Recluse, Wyoming

 After leaving the Forest Service in 1995 I did a variety of seasonal jobs, such as working for a property management company in Eugene and working for myself as a landscape/gardener.  I also took classes at Lane Community College studying agricultural and industrial equipment technology.  This course of study landed me a seasonal job on a grass seed farm as a mechanic and equipment operator for five summers from 1996 to 2000 near Harrisburg, about 20 miles north of Eugene.   Winter was a slow time of year for me and my thoughts would wander off to moving out of the big city to some rural environment.   Eugene was not my favorite place to live with all the traffic, neighborhood excitement, and also my two children had moved away to attend college.  Now there was just me and my dog Jack.

I subscribed to the Caretaker Gazette, a monthly listing of caretaker jobs offered mostly in the western part of the U.S. and some in other countries.   Many of these jobs involved working on remote farms or ranches.  I did apply to a couple of ads, both in Washington State.  One was on a small farm in southwest Washington, which did offer me an interview, which I turned down hoping for something better.  The second one was on a large ranch in the eastern Cascades of Washington where there was a house offered in return for watching the place while the owners went south.   I never received a response after applying for this job.  As time passed I looked forward to the monthly editions in hopes of finding Shangri-La.    Then I noticed a caretaker job being offered on a remote ranch near Recluse, Wyoming.   I looked on a map to see Recluse was located in the northeast corner of Wyoming and had a population of 10.   The average temperature in January is 20 above and can get down to 40 below.    About this time in my life I met Celia and life took a change for the better.    A few years ago we took a look at Recluse on Google Earth to see a small store with a Post Office, a few scattered buildings, some machinery looking in disrepair and a desolate flat landscape of no trees.    Thank God Celia came into my life.   Where would I be today without her?

The Bachelor Diet

 Another short story from days gone by for a little humor and an escape from the here and now.  Forest Service in Orleans and others Districts from 1969-95.  

Back in the days of working in those far off remote places, such as Orleans, in northwestern California, Hamburger Helper was the food of choice for us single men.    We would stock up during those monthly grocery shopping trips to the big city, usually at the Arcata Safeway, clearing the shelf of this prized product.   In addition, we would buy 10 or more pounds of hamburger and I don’t remember any of the lean stuff.    When a pound of hamburger was in the frying pan it would produce an inch of grease or more.   There was no need for cooking oil.   After adding the box of Hamburger Helper ingredients it could all be consumed right from the skillet, saving from having to wash more dishes.    

Other items that were purchased to round out the diet, including cold cuts, usually bologna, cheese, white bread, apples and cookies for those lunches out in the woods.   Bacon, eggs, cereal and milk for breakfast.   A few canned goods and potatoes for those times when the main dish of Hamburger Helper was depleted.   Due to a limited budget steaks and pork chops were rarely purchased.   On some weekend occasions eating at the Samoa Cook House outside of Arcata was a real treat.  

The beverage of choice was beer and at times a little wine.   Most of the wine was in gallon jugs with no need for a cork screw.   Quality was not a consideration back then.  During the wet winters in Orleans there would be slides along Highway 96 leading to the outside world, cutting off traffic for a week at a time.   The local store would run low on basic items, including beer and wine.  It was not good, as panic set in.

After getting together with my first wife, she introduced me to whole grains, fresh produce, chicken and brought a new word into my vocabulary, “Organic.”   I must give her credit for saving me from doom.   I feel lucky to have made it this far. 

Green Jello with Hot Dogs

 During the summers of the early 1970’s there would be potluck dinners at least once a month on the Orleans Ranger Station for the employees, including seasonal employees living in the bunk house.  Everybody was asked to bring something.  The wives of the staff, living in the family houses on the station would provide hot dishes, fried chicken, salads, deserts and other items that single people would dream of.    Seasonal employees usually brought bags of chips, can of olives, beans or a large bottle of pop.   The local market did not provide much in terms of gourmet items or even deli food.  It was pretty basic shopping there with bread, cold cuts, some dairy products, can goods, limited produce, soda and plenty of wine and beer.    Serious grocery shopping was done by most people once a month in Arcata or Eureka, about a two hour drive from Orleans.   Upper management would chip in and have a keg of beer available for all to enjoy.  Since alcohol was not allowed in the barracks, most beer drinking was done at one of three bars in the community or down at the river.   There was one fellow who lived in the bunk house that would always put together a dish of green jello with hot dogs lined up in it.   He would place it on the long row of picnic tables lined up on the lawn in the center of the compound, where all the food was served.   This dish was only popular with the young children of the families living on the station.   The adults always got a few laughs seeing it there on display with all the other dishes.   As the evening wore on and the beer consumption increased, most of the families retreated to their houses leaving the bunk house people to finish off whatever remained.   By the time the keg was empty, and all the food eaten it was well into the night, and the seasonal employees slowly made their way back to the bunk house or stumbled down the highway to wherever home was.  Even the green jello with hot dogs had been devoured.  

