Barbie

    I never had a Barbie doll. Barbies came along  after my doll days, and, besides, wasn't Barbie a symbol of all that was wrong—having to have the perfect body, being a sex object, having to wear high heels? These were Barbie associations we scorned in the hippy days.

    Nonetheless, without question, my favorite Christmas present this year, from my sister Laura, was a Barbie doll. I opened the Barbie package—Laura and my other sister, Sharon, were watching on Google Meet—and I burst out laughing. They were laughing, too We were sharing again the moments of watching the Barbie movie in Laura's den the week after Thanksgiving. Oh, how we had laughed. It was a sisters' bonding, sharing untold moments in our pasts as girls and women. 

        Laura had given Sharon a Barbie doll for Christmas, too. She held hers up to show me—Barbie, the yoga teacher. We reminisced about favorite scenes in the movie— Barbie walking into the shower on tiptoes, "Kenough" on Ken's shirt and the back end of a racehorse showing on a large-screen TV behind him when he talks to Barbie on the doorstep. The tribute to Ruth Handler. Barbie's concession, at the end of the movie, that every night didn't have to be girls' night. 

    We thought Greta Gerwig was brilliant, and we knew the truth of Gloria's monologue. "You're so beautiful and so smart." she says to Barbie, "and it kills me that you don't think you're good enough." Such familiar attitudes.

    Barbie no longer symbolizes what's wrong with the culture; she symbolizes that a girl can be whatever she aspires to be. (Laura said she had tried to find me a Barbie who was a professor of Old English, but had to settle for the baker Barbie.) I love having a Barbie. Standing tall (but not in heels) on my windowsill, she reminds me of how much has changed for women and how much I love my sisters. 

Well by Christmas!

     "Well by Christmas!" my doctor declared, setting our goal. 

    Three days and counting. Bronchitis. What a bear. 

    Bronchitis was the doctor's diagnosis when, since my violent fits of coughing weren't responding to cough drops, water, hot tea, herbs, juices, and spoonfuls of honey, I decided I ought to see him. That was a Sunday (of course). I called first thing Monday, and typical of this, the best doctor's office in Southern Oregon, he saw me that same day, at 3:00. 

    By 4:30 I was driving home with medications in my pocket and "well by Christmas" in my ears.

    Certainly I'm better. I no longer spend the night sitting upright on the couch, as I did for days, since I couldn't lie prone without being thrown into a coughing fit. My route through the house has expanded from the few steps between the couch and the bathroom. Yesterday I even took an hour-and-half walk up the mountain. (Never mind that the same walk used to take an hour.) My throat doesn't hurt any more, and when my son called me yesterday, he said my voice was stronger. Although a few days ago I couldn't eat the zucchini soup I made (one of my usual favorites) or, the next night, my curried yam soup, a never-fail pleaser, or even, the next night, the butternut squash soup a friend made and sent up to me, I have found that, actually, now that I try them again, the butternut soup is delicious and the other two as good as usual. I knew how sick I was when I didn't want to eat.

    My doctor, whom I really, really like, told me that one of the best things I could do was to bundle up and sit outside. "This cold, moist air is good for bronchitis," he told me. "Don't get cold," he cautioned. "Bundle up." 

    So for the past few days I have been bundling up in a coat, a wool hat, a wool scarf, fuzzy slippers, and my lovely warm gloves and sitting on the back porch with a blanket wrapped around my legs. I sit there for about an hour, reading or just watching the rain in the trees, breathing the cold moist air, loving the freshness, thinking, "Well by Christmas!"

    I'm not out of the woods yet, but the trees are thinning. This morning I spent hours planning a Christmas menu: salmon with mushroom orzo and red wine sauce, a green bean and feta salad, and Kahlua-and-chocolate pecan pie for dessert—a real meal, with fresh food and good tastes. Because, after all, I will be well by Christmas.

    Here's to a happy and healthy Christmas and holiday season for you, too.

Prayers for Humanity

     One of the 75 repetitions of 75 things each that I did for my 75th year of life on this Earth, five years ago, was to write 75 prayers for humanity or the earth. (Item suggested by Mariposa Kerchival.) Last Thanksgiving I posted prayers for the earth. Today, in thankfulness for the many examples of beautiful, kind, life-responsible people in my life, I offer prayers for humanity.

    Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

May the children know laughter, love, song, and freedom from fear.

May all children know the joys of childhood.

May the balm of sleep and the calming touch of an adult ease the pains of childhood.

May the voice of reason and the aura of compassion prevail in all circumstances.

May women and men be treated with equal respect all over the world.

May communities thrive with compassion, respect, neighborliness, and conviviality.

May those with illness find relief from pain.

May we learn to tune our hearts to the aches of others.

May music resound everywhere in the world, always.

May the cities flourish with art, music, and the good works of the poets.

May we learn to trust again.

Memorial Services

    I am saddened by the recent death of a friend.

He looks stern, but behind in that closed mouth his glorious humor peeks out.   

We hardly ever saw each other and communicated seldom, but he was always dear in my heart. He lived on the other side of the continent, so I'm not sure I would have gone to his memorial service, but I know I would have wanted to so I could hear the stories people told of him and to know, in this way, more about him.

    It didn't matter. He didn't want a memorial service.

    This is something I don't understand. My late husband also didn't want a memorial service. My anger at these deaths can be displaced onto the dying person himself: how dare you tell us we can't come together to mourn, laugh, and feel a common love through our relationship with you? How dare you deprive us of ways we would like to mourn, remember, and celebrate? What difference does it make to you? The memorial service is not for you. It's for us.

    I knew my husband for only six years. Our years of exploring each other's pasts and personalities were cut short, so I was looking forward to a memorial service, where his family would talk about what Mike was like when he was a child, as his children were growing up, as a brother, uncle, father, employer. I was cheated of that greater depth because there was no memorial service, not because Mike had requested there be none (he had agreed to it by the time he died) but because COVID prevented that kind of gathering. My mourning felt incomplete, ragged, solitary.

From the last hike Mike and I made together.

   A memorial service elicits closure and completion. It is a communal gathering, fellowship displacing the individual mourning in each heart. Rituals at memorial services can be rich experiences—singing songs, releasing (eco-friendly) balloons, planting flowers, eating together. A sudden and tragic death—a young person's suicide—becomes easier to bear when many mourn together.

    Years ago, driving to the memorial service for a friend I didn't know well, I wondered why I was going, but at the service the stories from her sister and brother broadened the incomplete picture I had of this person. I was glad I had made the effort to be there. 

    At the reception after the service for my friend Maren, I was suddenly surrounded by five or six of Maren's students whom I had also taught at the University of Gothenburg.  They were there through their love for Maren; now that love surrounded me as well. 

    At the reception after my sister's service, person after person came up to me to thank me for the help Linda, an occupational therapist, had given their children. Through the memorial service and following reception, I learned more about Linda's life that made me respect and admire her even more.

    At my father's memorial service friends and family laughed and told stories and radiated such love I have felt its warmth in my heart all these years. 

    So, listen, this is what I want to say. Go to the memorial services. Take advantage of this one last chance to know, in many dimensions, this person you loved. 

    And by all means, when you are dying, don't say you don't want a memorial service. This is for us, not for you. 

Pipe Fork Not Saved (Not Yet)

     A few days ago I listened in disbelief as the chair of the meeting of the Josephine County Commissioners told us that the board would not accept the Williams Community Forest Project's offer of over two million dollars to buy the forests of Pipe Fork. 

    "I know you have worked hard to raise this money," he said, apologetically, "and I know the strong feelings you have about Pipe Fork. But you are more than $750,000 short of what we want for the land."

    Let's see. They originally said if we came up with $1.6 million, we could have the land. We looked and looked for an environmental philanthropic organization that would buy the land and turn it over to the Bureau of Land Management to add to the Resource Natural Area the BLM established on Pipe Fork decades ago. We found that buyer. We had an assessment made and came up with $2 million to meet the assessment price—more, as you see, than we were originally told we needed. Now the commissioners had raised the price. They would keep the land and sell the timber.

Imagine this scene, clearcut                         Photo by Kevin Peer

    "There are other people in the county who need what this money could bring," the commissioner said. "We will go ahead with our plans to clearcut Pipe Fork."

