MY DOG JACK

It was a late November afternoon in 1989 when I was about ready to leave work at the Cottage Grove Ranger District office and go home to a little house I rented on Lynx Hollow Road north of Cottage Grove.   No sooner than I started packing up my things to head out the door when a woman that worked on the road maintenance crew came up to me asking if I would take a puppy they picked up walking along a forest road where it was beginning to snow.   She knew I had just put my old family dog Corky to sleep because of health issues.   She said she could not take the dog because they already had some dogs.    So I went home with the little black puppy that looked more like a cub bear that I named Jack.

There was a storage room in the back of the house where I left Jack during the day with food, water and a partially opened window as I went off to work.   When I came home at night I let Jack out in the back yard and he had free range in the house at night.   One wall of the storage room had unpacked boxes of items from the house I sold in Gold Beach in 1988.   After a few weeks I noticed Jack was in a corner of the storage room as if something had been bothering him during the day.  One day I saw a wild cat jump in through the opened window and discovered she had a litter of kittens in one of the boxes.   Jack had become accustomed to this wild cat coming and going as she raised her kittens.   Later I discovered the after birth in the box where she had the litter.   The wild cat and her kittens left the house to live in the barn behind the house and roam the nearby fields for rats or other small varmints.   In 1991 I bought a house in south Eugene in order to allow my two children to live with me on a part-time basis while they were in high school and their mother was considering moving out of the area.   Jack was two years old and I constructed a fenced yard with a dog house where he stayed when I was working in Cottage Grove.  Over the next few years Jack went on many hikes, backpacking trips and in the Fall of 1997 went on a  cross country car trip with me to visit a sister living in Indiana.    When Celia and I bought a house in Cottage Grove and got married in 2000 Jack became part of the family.   Jack was susceptible to seizures and in 2005 we had to send him over the Rainbow Bridge due to failing health.  

      

THE OLD MAN AND HIS DOG

Recently I went to the Oregon coast to visit my daughter and her family near Waldport where they had rented a beach house.    One morning we went to Seal Rock beach at low tide to explore all the tide pools and the creatures that live there.   There is a moderately steep trail from the parking lot going down hill to the beach.   Once we made it down to the beach I looked back up the trail to see an older man with his small dog on a leash coming down behind us.   I would guess he was around 80 years of age and very attached to his dog as he waved at me.   I waved back as we went down to the exposed rocks covered with muscles and all types of barnacles.   I noticed the old man walking on the upper beach playing with his dog now off the leash running around freely.    About an half hour later he made his way slowly back up the trial with his dog and disappeared into the forest leading to the parking lot.   I wondered if he was traveling in a motorhome, or lived nearby and if he had any family?     Sadly I suspect that dog was his family.   

CAMPING IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE

Recently a friend invited me on a camping trip up to Scott Lake, which is about 15 miles up the old McKenzie Highway over 4000 feet in elevation.    It has been a few years since my last camp out and much of my camping gear is old, like me.  I looked forward to getting back up in the high mountains to enjoy the solitude of nature, a campfire and boiling up a pot of coffee in the morning.    Most campgrounds require reservations and payment in advance online these days.   This campground required no reservations and picking out a campsites was based on first come, first get with a fee of $5 per car.    After picking out two campsites we went back to pay the fees thinking there were envelopes to deposit the money in and take the receipt back to put in the car windows to show that we paid.    To our surprise it required an app on our smart phones to scan the campground code.   Being out of range of a signal to the internet a sign was posted stating it would download the payment once we had a signal again.   We were unable to get any of this to work on our smart phones and figured that nobody would be checking on us this time of year.   There was no campground host and nobody showed up to check for receipts.  I guess we cheated the government out of $10.  

Now about that old camping equipment, especially my old backpacking mummy sleeping bag of 40 plus years that was to keep me warm down to 20 degrees below zero.  It didn't work, I was cold all night, even with flannel pajamas on and a wool hat.  Later I was told the down in those old bags becomes less effective over time.  I guess the time had run out of my old bag.   Then I got thinking back on when Celia and I slept in two full-size sleeping bags zipped together and how warm we were, especially with two warm bodies in the same bag, sometime we got too hot!    One thing for sure is that coffee still taste good in the early morning mountain air and those Canada Jays or camp robbers are still around to pick up any morsel that may fall to the ground.  

