The Slaughter of Owls

     I'm sorry to report that the US Fish and Wildlife Service is slaughtering barred owls in the Pacific Northwest. The barred owl, they say, is an aggressive species native to the eastern side of the United States that is moving into the Pacific Northwest, displacing the northwest-native spotted owl, the notorious icon of the timber wars of the eighties and nineties.

Northern spotted owl. Photo by Frank D. Lospolluto, on savetheredwoods.org 

Spotted owls need old-growth habitat; thus the conservationists' argument that cutting old-growth forests for timber was detrimental to the spotted owl, an endangered species. So timber sales were challenged in court, and again and again, the spotted owl won. Ostensively, the cutting stopped, although in actuality it only slowed.

    And yet the spotted owl has continued its downward spiral, and it seems that those mean bullies, the barred owls, are to blame. 

    So, again we're going to slaughter a species? Think: buffalo, wolves, coyotes. Think: passenger pigeons.

    But Elizabeth Kolbert, environmental writer for the New Yorker, tells us to also think hedgehogs in the Hebrides, rabbits in Australia, mongooses in Hawaii—introduced animals that wrought havoc in native populations of birds and mammals. Where we made the problem, some conservationists say, we have a moral obligation to try to fix it—to rid the Uist Islands of hedgehogs, Australia of rabbits, Hawaii of the mongoose—and the Pacific Northwest of the barred owl. US Fish and Wildlife has concluded that the demise of the spotted owl arose "almost certainly owing to the human transformation of the landscape"—i.e., destruction of old-growth forests, inviting the barred owl into spotted owl territory. 

Barred owl. Photo by Fyn Kynd on savetheredwoods.org 

    So, if we caused the endangerment of the spotted owl, are we not obligated to do what we can to reverse that trajectory?

    My heart, not to mention my mind, doesn't know where it rests because a beautiful barred owl lives in my woods. I cannot bear to think of someone shooting it. I can't bear to think of my nights empty of the barred owl's calls. I can't bear to think of that beautiful bird, that one particular bird, deliberately shot. I love the northern spotted owl in general, but I love the barred owl of my own nights in particular.

    But Fish and Wildlife has identified two main threats to the spotted owl's continued survival: competition from barred owls and habitat loss.

    Nonetheless, both the BLM and the US Forest Service are even now offering timber sales in old-growth and large-tree forests of the Applegate. Wouldn't it be a better solution to the demise of the spotted owl to stop destroying this habitat? Why have we chosen slaughter of birds and of trees instead of keeping the trees and, consequently, perhaps, keeping the owl, as well?

    I recognize the conundrum of invasive species brought into an environment by human acts. I don't know the answer. Still, I say to Fish and Wildlife: Stay out of my woods. Leave my barred owl alone.

    

    

Seven Days of Backpackng North of Yosemite

Diana Coogle, Sarah Nawah, Scott Mattoon
in the Emigrant Wilderness Area

     Standing at the rock edge of a pool of cold, clear-to-the-bottom water, I clasped my little backpacker's towel to my dripping body and gazed at the scene in which I had a moment before been immersed: the long, narrow cup of granite that held the water, the clump of red and yellow wildflowers in a crack of rock at the water's edge, the rush of a little cascade falling into the pool from the long stream down the mountain, and, beyond, occasional stands of pines among the enormous white boulders culminating, far above, in the peak called Granite Dome.

    It was beauty beyond comprehension. Not even a photograph could serve as Gerard Manley Hopkins's latch or catch or key to keep back such beauty, and so the beauty of that moment vanished except in my memory, where it stays rich and vibrant.

    My hiking partners for this seven-day backpacking trip in the Emigrant Wilderness Area were Scott, from California, and Sarah, from Pennsylvania, 

Sarah and Scott at our camp on Gnome Lake

with whom I had hiked in the Wallowa Mountains of eastern Oregon last September. Scott, who is training to be a leader on Sierra Club trips, kept the lead. Sarah hiked next, I last. Day after day we hiked past enormous pine trees, 

through large meadows still vibrant with lupine, groundsel, butterweed, Indian paintbrush, valerian; past tiny streams giving life to still more wildflowers.

 We climbed Mosquito Pass, then rested for half an hour on its flat top with the stark, rock beauty of Sierra-rich views around us. Veins of rose quartz flowed through the granite. A packer with his mule train ambled past, an iconic picture in the high Sierra.  I spread some of my late husband's ashes on Mosquito Pass. 

    On the sixth day, Scott led us off-trail, over granite boulders with flowers tucked in crannies and cracks, up rock steps easy only for giants, on thin, narrow ledges, up flat slabs, or leaping from rock to rock over streams in deep chasms.

