The day of my departure dawns blue and pleasant. The car is packed, all gassed up and ready to go. I kiss my wife goodbye and set out on my way. It is almost 9:00 am.
There’s a natural progression as one leaves the city behind. At first the city freeway is jammed with busy traffic. Cars and their drivers jockey in and out among the massive trucks and their flow is like the flow of a large river – except this is a river where certain of the water molecules are idiots and drive like it. However, that is a subject better left alone.
In less than an hour I am driving east on Interstate 84, beyond the city of Portland and all its outlying suburbs. Here I drive through the Columbia River gorge, one of the spectacular beauty spots of the world, where a broad river, as wide and flat as a lake, is flanked by cliffs, bluffs and overhanging mountains, all clothed in forest and from which several hundred waterfalls descend. It is here that the mighty (it habitually shares this epithet with the Mississippi) Columbia River has excavated its way through the Cascade Mountains. While the surface of the river is less than 300 feet above sea level, the great mountain ranges on either side rise up quickly to 3000 or even 4000 feet.
[...]
As I pass by the Oregon State Park at Catherine Creek I see the local families out in force, passing the Sunday afternoon with picnicking and dips into the water. The children are all wearing swimming suits. The adults are wearing Sunday smiles. The tables are loaded with food and the odd bits of gear that people bring on Sunday outings in the summer. The horseshoe pits are occupied by some of the older patrons of the park. It all looks like fun. But I have other fish to fry and I drive on. The road climbs gently, but continuously.
- Whoa! Wait a minute! What was that? Didn’t that signpost say West Eagle Meadows and point up that road I just passed on my left?
It was past me in a flash, much sooner than I had anticipated. As soon as it is safe I pull to the side and consult my map. It appears the signposted road is an alternative to the road I expected to take. I had overlooked it, because the map indicated it was a minor road and perhaps less than well-maintained. Since I know nothing about either of my two alternatives, I decide to take this one. If it has a signpost, I reckon it must be passable. I go back and turn onto Forest Road 77.
This turning marks the end of the pavement for me. From here onward I shall be driving on graveled roads. It is here that my Forest Service map becomes indispensable. In any U.S. National Forest that you might care to name there is a network of logging roads. In proportion to whether the logging activity in that forest has been merely excessive, or intense to the point of universal destruction, the resulting network of access roads ranges from merely confusing to downright mystifying. (Please note that, while reason would suggest that the continuum of logging activity should begin at a lesser level than “excessive”, mere observation is sufficient to correct this false assumption.) It pays to keep a map of these forest roads open and handy on the passenger seat at all times. You can get very lost up here.
Soon enough I come around a bend in the road (the road for the most part consists of nothing but bends) and encounter a cow and her yearling offspring, grazing beside the road. Wisely, I slow my vehicle to a walking pace as I pass them. The cows (not to mention yearling calves) that graze out here are as likely as not to get it into their dim cow brains to make a sudden run across the road in front of you. That would not be good.
While hare-brained and bird-brained have become watchwords for erratic and foolish behavior, respectively, I am surprised that “cow-brained” has not become a shorthand way of indicating both deficiencies at once. Despite this, I drive past them safely enough. When the yearling calf does bolt at the last moment, it chooses to run parallel to the road, not across it. Lucky me!
A short time later, I see a doe bounding away into a stand of immature trees in an old clear cut. I am rather nonchalant about seeing deer. They are plentiful now that all their old natural enemies are in decline, so the mere sight of one is not heart-catching in and of itself. However, this deer exhibits a leaping grace that I can’t help but admire.
I can never understand how a deer keeps from tripping or stumbling when it runs in the forest. Effortlessly, it navigates obstacles on all sides that would bring me down in a flash if I were running in the woods, and yet the deer evades them all, does so at top speed and makes it look easy. The opposite side of this wonderment is that, at night, when a deer passes my tent at walking speed it sounds like an army of oafs, stomping around and blundering into every bush loudly enough to wake the dead. How these two abilities can coexist in the same creature deserves more careful study by science.
Musing on these things I drive still deeper into the woods. Not many minutes after sighting the deer I make another, more startling, wildlife sighting. Charging out of the underbrush to my right, I see a young black bear. It gallops across the road a few dozen feet in front of my car and crashes its way into the underbrush on the opposite side of the road. In surprise I slow down, even though the bear by this time must be halfway to the next county. It was making good time the last I saw of it.
This bear sighting could scarcely have been much briefer. It was there and then it was gone. In retrospect I surmise it was about two years old, judging by its juvenile size and that it was apparently alone. It probably hasn’t been long away from mama and still isn’t easy in its mind over cutting the apron strings. Bears are quite sensitive souls, despite their size and coarse appearance.
[...]
By the time I stop reading and extinguish the lamp, the night is very dark and (apart from the faint sound of rushing water) very still. I am glad my bed is warm and comfortable. Tomorrow I shall begin to hike. I am soon asleep.