Where has this Green Cascadia Bob been? Is he still kicking?
YES!!!
It has been a monumental couple of years, with a tragic pandemic and a rash of fires. It feels like we're all dealing with so much change and loss and new things. I have wrecked and restored my beloved Bus. I'm no longer married but grateful for the love shared in my life. I have been visiting the forests of Oregon every chance I get, but of course it is never quite enough.
Through it all I have never stopped writing. I am happy to announce the completion of my novel, "Searching for the Skyline". The nonfiction story is about the 1921 Oregon Skyline Trail, once famous but now abandoned and lost. That is, until my daughter Eva and I discovered 50 miles of the old route through the Mt. Hood National Forest. The book is with a professional editor as I type this!
Below is an unedited preview of the book. I hope you find it enjoyable! Thank you for being there through it all.
Prologue
“Haw-OOOOO” howls the skinny old lady cat,
cinnamon-black with a patch of pure white on her chest.
“Heyyy-WOOOAHH!!!” she cries like a weird high-pitched banshee,
calling an otherworldly “hello”. My dear constant companion, she
intuitively knows that I will be leaving, off into the unknown and
doesn't like it one bit. The jays are still fighting with the crows
in the backyard, for territory, for dominance.
A reluctant summer has suddenly descended upon
Portland. It has baked away all traces of the past six months of
constant rain and fierce gray. Suddenly, the wet weather is gone.
“I have never felt the raindrops,” claims the toasted Earth in a
dull monotone, and of course lying the whole time.
It is almost noon. I'm restless and alone in the empty
house, nervously pacing around and breaking up the sunbeams that
illuminate the wood paneled room. In my insane but methodical way, I
have been planning this trip of a lifetime for months. It is
finally time to go. I am itching for it. All of the details, the
unfinished business and many loose ends, it is time to let go of it
all and leave on a great adventure. I must be especially careful out
there. In the wild will of these infinite conifers, a broken leg
could mean death.
Somewhere far away from the screaming cities, something
dark and mysterious lurks in the forests of Oregon. Shaggier than
Sasquatch, more lonesome than a solitary cry in the wilderness, a
tangled old path is trapped in 1921. It is from another time
altogether, a gilded age and long silenced. Locked in a time capsule
it still sleeps.
Imagine for a moment you are a red-tailed hawk soaring
high above the Oregon Cascades, thousands of feet in the air riding
the hot summer thermals rising into the sky. The rumpled peaks and
valleys stretch out below. Emerald green hides all that is secret
under a deep canopy of trees. Far off on the horizon are the
massive points of snow covered volcanoes. They suddenly thrust from
the green like pale fingers through an old quilt. These are the
Mother Peaks of the great Cascades, dazzling in the Solstice Sun and
scoured with glaciers. In places, entire squares of forest have been
removed, leaving a patchwork of burned out scars behind. Suddenly,
the hawk detects a bit of movement on the forest floor. With a
shrill screech she plummets, and the wood rat dies instantly. Here
under the deep green, only a bit of dappled sunlight scatters through
the forest in golden rays, dancing in the hot summer breeze. A deer
bounds off effortlessly into the dark on stick legs. On a branch
high above, a spotted owl ruffles his feathers and goes back to
sleep.
If you are reading these words, it is likely that you
live in or near a city. It is sometimes hard to imagine a world
without cars or noise, the lively bustle that goes along with human
life. I grew up in Chicago, Illinois, the Windy City and the Land of
Lincoln. It's about as far from the Oregon Cascades as you can get.
My grandmother was born in Chicago, and she spent her entire life
there. Irene loved to tell stories about her childhood, adventures
that are still with me. We are visiting a forgotten time, but she
is taking us along and instantly brings it back to life. Suddenly
you have been transported a hundred years into the past.
“Wateeeeee-Mehloooooonne!!” shouts the Italian
vendor in a thick accent, his wooden pushcart is almost overflowing
with fat green melons.