THE LOSS OF AN OLD FRIEND

I received an email from Judy Barceloux, the wife of my old friend Alan Barceloux, informing me he passed away August 12th. Alan had been fighting stage 4 lung cancer for the last five or six months. Alan and I had known each other going back to our days as Boy Scouts in Willows, California in the late 1950's. We had many adventures together exploring the Mendocino National Forest during the summers in our high school years, including backpacking through the Middle Eel Yolla Bolly Wilderness Area. We spent some early mornings hunting ducks and geese in the rice fields south of town during the winter months. In 1966 Alan enlisted in the Air Force for three years during the Vietnam war at the same time I was drafted into the Army for two years. In the Fall of 1969 Alan and I shared an apartment together while we both attended Lassen College in Susanville, California under the GI Bill. Later he attended Chico State University then took over the family auto parts business of Baceloux Brothers Auto Supply in Willows and worked at the NAPA Auto parts store in Orland until he retired. No doubt we drank our fair share of beer together over the years. We kept in touch by email and in many ways Alan was like a brother to me. Whenever Celia and I were visiting family in Chico we would enjoy a meal and have a few beers with Alan and his wife Judy. RIP old friend!

8/16/2022

THE MENDOCINO NATIONAL FOREST

This is the only national forest in California without a major paved road entering it and no year-around highway crossing over it.   There is Forest Highway 7, a Forest Service gravel road crossing over Mendocino Pass from east to west, but is not open in the winter due to snow.   This road connects state Highway 162 from Willows to Highway 162 in Covelo, a two and half hour drive over 85 miles.   Willows is the Forest Headquarters and known as the Gateway to the Mendocino National Forest.   Hard to believe when Willows is located in the Sacramento Valley with only a view of the Coast Range Mountain to the west some 40 miles away.    One of the most tragic incidents was the loss of 15 firefighters on the Rattlesnake Wildfire in July of 1953 in Grindstone Canyon.  The scar on the landscape from that fire was visible from Willows.   

As a kid I spent many hours looking west at these mountains from our house west of town and wondering what it would be like to see what is over that ridge or up that canyon.   The Willows Ranger District winter office was up stairs in the Willows Post Office, where I got my first  Forest Service map dated 1956.    The District had a summer ranger station at Alder Springs about 45 miles up in the mountains from Willows.    I studied that map until I almost had it memorized.  There were place names on the map that I wanted to explore--Hokey Pokey Ridge, Snow Mountain, Hays Place, Plaskett Meadows, Keller Lake, Jenks Place, Log Springs Guard Station and many more.  

As teenagers a friend and I drove around the Forest in one of my dad's farm pickups exploring different places on that forest map.    We spent 3 or 4 days driving around on forest roads with a 50 gallon barrel of gas with a pump in the pick up bed to keep us going, along with camping gear.   I don't recall seeing many other vehicles, except a Forest Service employee checking camp fires in a campground.   We went as far west as Mendocino Pass and drove more roads than I can remember.    In the summer of 1962 we backpacked four days through the Yolla Bolly Middle Eel Wilderness Area after my dad dropped us off at a trailhead at a place called Brown's Camp.   From there we hiked to a small lake near South Yolla Bolly Mountain.   The second night was with the fire lookout on Hammerhorn Mountain, and from there down to Elk Lake for a night before hiking out of the wilderness to a Forest Service road where we caught a ride with a Forest Service road engineer to a logging camp where we spent a night.  The next day we caught a ride on a logging truck to Paskenta where one of our parents picked us up.  

Over the last few years most of this Forest has been destroyed from catastrophic wildfires, including summer home tracks, campgrounds, Forest Service guard stations, many road signs and other improvements.  The Willows Ranger District no longer exist and was combined with two other Districts of the five original Districts over the years.   Today there is only three ranger districts and the Forest I once was familiar with is gone, except for the memories.    

