Travels – Page 3 – State of Wilderness

Sahalie and Koosah Falls: The One-Hour Five-Minute Hike

These pictures are from a hike we took more than a month ago, while we were making our way through Oregon to get to my work conference. I haven’t had time to tell the stories, though, because that baby pretty much demands most of my time at home. As a matter of example, I have been thinking about posting this for about two weeks, and then had the page up for about four hours before I was able to sit down to actually type these words.

_DSC1406 — The trail running parallel to the stream

I still want to chronicle our outdoor adventures, though, and I am not giving up on that idea. We’ll just have to get used to the idea that every post will be a past-tense situation, and not a regular update.

On the day I took these pictures, we were making our way from Portland to Eugene, and then from Eugene to Bend. These waterfalls are a short distance from parking – so the information I read said – off Highway 126 (McKenzie River Highway). The problem was, I didn’t identify which parking coordinates/spot that was from. We saw a sign indicating a parking spot for these falls, as well as other points of interest, so we stopped, anticipating a five minute hike.

We ended up spending an hour out here instead. We could have make the walk shorter, I suppose, by giving up on the idea of finding a second geocache in the vicinity that was beyond the falls (which it turns out we could not find, anyways). We thought about turning back briefly after the first find (GC3Y0R7) but then made the choice to keep going. I don’t think any of us regretted it.
There was a time on the trail that everyone wanted to stop and get their pictures taken at various places along the path. This is one example here. We indulged the kids at first, but then it just got to be time consuming, so we told them we were just going to get to the end, then take more pictures on the way back. However, as per the kids typical MO, they got it into their head to whiz back along the trail at hyper speed and not wait to see if we were keeping up on the way back, without thinking about the pictures they wanted to take. I was torn between sticking with Jason, who had his camera out and wanted to take pictures, and keeping up with the kids, and then I lost visual sight of the older boys and had to hurry up to catch up with them, being annoyed at every turn that they didn’t stop to wait for us when they noticed we weren’t right behind them (or maybe not even noticing). I finally caught up to them, but then we were over it and just wanted to get to the car. It’s a good thing, then, that we at least stopped to take the few we did along the way.We took some of the other pictures that we took along this trip and printed them out for a big multi-photo frame that I had recently gotten for a Mother’s Day present from Jason’s sister. It’s going to be a memory that will be with us for a while as a result.

As we got closer to the top of the second falls, I noticed that we were passing another parking spot, and realized that this was the one we should have parked at for a five minute walk. My oldest son and I remarked that Jason might be annoyed that I had picked the wrong parking spot, but when AJ went to talk to Jason about it, Jason was like, “why would I be mad? This was an awesome walk!” I agree that this walk was one of the best times of our year so far, one we would have missed out on if it wasn’t for that location mistake.
The only reasons we should have parked closer was that we had other time commitments, and we hadn’t packed any water for the walk. We were supposed to be meeting up with the kids dad and were now going to be about an hour late, and I was going to be late for the opening ceremonies for my work conference. We all ended up being a little parched from the walk, as well.

In the end, though, I made it to the work obligations without having missed much, and we still found their dad and made it work, and I am not going to feel regret about making him wait, considering everything I have been put through due to him past and present.

I think that Jason’s response to AJ’s question about the parking is perhaps a response we could apply to life: sometimes we take the long way, but if it wasn’t for the long way, we would have missed all these other beautiful experiences. I certainly feel like that could apply to my own life. Sometimes it is the detours that make life worth it, or at the least, things still work out in the end, anyways.

Paradise Campground

There is a road…there is always a road, with us…there is a road that crosses east to west, from Eugene to Sisters in the great green state of Oregon. This road is called the McKenzie Highway (126), as it parallels the McKenzie River. There are parts of this river that are good for fishing, rafting, and then there are parts that are good for just being still and watching. Fishing in the McKenzie River could yield Chinook salmon, mountain whitefish, and two varieties of trout. Various ducks as well as bald eagles and ospreys feast on these waters. The river is also the sole source of tap water for the communities of Eugene and Springfield. If one was serious about birding, one might search the dense forest on the west side of the basin in Linn County to see if they could find the threatened Northern Spotted Owl.
For us, we were simply seeking respite from the road, and a good ole geocache. We got more than we were searching for, though, with these stellar views. It is a place we would love to come back to and spend more time, perhaps camp for a while. This spot we found truly was Paradise.

