Coffin Mountain (2nd hike of the 33)

The day started much later than I had planned. Therefore, my trip did not end where I had hoped. Coffin Mountain was a backup destination. Over 70 miles from home, my car got good marks for effort while climbing up into the local mountains. In the final stretch, as it chugged up National Forest Road 11 I did have to pull over twice to turn off the car for a few minutes. Perhaps this precaution was unnecessary, but I got nervous as the engine temperature slowly rose past 200 degrees, inching closer and closer to the red zone. The road was deserted. I freely drove at a speed within my comfort zone. After turning onto the appropriate gravel forest road and continuing up and up, I began to doubt myself. Hiking alone is dangerous, even more so for a woman. My cell phone had no reception. The road twisted along the edge of a cliff. Two cars could barely pass and there was no guardrail. Panic grabbed hold of me. For a short distance I intentionally drove on the wrong side of the road. Several times I contemplated turning back, trying to convince myself that I misunderstood the directions. The view was breathtaking, but the location was so isolated that I felt the earth could swallow me up and I would never be found.

Rounding the last cliff I made a pact with myself to drive two more miles. If the trailhead could not deign to appear, well I could turn back. There were other, safer places I could go. But just past that bend appeared a road to the left. As my car pulled in to the parking area I took a deep breath. Was I relieved or disappointed? I no longer remember. At the signboard I took a few deep breaths, pleased with the wonderfully intoxicating smell of mountain air. The sky, hazy in the distance, displayed a bright blue overhead. Puffy clouds drifted at a higher altitude, clinging to nearby Mt. Jefferson. The plants along the trail were wet with the remnants of a morning rain shower. The air was cool enough to encourage me to keep my sweatshirt on.

As many trails do, this one climbed up. Near the bottom third grew abundant blue lupine and what I thought were wild blueberries. I tried smelling the berries, but could not definitively identify them, and therefore chose to pass on the trailside snacks. The mountainside and the trees obscured some of the view. Instead, I focused on the wildflowers around me and the insects. If I remember anything auditory about this hike, it will be the constant buzzing of bees. Wherever they may have disappeared from, they seemed to be doing well up the mountain, and hard at work pollinating the wildflowers. Had been allergic, I might have thought about turning back simply on that account. Thankfully they left me alone. Another pervading sound was the clattering of grasshoppers. In all my years of city life, it never came to my attention that grasshoppers make noise. Yet, as they flew away from the danger of me stomping them to a pulp, they produced sharp, distinctive, clopping and clattering noises. Butterflies also filled the air, silently dancing through the flowers on wings of orange, yellow, and shimmery purple.

This trail had quite a few lessons to teach me. I was certain that it would not. Once someone told me that the hike up to Manoa Falls on Oahu was an enlightening, almost magical, experience. For me it was not, period. And on top of that, I left with a bloody gash in my leg. Nevertheless, many other hikes have helped me to think through problems and make hard decisions. This morning was a drive morning. An attempted escape. A don't-think-about-anything kind of morning. Once on that mountain I was faced with all of the things I was scared of. Despite an easy trail, my body was tired. I blamed the elevation, but it was deeper than that. Each time I stopped for water, I considered turning back. I tried to generate excuses. My car. Being alone. The time. No cell reception. Being female. My backpack was too heavy. I've been scared of grasshoppers since fourth grade. I dug in deep to find excuses, but something else pushed me up the mountain.

Shortly, I passed the only other hikers on their way down, a young girl, a man I presumed to be her father, and perhaps his father. Very friendly. They thought perhaps I was with the Forest Service as the usual person posted at the lookout point was absent. I reviewed myself mentally wondering what about me might tag me with Forest Service, and came up blank. The thought did intrigue me though, spending long periods of time alone out in the wilderness. It might be a good job for me, I considered. Once at the top, I realized it might also drive me mad. How does one come back down and reintegrate into society?

