Wandering through Time and Place

“Why?” G, a blogging friend from Florida, asked when I posted my plans to spend the summer backpacking down the PCT. Why would I subject myself to ice cold baths and human-snacking insects? Why would I want to spend 7-9 hours a day hiking over difficult terrain in 100-degree weather while dodging fires, breathing smoke, and carrying a 30 to 35-pound pack? Why would I subject my body to the common ailments of through-hikers: exhaustion, near-starvation, freezing nights, blistered feet, trashed toenails, sprained ankles, shin splints, twisted knees, cranky hips, sore shoulders, bug bites, sun burn and poison oak, not to mention possible encounters with large furry animals sporting big teeth. 

My guess is that G thought 75-year-old men should limit their exercise program to hiking up and down the stairs on a cruise ship or possibly hiking from the TV to the bathroom during a football commercial. Puttering in a garden is also okay; as is fishing off the end of a pier. Going for short hikes is to be encouraged. It helps keep you healthy. But backpacking several hundred miles through rugged wilderness— much of it by yourself? That’s crazy.

Perhaps. But I had been backpacking since 1969, when the PCT was a barely-hatched one-year old, or since 1954 if you counted Boy Scouts. I had started exploring the jungle-like graveyard next to our home at five, and completed my first solo, mile-long hike in the wee hours of the morning when I was seven. While other boys my age had spent their summers playing sports and hoping to dazzle coaches, parents and friends, I had wandered farther and farther afield with nothing but my dogs for company. High school and college had seen a hiatus as studies, work and girls took precedence. But I returned to my wandering ways as a Peace Corps Volunteer, exploring the jungles surrounding my home in West Africa and carrying a compass so I could map them out.  And avoid getting lost.

Cheryl Strayed’s journey on the PCT in Wild and Bill Bryson’s hike along the Appalachian Trail in A Walk in the Woods had inspired me to think about undertaking my own long-distant trek. They were admittedly a tad younger when they started their adventures— at 26 and 45 their combined age was less than mine— but I had tons more of experience. I had celebrated my 60^th birthday by backpacking 360-miles from Lake Tahoe to Mt. Whitney. Certainly, I could do twice that to celebrate my 75^th.

I’d chuckled when I read Bryson’s chapter on a bear he may or may not have seen in the night, and how he had gone scrambling for his pocket knife.  Scary yes— big creatures that think of you as a menu item usually are, especially on a dark night— but I have had dozens of encounters with bears. Once, I woke up at four in the morning with one standing on top of me, sniffing my breath. Now, that’s scary!  Another time I was stalked by a grizzly in Alaska. And then there was the time I had a discussion with one of the great brown bears of Katmai over why he shouldn’t eat me. A ranger had told me that if I encountered a bear out on the trail, I should “speak to it in a calm voice and back away.” But what do you say to a thousand pounds of bulging muscles with four-inch long claws? Read on. 

Unlike Strayed, I knew that seemingly insignificant ounces add up to bone crushing pounds when carried on your back. I’d led hundred-mile backpack trips for 30 years in California and Alaska. Preparing first-time trekkers to go was one of the most important things I did. Now, picture backpacking over 1,100 miles with zero preparation, which Strayed did. While I had greatly admired her fortitude in hiking on the PCT through California and Oregon, I’d cringed at her lack of readiness. But I readily admit that it made a good story and served as an inspiration for thousands of women, and probably men as well.

By now, I am sure that you realize that I love backpacking. I love it for what it does for my mind and my body. It’s amazing how fast the worries of the world fade away when you are hiking up a mountain. And it’s fun to see what a week of backpacking does for your body. But what I like most is that backpacking gets me out into the woods. Time slows down. There is great beauty, and peace, and healing, and maybe even a touch of salvation. As John Muir noted, “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” 

This book concludes with my trip down the PCT at 75. I’d started with a goal of backpacking at least 500 miles and possibly as many as a thousand. Between giving my lungs fire-free breaks and providing more time for rest and recovery between trail sections, I split the difference, not bad for seven decades. And I was lucky to have total support from my wife, Peggy. Not only did she join me for three sections of the trip, she was waiting for me at the end of the other sections with a warm smile, a tight hug, and a cold beer. And she had camped out for the week by herself so she would be there to greet me and provide other backup if needed. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

The PCT trip is just a small part of my backpacking story, however. One can have a lot of adventures in 50 years of wandering in the wilderness and I plan to incorporate several into this tale, including the bear stories mentioned above. I also want to talk about the beginning, how I fell in love with the woods and outdoors as a young boy. That always gets a bit iffy in terms of memory. But getting kicked out of the first grade at five for a year was an important factor in that it encouraged me to explore the jungle-like graveyard next to our home. Choosing to sleep outside in the summer, even if it meant sleeping on the ground, was another. Such things tend to stick in your head. At least they do mine. 

