Hiking on Vashon Island, I

    When the weather is good, no place is more beautiful than the Puget Sound, and last week while I was on Vashon Island visiting my son, Ela, and family, the weather was perfect: warm air that settled gently on the skin, a slight breeze that lifted a smile to the face, a blue sky that absolutely sang. And then, of course, there were the birds with their own songs ringing through the air, and the madrone blossoms perfuming it.

    It was perfect weather for hiking, which I like to do, and mountain biking, which Ela likes to do. The first day I was there, we drove across the isthmus Vashon shares with Maury Island to Dockton Forest, twenty-three acres, mostly woodlands, with twelve miles of trails for mountain biking, hiking, and horseback riding. Ela gave me trail directions for my hike: go straight, take the first right, etc., to the overlook, then etc. back to the car. Meanwhile he would be on his bicycle on a different trail.

    The woods of the Dockton Forest flow from one micro-ecosystem to another: an overstory of Douglas fir, with sword ferns underneath; an overstory of madrones with their long red trunks rising from a rising skirt of huckleberry; alders and salal; maples and salmonberry. The combinations vary, but the enchantment is unending. 

    The trails wind through the forest, intersecting, running parallel, up and around, but if you keep going uphill you'll eventually arrive at an old road around a deep gravel pit, far below you, at sea level. The history is complicated, but essentially this is an old gravel pit that was bought a number of years ago by Glacier Northwest, who wanted to revitalize it for extraction of gravel again. But the inhabitants of Dockton, Maury Island, and Vashon, including hikers and mountain bikers, raised a ruckus of a protest. The issue went to court, and the judge eventually decided in favor of the preservationists, and Dockton Forest, including the gravel pit, was protected from environmental destruction and extraction of both gravel and timber. Now the gravel pit and its large rusted steel trestle, a bridge to nowhere, are historical artifacts. The steep hills rising out of the former gravel operation are green with vegetation. 

  

   From the top of the gravel pit and, a short hike farther up the road, from the overlook at the highest point of the park, the view is stunning: snow-blanketed Mt. Rainier shimmering over the dark blue water of the Puget Sound and dominating the Cascade peaks below it and, below them, the buildings of Tacoma made beautiful by distance. A few sailboats and fishing boats dotted the water. I sat on the bench at the overlook, absorbing the beauty of the scene, until time to hike back through the forest to meet Ela at the car.

    The next day Ela and I returned to Dockton Forest. This time Ela walked with me so he could show me the mountain biking trails he had built. They were beautiful. One was called "Eee-la-la!" for its exciting up and down route, the interesting natural features it passed—a large rock formation here, a beautiful tree there—its perilous ride along the top of a cliff, the sudden awesome view of Mt. Rainier over the sound, the steep descent. Even walking it was beautiful, and I could imagine the fun of testing your riding skill on it. 

    There was, however, one test of skill that Ela had not counted on. Earlier in the spring he discovered that the bare vines he had built the trail through on one section last winter had leafed into poison oak that now overhung the trail with a treacherous reach. To eliminate that danger, he had brought loppers, clippers, heavy gloves, and a small saw with him on this hike. We worked cutting back the poison oak until we had a trail safe for riders. 

    It was another beautiful day on the island, and another beautiful walk in Dockton Park. The next day we would return, Ela to ride with a friend and I to walk more trails. For this adventure, see next week's post.

Madrones

     Every spring as I walk through the mountains and drive through the valley, I find myself repeating the first line of a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem. "Nothing is so beautiful as spring," he said. It's a line that occurs again and again as the daffodils amass and the maples take to leaf and the birds sing to each other from the tree tops. 

    This year the line has been amended. "Nothing is so beautiful this spring as the Pacific madrone," I say to myself, again and again, as I walk through the mountains or contemplate Humpy Mountain from my deck.  Never have the madrones been so beautiful as they are this spring, with their masses of showy white blossoms. "The tribe gathers," Rumi says. "Who has a chance against such an elegant assemblage?"

    I've lived on this mountain almost fifty years, and I've never seen the madrones bloom so profusely. It's a once-in-fifty-years phenomenon, or, as far as I know, once-in-a-hundred-years. It's as though that rose bush you love suddenly put out three times as many roses as you've ever seen on it. It's like the burned-over hillside I saw in the Marble Mountains, made pink with masses of pussy-toes. The madrones this spring are like the richest cream whipped into peaks, the frilliest organza ball gown, the thickest patch of stars in the Milky Way.

    Only the female madrone puts out flowers, but this spring I'm wondering if every tree could be male one year and female the next because not only are there more blossoms on each tree than ever before but more trees with blossoms, too. The flowering trees are so many and so dense with blossoms they make splotches, lines, and patches of white on the distant mountains. Even from my house I can distinguish individual madrones on the evergreen-forested hillside of Humpy.

