The Further Adventures of Alex and Tommy

Another hot summer day in the valley. We had two packs. Both were old canvas Boy Scouts of America packs, one a small rucksack, good for a day trip, the other a larger backpack with a wood frame. They both smelled like a thousand fishing trips and a thousand fishing trips is exactly what they had been through. I inherited them from my great-uncle Mark who used to roam the high mountain lakes of the Cascades in search of cutthroat trout. I used to tag along with him leaving at dark o’clock in the morning and then hike for hours up steep mountain sides to fish up lakes with odds names like Snake Lake, Pear and Apple Lake, Extreme Lake, Wow Lake, Lost Lake. What was strange was there always seemed to be an old raft floating in these lakes hammered together with iron spikes and bound with baling wire. “That’s so you could float out and get a decent cast where the fish are”, he would say. “I packed all that in here in 19-something-or-other. I got a bunch of other camping gear stashed around here somewhere but I can’t remember exactly where it is.” I am sure it is still there today at this very moment, a rusting monument to a high mountain lake angler though the lakes more really resembled abandoned beaver ponds. Oh, ya, great-uncle Mark. He used to wear stovepipes on his legs when river fishing as protection against rattle snakes. And he was always good for a vanilla milkshake on the way back home.

Alex was packing as usual: cast iron frying pan, aluminum pot with lid, forks, spoons, hunting knife, a dozen eggs, two old cotton sleeping bags, extra pairs of socks for me and her, can of chicken noodle soup, full water bottle, pair of extra sweaters, sketch book, an old map, two crystal wine glasses, a bottle of Johannesburg Riesling Green Hungarian wine, a large box of ‘strike anywhere’ wooden matches, and who knows what else, “it’s a mystery” she would say, and “we’d pick up what ever extra food we needed on the way out of town at the local Safeway down by the highway.”

I jammed the old trail map into the rucksack and we laced up our boots, tied red bandanas around our neck, and headed out.

Our objective was to get out of the heat of the valley and hitchhike up Chinook Pass to Cayuse Pass and Mt. Rainier. I had this crazy idea I wanted to hike up the mountain and walk on a glacier.

Alex picked up the backpack and slung it over her shoulder. It was funky and lumpy looking. I took up the rucksack and we started walking.

“Feels good to be going”, Alex said.

“Indeed”, I replied. In my mind, I was already imagining alpine meadows and ice fields.

She reached into her blue plaid shirt pocket and took out a joint rolled in a zig-zag wheat straw rolling paper and a strike anywhere match which she struck and lit it with, took a long drag and passed it to me. We walked and smoked.

“It Meshmakhan” she said.

“Meshmakhan? What the fuck is that?”

“Someplace in Afghanistan or India. Maybe Mexico.”

“Someplace in Afghanistan, India, or Mexico?”

“Ya.”

By the time we hit the Safeway store we were all gawking and giggles and Alex kept poking me in the arm and saying “What!?” We grabbed a hand basket and walked up and down the isles: blueberry jam, bread rolls, one stick of butter, a block of sharp cheddar cheese, a can of roasted cashews, two large Cadbury chocolate bars with almonds and raisins, coffee, and a cantaloupe. Then the ambiance of the store, its air conditioning, muzak (a bizarre rendition of Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’ which I have never yet heard again), and the strange stares from shoppers seemed to indicate enough so we headed to the checkout line and that’s when I saw him.

He was ahead of us in line: a stocky past middle-aged man with a walrus mustache wearing a Scottish looking hat with a red checked tartan hatband and a red puffy pom-pom on top, and a short red ribbon sticking out the back. Gripped in his rather hairy and freckled left hand, which was missing the upper part of its thumb from the big knuckle up, was a large two-pound package of hamburger. It was the only thing he was buying. He paid and I watched him walk out of the store.

We got through the checkout without further incidence. Stashed our new supplies in the pack, headed down to the highway, and stuck out our thumbs at the passing traffic.

“Do I look sexy?” Alex asked.

“Of course.”

“Great. We’re sure to get a ride then.”

“Well, how about me? How am I looking?”

But before she could answer I saw what looked to be an over sized UPS truck slowing down and pulling over and the door swinging open.

“Where’re you girls goin?”

“We’re going to Mt. Rainer”, Alex chirped.

Alex stepped up into the passenger seat. I reached down to pick up the packs to swing them into the cab and then as I looked up I saw it was the hamburger buying Scottish hat guy with the missing part of his is thumb that we saw in the Safeway store. I stepped by Alex to sit in the compartment behind the cab and the guy yelled at me, “Hey, you can’t go back there. I got all my sales items back there.”

“Sure, sorry.”

“Ok.”

“I’ll just stand in the stairwell.”

“Fine.”

He closed the door with a switch and off we went.

Alex asked him what his ‘sale items’ were.

“I sell nylon stockings and cowboy boots.”

Alex glanced at me as if the say “sure he does.”

“I’ve got a route I travel from Seattle to Spokane to Boise to Pendleton to Yakima to Seattle. I sell nylon stockings and cowboy boots.”