    It is to my credit that I didn't spit in his face as I left the building. 

    We are just a little local organization passionately attached to our local stream, Pipe Fork, for its beauty, the importance of it as a water source for the community, and its ecological importance. We are just a handful of people, yet we raised more than two million dollars.

    Those three years of work—and anxiety—came to a close at the commissioners' meeting on Tuesday, yet I cannot accept that reality. I cannot envision a clearcut Pipe Fork. It just should never happen. It just simply cannot happen.

    This environment depends on a forest canopy.        Photo by Kevin Peer

    If the commissioners are thinking, "Well, thank goodness that's over. Now we can get on with cutting the timber"—if they think we're going to have a little grieving ceremony for the trees and accept their fate—they're wrong. Cheryl Bruner, head of WCFP, said, "It's not over, and we will continue to fight." 

    Saying that there were places in the county where the money was needed strikes me as a myopia we can no longer indulge in. When will we begin to understand that saving any portion of the environment, this small area of Pipe Fork, for instance, is in the interest of us all? When will we start seeing that destroying our forests for a handful of bills now means devastation for everyone later? Pipe Fork is important for the groundwater of Williams, where all residences depend on wells. If our wells run dry, will the county supply our water? Isn't everyone better off if we can continue to irrigate our fields (important agricultural income for many Josephine County residents) and supply our domestic water from our watershed? The Conservation Fund was willing to pay more than $2 million dollars for Pipe Fork, not to appease a small group of passionate citizens but because, in the bigger picture, the land is more valuable intact than the timber is worth, cut.

    But the commissioners said no. 

    We all live on this planet. Every ecological destruction affects us all. Yes, we who live in Williams are most acutely affected by a potential, unimaginable clearcut on Pipe Fork, but, in the long haul, it should be unimaginable for everyone in the county. 

                                                                                        Photo by Kevin Peer

Go to williamscommunityforestproject.org/save-pipe-fork to see a video of Pipe Fork by renowned videographer Kevin Peer.

    For years a bone spur in my left foot would sometimes be so painful I would have to stop wherever I was and take off my shoe. It was a pain like a knife. It didn't last long, but it was bad when it hit.

    I also have hallux rigidus in the left foot, the arthritic condition I had surgery to correct in my right foot last year. (See posts on December 9 and 23, 2022.) Recovery from that surgery was three fairly difficult months—non-weight-bearing, no walking, no driving.  

    So this time, when the doctor suggested an easier surgery, just to get rid of the bone spur—one-month recovery, walk (in a boot), and drive—I said yes, yes, yes. I would put up with continued pain from hallux rigidus in exchange for a shorter, easier surgery and no bone spur.

    Surgery was last Wednesday at the Grants Pass Surgical Center. Everyone is so nice there they make the whole experience not exactly fun but certainly pleasant. The woman at the entrance desk greets patients with a broad smile and says, "Thank you; I appreciate that" every time you answer a question. The prep nurse chatted pleasantly and asked if I wanted something from Netflix on the TV screen, and when I said I didn't want to start a movie I couldn't finish, she found a wonderful video about mating dances among tropical birds that kept me entertained and my mind off what was going to be happening very shortly.

    The anesthesiologist remembered me from last year. He and the nurses joked about my age as they wheeled me into the operating room. "The form says she is 79, but I think there was a mistake," he said. "She can't be almost 80." The operating room nurse asked me what I was going to do for my 80th birthday. I remember saying I would be hiking 800 miles on 80 different trails. That was the last thing I remember.

    My friend who had taken me to the surgical center took me home again. Another friend came up to visit shortly after I got home and brought home-made tomato soup and pumpkin pie for my dinner. This weekend, my friend Bryan, who is an excellent cook, is bringing me dinner. Ibuprofen and Tylenol are keeping the pain under control. I'm doing fine.

    Just one month. Then no more bone spur pain. I can't wait for my next hike.

