Bear Grub Gone

     Yesterday I joined a rally in front of the Bureau of Land Management office in Medford to protest the timber sale in the Applegate known as Bear Grub.

    Some of the most beautiful places in the Applegate are included in this sale, such as, for instance, the beautiful East Applegate Ridge trail. Since the East ART was built by the Applegate Trails Association four or five year ago, it has become one of the most visited trails in the Appleagate, and for good reason. Its views over the Applegate Valley—Ruch, the Thompson Creek valley, the Little Applegate, up into the Red Buttes, the Siskiyou Crest—are spectacular. Wildflowers grace its shoulders in profusion in May and June.

Now, however, when I walk the East ART, I see large swaths of trees with white rings painted on their trunks—trees marked for cut. The East ART would be a different trail if the Bear Grub Timber Sale went through.     

    Other areas I love to hike are included in Bear Grub: the Sterling Mine Ditch trail, the Jack-Ash trial, the beautiful, wild, unroaded Wellngton Wildlands, an area that the BLM itself at one time designated a "land with wilderness characteristics." Let loggers in, and it no longer qualifies for that protection, which wasn't much, anyway, if Wellington Wildlands could be given away as part of Bear Grub.

    It also seems wrong to be cutting the largest trees in our forest when wildfires are so rampant. The large trees are fire resilient. Younger, thinner trees, and the brush that grows up in overcut areas, burn hotter and faster, increasing the fire danger. What are our forest managers, BLM and Forest Service, thinking, to be cutting our big trees?

    So I made my sign for the rally—"Keep your grubby paws off Bear Grub"—and yesterday morning joined a group of other forest enthusiasts, masked and spaced well apart, in front of the BLM during the time bids from timber companies were being accepted (if there were any). 

Other signs gave similar messages as mine: 

    "Farmers for protected forests." 

    "No Sale! Save our big trees." 

    "Trees=oxygen. To cut them is an act of suicide." 

    "Forest protection = climate protection." 

    "Don't grub our mountains bare. Stop Bear Grub." 

    "Big trees are fire resilient." 

    "We ❤️ big trees."

    Judging by the reception we received from the traffic on the road, the rally was a success, as we received some honks and no fingers. The driver of a big semi drove past with a wave in our direction. Our aim was to make it clear that the community was not in favor of the Bear Grub Timber Sale. We hoped to deter bidders.

    For that aim, the rally wasn't quite so successful. In the end Timber Products bought Bear Grub for about a million dollars. 

    And so go our big, beautiful trees, our shaded trails, sold, for a million dollars, when their value to us is a million times more. 

    I am sick at heart.

    

Why I Voted for Biden

I turned in my mail-in ballot several days ago and there was no argument in my mind about whom to vote for. But a few days ago I heard on the New York Times's radio program an analysis of how well Trump has kept his campaign promises. That he followed through fairly well is part of the horror, you know, for those of us who are concerned about things like immigrants' welfare and global warming. But if you like the kinds of things Trump accomplished, maybe I began to understand why you voted for Trump (the first time around, anyway). And so I wrote a poem:

 I Finally Understand Trump Voters

If you think the country shines
And you want to antagonize Iran
And think China's evil, Putin's fine
And Erdogan, too—then Trump's your man!

And if you think that immigration

Of Muslims means they'd take a stand

To make sharia law our nation—

That immigrants should all be banned

And if you think that every cop

Who kills an unarmed Black man can

Go free of blame, no need to stop

And think, just shoot to get your man

And if you think we should bring back coal

'Cause global warming's just a scam

Or that COVID's just a big black hole

Of lies and hoax, and masks be damned

And if you believe not a jot of science—

Let "alternate facts" inform the plan—

If you like the courts' reliance

On bible and bully, of honor no fan

If you think a woman's nasty

To speak her mind against a man

That the man who lets her's just a patsy

And ought to grab her where he can

And if your pick-up flies two flags:

Big "Trump," Old Glory, hand in hand,

Banners meant to boast and brag

That bullies rule—that Trump's your brand

Well, then, I get why Trump's your man.