A Lost Weekend

As we approached the fire from the south we could see the smoke rising from the green forest canopy on the steep slopes north of the Salmon River, just about a half mile from where it flows into the Klamath River. This is near the small community of Somes Bar, which consist of a store with a post office, the Ukonom Ranger Station and few scattered houses. Our first impression was this won’t take much time to extinguish and we can get back home by dark and enjoy our weekend off. It had been a 10 mile drive up the Klamath River highway from the Orleans Ranger Station where we had just completed a day of cruising and mapping timber on a proposed sale area. It
was a warm Friday afternoon in July of 1973 when we got back to Orleans
and looking forward to the weekend. A few minutes before quitting time the
radio speaker from the fire warehouse crackled with a fire dispatch for all
personnel to respond to a fire near Somes Bar.
We arrived and parked our truck along the highway where other Forest
Service and state highway vehicles were parked. The 6 of us were combined
with others to form a 20 man crew, assigned a crew boss and given a variety
of hand tools to start constructing fire line below the highway. It was about
1000 feet from the highway to the Salmon River below as we started cutting
brush and digging a 3 foot fire line. The fire was confined to the ground and
slowly spreading up hill where the highway would serve as the upper line.
Within an hour or so we had constructed about 500 feet of line when the wind
picked up causing the fire to explode up into the canopy of the large fir and
pine trees. This also caused spot fires to start outside our contructed line
where we tried to chase these smaller fires as the wind speed increased.
Soon the fire was spreading over the top of us and our crew boss yelled,
“head down to the river”. Within a few minutes the entire crew was safely
in the Salmon River where the stream flow meandered through a gravel bar
that was about 100 feet wide. A few seconds later the fire had jumped
across the river with a deafeny roar as the entire world around us went up in
flames. In addition, we could hear the explosion of the some of the vehicles
that were parked on the highway above. At this point we knew our weekend
was shot as we started walking up river toward the bridge.
OFF Fire July & August 1973 Klamath National Forest. Named after
Offield Mountain where a lookout is located.
Here is a summary of what happened before and after.  There were 3 or 4 crew trucks with people and 1 tanker that responded from the Orleans RD, a tanker and not sure how many people from Ukonom RD and some people with the state highway department, who were doing road work at the time the fire started.  (they may have caused fire?)   More people arrived from the Happy Camp RD later, not sure how many and may have been another tanker.   Our 20 person crew constructed fire line down the east side and another crew went down the west side.  Only the tank truck operators remained on the highway to operate the pumpers as the tanker crews went down the fire lines laying hose line.  When the fire blew up and over ran the highway the tank truck operators could only drive the tankers out.  Some tried to go back and drive other vehicles out, some were removed, but ours and others were totally destroyed.  The tanker from Orleans barley made it as the spare tire mounted on the back caught fire and the plastic on the rear tail lights melted.  The hose leading off the truck burned as he drove away.  There were some houses along the highway that were destroyed and we could hear the propane tanks explode.
About the weather:  the winds in the heat of the afternoons goes up the Klamath River, and since we were on a south slope into the Salmon River, within half mile of the Klamath, the wind ran up the side canyon in all directions.
Our escape:   walking up the Salmon River toward the bridge on highway 96 there were vehicles to take us back to Orleans, also our District Fire Management Officer with tears in his eyes thinking we were burned up.  
This fire was turned over to a Regional team, a fire camp was set up in the Orleans school yard with kitchens, shower units and crews brought in from all over the region.   I ended up being squad leader on a fire line crew, mostly on night shift on Somes Mountain.  Took a month to contain, not sure number people assigned or acres burnt, maybe 80k.  It did burned into the Marble Mountain Wilderness.  There has been other fires over the years since the Off Fire over the same area.  
Google earth might be the best place to see the geography of the area.   The Ukonom Ranger station is no longer at Somes Bar, since it was built on Indian burial ground and the ground under it was moving as cracks were showing.  The two Districts are now in one office in Orleans. 