Autumn, 2023

     It's actually not a very spectacular autumn this year.  The trees seem confused. Some are still vigorously green with only one branch trying on yellow. Many turned brown in a dried-up fashion before they started turning yellow or red, so now they look half-dead and half-autumnal. Still, in the high country, the colors are better. Here is a picture from a hike on the beautiful Cook and Green trail last week.

                                    photo by Margaret della Santina

    Southern Oregon's autumns can be absolutely stunning. Here is what I wrote in 2013 to accompany Barbara Kostal's painting, "Autumn: Equinox," in our book, Wisdom of the Heart. 

    

    This autumn, on a sun-warm day in the woods, my heart is yellow—not a sickly pale jaundice, but a hearty, bright upspringing of rich, aqueous yellow; not a cowardly jealousy but a bold, brilliant glory of cadmium-rich yellow given it by maples, oaks, alders, and hazelnut trees flaming with the lustrous colors of canaries, goldenrods, and honey. Like a match, the sun ignites a maple in a dark hillside of evergreens with yellow fire. Gathering this fire in the palms of their hands, the broadleaf maples fling it into the air. Circles of yellow spiral from the trees like whirling embers, flowing through the leaves like warm air in a house, falling from the saturated yellow of broadleaf maples and the softer lemon of alders and the fulvous amalgamation of colors in the starry-tipped leaves of viney maples.

    I cannot drink it in enough, this aureateness, the gildedness of trees in autumn. 

    If the autumn of 2023 isn't as brilliant as that one, it also isn't as drab at the autumn of 2011, about which I wrote, "What happened to the autumn color? Where are the golden yellows and the flaming oranges, the scarlets and the vermilions? Who dulled the brilliance? Who rubbed the blush from the complexions of the trees? Who sucked the energy away? Who gave us acrhomatism, pallor, wanness in our autumn this year? Brown, brown, brown—everywhere it's brown."

      Well, every year is different. Even in its diminished brilliance, autumn is a beautiful time of year, and I am loving my hikes in the mountains this fall.

An Unsettling End to an Afternoon Hike

     We had beautiful weather on Tuesday, so when I finished my work by noon, I decided to take an afternoon's ramble up Bolt Mountain, in Fish Hatchery Park, just outside of Grants Pass. 

    The trail is a good, brisk six-and-a-half-mile hike up Bold Mountain and down. It's a great spring wildflower hike. Not so good for autumn color, but I enjoyed being in the woods, seeing the views, and taking strenuous exercise.

    Just as I was coming to the top of the mountain, I passed a man with a dog coming down. On the way down I passed another man with a dog, a single man, three or four single women, each with a dog, and a group of three hikers together. I was surprised at how late people were starting up the mountain.

    As I approached the parking lot at the end of my hike, a park ranger in a pick-up was just pulling up. "Checking on parking passes," I thought smugly, mine all in order, but that's not what she was interested in. She asked if I had met a tall man in a red shirt, without a dog.

    No, I didn't think so, I said. The only man without a dog I had met was in a black jacket ("Could it have been covering a red shirt?" she asked), and I didn't think he was especially tall. "But," I added, laughing, "almost everyone looks tall to me."

    She continued looking grim. This man, she said, had become so irritated with a woman whose dog was off leash that he had threatened her with a knife. 

    I hike alone in these hills all the time. I carry a personal locator beacon (a PLB) in case of emergency, which I have always thought of in terms of injury—breaking an ankle on slippery rocks, for instance, or some other fall. I have not been concerned about violence on the trail. 

    Until now. 

    Maybe I could think that that danger would only be on trails close to town except for remembering that the first year I lived here a family went missing on the Cook and Green trail, in the Red Buttes Wilderness. Rumors of UFOs flew around, but the perpetrator—the murderer—was caught a few years later. 

    I often hike with friends, but I also enjoy hiking alone. I like the solitude, the communion with the trees and flowers, with the earth and sky and the mountain itself, in a way that doesn't happen when I'm with other people. I like conversation, but I also like the way my own thoughts wander and, especially, the way I enter a meditative, empty-minded, in-the-moment state. I like the spontaneity of taking off for a hike at the spur of the moment, when the moment is right, not having to make plans.

    I don't want unreasonable fear to rule my life. But I don't want to be naive, either. Can I keep pursuing my favorite solo activity? Or should I be grateful for safety up to now and not push my luck? 