                        Photo by Scott Mattoon

It was stupendous hiking. We camped that night not far from an unnamed lake now dubbed Gnome Lake, blue water with undulating lines of green grasses outlining its contours, and a rock at each end for good swimming access. 

Gnome Lake

A waterfall made a long slender silver thread on the cliff above our tents. A glacier, we knew, was tucked up there on Granite Dome, on whose flank we were camped. 

    We hiked 42 miles in those seven days. Scott gave the trip a Sierra Club rating of four (out of five) for difficulty. Our highest altitude was 9370 feet, on Mosquito Pass, but we were almost as high at Gnome Lake. I had nine swims in five lakes, plus four dips in two pools. We spent our nights under brilliant stars. Scott watched the  Perseid meteor show. (I slept soundly in my tent.)

                                                                                        Photo by Scott Mattoon

 We saw an eagle, a marmot, various tiny frogs, a dragonfly caught in a spider web (which we set free), and we heard coyotes and an owl. 

    But there is no way to give voice to the beauty of that landscape. I will return.

Me and Sarah on the last day. Photo by Scott Mattoon

PCT Thru-hiker

        When I returned to my car at the top of Cook and Green Pass after a 12-mile hike partially on the Pacific Crest Trail the other day, a young PCT thru-hiker (Mexico to Canada) was sitting at the campsite there. He told me he had injured his leg and needed a ride to town, where he would "hang out for a few days and let the leg heal." I suggested he spend the night at my house, and I would take him to Ashland the next day, where he could find a motel to stay in.

    So after an hour's ride Nibbler (his trail name, because he was always nibbling on a block of cheese) found himself standing at the door of a lovely house in the Siskiyou Mountains.

   Taking off my shoes just inside the door, I asked him to do the same. 

    He took off his shoes, then said, "My socks are dirty, too."

   I turned to look. They were streaked black with dirt. I suggested he leave them outside.

    He took off his socks. He said, "My feet are pretty dirty."

    I turned to look. Indeed they were! I started to tell him to leave them outside, too, but told him instead to walk around the house to the bathroom door on the deck. There I gave him a towel and offered him a shower.

    What a change after no telling how many weeks or months on the trail! A shower. A good big helping of a tuna-melt casserole, which he wolfed down so fast I gave him the rest of it, too. A real bed, with clean sheets. Total luxury.

    For his part, he was a charming guest. He cleaned the kitchen after dinne r, made his own bed, and entertained me with stories about the trail. 

    I learned, for instance, that hiking the Pacific Crest Trail these days is as much a social as a wilderness experience. Because you are basically hiking the same route in the same time frame as the people you start with, they become your trail family.

    I have long been curious how PCT hikers keep their pack weight low. Did they, for instance, carry tents?

   Some did, Nibbler said. Some use tarps, some just bivy sacks. Some people don't carry rain gear. Some cut the belts off their backpacks to lighten the load. He himself had cut the strap off his headlamp and velcroed the lamp to his hat. Some people, he said, considered headlamps extraneous, but he sometimes walked after dark to escape the heat, and thought a headlamp a necessity.

    I asked about bear canisters. He said people carry them where they are required, as in the high Sierra, and then get rid of them. When I asked how campers keep bears out of their food, he said most people sleep with their food in the tent.

    I was aghast. A bear that smells food wouldn't hesitate a minute to rip into a tent. Weren't the hikers taking a huge risk? 

    Well, he said, there are so many people at the campsites that the bears don't come around.

    That many people?

    Everyone has their luxury item, he said. I pointed to my Kindle—that was mine, I said. (I didn't mention the camp dress.) He said his was an extra pair of socks.

    The next morning, on my way to a hike on Mt. Ashland, I left him, refreshed and well fed, in front of the Columbus Hotel in Ashland. He would stay there a few days, then rejoin his trail family farther up the trail when his leg felt better.

    Later, on my hike, I saw a thru-hiker with a big pack. "Smart girl," I thought.

    

The Birthday Hike That Wasn't

    Sometimes the good and the bad happen in rapid succession.

    The intended good: A 12-mile hike in the Red Buttes Wilderness with my son, Ela, for my birthday last week. 

    The first bad: A flash from the "overheating" light when we're six miles up a winding, uphill, gravel road headed for the trailhead. Steam billowing from the hood.

    The good: A lovely little waterfall at the side of the road from which I fill the water bottle. Ela pours water into the radiator. And again. And again.

    The bad: A leak in the radiator. We are going nowhere.

    The bad: No cell service.

    The good or the bad, depending: A 12-mile hike before us, after all, just not where we intended.

    The good: Cell signal after three miles. Ela texts a friend for rescue.

    The bad: No response.

    The good: After another mile: a car coming up the road. William! He takes us to his house, where I call AAA.