Big Thicket National Preserve

Last Saturday found us in the visitor center for the Big Thicket National Forest, north of the town of Kountze. We had stopped in briefly to get information on trails, and now we were back for a respite from the muggy humidity and the bugs after an hour long hike on the Kirby Nature Trail. I sat in the darkened theater room to feed the baby, and the friendly park ranger who was working the front desk offered to start the movie for me. We watched the fifteen minute film that offered some insight on what makes this preserve special.

One of the features of the park that make it unique is its diversity. The Big Thicket is actually a collection of several tracts of land spread out over several counties and 84,500 acres. It happens to sit right at the junction of several different ecosystems. A hiker might be able to cross through nine different ecosystems throughout a visit in the park, from the pineywoods of east Texas to the hardwoods of the Mississippi, from savannah to desert. Due to this intersection, visitors will be able to find a wider variety of species than in any other area of Texas: over three hundred species of migrating birds, a thousand flowering plants and shrubs (including four carnivorous species), one hundred species of trees, and many species of reptiles and amphibians, including all four venomous snakes of Texas, and this cute little skink here.

Buck Moth Caterpillar. Apparently their little barbs are poisonous and leave a vicious little sting if touched.

Fungus and flowers along the Pitcher Plant Trail

This is the Pitcher Plant – one of the four carnivorous plants. It digests insects that fall into the liquid inside this tube, which contains enzymes that break them down. These plants are easily viewed in the springtime from a short quarter mile walk along an easy walking path (that can be a little tricky to get to, at least the way we drove to it).

Given that this area of the world has been designated as the “biological crossroads of North America”, one should not be surprised that of all the strange insects, reptiles and flora and fauna of this preserve, there has been reports also of elusive hairy beasts – wood apes, aka “bigfoot” or “sasquatch”. There have been at least fifteen reports of sightings in the counties composing the Big Thicket on the North American Wood Ape website, accounts so numerous that Bigfoot researchers have been known to take up residence in the area to keep watch. (This information was not relayed in the film we watched in the visitors center). The area was also home to most species of American mega-fauna before their extinction.

Stories of the people of the area that were included in the official film included that of the “Dog People”, a group of pioneer-types that lived completely off the land in this area in the mid-1900s, using their pack of dogs to assist them in hunting game in the forest to survive off of. Also, groups of Native Americans, such as the Alabama-Coushatta, have called these woods home at some point. The Dog People and other residents were slowly kind of forced of the forest, as it started to be exploited for its oil and gas reserves, as well as its lumber. Eventually, though, there was enough push to get the land declared as one of the nation’s first National Preserves in 1974. Due to its status as a preserve and not a national park, there is limited allowance for these resources to be utilized, but while retaining the area’s natural resources for the future.

Another story that I came across later, not included in the film, was that of the Texas “Jayhawks”, a group of local men drafted to fight in the Civil War for the side of the Confederacy, who opposed that side’s viewpoint and hid out in the forest to avoid the war. They were arrested at one point and held in nearby Woodville, but escaped in a scheme involving whiskey, fiddling, a loose board, and the dancing of a jig by one of the Jayhawks, which allowed the guards to be distracted long enough for all the prisoners to escape through the loose board one by one. In the chaos that ensued after, the one who had been dancing the jig just walked away, free at last. Later, a Confederate Captain named Kaiser decided to light a fire to the Jayhawk camp at Honey Island, trying to flush out the traitors. It is believed that all the Jayhawks escaped, but the canebrake they lived in was permanently destroyed, and 3000 acres of forest burned up in what is now referred to as the “Kaiser Burnout”. This is one of the ghost stories that is attributed to the mysterious “Light of Saratoga”, a ghostly light that appears and disappears at random times on Bragg Road in the town of Saratoga, sixteen miles west of Kountze. Other explanations include ghost conquistadors looking for buried treasure, a decapitated railroad worker from a nearby accident, or an eternally lost hunter looking for a way out. Or, perhaps, swamp gas or light reflection from cars on the nearby highway.

