Belonging

I am up early again as is my new friend A, who slept not far away.  I heard her move in the night and she tells me that her sleeping bag was not quite warm enough for open air.  We make coffee and while others sleep, we take a hike and find a couple of our friends awake when we return.

Since things are off to a very leisurely start, I head off to move some rocks.  But, I run into S coming the opposite direction up the road and she asks to go for a walk with me, so we do.  We visit the squatter's cabin first.  I lead until we are close, then I point towards the last stretch of trail and stop talking.  I follow a short distance behind.   When we are done exploring and discussing that interesting structure, I ask, "what next?" - my way of politely giving a person a way out of a long hike.  S surprises me some by wanting to push on farther away rather than head back for breakfast.  In fact, I notice that if I stand still, she will walk farther into the forest.  It is a good trait and one that many of my artist friends have...their curiosity drives their creativity.  "Let's head up the road, I have a cool stump to show you."  I tell her that I pose my hiking partners with stumps and that some of them have a wonderful ability to look like they were born there and that they belong there.  I talk of them as matriarchs and how they guide me back out of the forest when I wander.  We get to that tall stump, and S climbs to the top of it.
She asks, "have you been up here?"
I respond, "That is not my relationship with them."
And she does something gentle that I've seen no one else do, and she looks like she belongs there.

May 12, 2012
Night was just cold enough to reach through my sleeping bag with only the stars as the skin of my tent.  Sometime in the early morning night, a half moon rose and drifted sideways across the sky.  Wind came sometime early also, with a breath of chill touching my side with each gust.  When it woke me, I had a starlit sky above and fuzzy in my nearsighted vision.

I rose before sunrise, made breakfast, and headed out to continue work.  As the sun rose and arced through the sky, the half moon disappeared.

Site visits for prospective Lo-fi artists begin today.  I knock off and wait for people to come at noon, but they are more casual and leisurely than I am about time.  But, they do arrive, and each meeting is a good experience with the possibilities of lasting friendship.  We have fine discussions, we tour the landscape, we eat an excellent dinner, and when all have retired to various buildings and spaces for the night, I lay down under the stars once more.

A slug

May 11, 2012

It is as much a summer day as one can expect - warm and sunny, the farm is green with new growth, the cottonwoods all leafed out and the grass in the meadows is somewhere between thigh and chest high.  My days here, the past few months, have been ones of exploring, days of finding new things and days of finding the outer edges of what I can call the farm (it does go beyond the legal edges of the farm).  But, today is a work day.  Familiar with the area, I decided to make something for others to find, an installation that will do no harm, but perhaps cause people to pause and think.  I've been told and seen that one of Smoke Farm's best traits is the exchange of ideas that occur when people come together here.

So, I move rocks.  Lots of rocks.  2 buckets at a time, 6 buckets to the wheelbarrow, 3 wheelbarrows before a rest.  The red breasted sapsucker that likes the cedar tree where I work returns.  It is unafraid of me and we look at each other from 6 feet away.  When I move, it just sidesteps a bit further around the tree.  As I collect rocks, I spot a mule deer on the far side of the river, a 100 yards downstream.  It looks back and spots me, watches me, and then takes its time walking further downstream.  I return to moving rocks.

Rain Day

Occasional afternoon showers arrive before I do.  They arrive all at once.  They stay.

A steady rain falls on a day that isn't too cold for people that live here.  It is just enough that I don't quite feel like diving into it.  I have to wait for a friend to arrive, so I make a small batch of cinnamon frybread, leaving the kitchen door open perhaps just to ease myself into what might be a full day of rain.

S and I head upriver to the diagonal road.  The cottonwood forest has the smell of new growth.  Even the rain can't keep that down.  The river is running high again.  It is already a foot or two higher than it was when I left on Sunday, so it has been raining upstream of here for some time.  The small sand beach by the USGS river gauge is nearly disappeared.  I always check this spot for animal tracks.  I cast a fine cougar print here once, but today there is no reason to drop down for a look.