While my emphasis will focus on the adventures, I also wish to encourage my readers to think of the wilderness as one of our most precious heritages, taking us back to our very beginnings as humans. When we lose our connection with the outdoors, we lose a bit of our humanity. We owe it to ourselves to reconnect or maintain our connection, even if it is simply going for a walk in the town park and listening to the birds sing. And we owe it to our children, grandchildren, and future generations to protect the world’s remaining wilderness areas. 

So, let’s get started as I tackle the insane task of leading a group of 61 people aged 11 to 70 on a 9 day, 100-mile backpack trip across the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range. The event kicked off my part-time career of leading long-distance backpacking treks and guaranteed that backpacking would always be a part of my life.

That I survived the experience and had any kind of a career at all was close to a miracle…

NEXT POST: On Thursday, Peggy and I continue our exploration of America’s backroads as we follow “The Loneliest Road in America,” Highway 50 through Nevada and into Utah.

This is it. The beginning of my book on backpacking and how I fell in love with the wilderness. I intend to blog it, one story at a time. My hope is that you will join me. There are many, many adventures: most are fun, some scary, and all challenging. If you been following me for a while, you will recognize several of the stories. I have every intention of mining my blog. I’ll keep the stories short, something you can read in a few minutes. So sit back, relax, and enjoy. Here we go...

INTRODUCTION: Part 1

On Bathing in the Woods

Getting naked is as essential to bathing in the woods as it is to bathing at home. The definition of clean, however, changes. Speed becomes critical when your bathwater comes from an ice-cold stream. A hundred mosquitoes viewing your bare body as a large neon sign blinking “Eat Here” hurries the process even more. You can almost hear the clarion call go out: “Major target located in northeast quadrant. Proceed at once to location. No invitation is necessary. BYOB. (Bring Your Own Beaks.)” A few swipes with a wet cloth and you’re done. So what if you still smell. 

“Wipe your clothes with pine needles,” Popcorn! suggested. “Then you will smell like a pine tree.” It was a morsel of through-hiker wisdom. Popcorn! was heading north on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in her quest to hike the 2650 miles from Mexico to Canada while I was heading south from Mt. Ashland, seeing how far I could push my 75-year-old body over the summer. She had caught up with me near the top of Red Mountain between Interstate 5 and Burney Falls in Northern California. I had just huffed up the mountain in hundred-degree heat toward the end of a long day and had to persuade my feet to move. “Okay left foot, it’s your turn.” I was taking a break while eating my late lunch of two fig bars and a handful of nuts while contemplating a nap. Old people do that.

Popcorn! had stopped to chat for a few minutes and introduced her trail-name with an exclamation point. She was a young woman with a wide smile and straight, shiny teeth that looked like they belonged in a dentist’s ad. Earbuds dangled down from her Osprey backpack shoulder strap. Tunes helped her hike the 20-30 miles per day required to finish the trail. I’d asked about swimming possibilities in Peavine Creek, where I planned to camp for the night. I was meeting my wife Peggy at Burney Falls the next day and wanted to be cleaner than trail-normal. Popcorn! had told me that the creek was shallow and covered with brush. Even getting water to drink was a challenge. That’s where the pine needle discussion had come in.

As she had prepared to hike on, I’d asked if I could take her photo for my blog: wandering-through-time-and-place.com. “Of course,” she responded, “as long as you put the exclamation point at the end of my name.” You quickly learn that through-hikers are a cast of characters and trail names are special. I’m Wanderer. After she left, I reached up and plucked a bundle of needles from the young Ponderosa pine I was using as a pillow and applied the sniff test. They had a rich piney smell. Not bad, I thought to myself, but I’d prefer red fir needles. Then I would smell like a Christmas Tree. I idly wondered if Peggy would view me as a present. Maybe, if I wrapped a ribbon around my body. I had some red parachute cord along… 

Given the challenge of bathing in the woods, I was a surprised a few weeks later when Peggy declared, “That was a good bath!” as we made our way back to camp after washing off next to James Creek in the Three Sisters Wilderness of Oregon. I had jumped north in my journey, trying to get away from the endless smoke and fires of California, and found a trail section that Peggy could hike with me. We had carried our small, folding buckets across a meadow to the meandering stream so we could fill them with water and avoid getting soap in the creek. I’d also carried a ground cloth to throw down on the grass.

