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 tow 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

"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.