"In a Landscape" Piano Concert

     Pianist Hunter Noack founded "In a Landscape" as a way, his promotional material says, "to bring together the two things he loves most: classical music and the great outdoors." Ah. Two of my favorite things, too.

    I received my headphones at the top of the lawn that sloped down to the the Applegate Lake. A piano sat on a platform at the lake's edge, with the snowy peaks of the Red Buttes above it. I set my camp chair for a good view of piano, lake, and mountains and waited for the music.

   This was not a concert hall. "Wander around as you listen," Hunter Noack said. "Wade in the lake. Go out on your paddle board." 

    With Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody" in my ears, I walked into the lake. Careless of my dress, I waded thigh-deep.

    At first, hearing the music through the earphones bothered me. I might as well have been listening to recorded music. It was only when I looked at the pianist and let the motions of his hands and the bend of his back sync with what I was hearing that I knew I was at a live concert. Then the water, the music, the mountains, the clear, warm air came together for music in a landscape.

    Introducing Beethoven's Pathétique sonata, Noack talked about the great composer's deafness, reminding us that he had cut down the legs of his piano so the vibrations of the music would resonate through his body. "I invite you to come to the platform and lie under the piano as you listen," he told us, "so you can experience the vibrations that Beethoven felt." 

    What an opportunity! I waited my turn, then scooted under the piano. Now my whole body was receiving the music. I could have finished the rest of the concert there except that other people wanted to lie there, and, besides, I was missing the landscape while I lay under the piano.

    Later in the program was John Cage's famous piece "4 minutes, 33 seconds," for which the pianist is instructed simply to sit at the piano and play nothing. Ambient noises would be the music. This was a marvelous idea for a concert in a wild landscape. In the silence of the piano, I heard children's voices from the lake, a bit of talk here and there, and I was just beginning to find the distant birdsong when Noack ended the piece by starting to play again. It is true that Cage didn't hold the pianist to four minutes, thirty-three seconds, but I was disappointed not to have had more time to listen to this remarkable composition. Noack might have underestimated his audience's attention span.

    The last piece, by vote of the audience ("Liszt or Chopin?"), was a polonaise by Chopin. The sun was now slanting across the lake. Waves rippled in its light. My eyes blurred. The waves seemed to come onto the keyboard of the piano itself. 

    In his poem, "The Idea of Order at Key West," Wallace Stevens, as he describes hearing a woman sing by the sea, distinguishes between her song and the landscape: 

            "It may be that in all her phrases stirred

            The grinding water and gasping wind;

            But it was she, and not the sea, we heard."

    Here, though, was the opposite experience. I was seeing Hunter Noack's fingers on the sun-sparkled waves. The lake was his instrument; from it came Chopin. It was the lake, and not the piano, I heard, and what an exquisitely beautiful music it has within it.

Hiking the Rogue River Trail, Part 2: Illahe to Graves Creek

      One of several surprises as Cheryl, Sandy, Janet and I hiked back to Graves Creek was that the irises were gone! Farewell-to-spring had come into bloom, but we didn’t see a single iris.
    Another surprise was awaiting us at the slide, where we had had to make a dangerous crossing on the way downriver.  (See previous post.)

    Janet, who had tumbled off a trail down a steep mountainside some years ago, was anxious about this spot and had thought she might leave the trail at Marial Lodge, where she could call her husband to pick her up. But when we got to Marial, we learned that the Forest Service, that very day, was sending a crew to fix the trail. 

    On we went, all four of us. We walked across the slide without difficulty.

    The difficulty had to do with bears.

    To deal with frequent bear raids in the lower Rogue, the Forest Service had placed big metal containers at campsites, with locks complicated enough to fool a bear At Brushy Bar (where, in fact, a bear had raided my camp seven years ago), we gratefully put our packs and food in the bear box. It was hard to get the lock to work, but we managed at last and went to bed secure in the knowledge that our packs and food were safe from bears.

    So safe, in fact, that the next morning none of us could get the box unlocked. We tried for half an hour. All our food and supplies, except our tents, were locked tight. Like refugees, then, with only the clothes on our backs, we set out to hike the three miles to Paradise Lodge, hoping someone there would call the Forest Service for help.

    A sign on the trail above Paradise Lodge reminds hikers that only guests with reservations were welcome. We, of course, went down anyway. We found the manager, Bill, in the dining room. He was scowling.

    We explained the situation. He was still scowling but said he would call the Forest Service for us. 

    As we talked I kept eyeing the urn of Noble's coffee on a nearby stand. Oh, how I wanted a cup of coffee! It wasn't offered, so I finally asked if we could have some. Grudgingly, Bill said yes.