The good news about the bath was that there were no mosquitoes. It was too late in the season. The bad news, as we expected, was cold water. But there was more. First, we were out in a meadow exposed to the world. Anybody hiking down the trail would see a pair of old folks as naked as the day they were born. Thrilling, I’m sure, but all the more reason to be hasty. Second, there were cute little green frogs hiding in the grass. There was a real danger of squishing one under our bare feet. And who wants to squish a cute green frog between her toes— or even an ugly one? 

Finally, there were the spiders, hundreds of them. I’ve never seen such a concentration. I spotted them scurrying away from under our tarp when I tossed it down on the grass. Apparently the instant eclipse had upset their world view. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley encountering the mass of hungry spiders in the Chamber of Secrets leapt into my mind. Fortunately, these guys were small and seemed more interested in running away than toward us. Peggy didn’t spot them and I chose not to tell her.  She’s not particularly fond of bugs with eight legs. Any spider that has the audacity to crawl into our home in Southern Oregon is guaranteed a short lifespan. “If they wanted to live, they’d stay outside,” she declares airily. Even though the meadow spiders were obeying her rule, I pictured her stomping across the grass committing arachnicide. 

NEXT POSTS: Thursday— The loneliest road in America. Highway 50 as it makes its way across the desolate Nevada Desert. Next Tuesday— my book introduction continues as I answer the question why I decided to take on the challenge of hiking down the PCT at 75, much of it by myself.

I’m sitting in my writing chair, listening to John Coltrane, and watching a flock of Western tanagers invade our birdbath. It isn’t that they want a bath; they’re thirsty. And the birdbath is the local watering hole. Just about everyone who is anyone in the animal kingdom around here drinks out of it.

Change is in the air. Birds of feather are flocking together. Fall colors are lighting up our property and the surrounding countryside. And the bucks are amorous. Not so much the does. Yet. They leap out of the way whenever a buck sneaks up behind them. The does still remember what happened last year. All those promises about sticking around and helping raise the kids. Right. And even if they don’t remember, they think that the bucks should work for what they want, prove their worthiness, and wait until the mood strikes. “Foreplay, sweetie. Foreplay.”

Politically, who knows what the heck is happening. But things will resolve themselves, for better or for worse— depending on which side of America’s Great Political Divide you find yourself.  The presidential race is being decided as I type this.

All this change going on has inspired me to modify my blog. With over 10 years and 1000 posts behind me, it’s time. I started Wandering through Time and Place as a creative way to promote books. But I got caught up in blogging for its own sake. It’s fun; it’s addictive. And I really like the people I’ve met along the way. It has also provided an opportunity to play with photography and go on adventures. What’s not to love about that? No regrets. 

But it certainly hasn’t helped the book-writing process. In fact, between all the things involved in living from day to day, going on adventures, and knocking out posts, there hasn’t been a lot of time for my original goal. Plus, there’s another thing.

Early on, I defined my blog in the travel/adventure category. It fit with what I wanted to accomplish. Unfortunately, in “being true to my blog,” I cut out an important part of who I am.  Between my experiences at Berkeley in the 60s, serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa, and working as an environmental and public health advocate for most of my professional life, I developed clear ideas about the direction of the nation and the world. For the most part, I have kept them out of the blog. It’s been really hard. Sometimes I slip.

So, here’s what I am going to do. 

I am currently working on two books: A revision of The Bush Devil Ate Sam (my Peace Corps memoir) and A Bear Is Standing on Me (a memoir on my 50 years of wilderness adventures). Like I did with my original Peace Corps book, I am going to blog them, one Tuesday at a time, alternating between the Bush Devil and the Bear. This will provide some much-needed focus for me, while hopefully providing you with a bit of entertainment. I’ll keep Thursdays for my travel blog. 

Occasionally, I will do an opinion piece about current affairs and the future. These will always be on Sundays.  This way you will know what to expect and can avoid them if you so desire. Or, join the discussion. No trolls, however. On the recent post I did on the Phoenix/Talent fire and global warming, one person commented more or less, “You don’t know what the S**T you are talking about. So shut the F**k up.” Not nice. I hit the delete button— with pleasure. Intelligent, rational discussion will always be welcome.

And now for some fall colors seen in our ‘neck of the woods’ this week. I’ll start with views around our property. The colors really are glorious. I feel like I am in Vermont.

Our 30 mile drive into Jacksonville and Medford has also been spectacular. It’s worth the trip for the fall colors alone. Count me in as a leaf-peeper. The photo at the top of this post demonstrates why. Here are some more photos from along the way.

NEXT POSTS: On Tuesday… Kick off for blogging “It’s 4 AM and a Bear Is Standing on Top of Me. On Thursday… The Loneliest Road in America: Highway 50 across Nevada.