What's Ahead Climate-wise

     

   The whole way home from my hike in Mt. Rainier National Park last week, I drove through smoke. Southern Oregon was especially bad. Those fires again. And hot as blazes again. The sun is a red ball of fire in a steel-gray sky. Apocalyptic images.

    As I drove I listened to the New York Times's radio program, "The Daily." The discussion was about the United Nations' latest report on climate change. The reporter made three points:

    (1) The report states definitively that the earth is growing hotter (fairly obvious to everyone on earth by now, I should think) and that the increased temperature is human-caused, that we have fouled our own nest.

    (2) Even if we stopped all carbon emissions immediately, we are stuck with the effects of climate change for thirty years—the fires, floods, hurricanes, droughts, and other extreme weather events that have so horrified us for the past decades. That means that for the rest of my life I'll see these unbearably hot summers at my home and these raging wildfires that stink up the air and destroy our forests and our homes. I have probably already seen the last of the heavy snows at my house (and how I loved that snow!), and it will become increasingly hard to find good skiing within a couple hours' drive. This summer's drought will be repeated, year after year. I'm afraid that the world as I knew and loved it is already over.

    (3) However, if we stopped all carbon emissions tomorrow (yesterday), we could turn things around after those thirty years. That is to say, there is a chance for my granddaughter to eventually experience a better world, in spite of the apocalyptic conditions my generation, and those before it, have brought to her. 

    Do we have the "political will" to make that change? Ask me personally: you bet! I'll do whatever it takes to renew our world in thirty years. Driving less, certainly. Maybe no more hiking in the Dolomites, as I would so love to do. Finding a way to take the bus—maybe there would be a service with a stop in the Applegate. Maybe we'll be given carbon rations—if you bicycle to work every day, you'll save enough carbon tickets to be able to drive to the beach on Saturday. Inconvenient, yes, but I'm willing. I'll do whatever is asked of me, to make those kinds of sacrifices to compensate for the selfishness I have indulged in, without knowing the harm I was causing, by my normal living. 

    The hitch is that we all have to be willing to make those sacrifices. Mine are meaningless unless they are matched by everyone else's. And I'm afraid the COVID pandemic has shown that many people in our country have very little concept of doing something for the common good. If people won't even get vaccinated, when the results are so immediate and so obvious, what will it take to get them to change drastically their way of life for results they'll never see, for a better life for the children's children they don't even know? If they won't even accept the government's efforts to make us wear masks to keep us safe—much less to shut things down for the same reasons—how will they ever accept restrictions on our use of carbon?

    We could avoid the collapse of all civilization, but are we willing to do what it takes? 

    I am. 

    And you?

And Then the Hike Itself

     Last week I did the much anticipated two-night backpacking trip on the Mother Mountain Loop at Mt. Rainier National Park with my son, Ela, and his friends Steve, Micala, and Lucius. My two previous posts expressed my anxiety about being able to do it, so now I'm obligated to tell you how I did.

    I did great. 

Photo by Lucius Williams

    And it was a great trip.

    The beginning was easy—car camping at Mowich Lake, with a good dinner of non-freeze-dried food. I swam in the lake, and, later, we all took a walk along the shore, where Ela played his bamboo flute,

Ela playing his flute high on the mountain.
Photo by Lucius Williams

sending that native-American sound meandering around the rock cliffs and floating over the broad expanse of the sunset-red lake.

    The next morning I was up at 6:00 for another swim. In the early-morning light I had that whole big beautiful lake to myself.

Photo by Lucius Williams

      With an eleven-mile hike ahead of us, to Ipsut Campground, we were on the trail by 8:30. 

     For the first few miles the trail humped its way, now gently, now steeply, through beautiful big-tree forests. Undergrowth was lush and the waterfalls jaw-droppingly beautiful. At the first waterfall we marveled at the long, thick ribbon of water, sunlit at its top, a hundred feet or more above us. But that was only prelude to the sight awaiting the nerves-of-steel hiker who, with all caution, crossed the two thin logs spanning the gushing river to the opposite shore,

A nerves-of-steel river crossing
       Photo by Diana Coogle

where the full waterfall came into view—the long free-fall before the water hit the rocks and spread out in a veil before coalescing into a river again. 

