Wandering Aimlessly

 You ever have the desire to take off with no final destination in mind?    Sometime in the late 1980's when my marriage was on the rocks and feeling depressed with a sense of loss I took off with my backpacking gear and some trail food in the car.    My general destination was the eastside of the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness thinking it was a good place to get away from civilization.   I left Eugene on a Friday evening after work and drove over Santiam Pass then turned north on a forest road leading to the Cabot Lake Trial head on the eastern edge of the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness Area.    It was about a 3 hour drive from Eugene.  It was the early Fall and no rain was in the forecast, so it was a good time to get away from it all before the wet weather set in.    There were only 3 or 4 cars parked at the trail head parking lot.   I loaded up my back and took off with no destination in mind.   It got dark on me about an hour into the hike, so I just got out my sleeping bag and slept on the trail.   Early the next morning I made my way to Cabot Lake and noticed some people on the other side of the lake.    After the lake I made my way toward Mt. Jefferson and ended up on a rim overlooking the Warm Springs Indian Reservation above the tree line.   It was a desolate area where a man could wander and never be found again.   That night I don't remember where I camped, could have been back by the lake on my return hike back to the parking lot, just don't remember.  Don't even remember my drive back to Eugene or wherever I was living at the time, maybe Cottage Grove.   Emotionally I may have never left the wilderness.  

Sure wish I could wander off these days, but the best I can do is wander aimlessly around the grocery store once a week.  

THE CHALLANGES OF GETTING OLDER

 Recently I've had to deal with some medical issues.    At the age of 75 my health seems to take top priority over everything else these days and I wonder what is next.    It sure makes me look at each day with more appreciation for the simple things of life.  Visiting the doctor's office and other medical facilities does enhance my social life these days since we are all living in some form of isolation because of the pandemic.   Some of the best medicine is talking to another patient in the waiting room comparing notes on our past medical experiences and learning we are not alone in our fear of the medical procedure we about to incur.   Talking to the medical staff and nurses can be encouraging also, especially with a little humor.  One thing for sure in this world is that change is inevitable.  

We get so consumed with the daily business of life, the news and the politics of the day that we become more isolated from the things that really matter in life--family, friends and sharing with one another.

    

GEESE FLYING NORTH

 Early this morning I could hear geese in the sky.  At first, I could not see them, but after looking way up into the clouds there they were in large V shape formations heading north.   Some of the biggest formations I have ever seen, maybe 400 to 500 feet in length on each wing of the formation.    Even this afternoon, while watering outside plants, which is unusual for April, I could still hear the geese.  They must be coming from the wildlife refuges on the Klamath Lakes with their final destination in northern Canada.    It is heartwarming to see so many geese after we almost annihilated them with DDT up until 1972 when it was banned in the U.S.  They might know more about what the future weather forecast holds than us humans.   

WORKING IN A LUMBER MILL

 Working in a lumber mill is noisy, dusty, and unsafe if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time.   During part of March and April of 1971, I spent a month working for Sierra Lumber Manufacturers at their mill in Stockton, California.   This mill did not process logs but manufactured rough-cut lumber purchased from mills that did cut logs.   The wood products manufactured here included pallet stock, fruit box material, different moldings for doors, windows, and many other products.  It was a union mill and new employees were given one month to work there before they had to join the union.   The initial fee to join the union was $100.  Starting wages were $2.67/hour or about $90/week take home after payroll deductions.  The job involved sorting boards according to lengths by pulling them from a moving belt.   I was given three sizes to pull and stack on pallets with all the knots turned inward as not to be shown.   If you missed a board it went to the end of the belt and onto the floor for you to pick up later.  There was a foreman and quality control man looking over your shoulder to see if you were working fast enough and stacking the boards as not to show any defects.   Depending on their product orders there could be up to 6 people sorting boards on the belt if all the cut-off saws were operating.   It was pure madness at times as the boards piled up at the end of the belt and then they shut down the cut-off saws until we could pick up the mess at the end of the belt.  This always got the attention of management when production was stopped as we could see a man in a suit appeared from the mill office, not in a happy mood. 

