waldo Lake. We hadn’t even reached the falls. I encountered an all-day-work-on-one-log here several years ago, and logs that gushed sap making saws useless. One of our saw groups had one log that did both, soaking a guy with sap. Delightful.

We split into three saw teams and hiked in, gaining 600 feet elevation, passing our previously cut logs, walking where we had repaired the tread. Two of us previously power brushed the quarter mille of trail outside the wilderness. I was in the middle group, where we needed to remove a 30 inch log, which had once been cut, but the remaining log had slid down and jammed two cut areas together. Much of the log lay on a steep uphill, so if we cut anything off below, there was a good chance the rest of the log might slide again. We managed to make a narrow passage through at ground level and started work to cut away the part over the trail. Between the dirt and the blackened bark, we were soon coated. The Emigrant Fire was south of us; by late morning it seemed darker than it should have been. The Sun was dimmer, smoke and white ash started to filter down from the skeletal forest high above us across the creek. We could smell smoke, and by lunch, many of us started coughing and had watery eyes. 

The group ahead of us finally got their log removed. The group behind us with sticky log syndrome still had more to do after two days work. Our log would need another day. 

By 1:15, I had had enough, enough of the heat, enough of the log, enough of the smoke, and enough of not being able to do enough. Human factors are important part of saw safety: wildfire smoke is dangerous to the lungs, especially given our activity, and coupled with heat and fatigue I felt our continuing to work was unhealthy. The Crew boss agreed and told us to pack up. On the way out, I went by the first group, still working, telling them we were knocking off. One asked me what time it was, and I answered “Time to leave.” We cleared 0.2 miles, mathematically perfect but depressing. I hope that changes, for otherwise next time we will go 0.1 miles and our mathematical limit is 1.6 miles. I really should think of other things.

While waiting for everybody to regroup at the trail head, a California Sister butterfly (Adelpha californica) landed on one of the other crew members. It looked like a white admiral but had a circular orange spot at the tip of each black wing. That was a new butterfly sighting for me.

It was a long drive home, 8 miles back on 2421, past log piles another few miles, then uphill, north, and west 12 miles on dirt to High Prairie. Far south, we saw the pyrocumulus clouds from the Emigrant Fire with a long plume of smoke to the northeast. When we reached a sign that said “Oakridge 2 Westfir 3” I looked at my map and said we could turn on McFarland and drive straight to Westfir, bypassing Oakridge. Nobody disagreed, but a quarter of mile down the road, we had to stop.

Perhaps fifteen elk, at least three young, slowly crossed the road in front of us. It was a tough day out there, dangerous dirty, dusty, hot, humid, and smoky, but seeing the elk helped, and at least for me, so did the butterfly. 

Payment in full. See you on the trail.

This wasn’t an impressive year for huckleberries at my Waldo Lake spot near Shadow Bay. I had hoped for more, but I decided to quit early and drive down to Marilyn Lakes off Waldo Lake Road, where I knew there were both blueberries and usually  a few huckleberries. It was a cool August day in the Cascades with significant mist above 4000 feet when I drove up and even on Waldo Lake itself, at 5400 feet.

Marilyn Lakes, upper and lower, are similar size, a bit over 20 acres, south of 50 acre Gold Lake, the latter’s having a campground and not allowing internal combustion motors. There is a network of trails throughout the several lakes in the area: Gold Lake Sno-Park south of 58, with Odell, Midnight, and Arrowhead Lakes; Willamette Pass Ski Area 3 miles further up, where the PCT crosses the road northbound to the Rosary Lakes, with a northern access to the PCT from Gold Lake Road as well, passing above and south of Gold Lake on the Maiden Peak Trail.

I parked on the side of the road, just south of Fuji Mountain trailhead on the other side, hiking downhill a short distance to Gold Lake. I crossed the bridge over its outflow, Salt Creek, which flows towards spectacular Salt Creek Falls, 20 miles later joining the Willamette in Oakridge.

A couple of years ago, we power saw logged out the Marilyn Lakes trail system, during which I noted a nice patch of blueberries south of Upper Marilyn Lake. Somehow, during multiple prior times on the trails, it must have been before or after blueberry season, because I didn’t notice any. There are huckleberries as well, which I thought I might sample on my three-quarters of a mile hike to the blueberries. The trail is generally flat; upper and lower lakes are separated by only three feet of elevation and 300 yards.