He shouts it into the crowded streets, cobbled and
bustling with early century life. Other vendors are crammed along
the dirty sidewalk, it is a crashing of joyful humanity. A red and
cream streetcar clatters by, clanging a happy warning and spitting
sparks. You are there too, it is fresh and alive and you can feel
the nickels rattling around in your pocket, for the cool dark of the
movie theater and a day of adventure.
Often I have wondered about the thin veneer that
separates our ages, this transparent membrane that seems to pass
through time. How can you stand in two places at once? A rocky
trail that climbed to some distant peak. Photographs in books called
out with that weird shade of Cascade green that is only found in the
jungles of the Pacific Northwest. The first time I stepped foot in
these vast forests I knew I had finally come home, as tear streaked
cheeks melded with the rain.
The past winter has been especially bleak, even by
Oregon standards. These are long and dark days that are chilled with
constant damp and the houselights must remain lit all day. Life has
become a comedy of tragic pain and personal loss, beyond anything
I've ever experienced and I'm not really equipped to deal with any of
it. Sudden cancer has taken away my adopted Mother, quick and
without warning She is gone. A twenty-year marriage lies in ruin,
crumbling away and it will soon end. It is raining, raining,
“Raining? Again?” you wonder in disbelief.
As the winter rain rolls down the window in streaks, I
sit hunched at the dim dining room table surrounded by a flurry of
books and paper. There are maps all over the place, falling off the
big table and circled all around, 1921 or 2006 all given equal
footing and still making a mess in the dim amber glow of the lamp.
These are just small pieces of a very mysterious puzzle folded upon
our current time. We have only a few clues to go on, a few faded
dotted lines on a piece of paper recorded long ago. A past that
seems so close at hand.
It has become a deep compulsion. To find the Oregon
Skyline Trail – or what is left after 100 years. The elegant
Skyline has haunted my imagination for a long time. “What is out
there?” is the real question. The maps are beautiful with detail
and burnished with time. If you are patient with them, the maps will
tell you a story. They speak of ancient volcanoes and meadows formed
from ice-age glaciers. The dotted lines contour around a ridge,
sensual in their purpose. Each inch of a Twenties map is a solution
to the mystery of the Skyline. But what is left out there in the
forest, on the ground? What changes have been seen in the last
hundred years since the passing of the Jazz Age? For this, they are
silent.
Raindrops patter on the windowpane and then abruptly
stop. All is silent, and a dazzling beam of sunlight makes the
entire room glow, so sudden that it makes you squint.
An idea begins to form, a summer like the ones of lost
youth. “Let's find the Skyline, Bob,” I say to myself quietly to
the empty room.
The Pacific Northwest is famous for our vast expanses
of fir forests growing on foggy mountains. In the Northwest part of
Oregon, you have the Mount Hood National Forest. as it is
known officially and Oregon's “working forest”. It is a big
place, over a million acres and eight wilderness areas. Timeless
meadows and craggy volcanic peaks peer out over a blanket of ancient
forests. It is a land born of firey explosions followed by eons of
deep peace, when the trees can get a foothold until the next cycle of
chaos. Mount Hood herself dominates this national forest, the ghost
of a triangle on the horizon. If you're lucky, that is, and it's not
raining. In 1921, the Skyline Trail began her journey here on the
south flank of this immense volcanic cone. For fifty miles, the
trail lazily wanders a dense and mountainous terrain, along high
ridges that have been forgotten. A few scattered pieces of the
Skyline are still in use as other trails, but much of it has been
abandoned for a very long time, for decades at least.