Then not much was said after that. I stood in the stairwell of the van looking out at the passing scenery and the highway traffic occasionally glancing around the cab to check it out. The engine cowling seemed to function as a sort of desk. Couple of old cups of coffee in paper cups, receipts of various sorts in pink and yellow. And a large package of raw hamburger, now open and which the nylon stocking cowboy boot salesman was grabbing chunks out of, rolling it into a ball with his right hand which I also noticed was missing the upper section of its thumb from the large knuckle up, and popping said raw hamburger ball into his mouth.

Alex stared out the window. I watched with awe the heroic endeavor of man versus raw hamburger.

This went on for an hour or so as we trundled on down the highway until the package of hamburger, carefully rolled ball by ball, was entirely consumed. He finished up by wiping his well-greased hand on his trousers followed by a loud burp and a high-pitched squeaky fart that made Alex giggle.

No one said a peep as the truck hurtled along the sage brush hills and green farm fields of the sparkling Naches River, then into the Ponderosa forest and up past the American River into the hemlock and fir forests and out of the valley and up to the mountain where I would walk on a glacier.

The raw-hamburger-eating-man with the Scottish hat with the red pom-pom and the physically challenged thumbs threw the old UPS truck into low gear as we made the steep climb up the watershed of the Rainier Fork of the American River and upward toward the summit of Chinook Pass. Not much talking as the engine loudly whined like something mechanical yet frankly constipated trying to take off and get airborne. We screamed through the Tori gate that marked the entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park and plunged over the summit pass down the divide between Yakima and Naches Peaks toward Lake Tipsoo and green sedge meadows of sub-alpine fir, paintbrush, lupine, and larkspur.

And then there it was looming above the burned, blackened, broken saw tooth mountains of the Governors Range and the great Emmons Glacier glowing white against the blue sky: Rainier as the British named it in 1792, spying it from their rowing dories at tidewater along Puget Sound; Tacoma, the white sentinel, the great one, the mother of waters as the locals called the mountain in its various incarnations from the beginning of human time. Mother of waters it certainly was as out of the Emmons, Winthrop, Carbon, Mowatch, Tahoma, Nisqually, and Cowlitz, glaciers flowed the White River and its West Fork, and radiating like the arms of a water galaxy the Carbon, Puyallup, Nisqually, and Cowlitz rivers flowed to Puget Sound or the Columbia or drained east through a network of watersheds that drained the Naches basin. The mountain was spooky looking, awesome, and alive and we blew by it all at speed through a series of hairpin turns down to Cayuse Pass and into the watershed of Chinook Creek on to the Ohanapecosh.

And all this thinking about glaciers and rivers and watersheds made me want to pee and the scenes going by while being cooped up in an oversized bread truck full of nylon stockings and cowboy boots was making me antsy. I elbowed Alex and nodded and when she spotted the first wide place in the road she suddenly yelled out to the driver “Here! This is it! Stop!”

“Here?”

“Yes, this is it! Stop here!”

“But there’s nothing here”, he said as his foot came off the accelerator.

I shouted out as the engine suddenly quieted and making the whole exchange rather awkward, “THAT’S JUST THE POINT!”

The truck came to a halt. The door swished open and I climbed out. I felt buzzed. The ground rolled beneath my feet as if I just returned from a long sea voyage. Alex handed down the packs. We said thanks and that we appreciated the ride as the driver was fumbling reaching down along the driver’s door finally coming up with a flat cellophane package that he flipped like a square Frisbee at Alex that she caught with one hand.

His last words before the door swished shut and he drove off were, “You girls have fun, now.” He waved and was gone.

“What’s the package Alex?”

She turned it over and read the label. “High quality silk fishnet stockings. Made in Paris.

Color black. Size M.”

Then Alex looked at me laughing and said, “Man, did you see that guy horse down all the raw burger meat?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I got to pee”, she said as she stashed the stockings in the rucksack.

“Me too.”

The road was empty. Just the sound of the rush of wind in the trees. And off different directions we went to find a place to pee.

I was waiting the packs when Alex walked up.

“I just realized something, Tommy. Or I realized something that I had forgotten.”

“What’s that?”

“See all those trees?” She help up her arms and pointed in any direction.

“Ya?”

“Well, things look different from close up than from far away. Take for example the forest here. That’s how we see it from a distance, as a forest but when you look at each tree they are all different, have different quirks and think different thoughts, different creatures live in them: red tree voles in one, spotted owls in another.”

“Sure Alex, I think that’s true enough.”

“Like that guy that gave us a ride. We saw him pretty close up.”

“Too close I think and not close at all.”

“Well I doubt if I will ever forget him. I mean he’s pretty well stuck in our heads by now.”

Alex walked up to me and placed her nose against my nose.

“Anyway, it always better close up don’t you think? I mean how do you like me? Far away or close up?”

“I think the closer the better I would say.”

