SIGNS OF GETTING OLD

 With the recent hot weather it has become necessary to retreat indoors in the afternoons when temperatures are pushing or exceeding the triple digits.    Usually during this time I strip down to my t-shirt and shorts, start to read and drift off to sleep.    The other day I had gone off to never, never land and awoke to the sound of the UPS truck driving up to the front of the house.   Waking up in a daze I stumbled out the front door to meet the lady driver before realizing I had no pants on.   She handed me the package looking a little stunned, muttered some words, got back in the truck and quickly departed.    I returned indoors and could only laugh at myself, thinking that poor woman!

THE JET BOAT EXPERIENCE

 This story was told to me by a contract timber faller by the name of Lester (Les) Olson.   Les had been a contract faller for South Coast Lumber Company (SCL) out of Brookings that purchased many timber sales on the Gold Beach Ranger District.    Les and his crew had been responsible for cutting many of the clearcut units on the District over many years from the 1970's through the 80's that had been sold to SCL.

As a timber sale contract administrator on the District from 1979-88, I got to know Les and his crew.  While inspecting his operation for required fire equipment and falling practices Les told me about his recent jet boat trip up the Rogue River with his elderly parents.   He said his dad had a hard time of hearing and spoke loudly, especially in the jet boat with the roar of the engine.    There were very few visible clear cut units from the river, except in certain side drainages where you could look up and see a distant unit ranging in size from 20 to 40 acres.    The jet boats could carry up 20 to 30 people, mostly tourists that had very little knowledge of clearcutting on National Forests at the time.    In one of these side drainages Lester's dad yelled out, "Les did you cut that unit!?" pointing up the hill.    Les looked at his dad in shock placing his index finger over his mouth in hopes his dad would be quiet as many of the people on the boat turned to look at Les in disbelief.    Les said his dad got the message after that, seeing all the heads turning.  

EXCITEMENT AT THE BRUSHY BAR CABIN

On the lower end of the wild and scenic Rogue River trail on the Gold Beach Ranger District is a Forest Service cabin at Brushy Bar.   It was used by Forest Service personnel doing trail work and checking for abandoned camp fires in the various camp sites along the trail.   During the summer of 1986 a seasonal employee by the name of Jeff had the job of patrolling this lower section of  trail and stayed in the cabin.    He had struck up a friendship with a female seasonal employee working on the District.  On her days off sometimes she would hike up the trail to see Jeff, including spending the night.  After one of these nights there was a knock on the door the next morning.  As Jeff opened the door he was greeted by the Forest Supervisor and some of his staff assistants, who had been hiking down the Rogue River trail checking on things.   In the back room of the cabin the young woman could hear the conversation and jumped out a back window to hide in the brush.  The management staff seem to be happy with what they saw and continued on their way down the trail.  Jeff told the story later and thought it was the end of his job as the staff people looked through the cabin having no idea the young woman was hiding outside in the brush.  Jeff thought she was still in the bedroom, maybe hiding under the bed.      

FLOATING THE ROGUE RIVER

Allen Wilson was a neighbor and friend when we lived on Hunter Creek outside of Gold Beach in the 1980's.   He had been a river guide on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and few other rivers, including the Rogue River.   To float the Wild and Scenic section of the Rogue River requires a permit between May and October, and sometimes you need to apply a year in advance for the time period you want.   The permit covers a certain number of people in the group and I don't remember the limit.    Allen had a permit for a summer float trip and asked me if I would be interested in going since he had a vacancy in their permit.   The reason for the permit was to insure each party of a place to camp, since there is only so many sand bars available in the wild and scenic portion to spend the night, plus try to make it a wilderness experience without bumper to bumper traffic going down the river.   The permit required all trash and human waste to be removed.  Allen had a bucket that we used to deposit our daily waste into after placing it in plastic bags.   To go up behind a rock to do our business we could see toilet paper and more behind every big rock.   During the high water in the winter all this got flushed down river.  No wonder it was common to get giardia from the Gold Beach water source.   

To start the trip we had to drive over Bear Camp Road toward Grants Pass and check in at the BLM Visitor Center at Rand to be issued a permit to be displayed on the raft.   It was a 3 or 4 day trip down to Foster Bar where we ended our trip.   Allen knew the rough rapids and where we had to pull the raft from the river and portage around, such as Black Bar falls.   On our second or third day we reached the Rogue River Ranch, a national historic site at Marial administered by BLM.   We spent a few hours looking at the ranch and the old house, used as a museum as  I recall.   There is a BLM road coming into the ranch from the north.  Beyond Marial we entered the Siskiyou National Forest where the old Mule Creek Guard Station was utilized by the trail crew that maintained the Rogue River trail.  The last dangerous rapid is at Blossom Bar.   Allen was experienced at getting a raft over this rapid, but many others have tried this, some have failed and some drowned.   This is the upper limit where jet boats coming up river from Gold Beach can go.   Many of these jet boats bring people up to the lodge at Paradise Bar, just below Blossom Bar.   In many ways this is where the wilderness experience ends.  