Despite over a hundred years of human intrusion, it is
still a wild land in these Oregon Cascades. I want to live rough and
ready this summer, as close as possible to a early century Forest
Guard on horseback. I need to see what it feels like to float
anonymous into our ancient land. It has been a dream for a very long
time to see these places unfold firsthand, to embrace the shy
splendor of a forgotten wilderness. To grasp at dream-smoke, perhaps
only vapor. Does the route of the original 1921 Oregon Skyline Trail
still exist, between Mount Hood on the north and Mt. Jefferson to the
south? What does it even feel like out there, today in the far
reaches of the Mt. Hood National Forest? It has been a long time
since someone has walked the 1921 route of the Trail. A century has
passed since a traveler has followed the original route, or even
thought about doing so. This is as much of an inner journey as one
of geography. What will I find out in the summer Sun, those lost
pages of the Northwest? Who am I?
It is ironic that you are coming along with me, out
there into the deep solitude. For most of my life I really haven't
enjoyed talking about myself, but here I will attempt to be bare and
honest. I hope we are both enriched by the experience.
It is time to go. Eva hugs me tenderly, wrapping her
arms around my neck so tightly I almost choke. “I will miss you,
Papa!” she tells me with such a composed maturity I almost break
down.
At
just twelve she is my golden-haired jewel, crazy curled and wise well
beyond her years. I cannot express my deep love for this child, the
confluence of all rivers running right through me. But still, I must
go.
...
Have you heard of
the Oregon Skyline Trail? You probably haven't. Don't worry, you're
not alone, no one else seems to remember. It has been forgotten.
For over ten
thousand years we have loved, lived, and died in these Oregon
Cascades. If you could race backwards in time and stand on that high
peak of eternal summertime, nothing would appear out of place. Even
as the Sun darts across thousands of heavens and entire forests rise
and fall, it all remains the same. This is the paradox of the
wilderness – nothing changes, everything changes. Since the
beginning, humanity has been a direct participant in the natural
world. For the majority of our humble existence, our species has
lived in balance with the seasons. Only at the dawn of the
Industrial Revolution have our priorities - and even our very
connection to the Earth shifted so drastically. Sometimes,
we leave a delicate trace of our passing, a track in the dirt like a
robin's footprint. Almost 100 years ago, the Oregon Skyline Trail
opened for business. Not long afterwards, a rough, horse track of a
road with the same name followed along like a guilty dog. The Trail
was borne on the dreams and vision of two men of the Northwest: Joe
Graham, a quiet and sturdy District Ranger of the U.S. Forest
Service, and Fred Cleator, a forward thinking Government
conservationist who believed that forests were for the people.
Together they would create a long-distance hiking trail that would
revolutionize how we interact with wilderness. At the russet dawn of
this new mechanized age, these men would be the first U.S. Forest
Service employees to bring all-weather roads into the Oregon
Cascades. The Northwest would never be the same.
Native
People have been living here for thousands of years. They came after
the vast ice sheets retreated for a time, to celebrate the bounty of
the mountains and the sacred sites that are scattered across their
flanks. The first residents of Oregon created rich cultures and many
languages as they moved over the vast landscape. They settled in
deserts and dense rainforests and mighty rivers. Thousands of years
passed. Throughout this time, they loved and managed the land in
harmony with natural processes. Peace was broken by violence as wars
and skirmishes sporadically broke out. Fights for territory and
slaves, or for contested fishing grounds. Sometimes these wars were
fought for honor itself.
During times of
cooperation, Nations met in vast trading centers, such as The Dalles,
Oregon, along the crashing Columbia river. Treasures from
thousands of miles away were bartered in many different languages,
salmon for seashells. For thousands of years this cycle continued
uninterrupted, these rich and complex rites woven into place like a
golden thread. How to build a longhouse from perfect cedar planks.
How to boil water without metal cookware. What to eat in a sparse
country. How to survive the long hypothermic winters. Tales of
fierce volcano gods fighting for the hand of a beautiful maiden,
shaggy Sasquatch and Bookwus
hiding in the fringes of
darkness.
The
first People also brought the first foot paths to these mountains.