Alex reached into the backpack, pulled out a black felt pork pie hat, stuck on her head, and put on her sunglasses.  We picked up the packs and walked down the road single file. Just under the sound of the wind rushing through the trees you could hear the sound of running water- a river in the tree filled valley on our left.

Alex and I walked single file down the shoulder of the highway for nearly a half an hour and no cars passed us coming or going. She was in front humming a familiar but indistinct song and glancing from time to time at the deep green of the valley below.

“I feel like Lewis and Clark” Alex struck up.

“Lewis AND Clark or Lewis OR Clark?”

“Clark I guess. I always liked him better.”

Then she recited this bit of poetry…

“There the smoky camp fires

of Lewis and Clark

in a wet Columbia River

winter waiting

 on the

Nez Perce horses

scattered thick on

the plain

in a fat grassy spring.”

We finally walked under a large branch of an immense Douglas fir tree and stopped for a break. Alex dug out of the pack some cheese and bread, the water, the hunting knife, and we sat and ate lunch. I was washing the cheese and bread down when I heard the sound of an on coming vehicle.

I looked up the road and to my surprise; it was a Park Ranger law enforcement vehicle all lit up with its red, white, and blue flashing lights starting to slow down. The driver stopped and lowered his passenger side window. We both stood up and walked over and looked inside at all spit and polish and official smelling stuff with the regulation 12 gauge Smith and Wesson pump shotgun mounted over the transmission column and the radio wires and aluminum clipboards and the man in the uniform and the badge and the Beretta automatic pistol stuck in his belt. And it went like this between the Park Ranger and Alex.

“What are you doing?” the Ranger asked giving us the look over.

“Do you know what time it is?” Alex replied.

“Where are you going?” he replied not giving Alex the time of day.

“Maybe”, Alex smiled.

Then there was some crackle over his radio about a disturbance at some campground and he looked up over again, powered up his passenger side window and drove off, lights still blazing.

We both looked at each other as if to say “as if’ and we had a good laugh at that nonsense. Alex put away the cheese, bread, and water.

“I think that guy had his butt plug screwed in two extra turns to tight” Alex laughed.

“Butt plug!?”

“Ya, you know, butt plug. It is a stick of wood that bears put in their butthole when they hibernate. Haven’t you ever heard of that before? You think there are any bears here around Tommy?”

“Bears? Sure. Black Bears likely.”

Alex stood at the edge of the road looking down the steep slope into the forested valley.

“You know what the world lacks most of Tommy? It lacks imagination, courage, and love. Too many fucking people sitting around doing nothing but checking their butt plug to make sure it’s in nice and tight. It’s a real fetish you know, that butt plug. Enough. Let’s go.” And she stepped off and I followed.

Down we went and the further down we went the mist was rising in the clear single note of a varied thrush heard but not seen. Hemlock and Douglas fir needles, the smell of wet Western Red Cedar, and old spent cones marking conversations with Douglas squirrels embedded so deep in memory here they coursed and weaved like blood on the forest floor. Here was bead lily, foamflower, devil’s club, vine maple, back-lit, illuminated, glistening and wet in pools of summer light, in air which tasted of winter snow melt suspended in the tension of the sound of running water filtered through fern and moss and the dark polished roots of immense trees as we followed the habit of salamander and shrew and the Water Ouzel  that I knew must be down there when we hit the bottom.

Water Ouzel Interlude

Reach, rapids, plunge pool, falls. Reach, rapids, plunge pool, falls. Reach, rapids, plunge pool, falls.

If there is reincarnation after death it is with great certainly that I would choose to return as a Water Ouzel making my Zen living on a high mountain stream walking on river bottoms and flying through waterfalls where it makes its warm nest home. Bobbing down rapids. An unsinkable cork of a bird that looks like a castaway piece of tree bark. No creature with wings and feathers surpasses the Water Ouzel’s locked in mastery of icy rapid water. That’s for me. That’s what I thought as Alex and I plunged down the steep hill slope. Alex out front shouting out “hey I’m a mountain goat” taking long high leaps off a down snags and then “deer trail! Follow the deer trail!” and a few swift switchbacks pass and the sound of rushing water getting louder and the shade closing deeper and darker in the cool misted air and the green, green, green, green translucent and glowing.

And the river. And a trail.

Alex was wiping of her sunglasses and putting them away exchanging them for her wire rims glasses by the time I caught up. Pork pie hat askew, blue plain shirt untucked, arms akimbo, she was standing on the trail that passed by here no closer than ten feet from the river. I slipped off the backpack, leaned it against a tree, and walked over open ground to the edge of the bank. Upstream the river was rushing white and it plunged into a deep pool the color of what?

“Describe that color Tommy.”

“Azure, blue, amethyst, sapphire, topaz. Maybe topaz blue.”

The crystal clarity of the water magnified the river bottom like a lens with just a slight surface ripple as the water moved off down stream and plunged over the edge of a rock lip. The opposite bank was a vertical moss and fern covered low rock wall and rising above that the mirror side of the opposite slope of the valley and the straight trunks of massive trees scattered at well placed intervals.