CABIN ON WOOLEY CREEK

A co-worker and I came across this cabin while backpacking the Wooley Creek trail into the Marble Mountain Wilderness Area in 1972.   We looked inside the cabin as it was not locked and saw beds with blankets on them and dishes in the kitchen.  It was one big room.   We assumed it was being used by a Forest Service trial crew.    Most Forest Service cabins in wilderness areas are not locked and can be used by the public in the event of foul weather or an emergency.   President Hoover was known to have fished Wooley Creek and may have stayed in this cabin.   With all the fires over the decades since 1972, I'm not sure if this cabin is still there.   Many cabins in the wilderness areas have come to disrepair, vandalism or burned down either by wildfires or the Forest Service due to liability problems or to keep squatters from taking them over.  

MY DOG HERMAN

 This was my dog Herman when I lived in Orleans from 1971-77.    He was part Chow and not sure what else, mostly All-American mutt.   I found him as a puppy walking along Highway 96 near Somes Bar.   Later I was told he my have come from a litter of dogs belonging to an Indian family living in that area.   Herman would go to work with me up until the Forest Service put an end to dogs going to work with employees, maybe in 1973-74.  When Christine and I married in 1975, Herman join the family, along with Christine's two dogs.   Herman went with me on many backpacking trips and always in my pickup on road trips.  He became a bad influence on Christine's dogs at times leading them in to trouble now and then.  

On one of our monthly shopping trips to Eureka we left the dogs in the back of the pickup, which had a camper shell on it with open screen windows.   The store we were shopping at was called Bazar's, a large department store with groceries, clothing, hardware and sporting equipment.   While we were in the center of the store we could hear people laughing and gasping as all three of our dogs were coming toward us in the aisle we were in.   The dogs had ripped open one of the screen windows, got scent of our trail, somehow entered through automatic sliding door into the store and followed our scent to the aisle we were in.   It was Herman leading the way as all three dogs were happy to have found us.    

THE TRINITY ALPS

With all the grim news lately I have resorted to getting lost in some old books I  have on places we backpacked into many years ago.   One place that stands out is the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area in northern California.   A hiking and backpacking guide book titled,  "The Trinity Alps" by Luther Linkhart describes 29 trips in to this wilderness area.   In the beginning of his book he describes the natural history and the human history of the Trinity Alps.  He gives directions from state highways to Forest Service Roads to trial heads, land marks to look for, how trails follow streams, ridges, what lakes are accessible from what trials and where side trails go.   He tells of old mining claims, provides pictures of mining equipment and cabins that remain from the gold mining days going back to the 1850's.    There is a story about George Jorstad, who built a cabin in 1937 on his claim and remained there until 1983 when he was over 80 years of age.   The cabin still remains, along with few other others.   During the 1970's the northwestern portion the wilderness area was under the control of marijuana growers that threaten hikers and Forest Service personnel.   The public was advised to stay out that area as many growers were armed and dangerous.   In the 1980's law enforcement agencies went in to clear out many of the growers.  

It is interesting to retrace my travels to some of these places, some places I remember and others that don't come to mind.    Some of my early trips were on weekends when I lived and worked for the Forest Service in Orleans.    On a Friday night after work I would pack a canteen of water, sleeping bag, a cooking pot, some utensils, trail food in a pack and off we went, me and my dog, Herman.    Herman was a puppy, mostly of the mutt variety when I found him walking along Highway 96 near Somes Bar in 1971.    Herman accompanied me on many hikes both to the Trinity Alps and the Marble Mountains.  In 1993 family members and myself backpacked in from the Coffee Creek Road on the eastside of the Trinity Alps for three days.   

Many of these areas have changed due to wild fires, road closures due to a lack of maintenance and deterioration of trails over the last three decades, but I'm sure glad to have these books to escape into during the harsh reality of what is happening in our world.  

EASTERN OREGON

Eastern Oregon has always intrigued me with its vast open country, insolated mountain ranges, high desert, small communities and less people.    I think back on all the places I was fortunate to see in my travels through eastern Oregon, including the Steens Mountains, Alvord Desert, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Lake Owyhee, the Mahogany Mountains, backpacking in the Strawberry and Eagle Cap Wilderness areas, just to name a few.   Celia and I looked at houses in Joseph, but after giving it serious thought decided not to thinking our children would never come visit us.   We even considered buying 40 acres of high desert land for sale outside of Dayville.   Not sure how that would have turned out, probably best we landed where we did.    