We were given a 10-minute break in the morning, a half-hour for lunch, and another 10-minute break in the afternoon.   Punching a time card was required when starting work, at noon for lunch, when we returned from lunch, and at the end of the workday.   After two weeks the union representative would approach me when in line to punch my time card and asked when I would be going to the union hall to join.   After the third week, he said," we have not seen you at the union hall and you only have a week before you must join and pay your $100 fee."   I had no intention of joining their union since I recently received a notice of acceptance for a position with the Forest Service on the Orleans Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest starting in May of 1971.   Not knowing what Orleans was like I had accepted their job offer knowing it had to be a better work environment than that mill.  

PS--somewhere in this blog is my memoirs of the 6 years I worked at Orleans and other stories about the Indian culture, marijuana growers, Big Foot, and a few other interesting characters that were part of the life around Orleans.

KP DUTY

 KP (Kitchen Patrol) duty in the Army during basic training involved working in the mess hall from the early morning hours throughout the day washing dishes, mopping floors, peeling potatoes, and whatever else the Mess Sergeant wanted us to do.   Most Mess Sergeants had the rank of staff sergeant, were overweight, had that greasy look, and never smiled.  If the Mess Sergeant wasn't yelling at us his assistant with the title First Cook was.   Each platoon had to provide 3 or 4 people for KP duty each day and our names would appear on a roster when it was our turn.   If nothing else it gave us a break from marching out to the rifle range, marching in formation on company grounds, crawling through the sandpit under barbed wire or some other thrilling activity, plus being harassed by the drill sergeants.

Preparing breakfast was always interesting as this process started about 3 am each morning with making toast or biscuits in large ovens, cooking a ton of bacon in boiling pots of oil, scrambling eggs in large trays over the stove along with hash brown potatoes frying on another tray.   It was quantity cooking, without much quality for a company of men, about 150.  I remember an old cadence song that we marched to that went like this, "The biscuits in the Army were so hard one fell off the table and killed a friend of mine."

All the fruit and vegetables I remember were from cans, the big one-gallon cans.   Canned green beans, canned peas, and carrots usually overcooked.   The meat was tough and well done.  The cows must have been raised in west Texas where they grazed on sand, rocks, and an occasional tumbleweed.   In the afternoon we had to peel potatoes outside where the grease trap was located.   This was a large concrete basin with a drain in the center where all the grease was dumped after each meal and large pots and pans were cleaned.  Three or four of us sat in chairs with a mountain of potatoes in the center as we peeled them with knives and placed them in big kettles of water.  There were always potatoes in one form or another for dinner--baked, steamed, or boiled.    Desserts consisted of some kind of cobbler that was baked on large trays where cans of fruit were poured into a crust.   The side benefit of all this was eating before all the troops were allowed in the mess hall as some of us had to help serve and others started washing dishes as they were piled on a counter in a large opening in the dishwashing area.

At the end of the day, we returned to our barracks exhausted and it took a day or two to regain our appetite after the experience.

RIDING THE GREYHOUND BUS

 Did you ever ride the Greyhound Bus and spend any length of time in their bus terminals?   Probably an experience you will never forget.  In my high school years in Sacramento, while attending Christian Brothers High School from 1959-64, a few of us living in the Sacramento Valley had to ride the bus home on weekends.   After taking the city bus to the Greyhound depot in the old part of Sacramento, we had to purchase our tickets and wait an hour or two for the northbound bus going up old Highway 99 to Redding (there was no I-5 freeway back then).   The Sacramento depot was a busy place with busses coming and going.   We had to wait in the terminal where there were wooden benches and all kinds of people, including the good, the bad, and the ugly.   If you have seen one terminal you have seen them all, the nice little cafeterias with a fine selection of items, the semi-clean restrooms, and all the pleasant smells that were part of the experience--diesel fumes, cigarette smoke, cleaning solvents, and the smell of alcohol on some of the passengers carry those brown bags, usually with a bottle of not so fine wine.    I don't recall ever eating in the cafeteria where there were premade white bread sandwiches, dishes of jello, and maybe some kind of other salad dish that did not look too fresh.  In fact, I don't remember anybody ever eating in those establishments.   If you had to use the restroom it was a place you could not get out of fast enough in fear of who was coming in next.   Once on the bus, it no sooner got going 80 mph before it pulled into every little town along the route.   Most of these small towns did not have a depot, just some designated place along a street where a Greyhound sign was posted and people waited for the bus.   It was about 90 miles from Sacramento to our hometown of Willows and it usually took two hours after making seven stops before our final destination.  On one trip home on a Friday night, I remember the bus driver pulling over between Sacramento and Woodland and kicking a drunken passenger off that was urinating in his boot.  There were other occasions with people leaving the bus before their final destination for a variety of reasons, such as fighting, threatening other passengers, etc.   The posted speed limit that I remember was 65 mph and these bus drivers were always behind schedule, so the pedal was to the metal and they were passing any vehicle going less than 70 mph.   We felt like survivors when the bus finally arrived in Willows.   