A while later I found a good place to sit and lunch. I had before me quite possibly the boldest panoramic ever at a mealtime (horribly squashed in my panoramic photo stitching). I felt a largess in sitting eye-to-eye among giants and also, infinitely small, lost like a pebble on the mountainside. Initial joy turned to heavy-heartedness. It too helped push me up that mountain. The trail switch-backed through meadows of wildflowers. Coming and going I caught glimpses of Mt. Jefferson to the northeast slowly emerging the clouds, like a reluctant sleeper from behind his blanket. As the path climbed up further only scattered trees dotted the hillside, some weather-beaten and decaying.

Before I was ready for the zig-zagging to end, the ground leveled out, trees reappeared and a sign reminded me that I was not welcome to spend the night. The trail cut through the trees carefully to a point on the cliff where a lookout tower, windows facing all directions sat closed off and unoccupied. I scurried about ever respectful of the drop off. I spied a wooden platform I suspected might serve as a helipad and scanned the horizon briefly for any movement. But there was none. I was alone. The sun warmed me as my thoughts sent shivers crawling across my skin. I checked out the northern vista, hidden on the trek up, and turned to scamper back down the mountain.

As with the last hike, I found directions and information for this hike in William L. Sullivan's 100 Hikes in the Central Oregon Cascades (3rd ed.)

Shellburg Falls (1st hike of the 33)

This adventure began with a wrong turn. Those who know me, know that I have a tendency to get lost. However, just as I lose my way I learn to find it again, though not always by turning back. That's how this morning began. I turned early off the highway onto the road I knew I was to take. My old car chugged up the hill groaning a bit at the incline. Well past the 1.3 mile spot where the trailhead should have been the country side was covered with golden grasses, isolated country homes and aging barns. Not a trickle or stream in sight. Without them a waterfall seemed unlikely. I contemplated my wrong turn and considered doubling back. The road had risen up the ridge and the vista with hills glowing in the morning sun seemed more appropriate than the raging tunnel of the highway. I rightly assumed that the road I had taken must wind back down to the spot where I should have turned.

Tucked into the rolling Santiam foothills off Highway 22 on the way up into the Cascades is Shellburg Falls. From the five car parking lot on Fern Ridge Rd. with a bent day-use recreation sign I headed up the gravel road. At 9:30am it was already warm and humid. The sky wasn't quite blue, but streaked with a bright cottony haze. The road passed through overgrown fields lined with tall and overgrown Christmas tress. I had been hoping for a myriad of wildflowers dotting the roadside, instead a few blackberry brambles, some Queen Anne's lace, an occasional thistle and a bright yellow flower shaped like miniature daisies were all that noticed. Despite it being the first weekend in August, the blackberries, with the exception of those right close to the trailhead, had not yet ripened. Gravel crunched under my feet and beads of sweat began rolling down my temples less than half a mile up the way. The smell of drying grass hung in the air. Occasional cattle grids in the road caused me to step more carefully.

Soon I passed a grove of five to six foot Christmas trees all lined up perfectly. It seemed a great place to play hide and seek, if I were younger. After that point trees and forest more closely lined the road, offering more shade, but little relief from the humidity. My GPS indicated that the official trail had not yet been reached and I fought the urge to wander off on the paths leading off into the woods. When I first caught glimpse of the forest boundary sign, I let out a little whoop eager to escape the crushing sound of gravel under foot, but it was few tenths of a mile too soon. Just about where William Sullivan's guide book said it would be, there appeared a trail marker and signboard. Unfortunately, some vandalous hiker had removed all of the signs from the board. I gave myself a pat on the back for having grabbed a copy of the trail map at the trailhead.


Here I paused to snap a few pictures out to the south, a landscape of seemingly infinite mountains. With the light and the haze, only at certain angles did the photographs appear to have any depth to them. I pondered how many climbable peaks there may be out there, and what treasures they might hide. Then I drank down a good portion of water and ascended the shored up stairs behind the trail marker. Not but a few steps down the path the sensation of sticky spiderwebs clinging to my limbs sent me into a semi frenzied dance. I'd free myself only to take a few more steps and begin the dance again. I couldn't help but wonder when the last person had trekked up that trail.

Almost too quickly a sign post for the lower falls came into view. I scrambled down to the lookout point through more spiderwebs. The thought had occurred to me that I might arrive to find a dry waterfall. after all, the last rains were already erased from my memory. Record temperatures had oppressed us for nearly a week. The trickling of water gave me hope, that I had not come to see an imaginary cascade, but that in fact there might be something tangible there. Water was indeed falling, but it was falling like from a shower head with weak pressure. More impressive than the water, was the giant rock formation over which it tumbled.