This picture is looking south across the John Day Valley toward the Strawberry Mountains.   

YOSEMITE

This story is condensed and revised from a 6 page story I wrote  in 1995 that had some humor in it that only the family would understand.  

 In September of 1995 two of my sisters and I, along with my son and daughter went on a backpacking trip from Tuolumne Meadows down to Yosemite Valley.   This was about a 28 mile hike.  We were over packed with enough food for a month, not well organized and behind schedule.   By 3 pm we approached the wilderness permit booth at Tuolumne Meadows and  noticed a sign saying, "all trails full for the day".  The ranger on duty took pity on us noticing how unprepared and overloaded we looked.   We were given a permit with the stipulation to be at least four miles from Tuolumne Meadows before setting up camp for the night.  In short, they wanted this motley looking bunch out of sight of the general public ASAP.   We found a place to camp before dark, ate our dinner and hung our six food bags, estimated at 75 pounds in a nearby tree in order to keep the bears away.   The next morning we were up with the sun, taking our time preparing breakfast, drinking much coffee and getting an early start by 11 am.   The plan for the day was to push ourselves another five miles to Emeric Lake.   After hiking up hill over Tuolumne Pass, it was all downhill in the Merced River drainage on trails carved out of the granite.   At our camp near Emeric Lake we dug through our 75 pounds of food, ate dinner, hung the bags up and retired for the night.   During the night some of us were awaken by the howling of coyotes.  The next morning was another early start, maybe 10:30 am. after another big breakfast and much coffee.  Our destination for this day was another 5 miles to Merced Lake.   The elevation drop on this day was 2200 feet, mostly in the last two miles.   We arrived at Merced Lake exhausted.   We were required to stay in a designated camp site and we were one of the last groups into the camp leaving us little choice of picking a secluded site.    Some of our neighbors were interesting to watch and I'm sure we were entertaining to them.  There was a man traveling by himself and had the perfect camp with all his equipment laid out just right compared to our camp with everything scattered all over the place.   After eating  dinner we were too tired to wash dishes, so we placed them in metal bear box provided near our camp along with our food bags.  During the night we were aroused by a bear banging on the metal box, probably our box with the dirty dishes.   The next morning some of our neighbors did not look upon us favorably.   Our hike for this day was short with about a 800 foot drop in elevation.   By 2 pm we asked a passing ranger where the nearest camp site might be.  He pointed to to a clump of trees across the river, which was easy to access by walking across the river on a rock out cropping.   This was the best camp site of the trip with a place to swim and good seclusion.    The next day we had a pleasant hike on mostly level trail into Little Yosemite Valley, which is 5 miles by trail from the main valley.   Here there were many people since it was a fairly easy hike up from the big Yosemite Valley, where the lodge, parking lots, and other park tourist facilities are located.   Here again camping was restricted to designated camp sites with bear boxes.   No camp fires were permitted, except at two community sites.  As night settled in, so did the multitudes of people.   The posted rule in this camp was no noise after 10 pm.   We no sooner settled in our tents and sleep started to take hold when people started banging on their pots and pans yelling BEARS!   I looked out of my tent to see flash lights moving through the trees within the camp.   This went on for most the night and I even saw a cub bear run through our camp site.   It was total madness and there were very few early risers in camp the next morning.    After getting our stuff packed up we made the final descent in to the big valley to my sister's car in a parking lot.   We drove back up to Tuolumne Meadows to retrieve my car.   I think we still had 20 pounds of food we never consumed.

It was a trip we would never forget.  

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.  