ELK RIVER & JIM ROGERS

Some of the steepest ground I ever worked on was in the Elk River drainage on the Powers Ranger District of the Siskiyou National Forest in the 1980s.   The Powers District was the smallest in land size on the Siskiyou but had the largest annual timber cut at 90 million board feet (MMBF) per year.   There were 3 sale administrators on the Powers District with a heavy workload of sales in the Coquille River drainage and Eden Valley.

Since the Elk River drainage was closer to Gold Beach sometimes I was assigned sales there to ease the workload on those 3 administrators.   One summer I was given four sales to administered in Elk River, two were falling operations and two were yarding and hauling logs.   One sale was purchased by Moore Mills out of Bandon, where they were cutting trees on very steep slopes.   This contract required trees to be pulled uphill by lining to minimize breakage and protect streams below the clear-cut units.    On conventional clear-cut units falling of trees starts at the bottom of the unit and progresses uphill.   On tree lining units it is the opposite with starting at the top and working downhill.   The first 100 to 200 feet below the landing trees are cut sidehill and removed in order to start pulling the trees below.   A small yarder is set up on the landing with about 1500 feet of cable on one spool.    The crew consists of a yarder engineer and two or three men cutting and bucking the trees.   One of these men climbs, usually the lead cutter, up the tree about 20 to 30 feet and places a choker around it.   This might involve cutting branches as he climbs up the tree.  Next, an undercut is made facing uphill, then the lead cutter, radios to the engineer to pull the line tight until the lead cutter says stop.    A back cut is made to a certain point and the crew backs away to a safe distance and the lead cutter would tell the engineer to pull the tree.   In most cases, the tree would slide back and be held in place by the stump, other times it might overshoot the stump, and downhill it went.   Bucking these trees into logs was a challenge on these steep slopes.

This was all brought to an end sometime in the late 1980s by Jim Rogers, who had been a forester for U.S. Plywood that use to have a mill on Elk River just outside of Port Orford.   Jim quit his job and became an environmentalist after seeing the damage to the fisheries resource in the Elk River by such intense logging practices.   Jim was responsible for the establishment of the Grassy Knob Wilderness and Copper-Salmon Wilderness Areas and eventually bringing an end to clearcutting in the the Elk River drainage.   Oregon Field Guide on OBP put together a program about Jim a few years ago about his fight to save the Elk River.   It is worth watching.

watch.opb.org/video/oregon-field-guide-jim-rogers/

FLOATING THE KLAMATH RIVER

One of the greatest joys in the summers of 1971-72 was floating down the Klamath River from Somes Bar to Orleans.   After a hot day of beating the brush, while doing timber sale preparation work on the Orleans Ranger District, a bunch of us looked forward to floating on inner tubes down the river.   There may have been 6 to 10 of us at different times, including seasonal employees on the brush disposal crew, fire crew, silviculture and timber crew.   We would load up our personally owned pickups with inner tubes that fit large trucks and head up the highway about 8 miles to the Somes Bar store where we proceeded to buy a sufficient amount of beer for the trip.   The pickups where left in the parking lot and somebody would drive us back after floating the river to pick them up.   One inner tube was used to transport the beer.  