After a short scramble down to the puddle beneath the falls I decided to continue on my trek. I had forgotten that the trail description had mentioned how the path cut under the boulder behind the waterfall. The view was beautiful with the sunlight catching on the water so it fell like shards of crystal. However, soon the realization that tons of rock were balanced above my head and a decent earthquake might change the shape of the local scenery, squashing me in the process, sent me scurrying out from under the outcropping.

Once above the falls I walked happily, briefly imagining that everyone else in the world had disappeared. There was no work to return to, no stores to shop at, no farmers, no restaurants, civilization was suddenly gone. And for a few moments, it didn't disturb me. For that brief period of time, I was willing to eke out a livelihood there in the forest. As soon as the path ended at the upper trailhead I sighed, not relieved, but accepting.

Once again I was dumped on a gravel road to trek back down to my vehicle. Had I paid a bit more attention to the legend on the trail map, I might have taken a more picturesque, perhaps even longer, trail part way back. Instead, I crunched on down the gravel road, the upper portion dotted with slowly withering purple foxglove.

Trail distance R/T: 4.3 miles according to my GPS, but it cut out for a little bit around the waterfall. Sullivan lists it as a 4.8 mile loop.

I found this trail thanks to William L. Sullivan's 100 Hikes in the Central Oregon Cascades (3rd ed.)

Milestones - beginning the 33 hikes

In a few short weeks my 33rd birthday will be upon me. At this point, I feel the need for milestones. However, my life has not gone down the most traditional path either careerwise or familywise. I have accomplished a myriad of other things in my life, far less socially quantifiable, better saved for conversational anecdotes than measuring sticks. Yet, I want something that I can actively do and to point to and say this is something I accomplished for me. Family and work depend on other people. And there's just no knowing when those stars will align.

Recently I've felt myself racing down a highway blindfolded knowing that there's a crash comming on. Maybe this is my midlife crisis, or one-third life crisis. Others might buy a car I could never afford, travel to far off places, destructively hurt those around them, or train for a first time marathon. Most of that does not intrests me, and the travel I cannot afford. The thought of running through a city in throng of humanity has no appeal. If I choose to do something, it should be uniquely me.

I most enjoy the fragrance of the countryside, the combined smells of grasses and trees; and the solitude of being away from the crowd, though not necessarily alone. I love hiking, being outdoors, watching butterflies flutter about and rabbits scope me out, photographing landscapes and wildflowers, and getting a little bit of dirt on me. It only makes sense to incorporate this more into my life.

So this is it. Over the next 13 months, to celebrate 33 years of life I will attempt to go on 33 hikes, at a minimum of 3 miles round trip, before my 34th birthday. To avoid hiking the same route 33 times the they must be different trails, or significantly different portions of connecting and intersecting trails. Furthermore, trails I have already hiked are off limits, unless again there is a significantly new portion involved. My camera and GPS will travel with me to document the route. Friends are always welcome to join me, though I realize that I may well end up doing this mostly by myself.

Keep an eye out for 33 new adventures.

Drift Creek Falls

The temperature in the valley is beginning to reflect the summer season. The mercury is climbing upward, so A, his dog and I gladly clambered into his car and migrated to the coast for a few hours. The heat was already pushing 80 as we raced out 22. As the elevation climbed we threw glaces at the in cabin thermometer. It dropped a few degrees as the miles passed.

At Devil's Lake near Lincoln City we checked out prices for renting kayaks. The sun shimmered on the water's surface, but we didn't stay. We wanted to save that adventure for another day.

A few miles further at the coast fog nestled up to the shore. We stopped to introduce A's dog to the Pacific. They'd never met before and she wasn't too sure she liked its cold salty waves.


After a stop for lunch we sought out the road to Drift Creek Falls. Our directions were one step short of accurate, but after a few tries we found the way. Blue skies and sunshine welcomed us. It was a long trek up gravel forest roads lined with foxglove before we reached the trailhead.