He's done all that and more and worse.

You've helped him build an empire on sand.

All woe to our country for such a curse.

French Lessons

     The Applegate Poets' assignment for this week was to write a poem about journeys, so I've been thinking about the significant journeys in my life, of which one of the most important was the semester I spent with Vanderbilt-in-France, in Aix-en-Provence. Those six months in France, February through July, 1966, were a pivotal growing-up experience.

Pont du Gard, 1966

    I was suddenly thrust into a different language. I had studied French for five and a half years before I went to France, and I am a good student and got As in every class, but when I stepped off the airplane, I couldn't understand a word. I was linguistically lost. 

    I was socially lost as well. I was not friends with the Vanderbilt students, but, trying to find a social footing, I joined a group on an excursion to Geneva soon after we arrived. I was painfully ostracized and never tried to be a part of the Vanderbilt group again.

    I was cut off from my family. Before I went to France, family was never more than a long-distance phone call away.  It's hard to imagine now, with our modern communications, how extremely far away I was, living in France. Communication was solely through aerograms, which took weeks to arrive. 

    I also found it disconcerting to be in a country where the dominant religion was Catholicism. I was already in the process of withdrawing from the Methodist church of my childhood, so it seemed odd, even then, that religion mattered, but the prevalent Catholicism intensified the sense I had of being a foreigner. 

    The language was different. The religion was different. The customs were different. The food was different. Living in a centuries-old town was different. I was alone and unsupported. I am not an extroverted personality; I didn't know how to make friends. The first few weeks in France were hard lessons in growing up. 

    But I loved living in France, I was determined to speak the language, and, gradually, I found a place. It helped when I was taken out of Vanderbilt's over-crowded dormitory and sent to live in a French home,  Mme. Sevin's, where I had a good cup of cafe au lait and good French bread for breakfast every day. I had a Swedish roommate, Gunilla von Arbin, whom I liked and who befriended me.

Me (left), Gunilla (right) in our room at Mme. Sévin's

I became a part of a group of pieds-noirs, exiled French Algerians, and the girl friend of one of them, Paul Merlot, so I had a social circle. My French improved to the point that even the French were telling me I spoke "presque sans accent." I loved living in Aix, with its eighteenth-century architecture and good food. I went to concerts; took excursions—to Cézanne's studio, to the Provençal countryside, to the sea; learned to sit in a cafe on the Cours Mirabeau with a tiny demitasse of espresso and watch people greet each other on the street. I bought my first bikini

In my bikini, at a pool in Aix

and swam in the sea at the French Riviera. I did a two-week mountain-climbing school in the French Alps, with a climactic ascent of Le Rateau, 12, 497 feet high. 

Climbing Glacier de la Rose, to summit at Le Rateau, 3,809 meters

    By the time I left France, six months after I arrived, I was thinking that I could live in France, if that's the way my life went. I had found a way to make it my home.

A Day Hike on the Wild and Scenic Rogue River

     A year ago last June Mike and I hiked the Wild and Scenic Rogue River trail forty miles from Galice to Illahe, where we spent the night in the lodge before returning to Galice. (See post on June 20, 2019.) Eightly miles.

    Mike died last May, not quite a year after that hike. Last weekend, after weeks of being house-bound because of the smoke, I did a twelve-mile day hike on the Rogue River trail. I dressed in hunting-season hiking clothes and took some of Mike's ashes with me.

    As I drove over the bridge and down the steep incline to the parking lot, my eyes filled with tears. We had had such a good time on that hike. Why, remembering it, was I crying? I always expect to be filled with the happiness of good memories when I return to a place where Mike and I had been together. I'm always surprised when those memories evoke the tears of loss instead.

    Once walking, I was better. The trail, bordered with wildflowers a year ago last June and now just beginning to show autumn color, is always beautiful,

as it follows the green, white-rushing river west towards the sea. There was no one else on the trail. I was walking fast over rocky ground, up and down the hills. I hoped to hike the six miles to Russian Creek, the site of our first and last campsites, to spread ashes there.