Wentworth Springs

 Have any of you folks from California ever been to Wentworth Springs on the El Dorado National Forest?  It was my first camping trip in the 1950's with my dad and another family from Willows.   We drove to Georgetown then followed a single lane dirt road to the end, where there was a building that may have been a store and maybe a hotel.  We camped along a stream, sleeping on old bed springs, no tents, some picnic tables and wooden boxes nailed on trees for storing dishes and food.    We spent a day hiking to Loon Lake where I remember a dam constructed out of blocks of granite with many leaks.   Somebody said it had been built by the Chinese.  The landscape was mostly granite with scattered trees.  I have tried to follow it on Google Earth and don't see what I remember.   Funny what we think about in our old age.  

Porcelain Signs

 How many have ever seen the old porcelain trail signs with the white background and green lettering?   My first sighting of one was in the Marble Mountain Wilderness in the 1970's.   Don't remember what it said, but remember it being on a tree along an abandoned trail.   Do remember one or two on the Hardesty Mountain trail system along the north boundary of the Cottage Grove District of the Umpqua National Forest.   Seems they had been there so long the trees were growing over them.

These signs date back to the 1930's and not sure when they were replaced with wooden signs.    Over the years many of the wooden signs have been damaged by animals, used as target practice or removed by people thinking they would look better as a mantel piece.   Most National Forests used to have a sign shop at their main shop and warehouse facilities located in the community where the Forest Supervisor's office was.   Not sure if that is still the case.   With all the wildfires most the wooden signs probably are gone, but the old metal porcelain signs could be buried in the ash for future generations to discover and wonder what prehistoric civilization used these and what happened to those places named on the signs?  

Twenty Years ago...

Today Celia and I celebrate 20 years of marriage. It all started November 1, 1997 when my dog Jack and I were hiking Buford Park outside of Eugene. I noticed a trail party work crew sign pointing to a side trail that I usually never took. Out of curiosity I turned onto that trail not knowing it would change my life. There I met Celia where she and some others were cutting invasive species, such as blackberries and scotch broom. They were members of the Friends of Buford Park & Mt. Pisgah. I made the fatal mistake of handing her my business card and telling her I was available, to work with the group that is. A couple of weeks later she called me about a work party that next weekend. I ended up joining the group where we worked as volunteers until moving to Douglas County in 2006. Celia was working for the University of Oregon Olum Child Development Center and at times I would work for University Housing doing landscape work as a contractor. Our favorite place to meet up and have lunch was the 19th Street Grill. On one of these lunch dates, I told her she was like an old shoe, meaning she was comfortable to be with. She accepted it as a compliment. Thinking back some women might have just got up and left. We were married October 7, 2000.

The Silver Fire

 This fire started 33 years ago.  The recovery project to salvage log afterwards was more intense than trying to suppress all the fires around the Silver Fire, including the Galice, Longwood and others I don't remember the names of.

Not sure how many of you retired FS people were on these fires.

                                                   THE SILVER FIRE

 

In the late summer of 1987 a dry lightning storm moved across northwestern California and southwest Oregon.   It had been a dry hot summer and fires were reported all across the Klamath National Forest in California and the Siskiyou National Forest in Oregon.   Fire crews were dispatched to many of the communities in the Illinois Valley to protect life and property from what was called the Longwood Fire.   With many other fires burning across the west there was a lack of resources to cover all the fires.   There was no major initial attack on fires burning in the back country.  This included much of the roadless area east of the Illinois River in the Indigo and Silver Creek drainages.   The only initial attack on what was called the Silver Fire was smoke jumpers being dropped into the fire area.   They no sooner landed then they had to hike out because of safety concerns as the fire exploded out of the Silver Creek drainage into the Indigo Creek watershed.  The use of aircraft was limited due to all the smoke. 

Many of us non-fire District personnel and Zone 2 engineering people from Gold Beach were sent to the Longwood fire camp near Cave Junction to provide support in the transportation section.   We spent two weeks driving trucks, delivering supplies, fire tools, lunches and water to crews on the fire lines.    Due to a lack of vehicles the Forest Service even rented U-Haul trucks.   We used many of these trucks to move equipment and supplies to a spike camp being set up at Bear Camp.   The National Guard was also helping out, but their Humvees were so wide it was hard to get by them on some of the narrow forest roads.  