The trail was easy though a bit crowded. Near the end was the 200 foot suspension bridge that crossed the creek. A few minutes further down the trail and we reached the creek just below the waterfall. Bugs attacked me on arrival. As I moved closer to the waterfall their pestering lessened. We splashed around in the water while A's dog watched the small fish swimming between the rocks.

The hike back, though not strenuous seemed much longer. The drive back to the coast was much shorter. And the coast was still shrouded in fog. We stopped for dinner to watch the sunset, but the fog was too thick and the wind was cold. Once back in the valley where we live, the heat hugged the earth hours after sunset. We wished we could have smuggled back some of the cooler weather like the bags of taffy we brought back from the coast.

Summer a la Provence

Experience gets under your skin. Memories bubble there. The smallest scent, sight, or sound can trigger one and it scratches its way to the surface. Some rise, burst and dissipate before they fully register in the mind; the hint of familiarity vaporizes in contact with the present. Others, oppressive and dense, suffocate us, like a like woolen blanked in a summer heat wave. But then there are those, sweet and mild, that you must tip-toe after like a beautiful butterfly. If you pounce upon them, they startle and flee. However, if you move softly, slow your breathing, then - like the butterfly - the memory will allow you to approach and savor it like a crisp apple plucked fresh from the tree, more splendid in its simplicity.

It is this butterfly and apple kind of memory that has played hide and seek with me these last few weeks. In fact, it frequently visits me in the late spring and early summer. While I have never visited Provence in full bloom, I crave its fragrance and flavors as if it were a cherished family recipe. Though my three months there were draped in autumn foliage and the signature lavender fields merely added another hue of brown to the landscape, I remember it in the vibrant hues of coffee table picture books and tourist postcards: thirsty greens, deep purples and earthy browns. My palate also longs for zucchinis, tomatoes, leeks, aubergines, onions and garlic simmered in the herbs of the hillsides, a loaf of fresh bread and a few sips of summer wine.

With no means to transport myself to France on a whim, as if indulgence could ever cure the longing, I seek out substitutions. I intermingle lavender into the potted flowers on my balcony. A collection of herbs grows in my kitchen. My Provence cookbook is flagged with a dozen sticky notes and the shopping list calls for produce in a rainbow of colors. The bottle of ranch salad dressing in the refrigerator goes unused as I make my own vinaigrette from memory. On occasion, ingredients are forgotten, but a few random sprinkles of this and that, and a little extra garlic can always remedy it. Sometimes, I'll even go so far as to rent Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources and spend a few hours in the countryside with a mad thief and murderer. I contemplate brushing up on my French by reading the other works of Marcel Pagnol, but never quite go that far.

After so much travel, I've found that there is no curing homesickness. Returning to the place one pines for, the traveler finds the landscape changed. The friends left behind have new chapters to their lives; and the traveler himself is stamped by his voyages having journaled new adventures without them. Few will follow him down his photographic rabbit holes, and fewer still will understand how the smell of thyme and spearmint growing wild on a sunny hillside one afternoon could have woven new tiny threads into his fabric that somehow alter him. We must savor the present wherever we may find ourselves, but know that it is the past that has seasoned us. These moments will soon enough infuse our brains with new snapshots to pull out in the future like souvenir postcards. No matter how many times we may visit a specific place or what herbs and flowers we may grow in the garden to attract it, we cannot capture the butterfly in our memory. We can, however, enjoy more moments by climbing out of the ruts of the road, taking in other vistas and letting them flavor us.

A sad pumpkin story

A few weeks before Halloween K and I headed out to our local pumpkin patch for a crazy pumpkin patch and corn maze adventure. Never having lived in pumpkin-growing country I eagerly awaited my first pumpkin patch experience with more excitement than many of the kids there.

We pulled up in K's shiny red truck and I was immediately struck by the family nature of the event. Clearly we should have borrowed a few kids to make our appearance seem more legitimate. After paying the $6 entrance fee we circled the pumpkin patches clearly planted in stages, making fun of the gourds already succumbing to rot. Once around and the pumpkins seemed puny, not quite worthy of my years of carving practice. Although after having carved a three-foot tall pumpkin for someone in Germany it would be hard to find an equally impressive challenge.