    I don't know. I just don't know.

    

    

A Getaway into the Red Buttes Wilderness

     I am pleased to say that it has been raining for days. I like to think the winter rains have started and that it will be wet and gray for months to come. Should we be so lucky.

    However, I am just as pleased to say that there was no rain Wednesday through Saturday last week because I was on a backpacking trip in the Red Buttes Wilderness Area, my back yard, with my friends Cheryl, Janet, and Sandy.

L-R: Janet, Sandy, me, Cheryl                             (selfie by Janet)

          The weather was glorious, as was the landscape. Mostly, we were hiking through old-growth forests, past true-giant cedars and pines. We laid hands on the big, shaggy-barked trunks, in veneration and gratitude. How we need these magnificent forests!

Me with a ponderosa pine.         photo by Cheryl

After a seven-and-a-half gradual climb up the Butte Fork trail, we made camp at Cedar Basin.

                                                                                                    photo by Janet

    Then we made a late afternoon hike up to Lonesome Lake, where I had my best swim of the trip, under the headwall, where the water was deepest, even though that part of the lake was in shadow by that time.

Me, preparing for a swim in Lonesome Lake    photo by Janet

                                                                                                        photo by Cheryl
Coming into sunshine after swimming under the headwall.

Azalea Lake is large but probably not even six feet deep and the pond at Sucker Gap is even more shallow and dotted with lily pads, but because we camped at both places, I could indulge in one of my favorite things to do: step out of my tent into a lake first thing in the morning.

    In some places, low-growing bushes gleamed umber, copper, burnt sienna, fire-engine red.

                                                                        photo by Janet

They were especially striking where they lined Azalea Lake, with the ghostly trunks of the burned forest behind them and their reflection doubling the color in the lake in front of them.

    What else? Well, the company. What great backpacking partners they were! Besides the talks and the stepping in to help when needed, all three had brought chocolate to share. And at our first lunch stop, Cheryl astonished me by handing 'round large pieces of spanakopita and baklava she had made the night before. Imagine having carried all that weight! I had no qualms about helping lighten the weight of her pack by accepting the lunch she offered. 

    Janet and Sandy both joined me for swims in the lakes. Cheryl picked mushrooms we found on the trail. Janet religiously stuck to her commitment to meditate every day. 

Janet meditating at Azalea Lake     photo by Cheryl

    It's hunting season, so we used brightly colored pack covers to keep us from being mistaken for deer. We did meet two sets of two hunters, all in their camouflage. Afterward, Cheryl told us of the days of her past when she used to hunt.

                                                                                                        photo by Sandy

    We misjudged the mileage of the last day's hike, so we were two hours early for meeting the person coming to pick us up at the trailhead. Janet, Cheryl, and Sandy looked through the woods for morels. I read a novel on my Kindle. I recited a few poems, while Cheryl and Janet danced. The lovely long afternoon was waning when our driver arrived, and we returned to the valley for pizza and beer in the Applegate and a toast to a great four-day getaway with friends.

Swimming in the Upper Rogue

    As I said in last week's post about backpacking on the Upper Rogue River, Cheryl, Janet, and I were walking hard on the last day to walk the twelve miles back to the trailhead in time for dinner at the Prospect Hotel, so we set a faster-than-normal pace. Nonetheless, when we got to the only place on the river that looked possible for a swim, we stopped there. 

    The river was wide, and the current looked slow, but I don't trust rivers. Besides, the bank dropped so steeply into the river I didn't think I could safely get in. And if I got in, how would I ever get out?

    Janet thought she could do it. Holding onto the branch of a riverside bush, she carefully lowered herself into the water. Then lower. And lower. She sank up to her chest before her feet touched a strong root growing out of the bank, where she stood for a split second before letting go of the branch. Then she was swimming downriver with the current. Shortly she turned and swam easily back. Holding onto the branch, she pulled herself out. She was exhilarated.

    That looked wonderful! If she did it, I thought, I could do it, too. Cheryl and Janet assured me they could help me get out, so, holding onto the branch, I lowered myself into the river. But Janet is taller than I, and I sank to my neck before my foot touched the root. Then I let go and swam downriver.

