Have you ever been somewhere outdoors so
captivating that you forgot, however briefly, about everything else? When you
were truly in the moment? Wilderness can do that to you.
This year, I spent a lot of time in the
wilderness forests of Oregon, with my friend, Neil, who has a personal
connection to these places.
We call ourselves The 1 mph Hiking Club, though our pace can barely be called hiking. More like sauntering, allowing time for swapping questions, taking photos,
telling stories, and being surprised.
“I
don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the
mountains - not 'hike!' Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It's a
beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages
to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed
asked where they were going they would reply, 'A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as
sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now
these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them
reverently, not 'hike' through them.” – John Muir
A flock of gray jays bombs me and Neil,
raucous as a band of bored teenagers. A brilliant flame on the forest floor,
appropriately called Orange Peel Fungus, catches our eye. There, fresh elk
tracks!
But it’s the big trees that entrance us. Like
the ents of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, these elders of the wilderness forest speak
to us of a world unmarked by civilization. We marvel at their beauty, their
tenacity to survive centuries of change to their homes. What have they seen? What
secrets do they know?
Mature forests that escaped logging and fire
are dominated by these behemoths, here in the mountains of western Oregon,
where we live. Over and over, Neil and I stop to touch trees that are, as he
describes, “a whole nother class of ancient.” As each new giant stops us, we
gawk upward, make wild guesses of its height, its age, rub its bark, try to
grasp its silent essence, shake our heads, and move on. Some trees are so huge
that we quickly run out of adjectives, reverting, simply, to pointing: “That’s
a big tree.”
The more big trees, the more our questions,
and the slower our pace. When did fire last burn here? From our guide books, we
learn that the oldest trees – wider than we are tall – are probably “only” 700
years old, since most every forest in Oregon burned at least once since then.
Neil and I speculate, argue about forest secrets, like why various kinds of
trees are common here, but not there. Is it from differences in elevation,
moisture, past fires?
And why did a cougar poop on this particular
spot on the trail? That monotonous hooting high in the hemlocks – is it a Northern
Saw-whet Owl or Northern Pygmy-Owl? Always, we’re left struggling to understand
how things got to be the way they are. The closer we peer into the wilderness, and
for each question we answer, the more questions we have. And the more
surprises.
One morning, a dozen miles inland from the
ocean, the forest was cloaked in fog. Sunbeams cut through the thick canopy of
branches, reaching 200 feet over us. Each of the trees’ countless,
needle-covered boughs was tipped with a drop of water. Then, at just the right
angle, a single drop high above caught the sun like a crystal, and burned as a rainbow-colored
diamond.
“You’re hallucinating,” Neil scoffed, when I
tried to describe the apparition. I wanted to show him, but apparently, it
required a unique set of angles – eyeball to droplet to sun. You had to have
your head in exactly the right place to experience the miracle. Move a few
inches one way or the other, and the fiery visage vanished. Fortunately, a ways
down the trail, we both hit that magical geometry again, and an otherwise
indistinguishable drop of dew on a hemlock boughlet high in the forest, caught
a sunbeam from 93 million miles away, and froze us in our tracks. When you find
yourself in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, is that merely luck?
These wild, virgin paradises are now protected
from logging, in no small measure, because of Neil. He was the attorney who
took on the U.S. government, 35 years ago, filing lawsuits to save the last
uncut, old-growth forests in Oregon. Long story, short, his success helped lead
to passage of the 1984 Wilderness Acts. Those federal laws set aside or
expanded 31 wilderness areas in Oregon (175 new wilderness areas, nationally).
Neil wrote a moving, intensely personal
account of that history, which might make you cry. It did me. (Wilderness, Luck & Love: A Memoir
and a Tribute – https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1077&context=mjeal)
He and I count ourselves fortunate to have
crossed paths again. We worked together as environmentalists back East in the
‘90s. Last summer, I discovered he had retired and moved to Eugene, near my
home. Now, we hike together.
Which brings me to Neil’s bucket list, and The 1 mph Hiking Club. Neil wants to
hike in all 31 of the Oregon wildernesses that he helped preserve. That is a
grand goal.
I’m just tagging along on the easier hikes,
happy for the chance to see, up close, supremely beautiful places. So far,
we’ve made it together to six on his list (Drift Creek, Waldo Lake, Diamond
Peak, Boulder Creek, Cummins Creek, and Menagerie Wilderness Areas), plus
another three wildernesses lacking that official designation (Gate Creek, Gwynn
Creek, and China Loop Trails).
Typically, we’ll hike seven or eight miles,
round-trip, which at our 1 mph pace, means we can be far from the car when
shadows deepen and the sun drops behind the mountains. That’s when we pick up
our speed, our gliding footfalls muffled by damp conifer needles that blanket
the trail. It’s the spooky time of day, when we hope to see a mountain lion. So far, no luck.
Each wilderness is different. Low-elevation
coastal rain forests drip with lichens and moss. The biggest Douglas-firs take
your breath away. Their bark is deeply furrowed with age, the ground littered
with their cones. Its Latin name, which I learned in college nearly a
half-century ago, still rolls off my tongue like a melody: Pseudotsuga menziesii. The biggest are the tallest trees in the
world, once reaching over 400 feet, taller even than the biggest redwoods. One
in Washington lived for 1,385 years.
East of the Coast Range, the Cascade Mountain
wildernesses that we visited are higher in elevation and not quite as soggy. In
Boulder Creek Wilderness, there is an expansive area called Pine Bench. It’s a
grove of centuries-old Ponderosa Pines, which grow ramrod straight, their bark
covered with golden-orange flakes of bark that look like pieces from a jigsaw
puzzle. Frequent fires have kept understory cleared, sculpting a landscape from
Hansel and Gretel.
Vistas open from meadows and fire-cleared
areas of these trails, to the volcanic peaks of the high Cascades: Mt.
Jefferson, Mt. Washington, Three-Fingered Jack, Diamond Peak, the Sisters – the
highest topping 12,000 feet, most capped by glacial ice. How much time until
they erupt again?
“It’s humbling, being in an area like this
that has endured so long,” says Neil. “We’re a blink of the eye.”
Like those Middle Ages saunterers, we are
pilgrims in Holy Lands, where wilderness quiets our minds, sharpens our
attention, puts us in the moment, and connects us with the Universe. We marvel,
in reverence, at our blessings.
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