    The bad: On hold interminably.

    The good: AAA response.

    The bad: My AAA membership is in Oregon, but the car is just over the border in California. AAA won't cross borders. More long holds to talk to AAA California. 

    The good: AAA response. They will send a tow truck from Yreka, California. I explain that it would be closer to send one from Grants Pass, Oregon.

    The bad: Rules are Rules.

    The bad: More long holds while they try to find a tow truck driver.

    The good: Response from a tow truck driver. We send the GPS coordinates for the location of the car. He would meet us at the car at 2:00.

    The good: A car to drive while mine is in the shop—William's parents'. They are vacationing in Alaska and won't mind, he assures me. 

    The bad: Ela and I wait another hour at my car for the tow truck. He watches the road. I write a poem. The two truck arrives with a very unhappy driver. The road had been terrible. His big flatbed trailer had buckled and fishtailed over every pothole. 

    The bad: I'm not happy, either, with my crippled car.

    The good: The tow truck diver hauls my car to my mechanic in Grants Pass. Ela and I go home in the Prius.

    The bad: Modern radiators are plastic, throw-away parts. 

    The good: Lighter cars have better gas mileage.

    Conclusions of the bad: A long, tedious day. I had missed my birthday hike.

    Conclusions of the good: Good friends to help. A car to drive while mine is being fixed. AAA assistance at no cost. Best of all, the competent and cheerful companionship of my son on a frustrating day.

    Conclusions of the day: Not so bad, after all.

The 800th Mile

    My goal for my 80th birthday, on July 20, 2024, was to have hiked 800 miles during the year. 

    By June 18 I had hiked 796.2 miles. Then I stopped so I could share the 800th mile with my sister Sharon in the Swiss Alps.

    On June 25 we got off the gondola at Schreckfeld and started on the trail towards Scheidegg. Wildflowers colored the hillsides.

The snow-encrusted  peaks of the Wederhorn, Jungfrau, and Eiger rose above the trail. I kept an eye on my mileage. Suddenly I stopped. 

    "The 800th mile!" I cried. Sharon congratulated me and took pictures.

That night she raised a toast to me at our hotel.

    By July 10, I had hiked 856.3 miles on 90 different trails. I invited everyone who had hiked any of those miles with me to join me for brunch at the Jacksonville Inn on Sunday, July 21.

    On July 15 my son, Ela, came down from Washington to hike with me and help me prepare for the party. We created a chart of my hikes, one axis showing the chronology, the other the distance, each entry naming the trail and the people with me. I added notes: "Downed trees!" "Swim!" "Skied this trail." 
    We mounted photos from the hikes and pinned them to the wall of the patio at the restaurant.

We displayed a large poster Sharon had sent me of my victorious moment at the 800th mile (see below). It was a wonderful party.

    Here are the stats from the year.

        Total number of hikes: 145

        Total miles: 868.3

        55 hiking partners

        70 solo hikes

        Person who hiked the most miles with me: Cheryl Bruner (306 miles)

        Person who traveled the longest distance to be at the party: Traci Esslinger, from LA

        90 different trails (40 in the Applegate, 10 in the Rogue Valley, others elsewhere in Oregon and in Switzerland)

        Swims in 16 different lakes, rivers, and creeks

        Longest hike: 80 miles in 10 days (Lower Rogue River trail)

        Steepest hike: Bort to Waldspitz, Swiss Alps, 1643 feet in one mile

        Longest descent: Männelichen to Grindelwald, 4295-foot descent in 9 miles

        Highest elevation: Ice Lake, in the Wallowa Mountains of eastern Oregon, 7980 feet.

        Biggest disappointment: Car trouble that waylaid my birthday hike

        Most fun: The whole darn year.

Highlights from Grindelwald

     The Swiss Alpine town of Grindelwald is, as it has been for two centuries, a tourist destination, crowded these days with Asian, Muslim, European, and American bicyclists, hikers, zipline riders, paragliders, and other sports enthusiasts and thrill-seekers, including many families with small children and teenagers. They zoom down the mountain in three-wheeled carts, fly across canyons on zip lines, and throng the easier trails under the famous Eiger, Jungfrau, and Monk mountains. In winter, mountain climbers and skiers flock to Grindelwald, too.

    I was there last week, along with my sister Sharon, for the hiking. It did not disappoint, on any level.

(1) Every trail offered astonishing expanses of wildflowers—

yellow globe flowers; deep purple, yellow-eyed spurred violets; lavender-hued, heath-spotted orchids; Carthusian pinks; the Alpine rose; azaleas; and then, just as I thought I had seen the epitome of Alpine beauty, astonishing clumps of deep purple, neon-glowing gentians. 