Our first stop is the squatter's cabin.  I lead to the grove below it and then point S towards the trail and let him find it himself.  He says that it has a good spirit about it.  This is not the first time that someone has said that.  I've always felt something creative here and I may be wrong about that, but a feeling of "creative" and a feeling of "good" could be easily confused.  S photographs while I collect a nice sample of witch's hair lichen.

We drop down and continue up the road.  We are exploring this area as a site for a collaborative project and we spend a couple hours moving around examining stumps and thinking about the shape of the land.  This is a mostly cedar forest in this spot, so while it rains steadily, we don't get nearly as wet as one would expect.

Our plan improves as we talk it out.  When we go, we continue upriver to the slough, which is once again thigh deep.  One of the two logs that the kids had placed as a bridge is gone and we have no reason, apparently, to get wet from the bottom up, already being wet from the top down.  We take a round-about route back, walking to the braided grasses, the lower beach and the barn before settling in at the kitchen to finish our chat.  A fine day, a fine day for sure.

Kid Camp, Day 2

It began to rain lightly sometime well before sunrise, so I moved my sleeping bag a few feet back under the edge of the metal roof.  None of this silenced the frog that had croaked all night long some 20 feet to my left.  I did enjoy the singing.  The lightest of rain on a bare metal roof can sound like a monsoon in full roar.  But, it was one long rolling rumble of the thunder that signaled the time to rise.  And, with that, the rain stopped.

I ran off into the woods for an hour and a half to work on my own project, after which I returned as I was the bannock chef for breakfast.  I was once complimented by the eldest elder of the Sauk Tribe for my frybread and for some reason the Smoke Farmer's like it too.  Flour and baking powder...go figure.  G made a fine set of scrambled eggs with left over sweet potatoes and shredded beef from last nights meal.

We hike the creek today.  Where it exits the hill it is spread out in shin deep flood, as it has been all winter.  When we walk the creek, where the creek is actually in the creek, I point out the beaver sign of cut trees, peeled logs, a drag or two.  We end out at the river where my track casting assistant from yesterday teaches one of the others how to cast a track.  It is all deer tracks, although there is a fawn in there.  The two of them cast a good adult deer track.

On the return, we stop at the double log bridge over the creek and the kids spend a half hour jumping into the cold water.

April 21 - Kid Camp, Day 1

This weekend is kid camp at Smoke Farm.  We have 8 middle school kids and 4 adults under the watchful eye of M.  I arrive early to get in a couple hours of my own artwork before the camp starts.  The wonderful aromatic odors that were in the forest on my last trip are already gone, but the grasses continue to grow and the cottonwoods and maples work overtime to put out new growth.

Once the kids arrive, we hike to the north fields.  High water in the slough gives them a chance to build a temporary log bridge.  They don't need my help, since I actually was an engineer at one time, so I take one of the kids who is standing on the sidelines and I show her how to cast animal tracks with plaster of paris.  The bridge project gives the rest of them a fine opportunity to also get wet, although after dozens of crossings back and forth on the new bridge, it is M, herself, who is the only one to take a dive.

 

I had spotted the remains of a gable roof in a brush pile in the north fields, and this is the goal for the kids.  They remove the enough brush so that we can pull back some of the rotting roof and peer in.  An old belt driven pump and some pipes show the building to be a collapsed pump house.  Someone pulls enough brush from the upriver side for us to see the old concrete cistern.

A makes an exceptional taco dinner for us all, so that mayhem may ensue until bedtime. 

With clear skies, I find myself sleeping under the stars, looking at pinpoints of light, light that has taken 10 or 100 years to reach me.  It is a humbling experience.  We are so small in what is a true and vast wilderness.  To think that not a million Earths, nor a million solar systems would fill the space between any two of those pinpoints of light.  I find myself thinking that those that aspire to try to lead our world would be well advised to spend a significant amount of time sleeping under the stars.

Smells

J and I arrive a bit after nine on a day of expected showers with some wind, but the temperature will be typical for spring...not a bad day to be caught in a shower.