    Gratefully, we took our coffee to the deck and waited. Finally Bill came back to tell us that the man who could help us was on his day off and couldn't be reached. Essentially, the Forest Service had said, "Good luck to them" and left it at that.

    Well, okay. Hoping the problem was just a rusted-shut mechanism, we asked Bill if he had some WD40 and a screwdriver we could use. By this time he had softened to our plight. Yes, he would get those tools for us. And we hadn't had anything to eat, had we? The cook was going to open the kitchen back up, he said, and make us breakfast. He waved away our promise to bring him payment when we got our packs back. "It's on the house," he said.

    We had a very good, very full breakfast of eggs, sausage, potatoes, and more good coffee. Then, armed with WD40, we walked the three miles back to our camp, opened the lock with a couple of squirts of the magic potion, and retrieved our packs and food, broke camp, and were back on the trail. We stopped at Paradise Lodge to thank Bill and return the tools. 

    By now we were meeting group after group of hikers, maybe because it was Memorial Day weekend, or maybe the trail has simply become more popular since I hiked it seven years ago. Cheryl, who enjoys chatting with people, told so many of them I was hiking 80 miles for my 80th birthday that I became legendary.

    Cheryl, Sandy, and Janet were great hiking companions. Sandy was our constant reminder to express gratitude for the river and the wilds, suggesting a circle each morning before we left camp. Janet, besides being my good tentmate, used the app on her phone to identify birdsong for us—and oh! how beautiful it was to listen to the birds at river's edge at evening. Cheryl filled me in on the interesting people we met—the graduate student from Humbolt, the eighth-grade school group on a graduation trip, Southern Oregon University students, many others.

    And not to forget Bill, at Paradise Lodge. I talked to him myself. Nice guy.

Hiking the Lower Rogue River Trail, Part 1: Graves Creek to Illahe Lodge

     Cheryl, Janet, Sandy, and I planned to hike the Wild and Scenic Rogue River trail 40 miles from Graves Creek to trail's end at Illahe Lodge. After a night at the lodge, we would hike the 40 miles back. Eighty miles for my 80th birthday. 

    We started up the canyon on May 16.

    The wildflowers were amazing. Yellow tarweed flowed down the steep canyon walls like water, bringing flotsam of blue gilia and white buckwheat with it. Wild azaleas stopped us in our tracks with their sweet aromas. Wild irises abounded—white and cream ones with purple veins; deep yellow irises and, farther down the trail, gorgeous white ones with deep purple tips. All down the trail, the wildflowers were stunning. 

    The jewels of the trail, though, were the swimming holes. First stop—a beautiful swim in Whiskey Creek. What could be better? Well, maybe Kelsey Creek, with its deep blue pool, or the swimming hole on Paradise Creek, or the swim under the long waterfall of Flora Dell, but the crowning jewel was the swimming hole on Mule Creek—turquoise water, large rocks, a long pool for swimming. I was in Paradise.

    But Paradise is a variable concept. Lying on a river beach, soaking up the sun as the river gurgled over rocks and lapped at the shore, Sandy said, "This is my Paradise." 

    In other places, mosquitoes blemished Paradise, as did, a bit, the fact that in the confusion of packing, the poles for Sandy and Cheryl's tent got left behind. Ingenuity came to the rescue. At Russian Creek, where there were no trees between which to stretch a rope, Sandy rigged up the tent on the bridge. Hikers who came later had to clamber over the railing and jump onto the trail, at the other end. No one minded.

    Other campsites had more convenient trees for setting up a tent using ropes and hiking poles. 

    When we were on the river beach, we all slept without a tent.

    The day after we started our hike, the Forest Service put up a sign at the trailheads warning hikers about a slide on the trail. We, of course, were unaware of the danger. On the third day Sandy and I, hiking ahead of Cheryl and Janet, came to the slide, which was slippery with scree and intersected by a chasm. Sandy, taller than I, leapt the chasm first, then held out a hand to help me across. Done, and on we went. I hardly registered the danger.

    A few days later we were at Illahe Lodge. 

    First things first: showers. Then, wearing the oversized tee shirts on loan from Coleen, lodge owner, we stuffed the washing machine with our trail clothes. My friends Margaret and Bryan were there with supplies for the way back. Janet's husband drove in to join us for the night. We had a real dinner, complete with a birthday cake for Cheryl, who had turned 76 on the trail 

    We slept well that night, in real beds, and breakfasted well the next morning. Then we packed up and set out for the return trip to Graves Creek.