    During the day the trees absorb the heat of the sun into those blossoms, hoarding it for an alchemical reaction that they release in the evening and early morning—as far as I know, throughout the night—in the sweetest, most intoxicating scent in the mountains. I lift my nose like a bear. I can't get enough of madrone perfume, which, usually given in stingy whiffs, this spring saturates the air.

    I realize that not everyone appreciates this abundance of madrone fragrance.  One woman agreed to the observation but not to the exultation. "Yes," she said, "my sinuses have never been so stopped up!" My deepest sympathies to those who cannot enjoy the wonderful gift of this year's madrone sweetness permeating the air.

    The birds take that sweetness and turn it into music, threading it with the needles of their beaks through the fabric of the air.

    It cannot last, of course. "Nothing gold can stay," Robert Frost reminds us. "So Eden sank to grief./So dawn goes down to day./Nothing gold can stay." Already the golden white madrone blossoms are fading, turning dull, dropping their tiny buds like hailstone beads on the trails. Already their lovely scent is growing faint, becoming memory. The sensual wealth is giving way to the maturity of summer. 

    And then—ah! Already I anticipate the abundance of bright red berries on each madrone tree next fall, brightening the woods with autumn's bounty, the fruits of spring's beauty.

Anniversaries

     Friday, May 7, marks one year since Mike died. (See post, "Last Days," on May 14, 2020.)  My heart is heavy to think about this past year without him, but, of course, those are the kinds of thoughts the date educes—the year without him, our six years together, and the tenderness and sorrow of the last three weeks of his life. To read the posts about those last days brings tears to my eyes.

    The anniversary of his death comes only eleven days before the anniversary of our wedding, which would be our second, so memories of that wonderful occasion pile on top of all the others. Yesterday, since I am fully vaccinated, I had my hair cut at last, and in a fit of sentimentality thought maybe I would dye my hair purple, the way it was at our wedding, as a way to honor Mike and recall  those good times. I wasn't sure about doing it—it could also make me too sad—but in a burst of courage I asked the hairdresser to do it.

Mike meeting me after my canoe ride down the
Applegate River. Note the purple hair.

    Unfortunately this wasn't the same hairdresser who had dyed my hair for the wedding. That was Dianne Knapp, who had been cutting my hair for years and was a good friend and knew exactly what I wanted and what looked best on me. I was sad to lose her last summer when she died of breast cancer. I had lost a friend, but I had also lost a very good hairdresser.

    To find a new hairdresser, I just looked online, read reviews, and picked one blindly.

    The haircut is all right. Not stunning, but it'll do, I guess, and I am very glad not to be looking so shaggy any more and to get the hair out of my eyes. (Dianne could do better.) I told the beautician I wanted purple in my hair as it had been at my wedding. I showed her a picture, like the one above, and told her I wanted that color, applied like that. 

    What I got has knocked all the sentimentality out of me. The color is all wrong. What Dianne did was draw a dark lavender through the front strands of my hair. What the new hairdresser did is pink-purple: too bright, too pink, and too broadly applied.

Intolerable. I should be scowling.

 I dislike it intensely. Mike would laugh, and that would make me laugh, too. I smile to think about it. The hair is all wrong, but it is what it is, as with Mike's passing. The little things, like the big, must be accepted. 

Trying to make it acceptable

Earth Day

     It was a beautiful Earth Day, with warm, comforting weather and a cloudless sky that smiled blue all day. When I took a walk up the mountain, the birds were throwing their songs into that sky. In the afternoon, a wind wandered down from the top of the ridge and played with the trees for a while. If ever there was a day for celebrating the Earth, this was that kind of day. 

    This has been that kind of spring, too, with balmy days and an unusual number of animals blessing me with their presence. First, a northern pygmy owl flew into my apple tree. easily identified by the spots that look like eyes in the back of his head and because he was a daytime owl. I wanted to see him dive for a mouse, but he outlasted me, and I finally turned back to my work, glowing from the treat he had given me.

    Next there was a fox, which my son, visiting from his home in Washington, saw first. At his cry—"Fox!"—we ran to the window to admire the russet and silver coloring, the silky tail, the lithe, graceful movements. We watched that fox leap after the mouse the owl never found. 

    The next morning it was again my son who spotted the pileated woodpecker I had heard when I woke up, so big and beautiful, with his red head pounding like a jackhammer and then flashing through the woods. At that point we saw the second pileated, no doubt his mate.

    One evening after my son had left for his home in Washington, I heard the fox bark just outside the back door. When I opened the door, he twirled his tail and darted away. I think he had just stopped by to say hello.

    Then there was the hawk that flew to the top of a tall fir where I had stopped on my walk to listen to the birds. And the large bird that swooped from my house through the woods over my pond, maybe an owl, but probably a great blue heron.

    And, climactically, coyotes, calling from somewhere far up Humpy Mountain, lifting their noses in the air, stretching their throats and pouring out their songs. They were a rare treat.