I don't remember the number of times we floated the river, but do remember one time that could have been my last.   There are two falls on this stretch of river, Big Ike and Little Ike Falls.   At Big Ike we had to walk around it, Little Ike could be negotiated.   Looking back on how negligent we were I don't remember anybody wearing a life vest or even any talk about having one nor did anybody own one.   In my old age I think back on many stupid things we did in our younger days, and this was one of them.   On this particular trip I went over one of these falls, it could have been Big Ike, I don't recall.    The inner tube and I were sucked under water as I struggled to keep my right arm wrapped around the tube.   These were big tubes and a man's arm could only encircle about half of it as the current threatened to separate me from the tube.   I don't know or remember how long I was under water, but my last gasp of air was about to be exhaled.   Finally the tube and I shot back up to the surface.    Some of the other people were shocked at what I did and really don't remember what was said afterwards.    The only thing I lost were my glasses, lucky me.  

LIFE THEN AND NOW

 Most of my ancestors were farmers in eastern Canada after migrating from Ireland in the 1840s.   They raised much of what they ate and traded or sold the surplus to neighbors, the local market, including the grain miller, distillery, and butcher.    They had some milk cows, a garden, fruit trees, butchered their own livestock, chickens, and sometimes feasted on wild game.    Much of the excess fruit, mostly apples were made into cider, the fermented type to add a little cheer to their lives.   Life was not easy as they usually worked from sun up to sundown.    Sunday was usually a day of rest and the only time to socially gather with others at church.  Getting there involved hitching a wagon to horses and traveling over a muddy trail to the nearest settlement 5 to 10 miles from home.   After church and depending on the weather people would assemble for a picnic, men would barter over the price of a cow, talk about their crops and maybe share some of their homemade beverages.  Women talked about when they were expecting their next child.

Women married young, had many children, and spent many hours cooking over a wood stove, washing clothes in a tub, and doing some of the outside chores in addition to tending the younger children.   The older children helped with raising their younger siblings and helped out with the milking, planting, and harvesting of crops.    

Some children never went beyond grade school.   If there was a crop failure or some family's house burned down they were at the mercy of relatives and neighbors.  There were no government social programs or insurance.

Many of the young men took up farming after leaving home, some worked in the meatpacking business, and later between 1900-1910 others went to work on the railroads in western Canada.   Visits to the local doctor were for broken bones, bad cuts, or to the dentist to have a tooth pulled.   Most lost all their teeth by the age of 50 and were fitted with false teeth.   Women usually died before their husbands, probably from exhaustion.   If a man became disabled or too old to work he was retired to a corner room in the house and dependent upon his children for care.  Most men, who were lucky died in their 60's and 70's from pneumonia or heart disease.

Today most of us have some kind of education beyond high school, worked an 8 to 10 hour per day job, 5 days a week, and retired after 30 years.   Our biggest challenge was making it through those years without losing our sanity.    We continue putting up with congested traffic, crowded markets, dodging the Covid virus, and making it home in one piece.   Many of us have not been to church in decades, socially gather at the local Bi-Mart parking lot or visit with a neighbor at the mailbox down the hill.  We have social security, Medicare, and maybe some sort of pension or IRA to get us through our retirement years.   If our luck holds out we might make it into our 80's and hopefully, our children have a corner room to put us into if all else fails.  

 

PREVENTING PARKINSON

 Parkinson's Disease is the fastest growing neurological disorder in the world.   In the U.S. it has increased 35% in the last 10 years and expected to double over the next 25 years.   Research has shown the use of trichloroethylene (TCE) used in many household cleaning products might be one culprit with increasing cases of Parkinson's.  The other is the chemical herbicide Paraquat used in agriculture.    In short, these chemicals get into our bodies killing good bacteria or microbes.   Basically, microbes make things that go into your blood to the brain, so what you eat feeds microbes.   

Parkinson Resources of Oregon (PRO) had a virtual conference today on nutrition and the gut-brain connection presented by Dr. Heather Zwickey.   She stressed the need to avoid inflammatory foods, such as dairy, meats, sugars, and produce that have been grown with pesticides and go more for a plant-based diet, mostly with organics vegetables, nuts, herbs, etc. 

The second speaker was Dr. Caroline Tanner presenting a public health approach to preventing Parkinson's.   Parkinson's can be caused by pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls, head injuries, chlorinated solvents, military service ( agent orange), age, welding/metals, physical inactivity, and air pollution.    Constipation, sleep disorders, anosmia, anxiety, depression could be the prodromal stage of Parkinson's diagnosis before any symptoms start showing.   