The cottonwoods are beginning to leaf out, the grasses are just a step ahead and all the shrubs just a bit more so.  Once again, Smoke Farm is intensifying the greenness of it all.  In winter, it was the forest with its cedars and firs that kept that color, which can be almost overwhelming here in the Northwest.  But with spring, everywhere, everyplace will take that tone.

But, as strong as that single color can be, today it is the smells that we comment to each other about.  There is the most wonderful scent drifting through the cottonwoods as we walk towards the river.  It is a complex mix that we don't recognize in its additive combination.  There is citrus and cinnamon and mint and pepper.  We sample different plants as we walk, finding a hint on this shrub, and a hint on that tree, but never finding any one of the culprits to be the majority.  On past trips, it has been the view, or the sounds of running water, or the sight of salmon or birds.  But, today it is the sense that is most difficult to describe.  It is the sense that must be experienced.

We check out the beaver activity at the creek, where beaver are doing what beaver do, cutting trees and eating bark, and leaving the leftovers as a sign of their mostly nocturnal work.  The creek is running good and full, and the restoration is coming along.

Walking up the river, we find that the guy across the river is building three cabins in the most insane of locations.  Neither J or I can figure the thinking that must have gone into (or not gone into) the location.  He is right at the edge of the gravel bar, not more than 6 or 7 feet or so above the current water level.  He is not building in a 100 year flood plain, he is building in a once a year flood plain.  I comment how it should only be a couple of years until the cabin floats off down the river like Huck Finn's raft.  It makes no sense...none at all.

I take J up to the squatter's cabin, which he finds fairly fascinating...as everyone does.  The floor has been pushed up more since I was here last.  The gradual slide of the hill with gravity and the wet of winter and spring are pressuring the cabin more and faster than I would've expected.  I am glad that I have documented it carefully.  It begins to rain in earnest while we are there and once we leave the cabin, only the cedars provide shelter for us.

We finish our trip by working our way in a circuit out through the lower beach.  I point out the pear trees and 3 maples that stand close to where the Baker homestead was.

All through that rain, we could still smell the citrus-pepper-mint-cinnamon of the spring forest.

The magic jacket

J and I get to the farm some time around 9.  There is some wind, but the temperature is comfortable.  Rain will come at some point today, that is certain.  J joins me on a trip to climb the upriver end of the DNR hill.  I've explored the bottom up there, but wanted someone along for the steeper sections.  At least I have figured out the easiest path through and around the blackberries that guard the bottom of the hill.  If all works out, we will cross over the hill and descend to the squatter's cabin.

We walk up and through the north fields to the river, which we can follow a hundred yards or so over to the top end of the slough.  During high water, the river runs into the slough.  Today it is a shallow creek.  But, it is choked with logjams and is only the preferable route because it avoids the blackberry tangles.  We make the final crossing where a creek enters from the hillside.  There is a fine beaver dam right there and from my past trips I know that it is just one of many.

Mother and Sons

The bottom of the hill is not too steep and we pick up a good trail that follows the state property line.  I suppose that I don't take the shallow slope as the warning it should be.  We soon find ourselves in some of the steepest terrain that I've seen on this hill, just as the first rain comes, bringing with it some small ice pellets.  It is a very strenuous section, made especially pleasant by the 25 pound pack on my back.  But, face down sucking breath like that, J finds a beautiful bird nest on the ground.  I don't have a box to save it in, so after we look at it some, appreciating the delicacy, I set it under a downed log so that it will last as long as possible...for whom, I don't know.  I pull my rain jacket out of my pack and the rains soon stops.

J thinks that it is made of cedar roots

Once past that grunt, the hill gradually relents and the sky shows more and more through the trees.  A last push through new alders, a sign of cutting, brings us to a logging road that has a fine view.

From here, we follow the road around and up to the top of the hill, which is just a bit over 1000 ft.  The weather has closed the view in some, so we drop down into the forest, stopping to listen to a chorus of frogs in a small pond.  When they spot us, they stop as quickly as if they had taken their cue from a conductor.

