A Day at Crater Lake

     The Cleetwood Cove trail at Crater Lake National Park, the only access to the lake itself, will be closed after this summer for construction of a new trail, so it's imperative that I get in a swim before I can't. So last week I drove to the park for a hike up Garfield Peak, followed by that cherished swim in the bluest water on the planet.

   I arrived at the park entrance before 10:00 and drove in light traffic to the Rim Village, parked close to the trailhead, and started up Garfield Peak. It was a good hike, uphill but not too strenuous, with stunning views of the lake.

I had one difficulty when I missed the path for avoiding a big snowfield over the trail and tried to walk on the steep hillside below the snow. But this was surely wrong! I did slip, but just onto my knee, not down the mountain. At the top I marveled at the view of the gorgeous royal-blue lake with snow still packed into each gully lakeside. Swimming would be fantastic!

    I was back at my car by noon. I pulled out of my parking place and headed around the lake.

    Big mistake. 

    By now the park was crawling with cars. At Cleetwood Cove the parking lot was full, cars were parked half a mile down the road, east and west of the trailhead, on both sides of the road. Hordes of people were walking towards the trail. It was a zoo. I didn't want to join it.

    The best thing, I thought, would be to go back to the Rim Village and take the trolley around the lake. I could disembark at Cleetwood Cove, walk down the trail to the lake, ignore the masses, take my swim, and catch the next trolley back to my car. (I have learned since that this can't be done.)

    It was a bad plan, anyway. The Rim Village was even more of a circus that Cleetwood Cove. I joined a long line of drivers driving around and around, hoping someone would vacate a parking place just as they were going by. It was madness. I gave up on my swim and headed out of the park.

    Things were slightly calmer at the Visitor's Center, where I was lucky enough to find a parking place. Then I took the Castle Crest Wildflower Trail,

an easy one-mile loop through meadows of large red Lewis's monkeyflowers, purple lupine, and yellow groundsel. Water flowed over flat stones on the path. It was a beautiful little hike, with few other hikers. 

    Then I left the park.

    It was earlier than planned, so I stopped at Mill Creek Falls and took the trail to the falls, which I had never done. The water fell in thunderous long plunges and were very beautiful, as reputed.

A photographer kept me from getting to the cliff's edge.

Then I walked further down the trail to the river's edge, where I found a small eddy in the roiling river. I  took off my shoes and soaked my feet and my face in the cold water. 

    At last and at least.

   I still owe myself a swim in Crater Lake. 

Swimming in Crater Lake in 2022.         Photo by Barbara Holiday
Do you see why I have to get back?

           

Women Friends

     I spent the three days of my birthday weekend in Gasquet, at the northern California/southern Oregon coast, with four women friends: Cheryl, Janet, Sandy, and Peter. These are women I hike with weekly. We have backpacked down the Wild and Scenic Rogue together, on the Upper Rogue, and in the Red Buttes Wilderness. Our bonds are tight.

L-R: Cheryl, Peter, Sandy, me, Janet

The weather was beautiful. We walked on the beach in appropriately foggy weather

hiked through the mystical light of the redwoods

and swam in some of the most beautiful swimming holes on the Smith River, which, in my opinion, rival any swimming holes in the Pacific Northwest.

    We stayed at Peter's beautiful, 100-year-old house above the Smith River, watching out the window at the water rippling by, ducklings playing tag in the riffle, a blue heron flying downriver, hummingbirds darting in and out, and often just the oak leaves twirling in the breeze. We ate magnificently. Sandy, who, to our good fortune, is a professional cook, made mole one night and curry the next. Everyone brought something to share—garden vegetables, freshly picked blueberries, home-made chocolates and chocolate cookies. I brought four kinds of tartlets: chocolate brownie, strawberry fool, orange custard, and nectarine-plum. The morning of my birthday everyone worked in the kitchen to make a magnificent breakfast. 

    They made me the center of attention that day, letting me choose the day's activity (a long hike ending in a swimming hole), taking me out to dinner at a seafood restaurant in Brookings, and then returning to the house for the birthday cake (New York cheesecake) Sandy had made.