Micala and me at the waterfall Photo by Ela Lamblin

    At each river or creek crossing, usually on a flat-cut log with a pole railing on one side,

Micala on bridge            Photo by Lucius Williams

I stopped to admire—worship—the fullness of the water, streaming, cascading, gushing through greenery and rock. Yet in the back of my mind I knew that that force and gush of water that I loved to see was coming from the too-sudden, too-fast melt of Mt. Rainier's precious glaciers. 

    One bridge over a surging, silt-filled glacial river was especially daunting, as the water splashed over the bridge at the far end and boulders bumbled against each other in the tumbling current under the bridge.

Photo by Lucius Williams

    Whenever we emerged from the forest or rounded a curve in the trail, the glaciated bulk of Mt. Rainier, magnified by closeness, came into view—its rounded gray top, its thick white glaciers, its rocky sides. Always awesome.

Front to back: Me, Micala, Steve, Ela
Photo by Lucius Williams

    Around midday we emerged onto the high altitudes of Spray Park, a long series of flower-filled meadows. If I had loved the waterfalls, I loved no less the purple-red--yellow-and-white meadows

Photo by Lucius Williams

stretching through the rocks to the near edge of the world, beyond which were the Cascade peaks—Glacier Peak and Mt. Baker and all the lesser mountains in between. And, unforgettably, even when it was hidden over our shoulders by the nearer mounds, Mt. Rainier.

    The descent was long and beautiful with meadows,

Front to back: Me, Micala, Ela, admiring a flower
Photo by Lucius Williams

creek crossings, rocks, and trees. After taking off my boots to cross a creek, I walked barefooted for a mile or so on duff-soft ground. When the trail turned rocky again, I put my boots back on and, immediately around the bend, came upon Ela, Steve, Micala, and Lucius sprawled on the trail, leaning against packs, feet up, taking a good long rest. I was glad enough to join them. After that, for the rest of the way down the interminably descending trail, I never fell behind.

Front to back: Steve, me Micala, Ela, awed by a waterfall
                         Photo by Lucius Williams

   When we finally got to Ipsut Campground, eleven miles from Mowich Lake, I found a spot on the river where the water was less silty and just deep enough for me to sit in, then lie on my back, then turn over onto my stomach, bathing my entire hot-and-sweaty body. The campground was at the end of a road, now closed but still passable by bicycle, so two other friends, Ann and Todd, had bicycled in to join us for the night, bringing beer and wine with them.

    The next morning the prospect of the intimidatingly steep Ipsut Pass loomed ahead of us. Nonetheless (or maybe therefore), breakfast was leisurely, but I was anxious to get started, so Ann, Micala, and I headed out while Ela, Steve, Lucius, and Todd were still talking around the breakfast table. 

    Up through the forest, always up, but not steeply. I was hiking well. Many creek crossings. More waterfalls. After a couple of miles, Ann turned back; she and Todd had to bicycle back down the road. Micala and I continued up, mile after mile. 

   And then we were out of the forest, and the rock side of a mountain loomed ahead of us, vegetation dropping from it like a waterfall. The up turned steep. Steep and hot. We stopped in the shade of a solitary tree for water. Then on up, steep and hot. Another tree, another swig of water. Then on up. And then, suddenly, two more switchbacks and we were on the pass. High-five!

    I don't want to say it was easy, because it wasn't really easy, but what I want to say is that I did it without difficulty. All that training of the past two weeks—Ipsut Pass was a cinch. Micala and I sat on the pass for a long time, like a congratulatory committee for hikers as they came up. Ela and Steve came charging up, throwing sweat and beaming with the exultation of exertion. Ela perched on a high rock and played his ocarina, to the delight of hikers coming up. ("I knew the top wasn't far when I heard that music.") 

    After a bit Steve went back down the pass to check on Lucius. Pretty soon Steve came huffing back up the pass, fast, just for the fun of it. Lucius was fine. He would be here after a while. He's a photographer and was carrying heavy camera equipment and stopping frequently to take pictures.

Lucius Williams            Photo by Ela Lamblin

    Ela and Steve waited for Lucius, but I was ready for a swim, so Micala and I headed down the trail to Mowich Lake, where I slipped into the cold blue water for a good long swim under the snowy bulk of Mt. Rainier.