In Search of Bigfoot

 The Orleans Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest was the center of Big- foot country.   It was here where the Patterson-Grimlin film was made in 1967 of a female Bigfoot in the upper portion of Bluff Creek.   A frame from this film was made into a popular post card, sold in many tourist traps and gift shops, showing the Bigfoot walking and looking at the camera.  The Indian name for Bigfoot is Sasquatch and there has been a few stories passed down through generations of local Indians about their sightings of Bigfoot. 

From 1971-74, I worked on the Orleans District timber sale preparation crew, doing harvest unit layout, mapping and timber cruising.   Most of our work was on the northern portion of the District where it was mostly a roadless area.    Due to the daily driving time and the distance it took to walk into the proposed sale areas, we were required to live in camp trailers during the work week to save on travel time.  These trailers were set up at the end of the existing road.   At the end of the week we would drive back to the ranger station in Orleans, about a distance of 30 miles.   On one of our return trips we encountered a man wearing a black hat, no shirt, ammo belts strapped over his shoulders, a revolver and a big knife walking along the Lonesome Ridge Road.    It was a hot day and he flagged us down asking for a ride back to Orleans and a drink of water.    Feeling a little sorry for the man not having any water or even a pack with him we let him ride with us, plus he looked like a man not to argue with.   He informed us he was a Bigfoot hunter employed by the University of British Columbia and needed to get back to town to pick up his paycheck at the post office, buy supplies and return to his camp somewhere in the upper Bluff Creek watershed.    The previous winter a plane flying over that portion of Bluff Creek reported smoke coming from a large washed out culvert on a snow covered gravel bar and this could have been his camp.  We dropped him off at the Post Office and returned to the station.   We told other Forest Service people of our encounter upon our return.  The foreman of the silviculture crew informed us that they encountered the same man one evening while eating dinner at their camp, where they had been doing plantation surveys in the upper Bluff Creek area.  They invited him to have dinner with them around the camp fire.   During the dinner he suddenly dropped his plate, stood up and said that he smelled Bigfoot and had to go in search of it.   The crew came to the conclusion he had been smoking too much “Humboldt tobacco.”

Other sightings our crew saw were foot prints in the snow on the Camp Creek Road.  They looked like large human prints, but could have been bear.  We reported this and as the word got out the San Francisco Chronicle sent reporters to interview us and our names appeared in the article.   On another occasion, two of us were mapping a harvest unit off Lonesome Ridge when we came across a large nest where rhododendron branches had been broken off and bear grass was used to line the nest.   The Forest wildlife biologist was called to analyze the hairs and his conclusion was they were bear hairs.  

The scariest episode for me was when I was working alone locating a harvest unit boundary in the East Fork of Bluff Creek.  I was a mile from my work truck down a slope flagging the boundary when I stopped to look at the aerial photo showing the proposed unit location.   This was when I heard something tearing up a log down in the ravine below me.  At first I thought it was a bear, then I could hear heavy breathing as it was coming up slope toward me.   As it got closer I got behind a large fir tree to hide myself and soon it sounded like it was too close for comfort, so in a panic I ran uphill.    After running up to the ridge as fast as possible through the dense brush, I stopped to look back, there was nothing.   I figured it must have been scared when hearing me and took off in a different direction.   After telling my story in the office a timber sale administrator said a logging crew near that location had seen a bear whose breathing was abnormal due to an old head wound, probably caused by a hunter.

Who knows what is fact or fiction on the existence of Bigfoot?