During our entire stay there we never saw the sun because of the dense smoke.   All we could see was an orange ball during the day.   Some residents near the community of Takilma were desperate for fire suppression help to save their crop of marijuana.   At times we could get a smell of it burning along some of the roads through that area.   In short many of these fires burned until the Fall rains arrived and extinguished them.  

Then came the recovery project.    Before the smoke even settled Congress was putting pressure on the Forest Service to estimate the amount of timber that might be available for sale.   In many ways, mostly through lobbyists, it was the timber industry wanting to gain access to the timber in the roadless area since the environmental community had been fighting to keep it roadless for years.   Foresters and engineers were detailed in from other Regions to help out with the planning and layout of these salvage sales.     I ended up working with a forester from Montana surveying the burned timber in the Indigo Creek drainage.   This involved hiking from the end of an existing road coming in from the north off the Burnt Ridge Road.   We spent days hiking through large stands of old growth forest that had been completely burned.  These were some of the biggest Douglas-fir trees I have ever seen.   In places we estimated 80 to 100 thousand board feet per acre.   That would be equivalent to 10 to 15 truck loads per acre of mostly three log loads.    Crossing Indigo Creek involved using a bosun’s chair rigged on a cable crossing the stream.   As winter storms started arriving it was common to hear the falling of burned trees off in the distance.   A camp consisting of some wall tents, cots, sleeping bags, cooking stoves and utensils was set up on a flat between Indigo Creek and the Silver Peak ridge for timber and engineering crews to stay at while working long periods of time locating unit boundaries and proposed road locations.    During a period of time when the camp was not used bears invaded the camp helping themselves to some food and dragging the sleeping bags from the tents and using them for beds.  They did very little damage.

Engineers surveyed different proposed road locations and a possible sites for constructing a bridge crossing of Indigo Creek.   They concluded it would very expensive, involving full bench construction due to the steep side slopes.    Over time environmental groups, such as Earth First, became aware of what was happening on the ground and when Forest Service personnel were not in the vicinity they would remove flagging used to locate unit boundaries and road locations.   Some logging equipment on a nearby Forest Service timber sale was sabotaged by this group doing much damage to their yarder by putting gravel in the transmission.   The logger was allowed to put up a gate with a combination Forest Service lock and his lock.   He also wanted to put killer dogs on the sale area which was not agreeable with the Forest Service.

In the end, no roads were constructed across Indigo Creek.  Roads were extended from the existing roads on the north side of the creek and the timber south of the creek was removed by helicopters to landings to the north.   When this was implemented I had transferred to the Cottage Grove District on the Umpqua National Forest in the spring of 1988 to be closer to family living in Eugene.  In the summer of 2002 most this area burned again in the Biscuit Fire, the largest fire in the history of Oregon.    

Communications

 How many of you remember picking up the phone and hearing the operator ask, “number please?”   Usually this was on a party line and sometimes you could hear the neighbor talking and had to wait for them to hang up before getting your call connected.   If the neighbor tied up the line too long sometimes mom had to interrupt and tell Mabelle down the road to stop hogging the line with her gossiping.    By the late 1950’s they came out with the rotary dial phones on private lines and there was no more dealing with the neighbors.  

My first summer job with the Forest Service in 1969 was at the Hilton Spike Camp Guard Station on the Modoc National Forest.    One of our first duties was maintaining the phone line between the guard station and Manzanita Lookout.  It took a few days to clear the fallen branches and trees from the line and splice it where it had been broken.   This line connected two phones that had to be cranked in order to make it ring at the other end.   The lady on the lookout used it whenever she needed us to bring her a load of water or haul her garbage off.   It was used once to report a lightning fire to us since it was after office hours and she was unable to call the dispatcher from her two-way radio.   The problem with this system was not hearing it ring when nobody was near the phone.  The two-way radio system was more reliable, but everybody could hear you all over the Forest depending on your location.    At nights the lookouts could talk to each other over the radio on a social level.  This reminds me of a story a lookout on Hammerhorn Mountain told us when a friend and I spent a night there in 1962 while backpacking through the Yolla Bolly Wilderness on the Mendocino National Forest.   He told us a recently young married couple were the lookouts on a peak to the south of his location, I think called Black Butte.   He said they had left the base set radio transmitter lever on and during the night many of the other Forest lookouts could hear the heated commotion after the lights went out.  