    It was a great swim. Cold, yes, with a gentle current and an easy return next to the bank, where the current was slower. I thought about swimming down and back up again, but the cold was beginning to pound at the back of my neck, so I thought I should get out.

    Not so easy. The bank fell perpendicularly deep into the river. Even standing on the root and holding onto the branch, I couldn't scramble out, as Janet had done, so Cheryl grabbed one arm and Janet the other, and, as I scrambled for a footing in the slippery grass, they hauled me ashore. 

    Worth every moment. I'd do it again with the same help.

    

Backpacking the Upper Rogue River Trail

    Few people backpack the Upper Rogue River trail because it is so easy to day-hike it in sections. I have hiked River Bridge to Woodruff Bridge and Woodruff Bridge to Natural Bridge many times. But when Cheryl, Janet, and I were on our way for a four-day backpacking trip in the Sky Lakes Wilderness Area last week, we stopped in Prospect to check on air quality and were told there was a fire in that area, just where we were planning to hike, so we just shifted plans. We would hike the nearby Upper Rogue instead.

                                                (All photos by Cheryl Bruner)

    Starting at River Bridge, we decided, we would go as far as we wanted, then find a place to camp, do the same the next day, and repeat for the two days back. Pretty simple.

    We left my car at River Bridge Campground and hiked five miles the first day, from the trailhead past the Baptist Church Camp, where Cheryl's family used to have family reunions, through the beautiful Takelma Gorge, then across the road at Woodruff Bridge and onto the next section of the trail, where we found a sandy flat on the river for our first night's camp. After dinner I recited Robert Frost's "The Death of the Hired Man" while Janet danced an extemporaneous interpretation of it, the river dancing its own rhythm behind her.

    That was the first five miles.

    The next day we hiked past a spectacular waterfall just before the Natural Bridge section of the trail. We stopped for lunch at a bench facing the lava cave, where the river famously disappears for a short distance. Three women with backpacks are an unusual sight on this popular section of the trail. Asked by curious tourists how far we were going, we said, "As far as we want."

    Once past the paved parts of the trail at the lava cave, I was in new territory. The trail began ascending steeply, through big trees and masses of viney maples just beginning to turn red.

The river, far below the trail, was mostly out of sight. The hiking was more difficult than it had been the day before, steeper, up and down, with several stream crossings. By the time we had hiked a seven-mile day and found a flat, sandy spot next to the river, we were ready to make camp. Before dinner, Janet and I took cold-plunge baths at the river's edge, holding on to willow branches to stay in the cup where the river lapped the shore.

    We woke up to an overcast sky. Rain was predicted for that night. We could avoid camping in the rain, we told ourselves, by hiking out the entire twelve miles. And if we did that and got back to the car in time, we further encouraged ourselves, we could have dinner at the Prospect Historic Hotel.

    Motivated, we hit the trail at a pretty fast pace. In spite of the press of time, though, we stopped at one of the few places on the trail where the river looked suitable for a swim, and Janet and I both swam. (More about that in the next post.) We had lunch at the same bench near the lava cave where we had eaten the day before, then put our packs back on our backs and headed down the trail again.

    At this point Cheryl took over the lead position and set an insane pace. Even moving at a faster clip than I normally would and ignoring my aching feet, I couldn't keep up. Jane, hiking behind me. distracted me from weariness and the difficult, rocky trail by telling me the trees were glad to see me again. 

    Twelve miles, and we were back at the trailhead, before 6:00, gratefully throwing our packs into my car and looking forward to dinner at the Prospect Hotel. First, though, I changed into the dress I had left in the car. Then, looking much fresher than I actually was, I drove us to the Prospect Hotel, where we toasted our adventure with a glass of wine and had a very good salmon dinner. Afterward, Cheryl drove us through the dark back to the Applegate.

    It wasn't Sky Lakes, but backpacking the Upper Rogue with Cheryl and Janet was its own satisfying adventure.

Cheryl

Janet and me

    

     Our perfect summer days, such as I wrote about two weeks ago, have come to an end. Now our skies are white with smoke. Visibility is diminished to my closest trees, and Humpy Mountain is obscured behind a veil of smoke. 