Alex faced the river, placed her hands together, and gave a short bow and then reached into the pocket of her shirt and pulled out another of her so-called Meshmakahn joints and a strike anywhere match which she deftly ignited with her thumb nail and lit it. We sat down on a large fallen log and watched shafts of light beaming through the forest and playing on the surface of the water and every time we blinked, we saw the world anew.

“Here it comes Tommy.”

“What’s that Alex? Here what comes?”

“Watch.”

She took my hand and walked me to the river edge and we stood there in silence. Alex nodded upstream.

“It’s you.”

And just as she said this a small dark colored bird looking like a castaway piece of bark came ripping down the river corridor with rapid silent wing beats just a few inches off the topaz water and glided over the lip of the downstream falls out of sight just like that.

“So, if that was me then where are you?” And as soon as I asked the question a second bird came flying down the river perfectly tracing the path of the first.

Alex smiled.

Alex interlude

Oh, yes. I had become used to this over the time we had been together. And my response was never to question it. It was just the way Alex was. I once saw her raise up a thunder and lightening storm over Bellingham Bay. She knew things about me that I didn’t even know about myself and I just took in stride. I had strange encounters out in nature that she knew about before I even mentioned them. I never asked about or commented on it and sometimes pretended to act like I had no idea what she was talking about and I still do that to this very day. 

One summer we both got jobs working for the US Forest Service on the Lake Wenatchee Ranger District as Forestry Technicians. Our mission was to build birdhouses. We had an open account at a local lumberyard in Cashmere to buy wood and nails. The Ranger District shop was opened to us to use and we cranked out dozens and dozens of birdhouses for Lewis’s Woodpeckers, Hairy Woodpeckers, Black-backed Woodpeckers, Northern Flickers, Western Bluebirds, Mountain Bluebirds and Wood Ducks. What these birds had in common was that they built their nests in the cavities of large old trees and these old trees were becoming more and more scarcer.  Then we would load up a few dozen of those bird houses into the Forest Service truck we were provided, take a radio, and a ladder, and our packs and drive out into the forest and nail the bird houses to trees in the appropriate habitat. We always left early in the morning just before sunrise, worked to about ten a.m., then find a nice out of the way spot of which there were endless choices to select from and eat lunch and then make love. We’d return purposefully late so we didn’t have to meet up with the Pickle Suits and leave our kind boss a map of where we had been, how many birdhouses the nailed up, and where we would be going the next day. This routine went on for weeks and weeks and we were paid for it. Our elbows and knees were incredibly scratched up that summer and took some time to heal up properly.

One day we borrowed a heavy-duty hammer stapler with heavy-duty staples and about a thousand four by five heavy-duty plastic signs that were made to last for a hundred years or so it seemed and which read “WILDLIFE TREE! DO NOT CUT!” with a little picture of Woodsy Owl on it. So then, we posted our birdhouses, made love, and stapled these sign on as many trees in as many places as we could find. Every time before we tagged a tree Alex would place her hands together, bow, and usually utter a version of “I hate stumps” or “I hate fucking stumps” or “fuck stumps.” I am sure the government would have disapproved. As it was Alex and I bonded over public service, birds, skilled artisanship, screwing in the forest and criminality (as the stapler and staples somehow never were returned). It was a perfect summer living out of my red truck with the camper top parked along the White River beneath the large home of sticks of a Bushy-tailed Woodrat.

But I digress, because the task at hand is to hike upstream, get to some Bear action, and walk on a glacier.

Trail interlude

We sat back down on the log and stared at the river, drank some water and shared one of the Cadbury chocolate bars. We shouldered up the packs and set off.

“Everything is spirit,” Alex said.

The trail was old, not well used or maintained, hadn’t been brushed out at any recent time, and tracked close the riverbank. With the sound of rushing water in our ears as a soundtrack Alex took off at a quick measured sustained pace with the purpose of getting somewhere only breaking her concentration to negotiate down logs, thick brush, a glance at the river, the chirp of a chipmunk, and to make sure I was keeping up. Alex moved with the grace of a dance choreographed by her own sure step and the topography of the trail. She kept at this beyond keeping track of the minutes. There were no minutes or minutes that added up to hours there was only mainlined endorphins and covering ground.

The sky was dimming, the shade deepening, the sound of rushing water constant then Alex paused and nodded upward to the first star of the evening in the sparkling in a lavender sky and then turned and caught the pace again until the light began to fade and the colors of the day washed out like an old photo.

We turned a corner at a quite reach of the river along flat ground and Alex said, “Here it is.”

It was a three-sided structure of logs covered by a flat roof. We sat the packs down and Alex rummaged around for the hunting knife and an old headlamp liberated from stores of the venerable US Forest Service that she had stashed away, threw me the box of strike anywhere matches and said “start a fire” and took off down trail. I watched the light of the headlamp bounce around casting odd shadows.