The dilemma is can we change our diet, behavior pattern, and environment to prevent or slow the progression of Parkinson's?    

DROUGHT

 Most of the western U.S. is entering another year of drought.   Many California reservoirs are below 50% capacity and water allocations are being limited to local irrigation districts, which means less water for irrigating crops.   The pumping of groundwater is causing some areas of California to sink as the aquifers are being depleted. Rangeland, dependent on winter rainfall for grazing livestock is not available and the need for supplemental feeding becomes necessary, such as hay and feed grains, which cost more.    The eastern part of the U.S. is at the mercy of extreme weather events, such as tornadoes, flooding, hail storms, and hurricanes causing damage to crops.  Each year more farms and ranches are going out of business due to weather events, crop failures, and expenses exceeding income.  This will only increase the price of food at the markets and some items will no longer be available.  

This is also a worldwide problem leading to mass migration, starvation, and civil unrest.  

Except for a few drops of rain, this morning the first week of April 2021 has been the driest I have seen since recording daily precipitation since 2008 at our place.   The long-range forecast is not good.   

TRAVELING THE BACK ROADS OF MY MEMORY

 When I went to Lassen College in Susanville, California from 1968 to 1970, I spent many weekends driving the back roads of the surrounding area in my old 1963 Ford pickup.   There is the Lassen National Forest to the north of Susanville, where the terrain is so flat in places that you could get lost without a map.   Most of the forest roads were single-lane dirt roads going through sagebrush meadows, pine, and juniper forests.   Road signs were far and few between or just downright missing.   At some road junctions, you were at the mercy of just guessing which way was the right way.  You could drive all day and never see another vehicle.  If you had a breakdown or ran out of gas it was a long walk back to town, if you could find your way out of the maze of roads to a highway leading back to civilization.   Some roads made their way to Eagle Lake with summer homes and a paved road going back toward town.   

To the west is the Plumas National Forest with Diamond Peak overlooking Susanville.    There was a dirt road that went from Diamond Peak through the mixed conifer forest and came out at Mountain Meadow Reservoir east of Westwood, an old mill town with company housing that was owned by the Red River Lumber Company.   Now a scenic tourist community.  

To the south and east of Susanville, there is the Honey Lake Basin, with surrounding farms, high desserts, and isolated mountain ranges all the way into Nevada.   Honey Lake is where all the water from snowmelt on the eastside of the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains drains into with no outlet to the ocean, actually part of the Great Basin that makeup Nevada and western Utah.   When Honey Lake is completely full it is only 3 to 6 feet deep.   The Sierra Army Depot is east and south of Honey Lake with all kinds of underground bunkers and off-limits to public traffic.

One of the most adventurous drives was east of Susanville through high dessert, the Smoke Creek Mountains, remote cattle ranches, and ending up in the old railroad town of Gerlach, Nevada.   The only people I remember seeing on that trip were some cowhands while passing through a ranch.  For all I know I could have been on a private road as they all looked at me as if I was lost.   

THE BIRDS and the BEES

 No, not those birds and bees.  The is about the real birds and bees, sorry.   This time of year the air is filled with birds and bees.    As I get distracted from what I should be doing, which is not hard to do, I wander off to watch all the bees in the flowering trees.  All kinds of bees, small black ones, white ones, multi colored ones and many honey bees.   Even the Mason bees are coming out of their nest boxes.  

The birds start singing as soon as the sun appears in the morning.  The Stellar Jays sit in an oak tree by the house in the early morning and talk to one another before they go off to harass other birds.  Even the buzzards are back.

Maybe a story another day about the other Birds and the Bees, the ones most of us learned about in the public library when we got distracted from our studies by those books in the reproductive health section.  

SPRING 2021

With the changing of the seasons comes all the spring projects.   Darn, I never finished all the winter projects.   Spring house cleaning should be priority one, but I doubt that will get the attention it deserves.  There is painting to do, gardening, pruning, firewood to split for next winter, grass to cut, preparing for fire season and the dreaded summer ahead.     

I forgot, time to get the hammock out where I can retreat and think of all that needs to be done.