Mike's and my tent on Russian Creek, 2019

    I got to Russian Creek in about three hours, around noon. I sat on a rock by the creek with my feet in the cold water and ate my lunch, letting the memories flow with the soft gurgle of the creek. Then I walked to our tent site and poked into memories there. I read a poem I had written about hiking this same trail, from Galice to Illahe, with my son when he was around eight years old and then again with Mike forty years later, when Mike was only a few weeks past six months of chemo-therapy. It ends with these words:

            We change like the bears and the birds

            We change like the trees, susceptible to fire

            We are not the master pattern.

I spread ashes on the tent site itself and chose three rocks from the creek to carry home in my pack as mementoes. They would join rocks from other places of ashes ceremonies now outlining my Zen garden.

    The trail was hot on the way back, with the afternoon sun beating on the trail from across the river. It had been even hotter in June 2019. The day Mike and I arrived at Illahe Lodge that year, the temperature was 103 degrees. The swimming holes all up and down the river had been godsends.

My swim in Flora Dell, 2019

Now, I stopped at Whisky Creek and took a good long swim in the swimming hole there before continuing back to the trailhead.

Swimming hole on Whisky Creek, 2020

    About a mile and a half from the trailhead my feet began to hurt. Rocky ground is especially hard on my feet, and a rocky downhill is the worst. Unfortunately, much of the last mile and a half of this trail are on rocky downhill terrain. As soon as I got to the parking lot, I took off my boots and put my feet in the cold river.

    My feet were still sore the next morning, but so was the rest of my body: my legs from tramping up and down, my back from carrying rocks, and, strangely, my chest. This was the first strenuous hike I had taken since the smoke came in. Maybe I had overexercised after the long days indoors, but why would the exercise have affected my chest?

    I think maybe it wasn't the exercise. I think maybe my chest was sore because I had loosened the emotional burden I carry in it.

Weather and Smoke Report

    Welcome to your weekly weather and smoke report from the mountains above the Applegate River of southern Oregon. 

    I am sorry to report that the smoke has moved back in. It's only half as bad as it was before (I can still see Humpy Mountain through the smoke), but half as bad is only half comforting. Williams was back on the AQI chart yesterday, fourth in the country, with a 298 rating. To be "unhealthy" might be one step better than "hazardous," but it still means staying indoors. [UPDATE, Friday morning: The smoke has disappeared again!]

   I took advantage of the clear days before the smoke returned to hike a bit on the Upper Rogue River trail. It was so beautiful! A soft rain made it even nicer. 

I was hiking with my friend Barbara Holiday, who has participated in the Bay Area's Bay2Breakers marathon every year for many years. Because the race was virtual this year (run or walk wherever you are and record your time), we hiked the seven and a half miles of the marathon on this beautiful trail. Our finish time was two hours and fifty-five minutes. We stopped often to take pictures or just bask in the colors. 

     During the clear days I took my fan back to the tool shed. Since there are no more mosquitoes and many fewer bees and flies, I opened all the windows, letting the butterflies flitter in along with the cool, clean air. Now, though, if the temperature goes up much more, I'll have to put on my smoke mask and walk to the tool shed to get the fan.

    It was such a relief to see Humpy and the blue sky behind it during the day and Orion rising over it at night that I wrote a cheerful poem. It was a relief not to be writing poems of doom. Here's my poem (the cheerful one):

The Day the Smoke Lifted

The day the smoke lifted

the sky discarded her smoke-stained frock

and slipped into her silkiest, sexiest, bluest dress.

The wind skipped in, waved, and went on.

A frolic of butterflies giggled and drifted.

At night the shiny-faced moon moved in

and when it docked

the night sky adorned herself with jewels

polished to their shining, sparkling best.

The air held not a taint of fire

no smoky pall of gloom.

The best-dressed sky and skip-to-my-Lou wind

uplifted us smiling from our sense of doom.