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.