The corn maze was, for me at least, a bigger draw. We wandered around the themed maze having to rely on our knowledge of local geography to find our way around. Eventually, we found the big pile of hay bales that were supposed to represent Mt. Hood. Up we climbed to survey the corn and pumpkins, and the families clustered by the food stand, the livestock and waiting for the hay ride.

After mastering the maze and hay bale Mt. Hood, we required rehydration. Sticky fresh pressed apple cider was for sale. Two bottles were placed into our wheelbarrow and we bumped along to focus on pumpkin selection. K found lots of adorable baby pumpkins, but wanted mostly the ones with the cute curly vines still attached. The rotting pumpkins distracted me often in my search. Imploded, exploded, half rotten, flattened, even one one healthy one placed inside the carcass of a rotten one making it look very much like a skull with an exposed brain, it was the same facination that causes people to stare a train wreck. For a while K and I debated which rotting pumpkin most accurately depicted the state out the current economic situation. We were going to use pictures to make a survey, but unfortunately I accidentially deleted them from my camera before finding a good format for the survey. As for my personal pumpkin, it was a hard choice. I was tickled by the albino and varigated pumpkins. However, I went for the traditional orange with a smooth carvable side and a cute stem. The abundant selection and my indecisiveness led me to find a second that I just could not part with. In the end, one tall and one squat pumpkin followed me home.

For a while they sat on my back porch out in the cold October air. I had big plans to carve them up on Halloween eve. A one-man carving party on my kitchen floor with roasted pumpkin seeds to munch on the next week. Two jack-o-lanterns to set outside my door and greet trick-or-treaters. It all excited me, because I remembered how much fun I had as a kid, both with carving and dressing up. I chose to hold off that long, because last year my pumpkins began to sag and smell before Halloween. Therefore, waiting seemed best. Then came the call I desperately needed, but it also put an end to my plans. My pumpkins sat neglected on my back porch while I went to work, second shift for more than a week. My porch light remained dark and I had to eat the candy myself. Next year, perhaps my pumpkin story will have a happier ending.

The last fruits of summer and a bit of Frost

As the fog lifted I headed toward the local park to explore the trails along the river. I wandered around thinking to myself about the great blue sky, the changing leaves and everything that has happened over the last few months. The smell of nature all around me was intoxicating. My miniature camera took pictures of everything, but later as I reviewed them, the pictures seemed less impressive without all of those intermingling scents or the feeling of sun on my face.

I spent hours there walking only a portion of the miles and miles of trails. At one point as I stood there about to choose between branching paths, that Robert Frost poem I had to memorize in 8th grade came back to me about two roads in a yellow wood. Unlike Frost, I did not stop to question what was down that untaken trail, knowing well I would return that way another day to trample upon the leaves strewn there. Instead, I eagerly chose the path muddy and lined with blackberry brambles. Unconcerned for the remote and unpopulated location I might have skipped a step or two, but there were no witnesses. Also unwitnessed was my tasting of blackberries straight from the vine. Some raced tart to my brain and others, in a slow sweet memory of summer, carried me off to other delicious blackberry remembrances. I shuffled my feet through the leaves to hear that glorious sound crinkling and crackling, longing for a rake to create a giant leaf pile. On that path where anything could have happened, I left behind shoulders strained with worry and a heart full of indecision.

As one hour turned to two, and two to three, I returned to a happy place. Not wanting to lose that euphoria of summer blackberries, dragonflies close enough to touch, gaggles of geese in flight overhead, the strong smell of crab apples growing along one trail, or the landscape festooned with autumn colors, I walked on. When finally my muscles began to betray fatigue, I returned to my little old car.

My happiness was tinted with loneliness though. After an amazing yet ordinary adventure the only one who would remember it was me. And that was one road I rather not be taking. But sometimes, as Frost suggests, we'd miss out on the unique experiences that brought us to this point and stage in our lives if we had taken another road. So I'll eat my blackberries where I find them; I'll stop to smell wild pears along the road; and I'll wonder at the strange animal slithering against the river's current, because there is no point in denying ourselves real moments of happiness just because we believe life might have been better down a different hypothetical road.