Coming in after a swim in Mowich Lake, facing Mt. Rainier 
       Photo by Lucius Williams

Micala explored the trails a bit. Ela, Steve, and Lucius soon arrived and sat on a log, dangling their feet in the water. 

    Finally it was time to load packs in the car and go home. Hugs and good-byes all around, promises to do another trip together. 

    "You kick ass," Steve told me, as we parted. 

    "Well, I'm no Tara," I said modestly—Tara, the ultra-runner who had organized this trip and then was unable to come. Steve, Micala, and Ela always say, "Tara kicks ass."

    Steve wouldn't let his praise be deflected. "You're who Tara wants to be when she's your age," he said. 

Mt. Rainier, on the Mother Mountain Loop.     Photo by Lucius Williams

At the Coast, Among the Redwoods, and in the Applegate—Still Training

     I had a very good time visiting my friend on the Northern California coast last week. I enjoyed Luffenholtz Beach

and did a lot of hiking, with a backpack, as I was still training for my upcoming, strenuous, two-day backpacking trip in Mt. Rainier National Park. I hiked through the  beautiful redwoods, up hills and down.  

On my way home I stopped at Jedediah Smith State Park to hike the five-and-a-half-mile Boy Scout Tree trail, with my backpack.

   It was early morning as I drove the curvy, one-lane, gravel road through the redwoods at the park, brushing so close to the giant trees I might have stroked them in passing and passing no cars at that hour. The only other people at the trailhead were a carful of young Asian men, who started on the trail while I was still putting on my backpack. I soon passed them, as they were stopping to take pictures and walk up logs and generally cavort in the forest. For the next hour and a quarter I walked through the prehistoric redwoods, alone in the forest. I sank into the scale of massive trees and enormous ferns, of vast silence and ancient eras. After an hour and a quarter I came to the hand-carved sign, "TREE" with an arrow pointing to the right—like some kid who was being a wise-ass: "In case you can't see a tree, here's one"—but I knew to climb up the hill where it was pointing to the Boy Scout Tree.

    It was as I remembered: astonishingly huge. I took off my pack, sat down, and contemplated the tree, remembering when Mike and I had come here two years ago so I could hug this tree, as part of my 75x75 project. Remembering the pictures he took of me hugging it all the way around and the photo-shopping my son did to turn that picture into one.

Remembering Mike. Reading a poem I had written when we hiked through the redwoods on our honeymoon in Trinidad two years ago. Spreading a small vial of his ashes at the foot of the Boy Scout Tree. 

    I was lucky with those few minutes of solitude, as I met quite a few hikers on my return to the trailhead. One woman asked why I was carrying such a heavy pack. I told her I was training for a backpacking trip at Mt. Rainier National Park. I said I hoped I was ready. She said, with great confidence, "You'll do fine."

    Now, how would she know that? She had no idea how many miles I would be hiking, how steep the trail was, how fit my hiking partners were, or, as far as that matter goes, how fit I am. It was a statement of false confidence that had me shaking my head in puzzlement all the way to the car. 

    Yesterday I made the last training hike. With my friend Margaret, I climbed, with my backpack packed as for Mother Mountain Loop, the Horse Camp trail, the steepest trail in the Applegate, four miles, with 3500 feet of elevation gain. Up and up and up we went, relentlessly up, Margaret said. I kept on climbing. I didn't stop till we got to Echo lake, where I took a well earned swim,

Swimming in Echo Lake

and we had a bite to eat. Then, with my pack lightened by the weight of one cucumber and a bit of cheese, we hiked another quarter of a mile up the cliff to the Pacific Crest Trail. From there it was an easy two more miles to Cook and Green Pass, where Margaret's husband had kindly left us a car so we wouldn't have to make the horrendous hike four miles down the Horse Camp trail.  

    Somewhere along the PCT, in view of Mt. Shasta and the surrounding mountains, I did another ashes ritual for Mike. As it's my practice to bring a rock back from each place I spread ashes, I picked up one here. Margaret picked up another for me and said she would carry both rocks. That was so kind! I was happy enough not to replace the weight of the cucumber with even heavier rocks. 

    I left the trail well satisfied with my last training hike. This much I could do. Now for Mother Mountain.    

Just before the end of my last training hike