The Brush Picker

 Thinking back on some of the colorful characters that lived in Orleans, in northwestern California where I worked for the Forest Service from 1971-77, there is one that stands out by the name of Fred Starnes.  He lived across the highway from where I lived, next to the brush shed in a small camp trailer.   The brush shed was operated by Evergreen Flora, based in Washington State.    It was a long old building with a covered deck, where trucks backed up to for loading or unloading their bundles of huckleberry.  No fancy landscaping around the shed, just some oak trees and dry grass.  The Evergreen truck would arrive once a month to collect the huckleberry to be used in floral decorations.   Fred was a brush picker, a timber faller and a security guard during the night at the brush shed, which provided him a place to park his trailer free of rent.  He was a tall skinny man in his 40’s and drove a VW bug with big tires for better traction on some rough forest roads.   Fred had a family living in Willow Creek, about 40 miles south on Highway 96, where it intersect with Highway 299.    Brush picking on the National Forest required a permit, and permittees were assigned an area exclusive to them.  There were other brush pickers in the community and some acted as graders, working in the brush shed for Evergreen.  Huckleberry had to be picked in a way that passed the grade and pickers were paid by the pound.   It was hard work walking through the woods, searching for the perfect branches to pick and pack it on your back, usually up steep mountains slopes back to your vehicle.    At the end of the day pickers would unload their bundles at the brush shed for grading and weighing.   There were a few times when I saw Fred walking along a forest road with his pack frame so loaded down with huckleberry you hardly see him under it all.   Whenever Fred had a timber falling job, he always worked by himself.   He had a couple of power saws and timber jacks.  He worked on some of the timber sales I had to oversee.   After a day of cutting timber he would walk back up hill to his VW bug with a load of huckleberry on his back.   This was not his permit area, but who really cared since it was going to be a clearcut eventually.    Like many timber fallers, Fred would take some empty plastic jugs with him in the morning to place next to freshly cut sumps to collect the tree sap, which was sold to pharmaceutical companies.     

On a few summer evenings a couple of us would gather around Fred’s campfire by his trailer and listen to his wild stories, while sitting on log rounds he provided for chairs as we all contributed to his pile of empty beer cans.   Some of his stories were a little on the far side, such as sightings of Bigfoot or a man he called Garlic Man, that lived in the woods and survived by eating garlic.  The thought occurred to me at times that maybe Fred had spent too much time alone in the brush.   There were a few times I could hear Fred talking to himself when I was at my place across the highway.  Looking back maybe we all spent too much time working in the brush while living in Orleans.

Shopping Madness

 Went shopping at our local Bi-Mart yesterday in Sutherlin.  Place was beyond madness with people stocking up, could hardly find a parking space, never seen that many people there at once.   Got the last bags of Bob's Red Mill bean mix, so many ways it can be served; on toast, with veggies or just mixed with what ever, better known as swill.   On the way home went through Oakland to check out the Oakland (Bart's) Market, lot of parking space, no crowds, good supply of beer and assortment of veggies, so loaded up.

Time to stir the swill

Potato planting time

 Time to plant those potatoes that have been way back there in the dark corners of the pantry along with other hidden surprises.   Might be nice to have in a few months when you can't find em in the market.

Cheers!

GREEN GOLD: the cultivation of marijuana in Humboldt County

Short story of my experiences with the pot growing culture of the 1970's, while working on the Orleans Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest.   

Could be many more days of writing as the Corona virus sets in and we become home bound to avoid contact with the outside world.

Be safe out there

GREEN GOLD

 

Back in the 1960’s and 70’s Humboldt County, in northwestern California was known as the pot growing capital of the country and the revenue it generated was a major factor in the economy there.   Much of the marijuana was grown on the Six Rivers National Forest under the disguise of mining claims, both legal and illegal.   These claims were established under the Mining Act of 1872, which is still applicable today with some revisions.    Other marijuana or ‘pot plantations’ were established in remote areas of the forest, where a good water source could be tapped and there was abundant sunshine available during the growing season.   It was not uncommon to stumble across a black plastic pipe while working in the woods for the Forest Service cruising timber or doing tree plantation surveys.   During the winter of 1972 the tree planting crew I was working on came across an abandon greenhouse frame located in an old tree plantation that we were replanting.   The Resource Staff Assistant on the Orleans Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest had the job of keeping inventory of mining claims on the District, in addition to other duties of this position.   At times he would visit some of the claims to see what progress was being made.   On one occasion some of these claimants made an office visit to the Resource Assistant and threatened to kill him if he ever returned to their claim.   These characters were easy to identify in the small community of Orleans as most had long hair, beards and the general appearance of being rough individuals, sometimes packing guns.    After having a few beers in one of the three drinking establishments some of these people would show off their big rolls of cash after harvesting their crop.    There was an old building across from the post office, known as wino hill where many of the pot growers would make deals selling their goods.   It was also a place where some of the local Indians gathered to consume liquor, mostly in the form of wine.   My only encounter was on a weekend, while hiking alone cross country back to my truck, parked at the end of a logging road from a hike into the Trinity Alps Wilderness, when I stumbled through a pot grower’s camp where the occupants were sitting around a camp fire.   I was packing a 357 revolver and as I passed through their camp they just said, “how you doing?”   I don’t remember my reply, just kept moving and nothing happened.   They must have thought I was another grower with the sight of my revolver.   Who knows?