We had decided to take the scenic route from the visitors center to the Pitcher Plant Trail, and then may or may not have lost our way. As we worked our way through a series of back roads, the roads eventually turned to dirt. Occasional small houses were found along this road, or sometimes just signs with a person’s name marked on it indicating a lot or way to another property. However, most of our drive we spent in complete wilderness, with no signs of human presence. The preserve was on our left, and private property to our right. I felt the presence of other life out there, though, and was half-expecting to see one of the “Dog People” in the silent woods around us, perhaps sight some unusual movement in the forest. I didn’t see anything, though, besides a few birds not already on our list for the year.

It was a place that was enlightening and intriguing, though, and we did decide it was worth coming back to another time – just not often, as it is some two hours and change drive from our house. There is much to explore out here.

Wild Montana

July 21, 2014

Two horses nudge each other nervously, looking over each other’s withers across the fence, towards the treeline. Two dark figures move slowly across the field, cautiously stepping out of the cover of the forest. Jason’s eagle eye had stopped these slow movements, and we had turned the truck around and parked to watch what came out of the forest: two moose cows, one of the animals we had been watching for during this vacation and had yet to see.

We were parked near a pasture on a side road just off the highway headed from Browning to Cut Bank. The horses were standing along the outside of the pasture, staring at these foreign occupants of what appeared to be their home. I thought perhaps these horses had gotten out somehow, but we had seen others, and sign of more, roaming loose. To this day, I can’t explain what the all the horses of Browning were doing outside the fencelines. Jason’s theory is that they are wild, but mine is that they belong to the Blackfeet whose reservation land includes or borders Browning.

There is a story I read about a farmer in Browning who came across unknown visitors who got their vehicle stuck on his land. As he helped them out, he asked them what they were doing there, and they told him they were scouts from Hollywood, looking for a place to film a movie. They asked him if he knew where they could find some horses to film in a stampede, and he replied he knew exactly how to find those. Turns out the movie they were filming was “Hidalgo”, and not only did the man manage to find them some horses to stampede, it turned out to be the largest free horse stampede ever filmed with some 570 reservation horses taken part. This 21 days of filming employed 100 of the Blackfeet and pumped a quarter of a million dollars into the local economy.

We drove further south. We had the world to ourselves, green and amber colored hills rolling to each side of the horizon. Outside Choteau, Montana, another dark shape moved on a hillside. Again we stopped the truck, and again we reached for our binoculars. A lone wolf trotted slowly down a hill, moving towards a pasture, crossing under fences, making his way over a small stream. His movements seemed a little off, and we realized that he was lame in one leg. Later, as we crossed into Wyoming, we saw a coyote dart into the road for roadkill. His coat was coming off in patches, most likely due to mange, and he looked pathetically thin. The struggle for survival is real for the wild animals.

We left the wild that afternoon, heading out of the backroads and on to 90, which took us through Billings and on to Sheridan, where we stayed the night at a hotel. From here, we were headed back, into towns like Fort Collins to visit with my good friend Matt, to Claremore OKto visit Jason’s family, through the outskirts of Dallas and on home. We didn’t take any more pictures or find any more interesting animals.

My journal lists that the birds we saw from this point included lots of hawks, robins, and ospreys. The hawks were unidentified, except a Coopers Hawk. In Oklahoma, we saw House Wrens making a home in his mother’s yard, and saw Greater Roadrunners, Common Ravens, and a large, beautiful immature Blue Jay with a trilling voice in a park in Claremore. From here on out, we resort back to local adventures, finding local wildlife, birds, trails and wilderness areas until we can afford to get back out on the road again.