    Today I was supposed to do a Facebook Live recitation of nature poems in honor of Earth Day, but something went wrong, and the recitation didn't go live, so I'll have to reschedule for another day, which, alas, won't be Earth Day. But nature poems are good to read any time. As one friend said, "Every day is Earth Day," as this spring has made abundantly clear.

"These Days of Spring"

For those of you unable to get to Table Rock Mountain to see the wildflowers, here is my poem that the Nature Conservancy posted on the trail. (See last week's post for a description of the trail.) 

These Days of Spring

These days the sun exhales with warmth and pours

Over the peak ablaze with smiles. It paces

In leisure through a lapis sky where soars

The big-winged hawk the glorious blue embraces.

These days, at forest's edge, the shooting stars

Flamingo-pink—and buttercups rich gold,

Camas blue as robin's-egg skies—set bars

Of color into which winter's wastes fold.

These days the fuchsia rows of redbud trees,

White clouds of flowering pears, and candy-pink

Crabapple waves present to eager breeze

Their petals, delicate flakes for air to drink.

Gathering all that glory on the wing

A bid's song colors air. These days of spring.

Poetry on Table Rock

     If July is the best time for wildflowers in the Siskiyou Mountains, spring—now—is the best time for flowers on the Table Rock Mountains, flat-topped, low-elevation, geologically interesting formations outside of Medford, Oregon. Both Upper and Lower Table Rock are famous for their masses and varieties of wildflowers. Usually the Bureau of Land Management and the Nature Conservancy, who co-manage the area, lead wildflower hikes at this time of year. This year because the pandemic has prevented those walks, the Nature Conservancy has encouraged individuals to hike there by posting poems by local poets along the trails.

    One of my poems, "These Days of Spring," is on the Upper Table Rock trail. I wanted to see how it looked and also to read the other poems and to witness the flowers, so a few days ago I left the house at 6:00am and was on the trail by 7:15.

   The trail led gently uphill through woods of oaks, firs, and madrones, on the floor of which were carpets of fawn lilies, with occasional accents of scarlet-red fritillaria and blue hound's tongue, then stripes of yellow buttercups. The birds were singing from tree-tops. Such a chorus for an early-morning hike!

Fawn lilies

   I also saw desert parsley, fiddleheads, blue-eyed Mary, ookow, buttercups, popcorn flower, larkspur, and mountain lupine. If I hadn't stopped off the trail, carefully avoiding the poison oak, to give plenty of space for a couple of hikers to pass, I would have missed the rush lily in the woods.

The trail is wide enough 
for the hiker to avoid poison oak.

    When I paused to read my poem on its placard by the trail and read its last two lines—"Gathering all the glory on the wing/A bird's song colors air. These days of spring"—I lifted my head and heard the birds, the perfect combination of poetry and experience. Reading about the turkey vulture in Dan Kaufman's poem at an overlook, I kept expecting to see a vulture soaring in the distance. And Pepper Trail's five haiku were written on Table Rock, so they evoked exactly where I was.

    From the wide, flat expanse of the top of Upper Table Rock, snow-peaked Siskiyou Mountains rickracked the distant horizon. Desert parsley yellowed the ground. 

Desert parsley and snowy Siskiyous

In the distance I could see a white tower of some sort and imagined it as a religious or ritual tribute to Table Rock. I was curious enough to decide to walk to it.

    To save you the hour's walk, in case you hike there and have the same curiosity, I will tell you that it is an ugly government tower with huge Keep Off signs. I could have saved myself the extra hour's walk by simply looking for information on Wikipedia later, which told me, after I got home, that it is a 25-foot tall very high frequency omnidirectional range aviation tower. In other words, a practical thing for navigation, but far from the lovely steeple I had imagined.

ORA tower

    Other than the tower, the hike was nothing but beauty—the flowers, the views, the woods, and the poems. If you live in or near the Rogue Valley, go to the Table Rock trails this April both to see the wildflowers and to read the poems. You're in for a treat.

Another view from the top

April Fool's Day

     April 1 is April Fool's Day. It's also the first day of National Poetry Month. Therefore, I post the following poem, which talks not about fools but about:

Foolish Money

                        

 

Foolish money is not the money you spent unwisely

on that pair of shoes that don’t match anything.

It’s not the ten-dollar bill you so foolishly dropped 

in the garbage bin when you threw away the receipt 

in your hand as you left the store. 

It’s not the quarter you bent over to pick up in the gutter,

hoping no one was watching.

It’s not the money you spent for a trip to Paris with your boyfriend,

who left you there to make your broken-hearted

way home, determined never to be such a fool again.

Foolish money is not the ten thousand dollars 

that built a pond that never filled.

And it certainly is not the money that bought 

the degree in English you “never used.”

Foolish money is the money 

my mother gave each of her children

after her annual Open House,

at which she sold the bins and tins and metal trays,

children’s chairs, china cups and saucers,

wooden boxes, Japanese screens

she had been painting for months.

“This is foolish money,” she would say.

“Don’t spend it on anything important,”

by which I learned 

that generosity is never foolish.