The descent goes well.  While often, the descent is more difficult than the climb, this time it seems almost casual...which I know is not true from past trips.  It is the brutal climb on the other end of the hill that has made it so.  I pick the route by feel and by sensing that things look right.  There is nothing tangible for me to key off of, and I often wonder how the human brain can pull off such complexity.  Eventually, I look down through the trees and see the boulder and roof of the squatter's cabin directly below us, and I wonder how often I would be able to do that.

 

squatter's cabin

We spend some time examining the cabin and then take our last hour and walk the lower farm, checking out beaver drags and lower beach.  One last rain shower brings my magic jacket out of the pack.  The rain shower stops. 

New Terrain

I needed to write, today.  I don't remember ever feeling that I needed to write, even after a couple years of writing my journal from the inside of a canoe or while in the forest.  I was a creatively bad English student, unable to comprehend the passion for words that my teachers had.  When I think about it, it was that their formula for writing was not the one that I require.  They succeeded in a system where people sit at a desk and write creatively.  I sit at a desk and, at best, I doodle - more likely, I just fidget.  Movement triggers the stuff that I put into words.  Even as I drove the car up here to the farm, a 100 thoughts about my beautiful wife went through my head, thoughts that could not be written at sixty miles per hour, and as with thoughts that come while moving, they are fleeting thoughts.  Even unwritten words have value.  If only she knew.  Maybe she does.

I plan to head up valley and around the east side of the DNR hill, where I haven't been, yet.  Dense brush and blackberries have turned me back twice, both times with hiking partners that didn't need to abuse themselves that much.  The water in the slough is down quite a bit and where it was thigh deep on my last trip, it is just ankle deep.  The winter seems to have pushed the blackberries down to a level where I can strategically dance step them to ground...I just walk on top of most of them.

I find a witness tree with its shiny aluminum plate.  It was placed on August 22, 1996 and notes that I am on the line between sections 9 and 16 of Township 32N, Region 6E.  It is unusual in that the surveyors have listed their names - Olsen, Herrick, Carlson, and Lonpher (hard to read that last one).  I cross the slough nearby near a silted in beaver dam.

There is a nice game trail climbing cross slope and easterly.  Soon, it coincides with the timber boundary, so it may be a man/animal mutual trail, although I doubt anyone has walked this in a couple years.  I stop to photograph myself with a couple of fine old cedar stumps.  I also grumble silently about the ridiculous amount of stuff that I have put in my field pack today.  I move on.

Squirming through brush and fallen alder, I dream of "losing" the damned machete that keeps hanging up on everything (because it strapped to my pack - useless piece of shit tool that it is, unless you want to open up your shin, of course).  I talked myself into taking the hazard because of the blackberries, but it has to be a lot worse than this before I start swinging a rusty dull samurai sword with only me in killing range

I come out to an amazing cedar stump.  She is thoroughly wrapped in the roots of her offspring and leans out over the hill above a sandy depression left by the falling of another tree.  Parts of her, huge red-brown blocks, dangle in the air like jewelry suspended by thin strands of root.  I feel something off.  There is a sense of something amiss here, something dark that I do not want to know about.  She is not to be photographed, and it is not a place to linger.  I'm not one for spirits and ghosts, but I came to the forest to feel, and it is only foolishness to deny a feeling, even if it doesn't figure.  I circle up high and wide around her.  She disappears in the brush not too soon.  I will avoid her on the return, I am not supposed to be there, and I don't know why, but I don't want to be there.

logjam in the upper slough

I drop down onto the slough and follow it up river.  This might be the most interesting terrain that I have seen in awhile.  One branch is a series of beaver dams and ponds.  I think it leads to a drainage coming off of the hill.  The main channel is broader and shows frequent high water.  It connects to the river farther up.  It is choked with log jams, but the going is relatively easy.  It takes me to a fine gravel bar in the Stillaguamish where I sit for a time and end the days exploring.

Just as I near the log bridge while returning to the barn, I hear frogs and frogs and frogs singing out in the wet field under the hill.  I am watching a snipe when the frogs all go silent, all at once.  I take a knee and wait, wondering what has scared the frogs.  I wait for a 1/2 hour.  Still the frogs are silent.