I hiked in from the campground and within 50 yards saw blueberry bushes, although with few berries. The trail became wet, a small seepage maybe 50 feet wide with several large skunk cabbages with individual leaves over a yard long and blooms at least a foot high. Along a small wooden puncheon were multiple, large, thick branched blueberry plants the size of cultivated ones I frequent every year to pick my own berries for morning cereal. These larger plants had berries.

For the next hour and a half, I picked. My foot was bothering me, but once I started picking, I realized I didn’t need to hike further. After obtaining what I could from the puncheon, I stepped off into the dark mud over branches that at first I didn’t even realize were blueberry plants. Wild berries are smaller than cultivated ones, so I picked to save for maybe 40 minutes, before I picked several handfuls just to eat. The branches were thick, the ground damp, with a convenient small log to sit on while I picked berries individually or in groups of two, three, or four. I could go further into the woods if I wanted for more berries, but I didn’t need to. I came here for berries and to get into the woods on a nice, cool day. I had to decide whether to wear my sunglasses for sharper vision in the dark woods or to take them off for more light, but struggle with my astigmatism and perhaps miss my target.

As I worked my way back out of the bushes, trying to protect the branches from more abuse, I placed my berry bag on the trail so I could extricate myself. As I finally stepped onto the trail and bent down to pick up the bag, I saw something red on the other side peeking out from underneath a stem of a small plant with alternate leaves resembling a false Solomon’s seal. I picked up the end of the stem and looked underneath: there were a series of red berries hanging off the underside, which I had never seen before. 

This was twisted stalk (Streptopus amplexifolius). Earlier this summer, I had heard this name (as “twisted stock”) used at Pioneer Gulch Trail, describing something larger, in a different habitat, that clearly wasn’t. That latter plant remains to me unnamed. Twisted stalk berries are not poisonous, but I didn’t plan to eat any, only to be fascinated with their color, number, and hanging. 

When I was a guide for Sandhill Cranes viewing, some were impatient if the birds were late. I told them the world was unfolding as it should. The birds always came. I went for huckleberries, ended up with wild blueberries, saw an interesting plant, and learned something about real twisted stalk, its name, location, and hanging berries. The world unfolded as it should.

See you on the trail, and may your world unfold as it should.

Years ago, when I trained in neurology, I spent time at the Tucson VA Hospital. I remember a radiologist there, a pleasant man 30 years my senior, who once tried to get rid of extra chairs in his department. I don’t know how he ended up with so many chairs, but he wanted to get them removed and had no success.

Then one day, an edict came down from the fire safety manager saying the halls were unsafe in many departments because of furniture. If anything not fixed in place was left in the hall, it would be removed.  The radiologist was thrilled. He told his secretary to start leaving chairs out in the hallway. Problem solved.

The Crew was working Rockpile Trail from the trailhead on Pioneer Gulch to Rockpile Lake junction, about two and a half miles. The trail was mostly in the 208MF fire last year and had been badly burned over. We had to hike almost a mile where we had already cleared and logged out the trail before we got to the rest needing work. We had three saw groups and I led a fourth group to work on restoring the trail, which needed to be found in some places, have holes filled with rocks and soil, and dug out in other places so people could follow it.

At the trailhead, 600 vertical feet below where we needed to start, we lay all the tools out on the ground that we would need. Everybody takes at least one tool and maybe two. Not sawing that day, I left my axe, wedges, and hand saws out of my pack and off the ground.  That was 10 pounds less right there. The last tool remaining was a Rogue Hoe/Rake, which is fine, although I prefer a Rinehart with a better hoe with no rake. I had reached a certain degree of competence in trail work and had used many different tools. An experienced crew member told me a couple years back he liked the Rinehart the most, and with time I agreed with him. But a new person to the crew took it. I could have pulled rank and taken it from him, but I can work with a Rogue Hoe. Both it and the Rinehart are light; I can use either as a walking stick, shovel, or a root cutter, especially in a burn, where roots are easy to pull out, or if not that, to cut with a hard whack. The tool is stable enough vertically that I can use it to pull myself up after kneeling.