(2) Every trail was stunning—winding, climbing, and flowing under and among mountains spotted and streaked with the late snow. I hiked up to Bäregg, eye to eye with Grindelwald Glacier. (Until the 1980s, you only had to walk to the edge of the town to meet the glacier).

The hostel at Bäregg

On the way down just past a split in the trail, I saw fresh blood on the rocks, a good cautionary tale for a solo hiker: danger is only one false step away.

    I took a gondola up to Männelichen, meaning to hike up to and along the Eiger trails, but these high-altitude trails were closed because of snow and snow-melt flooding. so there was nothing to do but hike down—and down and down and down, for nine miles. Total exhaustion.

    I rode a different gondola to First (at 7165 feet) to hike from there to Waldspritz on what turned out to be a long, high trail over snowmelt streams and across tundra-like, fog-wrapped landscapes so lonely I was glad to keep in view the only other two hikers on the trail. 

    Another day I climbed from Bort to Waldspritz, with an elevation gain of 1643 feet  in less than a mile on tight zig-zag switchbacks. I kept passing people coming down, not another soul going up. (I mean, who would?) Finally, finally one of the hikers passing me said what I had been longing to hear: "You're almost there." 

    In short, the hiking was everything I had wanted—rugged trails, breathtaking scenery (and trails!), all in Alpine splendor. I was in my element.

(3) Actually, I was really in my element at Bachalpsee, a pretty lake at 7432 feet under snowy Alpine peaks, at the end of an easy two-mile trail. Snow clung to the lake's edges; two long, thin, mushy-ice lines on the surface of the lake stretched from the shore towards its center. When Sharon and I got there, we watched a young man in shorts (or undershorts) walk into the lake, quickly dip in, and rush gleefully back to his companion on shore. A few minutes later two young women arrived. One stripped to her underwear, walked into the lake, dipped in, screamed with the cold, came back grinning. 

    Yes! I stripped to my underwear, walked into the water,

Just before submersion and swimming

submerged, and swam, stroke after stroke, towards the center of the lake. In the video Sharon took, I swim until I disappear; then I reappear, swimming back towards shore. It wasn't a long swim, but it was a great one. Total exhilaration.

(4) Fondu. Of course. After all, we were in Swirzerland.

Sharon enjoying fondu

Me enjoying fondu

Yoga in France

     When my sister Sharon, an Iyengar yoga teacher in Georgia, suggested I join her for a six-day yoga workshop in Beaune, France, I said, "Yes, if you will hike with me afterwards in Switzerland."

    Deal struck. We met in France on June 20.

    Beaune was a delight—narrow cobbled streets lined with centuries-old houses and beautiful flower boxes,

 the ramparts of the walled city, the good food and wine. Every morning we walked through town to the yoga studio, stopping for coffee on the way.

    The yoga was intense. The teachers, Mary and Eddie, had studied in India for decades with B. K. S. Iyengar and his daughter, Geeta ("The best yoga teacher in the world," Mary said). Everyone in the class except me had studied with Mary and Eddy before. Avid followers, they had come from around the world for this workshop: from San Diego, Georgia, England, Thailand, Spain, Scotland, France. The class was beyond my skill level, but when I sneaked a look around, I saw that although some students were better in some poses than I was, I was better in other poses than they. I would do all right.

Me preparing to enter the yoga studio

       Eddie and Mary alternated teaching days. While one was teaching, the other walked around helping students. They taught the same routine every day, an approach that I thought would be repetitious but that instead brought deeper understanding every class period. Their teaching style was what B. K. S. and Geeta's reputedly was: barking orders and sprinkling instructions with sarcasm. I wasn't sure I liked it.

    But it produced results, and, in truth, both Mary and Eddie were more sympathetic with our hard work than they let on while teaching. By the fourth day my muscles were rebelling. And yet, every day, after a long and directed savasana, I walked out of class as exhilarated as I had been tired only an hour before.

    Between yoga in the morning and yoga in the late afternoon, Sharon and I had lunch in town, walked on the parapets, toured the Hotel Dieux, the 15th-century hospital with its beautiful Burgundian architecture, famous glazed-tile roofs, and, in days gone by, gracious nuns who cared for the indigent sick of Beaune. We ate regional specialties: boeuf Bourguignon and chicken in mustard sauce. (Dijon is nearby.) We had crepes.

Sharon with a crepe and egg

We had cheese from the market with good French bread. One of the best things I have ever eaten was a gazpacho with goat cheese sorbet—gaspingly delicious—at the RenDez Vous brasserie. 

    And the wine was good, too. Very good. 

    But the best part was sharing the whole experience with my sister.

    On June 24 we hugged everyone good-bye and took the train to Switzerland.

Gazpacho with goat cheese sorbet