Sometime in the 1990’s cell phones came into use.   Through my credit union in Springfield I got my first analog cell phone in 1997 for free from Verizon with a monthly cost of $20.   When everything went digital they informed my phone had to be replaced and they sent me a Motorola phone, again for free and still $20 a month.   I believe this was in 1999, not sure, but I still have this phone with the original battery.  Took a while to learn how to use it and never fully understood all the functions available on it.    A few years ago I took the phone into the Verizon shop in Roseburg where the people there had never seen one this old.    They checked it out and got it programed for caller ID, call waiting and showed me it could receive and send text messages.   They tried to sell me a new smart phone where my monthly bill would be increased to pay for it over time.   I declined in fear of never learning all its functions and besides my old Motorola could do all the basic things I needed.    When we had our land line phone disconnected four or five years ago we got a second cell phone for Celia.  It is the flip type phone and more complicated to use than my phone.    Our monthly rate for the two phones is $54 with a limit of 700 hours.   Our old land line phone was about the same amount per month and did not include long distant calls.    Now we never leave home without our cell phones.  

How did we ever survive in our younger days riding our bikes down country roads, getting flat tires, crashing into the ditch and getting bruised knees with no way to call mom?    

Wildlife Encounters

 Some of you may have seen the story of my encounter with the cougar.

The encounter with the turkey is a new addition.

Stay safe out there

Happy 4th!

COUGAR ENCOUNTER

 

Living in the forest of southwest Oregon it is common to see wild animals on a daily basis, mostly deer, birds of all kinds and occasionally a few other critters.   There is a system of trials on our property we utilize for recreational hiking and taking inventory of our trees.   One trail has a foot bridge crossing a seasonal creek and leads uphill to our house from the lower 10 acres.  A few years back while hiking this trail on a pleasant spring day, looking at trees and just slowly taking my time I approached the foot bridge and noticed a deer laying down on the other side of the bridge.   I was about 15 feet from crossing the bridge when I noticed the deer had long tail.    Deer do not have long tails.  Then to my shock I realized it was a cougar.  I had no weapon, except a Swiss Army knife in my pocket.  I looked around for a big stick, there was nothing.  I could not see the cougar’s head as it seem to be busy chewing on something.  I slowly backed away thinking it must have heard me and I will probably have to fight for my life using my Swiss Army knife.    After getting some distance away without being attacked I made it home by another route and called the neighbor down the road.   We both returned with weapons, but the cougar was gone and we could see it had killed a deer.  Another neighbor informed us that he had been working near his house a few days before my encounter and a cougar was sitting about 20 feet from him just watching what he was doing.   We all came to the conclusion that this cougar or cougars were too familiar with us humans in their habitat.   A government hunter with dogs was called in and a cougar scent was picked up and the dogs chased it out of our area.   No harm came to the cougar.  

Cougars usually avoid humans and when they do kill a deer they will bury portions of it and return over time to indulge in a meal.   When hiking the trails now, I keep an eye out for them and carry a tool or run power equipment, such as my DR power wagon down the trial to let them knows I’m coming.  

TURKEY ENCOUNTER

 

A year or two after the encounter with the cougar I went down the trail below the house to check on some trees I had planted the past winter with a shovel to clear away any brush that might be growing near the newly planted trees.   As I made my way off the trail through the tall grass and blackberries a hen turkey jumped out at me.   She was not happy with my presence and began coming at me.   I used the shovel to keep her at bay as I made my way back to the trail.  She was jumping up toward my face as I was swinging the shovel in self-defense.    In between swings she would try again to get my face with her claws, it was hand to hand combat.  At times I could not swing the shovel fast enough to keep her away.  Once on the trail I tried to out run her, but she was hot on my heals as I had to turn and swing the shovel to get her away.   She jumped up above the trail to overtake me, but the brush slowed her down and I was able to escape in one piece. 

Thinking back, I wonder how it would have turned out if I did not have that shovel, purely hand to hand combat.

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?