Starting the climb, I was slow, in part because of plantar fasciitis, which had me trying different sock combinations in addition to a boot insert. I found something that worked, but it was additionally humid with a chance of thunderstorms, and that slowed me down, too. Eventually passing the new person but staying well behind another, I made it to the junction, where we regrouped. We planned to leapfrog each other up the trail. The saw groups were ahead of us. I used the rake part of the hoe to break up the soil and move it, either to fill a hole, to uncover the tread, or to make a place for flowing water to drain off in order to limit trail erosion. There had been some recent rain, so there was almost no dust; the last time we did trail work even hiking left dust in the air, quite typical in Oregon this time of year.

About a hundred yards past the junction, I caught up to the new person, who asked me whether a gully on the side of the trail could be left as is. I preferred not to do that, so I used my rake to break up some dirt to put in the gully to fill it and uncover the tread where I thought it should be.

“Wow,” the newbie said. “I should have taken your tool.”

Music to my ears.

Quietly, I replied, “Want to trade?” 

I got a look like really? You are going to let me use that?

We traded tools.

The rest of the day went well. Why not? I just traded away a tool I didn’t prefer to somebody who wanted it and had the tool I wanted. We were both happier and he might think I was really nice to work with. Or not. I had put the chairs I didn’t want in the hall. Win-win.

See you on the trail.

“Hey Mike,” Patrick called over, holding up a bunch of brittle brown stems. “This is yarrow. You can leave it.”

Blast it, I said to myself. I had looked at it, figured it was Queen Anne’s lace gone to seed and pulled it out. “You know, I wondered about that,” I said, “but it pulled out the way Queen Anne’s Lace did.”  

Chastened, I returned to work just below the gravel road at the Arboretum, in the brown grass, where real flowering Queen Anne’s lace needed removal. My job as one of several volunteers was to clear five or six meadows, each a few acres, of that, tansy ragwort, and Canada thistle. Queen Anne’s lace, 90% of what we were pulling out, is an invasive successful competitor, tansy ragwort is toxic to animals, and Canada thistle is also invasive. The first two are biennial; thistle perennial. We will need to do weeding next year in order to fully control the biennials.

I had just learned something about yarrow, because while I had seen plenty of the white blooms, I wasn’t familiar with yarrow that had gone to seed, a polite way to admit I had been around yarrow that had gone to seed but hadn’t noticed. The blooms had faded to brown, but the yarrow flower structures were still present. Had I looked at the flowers more carefully, I would have noticed the difference and besides, Queen Anne’s lace was still blooming. None appeared past the blooming stage. While true yarrow stems were the same size as Queen Anne’s lace and easy to remove, that was irrelevant.

We are pattern recognizers. It allows us to perform quickly and efficiently much of the time. But sometimes the familiar seen in unfamiliar surroundings can fool us. It reminded me of 24 years ago on a train trip back from a solar eclipse where that evening I saw an odd arc of stars just clearing the northern horizon over Zambia. It took me a while to realize it was the handle/spout of the Big Dipper, an asterism I knew well, the southern part of which was just visible from where I was at 16ºS., but had never seen in such circumstances. The stargazing I did south of the equator usually was focused on objects I couldn’t see from home. I stared at the handle for a long time.

I remember fields full of Queen Anne’s lace when I was a kid, but I didn’t see much of it afterwards. I was not consciously aware of its being called wild carrot because of its pale carrot-like tap root. I think I would have remembered. But perhaps not. As I worked, I developed a sense of what I had to dig up, how deep, how far around, what I could pull out just by hand, oddly using my non-dominant left hand as a decent lever that would either pull the plant out or not, whereas my dominant stronger right hand would often break the plant off above the ground and not be as helpful.

I noted the smallest Queen Anne’s lace flowers often bloomed from the same rosette of leaves. Once I discovered that relationship, I tried to remove the whole base along with its single large taproot, not each individual flower. Small free standing plants I could carefully remove with my “calibrated” left hand. Medium-sized plants I could comfortably pull out with either hand, and the larger ones I needed a shovel to clear out slightly more than 180 degrees around to pull them out. Six of us there cleared two acres, putting the removed plants in a large plastic bag, thicker than the one we used two weeks earlier, which ripped early and often, spilling seeds.

Back home the next day, Alton Baker Park was a sea of white Queen Anne’s lace. I looked at the flowers differently from the way I had before. I left these alone, more interested in picking blackberries from another invasive plant. I tried to visualize the number of tap roots out there. I like the smell, which reminds me of my childhood three thousand miles to the east.

Maybe see you on an Arboretum trail sometime.