   

CALIFORNIA HWY 139

State highway 139 went east out of Susanville into the rocky hills and up onto the high dessert of northeast California.   It was a 67 mile trip between Susanville to the Big Valley Ranger Station in the small town of Adin on the Modoc National Forest.  It was another 20 miles on forest roads through a mixed conifer forest to the Hilton Spike Camp Guard Station where I spent my first summer in 1969 working for the Forest Service on a fire crew.  On my days off I would drive back on Highway 139 to Susanville to visit friends where I was taking a two year forestry course at Lassen College under the GI Bill.   The scenery along this highway consisted of an arid landscape of stage brush and Juniper trees scattered across valleys and hills, mostly utilized as range land for cattle.   There were a few corrals and old barns along the highway with dirt roads leading off to remote ranches, some with gates closing them off  to the public.  Portion of the highway went along the arid east shore of Eagle Lake, the second largest natural lake in California.   The high point of this highway was the Willow Creek campground in the open pine forests of the Modoc National Forest.  One of the only houses along this highway was a white house known as the Willow Creek Guard Station just south of the campground, where a fire patrolman was stationed during the summer months.  The campground is still there, but the station house is gone now.    A few miles after this the highway descended into the Big Valley, an arid valley of cattle ranches with irrigated pastures and hay fields.  I remember very little traffic on this highway.   Sometimes it was like a journey you did not want to end or really cared if you ever arrived at your destination.    

THE MANY ROADS OF DOUGLAS COUNTY

I have lived in Douglas County for over 16 years and probably have only traveled over half the county roads, mostly in the north end of the county.   The best part of driving the back roads is the scenery and not much traffic.   The county roads are well maintained.    It would take a life time and good amount of money with the price of fuel these days to cover all the roads in the county, including all the forest roads on the Umpqua National Forest and the BLM roads.   

Picture is looking north at Tyee Mountain on Melqua Road in Coles Valley.  

PAPER WORK MANAGEMENT DISORDER (PWMD)

What you are looking at is my deck, better known as chaos central.    Believe me, this looks better than a year ago when you could not see the deck top and many piles were on the floor.    Rita helped me organized it all under the three option filing system--action file, important paper file and the trash bin.   It is just a matter of forcing myself to do it, but first I better pay some bills, if I can find them before the lights are turned off.

How many others suffer from PWMD?

SLASH BURNING

 In my early days with the Forest Service on the Orleans Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest from 1971-77, we would spend two weeks every fall broadcast burning slash on all the steep clear cut units logged that year.    This involved all District personnel, except the clerical staff.  

One unit that stands out in my memory was on the Catsup Timber Sale.  It was an 80 acre clear cut unit with all the hardwood trees cut and left on the ground.   This sale was sold prior to the requirement for the timber purchaser to yard unutilized material (YUM) greater than 8 inches in diameter and 10 feet in length.  This would reduce the heat to prevent the soils from being damaged.   Strip burning was the prescribed method on most clear cut units where machine piling of slash was not possible due to the steep slopes.  This involved a person walking across the top of the unit 20 feet or so below the upper fire line, which usually was a road.   The next person would follow another 20 or 30 feet below the first person and try to stay 40 to 50 feet behind the upper person as not have fire threaten that person above.  It was very important to keep an eye on where that upper person was.  Because of the width of this unit we were required to carry two drip torches, each with two gallons of fuel to get us across the unit and weighing about 20 pounds each when full.   Some where in the line up I was number 5 or 6 downhill going side hill on 40% to 50% slope with slash and hardwood trees 10 feet to 15 feet above the ground making it tough to climb through, especially juggling the two drip torches   It was difficult at times to see the person above me since he was battling the slash and hardwoods also, and at times not visible.   When I was finally able to see where that person above me was at, to my shock he was behind me 30 or 40 feet.    I stopped to let him get ahead of me as the fires from my torch were racing toward him.    Luckily he made it without being scorch.   When the upper portion of the unit was burning a person at the bottom of the unit, about 1200 feet below the road set fires along the bottom as he walked the three foot wide hand fire line that had been constructed during that summer by the Brush Disposal (BD) crew.   About 10 people were scattered around the unit on the fire lines with hand tools patrolling for any spot fires that may have started beyond the fire lines.   When the burning operation was completed two people along with a pumper truck with a two-way radio remained on the unit throughout the night in case of any escaped fire.     These were long days working into the nights and included weekends as long as the fall rains did not arrive.   For tree planting obligations so many acres had to be burned since the District had ordered thousands of seedlings from the nursery to be planted by contractors that winter.    All this hard work paid off with much over time.    Except for a few close calls nobody was injured. 

JULY 4th 2009

                       Celia at the July 4th parade in Oakland in 2009.   Those were some good days!

WATER

This afternoon I got my first load of truck water delivered from Oakland for this year costing $90 for 2300 gallons.    The last load of water was last October for $75.   The high cost of fuel is what caused the price increase and the further the delivery from Oakland the higher the cost.   He has one customer in Scottsburg that requires two loads a month at $200 per load or $400 for the month.  

This morning I read in the news that many communities in Arizona are running low on water and many wells in rural areas are going dry.   Bulk water deliveries are common there and some communities are thinking of cutting off these water trucks because of the water supply issue.    How much longer before this happens here?