They are responsible for thousands of miles of trails throughout the
Cascades, trails for trading, or to access an abundance of
huckleberries and elk. Many of these trails would have taken you to
sacred places high and far away in these deep mountains, places of
prayer and deep contemplation. To this day, quite a few of these
forgotten pathways are now familiar roads and highways as they
thunder through high mountain passes. Not all of the ancient routes
are gone, however. Some are still asleep, hiding under the dense
brush. They are waiting for their people to come back to the forest.
By
the late 1830's more than three quarters of the Native population was
gone. Decimated by European diseases to which they had no immunity,
the People died in great numbers. Often entire villages were wiped
out by smallpox or diphtheria, wailing babies lying alone and
helpless next to the stiff corpses of their mothers. The remaining
few, shocked and stunned by the death all around them – the Chinook
Clackamas, the Molalla, the Tygh, and many other Nations were rounded
up and driven to distant reservations far from their holy lands of
ten-thousand generations. In their memory, they left a wake of
ancient trails.
In the early 20th
Century, vast areas of unexplored and untapped wild lands still
remained – in the high country of thick forests, just out of reach.
They were too far from the sprawling city streets, remote and
mysterious to many Oregonians. This was a time for new ideas and
innovations and almost anything seemed possible. Farms that had been
homesteads would be surveyed and turned into tidy towns and cities
with proper sidewalks and indoor plumbing.
By the 1920's, we
had learned to fly. Biplanes filled the skies. The radio brought
the news and entertainment into every dusty parlor. By the end of
the 1920s, over a million radios would be in use by American
families. For the first time in human history, news could be heard
instantly with the turn of a switch. Moving pictures dazzled
audiences in ornate theaters that would pop up overnight in every
American town with great fanfare. And yet, we could not escape from
the powerful call of the wild. Just past the fringes, past the
twinkling end of city blocks, ancient forests continued lush in their
complex processes, green and oblivious to the mischief of society.
In 1921, when the
Oregon Skyline Trail opened for business, alcohol had become illegal
in the United States. Due to the newly enacted 18th
Amendment, selling a glass of beer would send you to jail. Most
Americans climbed out of their sleepy beds in rural farming towns, to
the crow of the rooster and a hard day of toil. But a great shift
had begun, and the sparkling city dazzled. Hardscrabble hicks wanted
a little glamour. They wanted something young and exciting that the
farm could never provide. Good paying jobs were available in the
booming cities, in the factories and the boilers, in the sooty rail
yards and the bellies of steamships. Just behind the waterfront
docks and locomotives, you'd find wild Jazz in the speakeasies, where
patrons swill homemade gin by the flirtatious glassful. Skinny women
in bobbed hair danced with newfound abandon late into the neon-lit
night. Their tight dresses and sparkles are now just stories to
tell.
A brutal world war
had ravaged the countries of Europe, the deadliest conflict in human
history. Warfare had become like a machine as men were mowed down in
the trenches, choked to death by the mustard gas. By the time the
fighting had ceased in November 1918, over 18 million men, women, and
children had been slaughtered. Veterans returned from the European
front lines, some missing limbs, others damaged in ways invisible.
Fueled by the sickness and hate of the Great War, a terrible pandemic
flu swept the world of 1918-19. An estimated 20-50 million worldwide
gave their lives.
In
Nineteen-Twenties America, we began to feel the first stirrings of a
collective wilderness movement. Artists and visionaries such as
Ansel Adams and John Muir had already popularized romantic notions of
the American West, “The mountains are calling...and I must go!”
said John Muir famously. But these far removed lands were mostly out
of reach to the average citizen in the hardscrabble logging towns
that sprung up along soggy rivers where the rain hardly stopped.
“Stumptown” would soon become Portland, the whitewashed tree
stumps would give way to electric trolleys. The forests retreated,
and the wilderness became closer.