There was an old fire ring in front of the shelter with moss growing in it so it hadn’t be used for some time I thought. I found a stout stick and dug it out then gather up some old fir cones, dry pieces of park, small sticks and piled it all carefully together in way that would take a match and lit. By the faint light that emerged from the flame I gathered larger pieces of broken limbs and sticks and set those aside and waited for the flame to build and then noticed carved into the cross piece log holding up the roof of shelter: Mt. Rainier National Park – CCC – 1936.

 “CCC” I thought, “Civilian Conservation Corps.”

FDRs make work project of the Great Depression that sent hundreds of young men and women into the forest to make trails and build shelters in the forests and mountains from Maine to California to here.

“Alex will like that” I thought as the fire grew brighter and I gathered more wood by its light.

The headlamp bounded back down the trail with Alex carrying a full armload of cedar and fir bows she had cut and collected with the hunting knife. She tossed those into the shelter, looked at the fire, looked up, said “CCC” smiled back at me, and bounced up the trail again. I stoked the fire and she returned with a second load of cedar and pine bows. Rattled around in the pack, turned off the head lamp and lit a candle, tossed the cedar and pine bows around to make a nest of sorts, laid out the sleeping bags over the nest, grabbed the pot and cast iron frying pan and set them down near the fire, took a look around and said “fantastic.”

By the light of the fire, Alex opened the can of chicken noodle soup, poured it in to the pot, and set it on a flat rock near the fire to heat up. Then she cut up the cheese and dinner rolls and with a little butted started making toasted cheese dinner rolls in the frying pan. I opened the wine and poured two crystal wine glasses full.

“This is not quite that gourmet but it certainly tastes pretty damn good”, she said as she passed the pot my way.

We took turn slurping the soup and had our fill of toasted cheese dinner rolls washed down with a fine white wine.

We brushed our teeth, washed up with cold water down by the river, and looked up at the thin ribbon of blazing stars bounded by the pitch-black hill slopes. I had the peculiar sense of feeling the earth turning.

Back at the shelter, Alex lit the candle again and we zipped the sleeping bags together, arranged the cedar and fir bows, and made a serviceable pillow out of the packs. Alex took off the only clothes she was wearing except the red bandana still tied around her neck: her shirt, pants, and socks and took my clothes with hers and folded them in a neat pile and placed them at the bottom of the sleeping bag where they would stay warm and dry through the night.  We climbed in together and I lay on my back and felt the exhaustion of the day flood out of me with her head on my shoulder. And the day had been perfectly weird with the raw-hamburger-eating-man, the Park Ranger cop scene, the river, the Water Ouzels, and the trail.

Alex rose up and blew out the candle and reality was reduced to her touch, the sound of the river, the smell of fir and cedar and the dieing embers of the campfire. Then she kissed me that kind of kiss that races the heart and knocks on the door of the soul. Have you ever been kissed like that?

She put her tongue in my mouth and took my hand and placed it between her legs and I could feel her warm and moist.

“Jesus Tommy. Where did you learn to make a girl so wet?”

“U of A.”

“U of A?”

University of Alex. Free tuition. Majoring in pussy.”

“You fucker”, Alex giggled.

“I hope so.”

Alex swung on top and placed me inside her. I felt her breasts against my chest as she bent over and kissed me again. Then in two short rhythmic movements her finger nails dug into my arms.

“Oh, shit!”

And I came and came and came.

“Whoosh!”

She rolled off me and on to her back and then cuddle up next to me.

“Tommy.”

“Yes.”

“Tell that story about the bear.”

“Which one?” The bear story from the Prince of Wales Island or the one about the bear on Stevens Pass?”

“The Stevens Pass story. You know I once saw a bear when I was a kid.”

“Ya?”

“Ya. I was with my mom and dad and we were taking a vacation to California. Somewhere by Crater Lake, we got in a traffic jam and when we finally moved up the highway, we saw what all the commotion was. It was a bear by the side of the road eating a box of Cracker Jacks.”

“Hmmm.”

“So?”

“So, it was about nine or so in the morning and I was walking in a meadow near the summit of Stevens Pass when I came upon a sub-alpine fir tree whose bark, on its up slope side, had been just freshly ripped off and the cambium scraped off. You could see the teeth marks quite clearly. I remember this very vividly because it was a clear sign that a bear had just been where I was now standing…”

I could feel myself drifting off. Alex next to me, holding my hand, I could feel her slow breathing and the ground opening up and myself falling into a deep sleep and I let go.

What the Wolverine Said

Then I was in a high alpine sedge meadow on the upper slopes of Mt. Rainer. The view was tremendous and just on the far horizon through a brown haze I could see the Seattle skyline punctuated by the distinct outline of the Space Needle. I was hiking up slope dressed in my favorite Aloha shirt and wearing flip-flops toward the glacier ahead of me. I noticed all the little rills of waters gathering speed and sparkling in the sun as I approached the terminal moraine of fine black volcanic rock and sand. The glacier front glowed blue. I could not believe it. I was going to actually walk on a glacier. Then I heard someone behind me clearing his or her throat.

“Ahem, excuse me.”