Humpy Mountain yesterday afternoon

Humpy Mountain in the idyllic days of summer

    But smoke is not as bad as fire. Although we suffer the lung-stifling effects of the fires in other places, the Applegate itself is not on fire. At least, not yet.

    It would help if we would roll back climate change. Get busy, damn it, all you politicians and lawmakers and industry CEOs who could be making a difference! 

    According to some thinking we should be thinning the forests of their century of fuel build-up. But there are problems there. One is that BLM, at least around here, seems to be taking advantage of "thinning for fire" to do some pretty damaging logging, taking large trees that are both carbon storers and fire resistors. Another problem is that logged-over land, often the result of "thinned" forests, is seemingly more susceptible to fire than our old-growth and large-tree forests. A third problem is that even if forests thinned of small trees (leaving big trees) would create slower and cooler fires, who's to say that those areas would be the ones to get the fire, so was that a good use of money? I'm no expert on fire or on forests, but I do see that if an agency says "for fire protection," the public falls right into line with whatever the proposal is and that not all such proposals are either especially for fire protection or actually protective against fire or, even, good for the forest.

    A couple of years ago the Devil Fire burned not too far my house. It was a ground fire, burning low and slow, doing the good work of forest health that fire does. So why didn't the Forest Service let it burn? If this is a fire-dependent ecology and if a century of fire suppression has put us in this quandary, then why put out fires that pose no danger? 

    Experts speaking in the documentary film Elemental (see if if you can) and elsewhere are advocating defensible space around structures as the only sensible way to approach fire preparedness. Fire prevention, of course, is preposterous, and fire suppression has been disastrous, but protecting homes and other structures from fire seems sensible. I love my trees, but I am ready to do what I have to do to defend my house from the fire that is as likely to be here as in Lahaina or in Paradise, California. I can only hope that the fire that is sure to come will hold off till I get that work done.

Hiking in the Eagle Cap Wilderness Area in the Wallowa Mountains of Northeastern Oregon

                                                                                            photo by Scott Mattoon

     After seven days in the mountains, the twelve of us on this Sierra Club backpacking trip hiked 2 1/2 miles to the trailhead, found our cars, then reassembled for lunch in Joseph. Then we hugged good-byes and headed back to Pennsylvania, New York, California, Missouri, Illinois, and various places in Oregon. I drove to a sub-par Motel 6 in The Dalles, took a shower, ate some dinner, and lay down to sleep in a real bed again.

    But I couldn't sleep. I missed the hum and thrash of the river outside my tent. I missed the chill of the night and the warmth of the sleeping bag. I missed the other hikers who had been sleeping in their own tents near me, those eleven good friends who had been strangers to me only a week before. The mediocre dinner from the Indian-cuisine food truck had left me missing the amazing camp-food dinners Leah, trip leader, had prepared for us—risotto with three kinds of cheese and tuna, noodles with Thai peanut sauce, curry-and-rice. And I knew that whatever I found for lunch on my way home the next day couldn't match Nutella on lavage bread with dried bananas, mangoes, and turkey jerky. Such imaginative meals Leah had planned!

    I missed the mountains. Several days before, as I was hiking the 1000-foot elevation gain up 8540-foot Glacier Pass, then down the other side along the West Fork Wallowa River—

                                                                                            photo by Gabe Oprea

the steep slopes streaming with wildflowers, the river cascading white through black rock, the peaks rugged and stark above the narrow valley—I thought, "I have hiked in the Dolomite Mountains of northern Italy, in the French and Swiss Alps, in the mountains of Costa Rica and Corsica, in the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and the Appalachians, and I can say that this is world-class hiking." 

                                                                       photo by Mark Dumont

    Everywhere wildflowers amassed in stunning arrays—purple asters splotched with scarlet firecracker flower and Indian paintbrush, sunshine-yellow groundsel, sunflower-bright arnica—occasionally a rein orchid, catchfly, pearly everlasting. Horse mint scented the air. I grew dizzy trying to name all the flowers and finally gave up.

