Oregon Day 5

By seven a.m. we had already done our first 2 ½ miles.  The sun was up, the birds were singing and the morning meadow was a sweet perfume.  Our sleeping bags were pretty wet from all the dew and condensation, but we shoved them down into our packs and planned to air them out when we took our first snack break.  We were beginning to fall into the routine of the trail- wake early, break camp, start walking, eat, walk, eat, walk, make camp, eat, sleep.  The trail is very narrow, so most of the time, even though we were always fairly close to one another, we were in our own little silent worlds.  Sometimes we would talk, like this morning as we tried to figure out which sections of the PCT were completed in which years. We could remember the first year very clearly, but many of the others were a muddle and we weren’t exactly sure who went and how far.  Having little puzzles like that helps to keep your brain busy and while away the hours.  My mind also works hard on identifying and categorizing the plants on the side of the trail.  I know most of the edible greens, wildflowers and trees on the California side, but crossing over into Oregon had really changed the flora all of a sudden.  Now there were big clumps of grass with tall flower spikes extending from the middle, a bunch of narrow-leafed greens I could not name, and lots of little bushes with tiny red berries on them.  Gone were all of my friendly edible and wide leafed (toilet paper leafed) green plants- not a mule’s ear in sight. A field guide is too heavy to carry, so I take a picture of the plant, sketch it, or just describe it in my journal and look it up when I get home.  The pictures are the most helpful visually, but there is no context as to time or place.  I was kind of worrying about all these new plants to look up and how I would ever name them all, much less remember all their names, when a thought hit me. Their creator knows all their names.  Appreciating them is my job, naming and knowing them is His.  With this new perspective my day was a lot more pleasant.

Another thing my mind spends time on is writing.  I have always enjoyed writing, but my normal life does not give me much time to do it.  Out here, with more time than I know what to do with, my brain loves to write and rewrite.  I’ll think something and then my brain will reword it so that it would sound good in writing.  Sometimes it thinks up verses, or songs or poems.  During last year’s trip I was inventing poems and verses every day.  This year my brain had a more practical view point.  It was writing articles for the PCT magazine, a how-to book on hiking and a science book.  This part of the trail was very conducive to that because the area we were walking through looked just like the habitat we walk through at home with the manzanita, sage and shrubs. Unfortunately most of these ideas are lost by the time I get home as my journal is not big enough to write them all down.

After morning snack we decided to take a detour through a broad meadow.  We walked side by side on a gravel road and noticed houses that were being built or had just been built.  We imagined together what it would be like having a home right off the trail so that you could trail angel and visit and help people.  I particularly liked one of the homes.  I enjoyed the detour, but we weren’t really in the wilderness and we weren’t really in town.  What do you do when you have to relieve yourself and you are kind of on the edge of people’s property?  There were no big trees to hide behind and no little trail diversions.  Finally (and I couldn’t have waited much longer) there was some tall grass and big bushes just around a bend out of sight of the houses.

 At the end of Old Hyatt Lake Road was an unexpected water source.  A nice little stream was being supplied by a wall of water spilling off the wall of the reservoir.  I went down to the stream, got some water to drink, took a few pictures and washed out my hanky.  I really wanted to take time to cool down my hot feet, but Snickers hadn’t even come down and was sitting by the trail head on a stump, studying the map.  I got the idea that he wanted to move on. 

As we continued down the trail toward the Hyatt Lake Campground, where we would get our next water, we began to hear a lot of dog barking kind of noise.  It sounded like a whole pack of them, but out of control.  There was a loud bang and the barking stopped.  My husband’s story was that a guy in a pickup hit a deer but didn’t kill it and the pack of dogs in the back of the truck went crazy with barking.  The guy had to finish the deer off with his gun.  Not too bad an imagination for an engineer- must be all the hours he has to think out here.  As we got closer, the noise sounded more like children yelling and screaming, like they do on a playground or when there are a lot of them running loose in a meadow at a campground.  Then, as we got closer, I recognized the sound as a pack of coyotes.  We have them in the fields past our house at home. 

Snickers thought it would be nice to go down to the camp store and get a soda or something, but it was a mile off trail down a pavement road in the heat.  We hung around at the campground entrance for a  little while, hoping for a hitch down to the store, but we never saw any cars going in that direction.  We finally gave up and headed down to the water faucet, filled up our bottles, had some snack, dried our sleeping bags out for a little while and listened to the coyotes.  As we started walking again, the coyotes stayed just out in front of us.  I was wishing we had time to crouch in the bushes at the end of the meadow and get a good look at them, but we had miles to do.  Still, I enjoyed knowing they were there.

Most of the rest of the day was hot, waterless and dry.  At least I recognized the plant life- it was oak trees, sage brush and manzanita.  We had leftover burritos for lunch, got our dinner soaking and walked some more.  We were headed towards another lake, which we needed to get to in order to have enough water.  You never know what to expect.  The last few miles were hard uphill miles, and we came out into your basic red neck boater’s lake. No one took much notice of us.  Our feet being very hot and mine pretty blistery, we limped our way down to the shore. It was full of both dried and slimy algae and sharp rocks but as I was determined to let my feet have a good soak I braved the conditions in my bare feet and sat for quite a while with my feet cold, wet and happy.  We had been planning to camp by the lake, but the campsites and campers there did not appeal to us.  We took advantage of the flushies, the tap water and the picnic table.  Dinner was baked beans with cheese biscuits.  When we first started hiking together we only boiled water and poured it into whatever prepackaged meal we were eating that night.  Now that we make our own food there are a lot more choices, and sometimes we actually have to do something that looks a lot more like cooking (but gets the pan dirty.) Snickers doesn’t always trust my girl scout cooking and it is always fun when it turns out.  This was yummy.  With rested feet and full bellies we decided to push on a little further.  It was going to be about fifteen miles to the next water source but it didn’t matter if we camped next to water that night because we had already eaten and cleaned up.  As much as it rains in Oregon you’d think they could have drinkable water more often. 

To make biscuits:

At home mix 1 cup flour, ½ Tablespoon baking powder, 1 tsp. sugar ¼ tsp cream of tartar, dash salt and ¼ cup dry milk powder.  Pack into a baggie or whatever you store your food in.  (double recipe if you are feeding more than one person or you have a large pot)

On trail- add ¼ cup olive oil or butter (we mooch butter packets from chicken-take-out places) and 1/3 cup water to the dry mix. Stir just until mixed.  Batter should be dryish and lumpy.

Add the dough to a simmering stew, chili, soup, beans or other trail dish, by dropping it in small (golf ball sized) lumps onto the top of the stew.  Put on the lid. Keep the dish at a simmer for 12 minutes.  Don’t peek!  You can also use this procedure with pre-maid biscuit mixes or cornmeal muffin mix.   We like the Marie Calendar ones.