I turned to look. There behind me standing about four-and-a-half feet tall was a Wolverine with a pack of Marlboro Reds in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. The Wolverine was wearing a pair of colorful red, yellow, and blue beaded Cayuse moccasins of a flora design. Much like ones Alex and I saw on display at the Mary Hill Museum on the Columbia River one summer.

“Ahem, excuse me but do you have a light?”

I reached into my pocket, pulled out a strike anywhere match, and held it out to the Wolverine. The Wolverine put the pack of smokes into a pocket and then took the offered match, struck it on a nearby rock, and lit up. He took a couple of puffs and squinted at me. Then threw the butt into a campfire ringed with stones that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

“Vile things” the Wolverine said. “I usually don’t smoke.”

“Well” the Wolverine said, “the negation of the negation is the negation; as you were saying a moment ago?”

“Excuse me? What the hell does that mean?”

“I’m not sure myself”, the Wolverine replied. “I read it in a book somewhere.”

“What’s that? Come again?”

“The story about the bear, don’t you know?”

“It was a beautiful morning in late May.”

“Go on.”

“It was a beautiful morning in late May; warm with white puffy clouds floating by; a kind of day glorious, vibrant, alive kind of spring day. Alex and I were working for the U.S. Forest Service on the Skykomish Ranger District conducting botanical surveys, writing up biological evaluations for a number of district projects. That particular day Alex had to go to Seattle to take care of some business at the University of Washington so I was working alone. I kissed her goodbye and told her to drive carefully and she told me to “have fun.” I headed off to the motor pool compound, picked up my truck, and then drove over to the ranger station to check in, shoot the breeze with my boss, tell her what my plans for today were, and avoid the District Ranger, Dan Starkenrider. Starkenrider was an aloof character, ex-Navy, stickler for uniforms, and a toady to the Supervisors Office down in Mountlake Terrace. Talk about a guy with his butt plug in too tight, that’s him. I thought he never cared a rat’s ass about who I was or what I did other than to regard me as making his life potentially if not in fact miserable. I did not wear a uniform for one thing and for another I was just a seasonal employee and therefore did not account for much.

That was the Forest Service. The seasonals did all the work and the uniforms sat in the office in front of their Data General screens and pushed paper and sucked up to timber interests and hung together in gangs of road engineers and so-called foresters.

However, it was not all bad either. For one thing, the seasonals cared about what they did and for another it was a chance to work in the forest and mountains and for another it was a chance to speak up for the small creatures like botrychiums or Spotted Owls or Marbled Murrelets who otherwise would not have anyone to speak up for them. Seasonal biologists working for the U.S. Forest Service could put up a good fight when push came to shove and it made the U.S. Forest Service weary and on notice that they were being watched. Plus, the pay wasn’t bad, there were comrades, and the Skykomish Ranger District had the best bunkhouse on the entire Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

I picked up my radio, my maps, aerial photos, checked my field vest for compass, notebook, pencils, made sure I had lunch and water and grabbed of cup of coffee and got the hell out of the office as soon as humanly possible. I was then free, with a government vehicle, a full tank of gas, and a glorious spring day ahead.

I headed up Stevens Pass on Highway 2. The project for today was hunting botrychium.

Alex and I had been working on conducting botanical surveys for a rail to trail project called the Iron Goat Trail. The project was converting a line of the old Great Northern Railroad bed that ran along the Tye River to a serviceable recreation trail. The project at this particular section of the line also included the old town site of Wellington. The Great Northern built Wellington in 1893 and the town sat near the western side of the original Cascade Tunnel that ran under Stevens Pass. Its great claim to fame was that an avalanche wiped it out in 1910, killing ninety-six people and blowing steam trains off their tracks. It was the worst avalanche in U.S. History and remains so even today. The Great Northern finally abandoned Wellington in 1929 and there is not much all left to see there except open meadows and a few broken plates if you dig down into the soil some. As it turned out the abandoned site of Wellington was superb botrychium habitat.

Botrychiums are a genus of small ferns, running from a half inch to seven or eight inches tall, in the Ophioglossaceae family (Adder’s Tongue Family). Commonly called Moonworts they live at high latitudes and high elevations, mostly in disturbed meadows and woods. The Tye River watershed was full of disturbed meadows and woods, avalanche tracks, old rail beds and an abandoned town site.  Practically every botrychium known to Northwest botany was present at Wellington: Botrychium lanceolatum, Botrychium lunaria, Botrychium minganense, Botrychium montanum, Botrychium multifidum, Botrychium pinnatum, Botrychium virginianum, and the very rare Botrychium pedunculosom.

That spring and summer Alex and I worked with a fellow named Elroy Burnett. Burnett was a character and one of the best amateur botanists in the Northwest. He had tramped up every peak and through every valley along the Skykomish River and over the pass in the Nason Ridge lands of the Wenatchee National Forest. He had been at it for years. The mountains and the plants were his life. He was a likeable and engaging fellow and kept his secrets well. Some days we would meet him at Wellington, he would run ahead, and then we would hear him call out “Boooootryyyychiiiuuummms!” which meant he had found some botrychiums. Then Alex and I would come back to the ranger station, walk into the office, and yell out Boooootryyyychiiiuuummms! And, man they hated that. The uniforms froze to their chairs, you could almost hear the sound of their assholes tightening up, and what was worse for them almost every time we went out we came back with new sightings Moonworts smack in the middle of their project.