                                                                                            photo by Gabe Oprea

    We saw picas and mountain goats. At one campsite we were awakened by a large herd of horses galloping past camp. When it rained (and it rained a lot), we just donned rain gear, covered our packs, and kept on walking.

                                                                                        photo by Mark Dumont

    Was the best day the day we hiked up to Ice Lake, a good steady climb from camp at 5500 feet to the lake at 7849 feet, followed by a beautiful long swim,

Swimming in Ice Lake. I am behind Leah.    photo by Mark Dumont

lunch lakeside (watching mountain goats descend to the lake), then a walk halfway around the lake to a remarkable white-sand beach, where I swam again? 

                                                                                    photo by Mark Dumont

    Or was the best day the day we climbed Glacier Pass (where I sprinkled some of Mike's ashes; see post on June 21, 2020, for an explanation), then hustled down the other side through that gorgeous scenery, on and on until it was starting to get dark and Leah and John, our leaders, found a possible campsite ("It would be miserable, but it would only be one night of misery"), which we rejected in favor of walking another two and a half miles in hopes of finding there a better place to camp? What a fast walk it was! But we got to a large meadow and threw up our tents just before dark.

                                                                                        photo by Mark Dumont

It had been a long, beautiful, and exhilarating day.

    The lakes were superb. I loved my swims, and the stream crossings, too, which I usually did barefooted. 

I am about to cross behind Traci, my boots in my hands. photo by Mark Dumont

    Have I mentioned the food? Did I say the leadership was great? Did I say the scenery was breathtaking (to say nothing of the breathtaking hiking)? Did I mention the company? We were teachers, a pianist, a farmer, an engineer, people who worked in tech, in non-profits, in academia. We spanned the ages of 39 to 79. Phenomenal hikers all.

                                                                    photo by Mark Dumont
Everyone is in this picture but Gabe, who is taking it. Note Leah, our leader, far right. She and John, assistant leader (4th from left), carried enormous packs.

    No wonder I had a hard time going to sleep that first night off the trail. My body was there in Motel 6, but my spirit was still in the Wallowas, among those wildflowers, in those lakes, with those friends.

                                                                                            photo by Gabe Oprea

On a Perfect Summer Day I See My Fox

    Our summer days lately have been as beautiful as they come—warm but not overly hot, balmy, gentle, smoke-free. In fact, it has been something close to this all summer—no smoke, no triple-digit temperatures. I have been hiking a lot, with a 30-pound pack, training for a six-day backpacking trip in the Wallowa Mountains, in northeastern Oregon, but today I took a rest day and sat on the deck in my new swing, now my favorite place in the house, reading some, writing some, swinging gently.

    I looked up at a strange scraping sound in the yard in front of me, on a bare, flat bit of ground downhill from the house, between the woods and the apple tree . 

    It was my fox, rubbing his back on the rough ground. Then he sat up, glanced at me when I made a slight noise, then sat there, looking around, attentive but at ease, before loping off down the hill towards the woods.

    I see this fox from time to time, and I often hear him at night. Sometimes he stops twelve or fifteen yards from the house and barks his saw-blade-sharp arf. If I come out the door, he looks at me and barks again. I greet him with a few words, then go back inside.

    He is a gray fox, very beautiful in his red-and-gray lush fur coat and long handsome tail. 

    I know it's the same fox I see every time because he is lame in one foot. He limps on his right front foot, lifting the paw off the ground and trotting angularly, though swiftly enough. I thought at first the paw might have a temporary injury, maybe a thorn in it, and I imagined myself playing the part of the mouse who took the thorn out of the lion's paw in Aesop's fable. But I have seen the fox often enough that I think the paw is permanently injured. I doubt that it was caught in a trap; trapping isn't usual around here. I wondered if it were a birth defect. Maybe the mother fox sat on the foot when the kit was born. That happens sometimes with domestic animals.  

    I know better than to be sentimental about wild creatures, and I feel strongly about the wrongness of making pets of wild creatures. But I do love my fox. We are cordial, if distant, friends. It is between us as Emily Dickinson said:

            Several of nature's fellows

            I know, and they know me

            I feel for them a transport

            Of cordiality.

    So it is with my fox.