The logging camps
came, with locomotives and men without shave or bath. Rough men who
smelled like kerosene and copper, working the seven foot long
crosscut saws from bouncing springboards. Brass steam whistles
roared through the countryside, into ancient valleys of thick cedar
and rainbow trout. Too many trees were disappearing, and concern
mounted. Conservation became the bold idea of the early 20th
Century. Gifford Pinchot's new school of forestry began to champion
the idea of “the greatest good for the greatest number of people”.
Cities blossomed
into crowded neighborhoods filled with soot. The promise of fresh
air in the healthy mountains filled the public's imagination.
Sleeping in the great outdoors had suddenly evolved into a popular
leisure activity enjoyed by young and old alike. People flocked to
the high lakes of summertime by the thousands. Woolen outdoor
fashions of the time reflected this trend: high-laced tall leather
boots and baggy hipped pants became the rage.
With a gooselike
honk, the era of the automobile had also arrived, destroying some
dreams and building others. A booming middle class had money to
spend, and Americans fell in love with their Model T Fords spitting
steam out of shiny brass radiators. Despite frequent mechanical
problems, the “Tin Lizzie” gave the working class American of the
Twenties a new sense of independence and freedom. Soon the woods
would be full of cars, loaded with camp gear as they made their way
into the high country. No other era in the 20th century has been
more responsible for reshaping our collective consciousness and how
we think about Nature itself.
The Oregon Skyline
Trail was a direct product of the Twenties. For over 260 miles, a
horse and hiking route was dreamed over the thickly forested backbone
of the Cascade Range, from glacier clad Mount Hood southward to
Crater Lake - no small journey in 1920's America in your itchy wool
pants. The Trail would pass through some of the most remote terrain
in the American West, unrivaled in spectacular scenery, crossing
countless rivers and rich trout streams along the way. Most of the
route of the Skyline was already there - it had been in use for
centuries by Native People. Other parts of the trail were built by
trappers, miners, and explorers, and later by U.S. Forest Service.
Trail crews were sent deep into the forests, equipped with hand
tools, axes and crosscut saws. The men turned a rough collection of
paths into a consolidated route, well marked and fit for hiking or
horses. At certain points you could buy feed for your horse, or even
use the telephone. The first map and guide was released to the
public by the Oregon Information and Tourist Bureau in 1921.
The Oregon Skyline Trail was open, and a great dream had become
reality.
It was constructed
as the highest quality high mountain trail ever built, with horse
camps, ranger stations, and telephone communication strung along the
route in strategic locations. Wide as a highway through the old firs,
the Trail symbolized a stylized remaking of mountain travel. But
something else was on the horizon.
The May 8th, 1927
Oregonian newspaper reports:
“Oregon
Skyline Trail – Rich in Rare Scenery
High
along the summit of the Cascade Mountains, extending from Mt. Hood on
the north to Crater Lake on the south, there runs the Skyline Trail,
one of the most remarkable and at the same time one of the least
known scenic routes of the far west. The Skyline Trail, which is,
perhaps, unique in the manner in which it traverses an unbroken
stretch of mountain summit and in the wide variety of country it
includes...is practically unknown to native Oregonians. Although a
trip is a challenge to the imagination of even the dullest of
urbanites, the Skyline Trail has never taken hold of the public fancy
in the Webfoot State.
There
are several reasons, perhaps, for the fact that the trail in past
years has not been frequented by more than a handful of persons
annually. In the first place, the age is one of the automobiles,
and the habit of making long trips by foot or horseback has long
since disappeared. Then too, the entire trip takes at least 15
days by horseback, and about a month by foot. It is no journey for
weaklings...”
This first-modern
high Cascades highway became in stages magnificent, then quaint, and
finally obsolete. By then, America had long lost its brief love
affair with the now-forgotten Oregon Skyline Trail. Like an old
photo too long in the sun, it curled and slowly faded away. It has
become a lost memory, just a fragment tossed in the wind. Today, no
one remembers.
