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.