So, because of or in spite of this, Dan Starkenrider got this notion that we should look for botrychiums outside of the project area. I think he had this notion that if we found them outside the project area then the project would not have an adverse effect on the populations in the project area. Of course, one group of plants did not necessarily relate to another in just this way, his scheme was blatantly devious, and you could see the scheme for what it was worth from the highest forest lookout. But it meant more survey days and the ability to collect more data on the area and Alex and I felt like brer rabbit thrown into the briar patch.

That was what I was doing on that glorious spring day. I was out to hunt down botrychiums outside of the project area.

Just before the summit of Stevens Pass, I turned left onto the Tye River Rd., FS 6099.   The road followed the contour of the base of Skyline Ridge just above the Tye River and a mile or two down the road I pulled off and parked. I got my gear, turned on the radio, and stacked everything on the hood of the truck, looked around at the glorious spring day in the forest and mountains, and sipped my coffee.  I got my aerial photos out and was able to locate myself on the image so I had a reference point from which to proceed. According to the photo, there was a band of forest with a jagged running upper tree line above the road. If I walked through the forest upslope, I would find open meadows that appeared to be in old avalanche tracks or on slopes too steep or seasonally wet for trees. The slope had a west facing aspect with several slope breaks where it steepened out as I could tell by my contour map. It promised to be an interesting hunting ground.

I walked up through a forest of hemlock and fir and into open green meadows and began recording my species list as I moved upslope.

It was about nine or so in the morning and I was walking in a meadow at near the elevation of the summit of Stevens Pass when I came upon a sub-alpine fir tree whose bark, on its up slope side, had been ripped off by a bear so it could get at the cambium. You could see the teeth marks quite clearly. The marks looked as if someone had taken a carving tool and made a multitude of cuts with it into the tree trunk. I remember this very vividly. The trunk of the tree was fresh, wet, and glistening. It was a clear sign that a bear had not too long ago been where I was now standing. I reached out, ran my fingers over the wound, I examined it at length. Then I took out my small Olympus camera I carried in my shirt pocket and took a photograph.

The view from the bear wounded tree was glorious on this glorious spring day. You could look down the Tye River watershed for some distance; see the open avalanche tracks on the side of Wheeler Mountain above Wellington. I looked around and then I filed the bear information away and did not think about it much.

The upslope steepened out so I started to survey along the contour. I continued the survey for another ninety minutes or so in a switchback pattern working the contours down slope until I nearly reached the upper forest tree line. The meadows there began to peter out and I had not yet found a single botrychium.

Where one of the meadows narrowed out along the fringe of the forest, I noticed a few ragged groups of vine maple. I had found botrychiums under vine maple before so I decided to check those areas out. I was walking very slowly and quietly directly down slope, head and eyes to the ground, when it happened. I heard low grumbly woof woof sound. Then not more than just three or four steps away a small group of vine maples began to rattle as if struck by a strong wind. But there was no wind. Then behind the vine maples, standing on its hind feet was a brown looking black bear and that bear was raking its paws through those vine maples in rather menacing manner a like a boxer in the eighth round of a ten round bout. The bear seemed rather pissed off.

I was suddenly jerked into a different time zone, slow-time, a completely different world of time. My mind went white, and I was choking on the adrenaline that was cascading through my nervous system.

I saw the bear and then I did not see the bear and then I saw the bear again and did not see it and then I saw it only one time more. I was trapped in a narrow little vine maple meadow gap with thick forest and down wood on either side.

I can’t actually recall if I thought things through but I didn’t turn around and run and that probably saved me from a mauling or worse because if it is one thing that bears can do it is to run up hill. They all got thighs like hydraulic steam pumps. I walked slowly back up the slope facing the danger. I was walking backward thinking I need to get back to the truck. Then I noticed light through the forest coming from another meadow in the direction I wanted to go so I moved on the contour. I did not run but I walked very fast. I got into the forest and looked down slope and the bear was following me on the contour about thirty feet below. There were just a few trees between the bear and me. I was slightly ahead the bear and then I fell down stumbling over down wood and the camera in my shirt pocket flew out and I watched it land about four feet down slope from me. I did not bother to try to go pick it up. On the ground, in all the down wood, I felt like the rusty tin-man. I did not look around for the bear and it took some effort to get to my feet again although I imagine it was only just seconds. As I began to move again I grabbed my radio and called into the ranger station dispatch.

“Skykomish. Skykomish”

“This is Skykomish.”

“I have a bear following me. Over.”

No reply. Nothing. I knew the kid running the desk. Just out of high school. I am sure he was there by himself and must have thought “what the fuck am I going to do now” and so he did nothing at all. I briefly imagined that he went to get some adult supervision, but who knows.