They gave me a flood of presents—a quart of blueberries, a delicate necklace, pomegranate syrup, lavender cheese from Rogue Creamery, and many other gifts, all of which were supplemental to the love they had showered on me all weekend and, indeed, on each other as well. They're that kind of women.

One of my birthday gifts

How Old Is 81?

     In a few days I will turn 81. How old is that? Consider:

    The family car, a '49 Plymouth, had running boards. My sister Linda and I would run down the front walk when we heard Dad coming home after work and jump on the running boards to ride the rest of the way down the driveway.

    Flour came in cloth sacks. My mother made dresses for Linda and me out of flour sacks. 

    Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy were the dolls of the day. Pre-Barbie, pre-Cabbage Patch.

L to R: Linda, our sister Sharon, and me
at Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy's wedding

   The milkman left milk in glass bottles on our doorstep. In rural Kentucky, where my grandparents lived, the bread van pulled into the driveway once a week.

    Our telephone was on a party line. There was still an operator you could talk to. 

    We wore white gloves to church.

With my sister Linda, 16 months older, in matching
dresses. (Linda ia also wearing a sweater.)

    We wore crinolines under our skirts, as in this picture taken before the 7th-grade graduation prom. (There was no middle school. We went from 7th grade at Liberty Guinn Elementary School to 8th grade at Sandy Springs High School, where we were called subfreshmen.)

My date was Gary McClosky, as noted in the margin.

   At dance lessons we learned the waltz and the fox trot. Later we learned the jitterbug.

    When I worked for my father during my teen years, his secretary advised me to learn shorthand so I could take dictation from my boss when I became a career secretary. I learned Gregg shorthand, the system invented by John Gregg in 1888. I did not become a career secretary.

    When travel by air became available, while I was in college, women dressed up to fly, just as they did a century earlier to take the train.

    In my childhood, oranges were special treats, avocados and artichokes unknown. I had my first artichoke when I lived in England in my early twenties. I had my first avocado two years later, when I moved to California with the hippy movement.

    I learned to type on a manual typewriter, aa Royal, while I was in high school. Later I used an electric Olivetti, then reverted to the Royal during those many years I didn't have electricity at my house.

Royal typewriter at left, sitting on top of my treadle
sewing machine in the house I built in the early '70s

    It all seems like such a long time ago.

    

    

July 4, 2025

     It's July 4, but I'm not celebrating our country these days. Trump's crowing over his Big Beautiful Bill just about drowned out the chorus of birdsong this morning. And what did all those birds have to sing about, anyway, given the cuts in support of alternative energy and other mitigations to global warming in the BBB? 

    And that was only one of many abominations in the bill. Good for the Democratic senators who yelled "Shame!" to the Republican colleagues voting "aye."

    Thank goodness the Senate took the sell-off of public lands out of the bill. That was a close one.

    Most abominations remained, though. I worry about the cuts in Medicare. I worry about people who identify as trans and other sexualities outside the straight-and-increasingly-narrower heterosexual-marriage one. And I especially worry about immigrants. I worry about separating children and parents; I worry about depositing people in detention centers, and isn't that just another name for concentration camps and haven't "immigrants" become today's Jews? We said, "Never again," but I'm very much afraid it is happening again.

    I have a friend from Europe who has lived in this country for decades. She isn't a citizen but has permanent status. She is worried, but I don't think she needs to be, not because of her "permanent" status but because I don't think it is European immigrants Trump wants to deport. (Look for instance, at his welcome to white South Africans to immigrate here.)

    In her July 3 column, Heather Cox Richardson, who is good at giving historical context to contemporary issues, reminded us that the Declaration of Independence formed a nation based on the idea of human equality and that the Civil War was a test whether that concept could hold. Then she says, "It did, of course. …But…we are once again facing a rebellion against our founding principle as a few people seek to reshape America into a nation in which certain people are better than others."

    It's July 4. The birds are singing as beautifully as they did yesterday. I hope they can continue to sing, day after day. I hope we can continue to honor, or learn to honor, the birds and all living beings in our country. It's not too late.