Finally, I broke out into the other meadow, a bigger meadow than the one I was had encountered the bear. There was no down wood and I moved faster, I glanced over my shoulder and did not see the bear and so shot at an angle down slope toward the road. Then I hit the forest again and took the most direct line down hill possible until I hit the road not more that a hundred feet from my truck.

No more bear.

I dropped my daypack and took off my vest and unlocked the truck door and then just sat there saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck” repeatedly punctuated by an occasional hysterical kind of laugh. I felt weak and a bit sick from the adrenaline and a bit scraped up on the arms but I was alive and it all made me laugh. I thought about going back to get my camera but I was in doubt if I could really find exactly where it flew out of my pocket. I said, “Fuck it” and let it go. It is probably up there today rusting away.

I got in my truck and drove the hell out of there. The bear could have that slope. I did not care. I finally pulled off at a hairpin turn where a small stream comes into the Tye River. I walked upstream with my daypack and found a rather large flat boulder deposited there at the dawn of time. I sat in the sun, ate my lunch, and thought it must have been a young bear; it was a brown black bear, didn’t seem that big, if it had been a female bear with cubs or a big male black bear I would be dead now, and what was it doing there in those vines maples? It was sleeping. I had nearly stepped on it while it was taking its mid-morning nap on that glorious spring day. Three or four more steps and I would have stepped on it. The bear had been as surprised as I to be in such a situation; had probably finally ran off. Black bears are rather timid creatures after all.

I stood up to take a piss, walked over to the edge of the big rock and began to pee. I was looking around in the shrubs when I noticed a very large purple pile of bear shit. It was an oversized huckleberry pie and it appeared freshly baked, so to speak.

That was it. I went back to the truck. I drove back to the ranger station. Told my boss I had an encounter with a bear. I think I said, “I’ve had encounter with a bear and am taking the rest of the day off.” She did not say anything. I walked over to the station dispatch, caught the eye of the young just out of high school fellow whose job I never clearly figured out what it was, and gave him the stink eye. Then I left and went back to the bunkhouse.

When Alex got back, I told her what happened and she all excited and pissed off that she had missed the action. She still has me tell that story of the bear to her from time to time. I do not mind the telling of it.

“And that’s it?” asked the Wolverine.

“Ya, that’s about it.”

“And what did you learn from that?”

“I learned that humans are not the center of being. Humans are just beings among beings. I learned that the forest and the mountains could kill you. I learned that it is possible to be on someone’s dinner plate. I learned that bears like to nap among vine maples about mid-morning. ”

“Well, that’s not bad for a start. The best thing is you did not read it all out of a book. Now, you can go walk on it.”

“Walk on what?” I asked.

“The glacier.”

The glacier glowed blue and cold in the darkening light. I reached out, touched it, and walked on its blue glow and all went dark.

Alex in the Morning

I woke up eyes wide open to the smell of coffee and campfire. I sat up and peaked out the shelter but I could not see Alex. I finally got up and stepped out and there she was standing near the river wearing her Danner boots, her new black silk fishnet stockings, her pork pie hat, and holding a steaming cup of coffee in one hands and a cigarette in the other.

“How do I look”, she asked.

“Fucking beautiful”, I relied. Then I noticed a pack of Marlboro Reds on a nearby log.

“Where did you get these?” I asked.

“Found them in the rucksack; vile things. Have no idea where they came from. I don’t usually smoke but thought I would try one.”

She threw the butt into the campfire ringed with rock. Set her coffee down. Then came up to me and gave me a big wet, smoky, coffee, wet tasting kind of kiss.

“Did you walk on the glacier?” she asked but before I could say anything, she chirped, “Let’s take a dip in the river.”

Alex threw off her pork pie hat, Danner boots, and silk stockings. I dropped my boxers and took my t-shirt off and we jumped into the ice blue pool of the Ohanapecosh River. We staying in until we were fairly pink, which was not long. Then we jumped out of the river, rolled around and screwed on the cedar boughs and sleeping bags, ate blueberry pancakes and eggs for breakfast and then jumped one more time into the river of time for good measure.

We put ourselves in order feeling quite fresh. We packed up camp. Put the fire out, dead out, as the Forest Service likes to say. Alex bounded down the trail and in not more than twenty minutes from camp, I just caught sight of her disappearing into a thicket of Salmonberry bushes where the trail seemed to vanish. It did vanish. I just was able to see a pork pie hat bobbing up ahead. I thought to myself how beautiful and young, beautiful, intelligent, beautiful and magical that woman was.

Then I heard Alex yell out, “Fuck!”

I worked my way up to where she was and we both found ourselves standing at the junction of two paved roads. There was no traffic about and just down one of the roads was a National Park guard station. We walked up the station and pressed our faces to the glass window but no one was about.  The National Park sign indicated that this was the Stevens Canyon entrance to the Mt. Rainier National Park and the road led to Paradise and we walked up the road a bit to wait to stick out our thumbs for a ride.