Wow, the hike across the Beartooths was amazing. Check out the new slide show in the right hand margin!

9 minutes and counting until I leave for an epic 29 mile through hike in the Beartooths with Whitney!

Beargrass in the Big Creek Lakes area

Cross-cut close-up

Moving the cut piece of a 30+ inch log off the trail

The view from Packbox Pass

Portia, Craig and I on a 30+ inch tree that needs to be removed

The Big Creek hitch went really well. We busted up to the lake in just two days. There was a "crazy axe man" who had been up the trail before us and had cut out most of the downed trees. Unfortunately, he had not cut them to spec and we spent a lot of time correcting his shoddy work. The other unfortunate part of the whole situation was that I think that he was actually using a chainsaw, which is against Wilderness regulations. My speculation is that someone associated with the water rights holders and the dam got impatient and took logging out matters into their own hands. I guess that things like this happen every year and often, our schedule will get shuffled around in order to accommodate water rights holder's wishes to access the dams on lakes. I am mildly disappointed in the fact that my schedule is at the mercy of water rights holders who, for lack of a better word, blackmail us by threatening to log out the trail themselves with chainsaws if we don't get their first with cross-cuts. Is nothing sacred?!

On a brighter side, we saw two black bears! It was so fun to watch them nose around looking for grubs. We also got to cut a couple of trees that were over 30 inches in diameter. We cut the chunks at angels so that they slid off the trail really easily despite their great size and weight. Big Creek Lake was a joy to swim in, the bugs were tolerable and the view from Packbox Pass was astounding. We also got done with the job a day early so we got a nice warm shower and I got to see Mike sooner than expected.

This weekend, I resolved all my car's issues, watched Mike kick ass at softball, picked a bunch of veggies, visited my cats, saw the midnight showing of Harry Potter, tried to organize food and gear for three weeks worth of backpacking, broke my camera (in a way in which the 5 year, very expensive warranty, doesn't cover) retitled my car, dehydrated a ton of fruit and made spent grain granola bars. Mike and I went up to my Grandparent's cabin for two nights too! We went to Glacier and Tamarack Brewery as well as the Mission Mountain Winery and saw the regatta races and the cherry festival in Polson. We played with Beagle Baylea and taught her how to ride in a paddle boat and swim (sort of). And we sat out late on the dock and watched the stars, my favorite.

In the next month, I will be working and backpacking for fun with only one day in the middle that is designated as not in the woods time. Let's all hope the weather is wonderful!

This weekend, my bunkhouse mate, Stephanie and I went to Seattle. Stephanie hails from New Mexico and has never been to Seattle or anywhere else in the northwest, for that matter. I invite her to come along to Seattle to see Jason Webley's Elevanniversary show. She agreed, especially since her cousin was living on a military base near Seattle and was having a 4th of July/birthday BBQ. This was going to be my first Webley show in a few years. It seems like we have been dancing around each other all over the country and I was never in a town at the right moment to catch a show. Finally, the stars aligned and I was going to see JASON WEBLEY. In the end, while it wasn’t my all-time favorite Webley show, it was still good, a lot of fun, and I'm glad I went.


There was a huge will-call line outside of Townhall, the venue, when we arrived at 7:45. We didn't make it inside until 8:10pm. Apparently, we missed the first performers, Seattle’s Orkestar Zirkonium but they made a second appearence with Jason later. The show itself was divided roughly in half, with the first half devoted to Jason’s friends and collaborators doing short sets on their own, and Jason coming out for the second half. This ended up having some definite pros and cons: on tshohe plus side, we got some more exposure to the people Jason’s been working with over the past few years, all of whom had quite enjoyable sets; however that also meant that Jason himself had a somewhat abbreviated setlist. He didn't play nearly as many songs as he usually does and I didn't hear any of my favorite ballads. He did play a lot of the louder, more exciting, get-everyone-bouncing-around songs though!

The first guest performer up was Andru Bemis, who worked with Jason on the How Big is Tacoma EP, with three of his own songs. Jay Thompson (Eleven Saints) read a few poems. I am so sad that I don't have the Eleven Saints collaboration now. Reverend Peyton, who collaborated with Jason on Two Artichokes and a Bottle of Wine did a couple songs but spent most of his time tuning his guitar. Some of Jason’s goddesses did a silly Billy Joel “We Didn’t Start the Fire”-inspred pseudo-retrospective of Jason’s career, accompanied by only a big bass drum. I don't have Amanda Palmer's collaboration album, Evelyn Evelyn, either. And after her set, I am determined to find it somehow. I am also interested in finding her work with the Dresden Dolls and as a solo artist. After Amanda’s set, we were treated (after some slight technical issues) to a short, four-minute edit of video from Jason’s first public performance from eleven years ago, featuring songs from his first album, Viaje. It was fun to see — younger, shorter hair, a bit more unfinished, but definitely Jason.

Jason performed after the video with his Alex (Sprout) Guy, Jherek Bischoff, and Michael McQuilken. They did a few of Jason’s songs, one from each album including Forever, Once Again, and then he invited his guest performers up one-by-one to perform songs from their collaborative EPs. Before his collaborators started joining him, though, Jason invited onstage one of the first people to welcome Jason into the world of busking when he started all those years ago, Seattle legend Artis the Spoonman, who joined Jason for an incredible performance. After this, Jason and two others changed into white jumpsuits and sunglassed and did a short, bizarre, techno-Devo-ish piece that just seemed odd and out of place.

Next up came a short word about Sunday’s Camp Tomato, along with indoctrinating (or, for many of us, re-indoctrinating) us all into the Tomato Scouts, with both the Tomato Scout Oath and the Tomato Scout Song. Jason read a sweet short story about a boy with a dream of feathers, boats, balloons, tomatoes, and lots of friends, only to wake up to find that the dream was still ongoing. Alex, Jherek and Michael came back on stage and were joined by a string trio of two cellos and one violin. After a few songs, they were joined by the Orkestar Zirkonium and shortly afterwards, Jay Thompson came on for “Eleven Saints."

Many more balloons were launched, both big and small, people got up and danced in the aisles, and the marionette version of Jason from a few years back floated around the room underneath big red balloons. The audience was in a chaos of balloons and dancing and the stage was packed with people and instruments, creating the perfect atmosphere for the grand finale, “Music That Tears Itself Apart."

There was a giant tomato cake over in Freeway Park and Stephanie and I wandered for awhile with other fans to try and find it but were too tired to stay for long and so we headed to my friend's house for the night and slept soundly with visons of balloons and boats and tomatoes running through our dreams.

Backslider's Belgian Wit

Ingredients for Backslider's Wit

The boil

Krausening

Transfering the Wit to a bucket for bottling ease

Bottled Backslider's Wit

I finally bottled my Belgian Wit! Actually, I am not sure that I ever mentioned that I was brewing beer at all. So yes, I brewed a Belgian Wit several months ago. The recipe goes as follows.

6.75 lbs Dark Wheat Malt Extract

.3 lbs Munich Malt

1 lbs Pilsner Malt

1 Oat Flakes

1.2 oz Hallertuar with 4% alpha acid (60 min)

1.2 oz Kent Hops (5 min)

Fresh orange peels

Pepper corns

Coriander

Safbrew T-58 yeast - use 4 oz extract and 1.5 L of water to make a slurry

Start with 3 gallons of water at 175 degrees F. Add malts and mash for 30 minutes. Boil 60 minutes. Transfer to the carboy and add 2.5 more gallons of water. Let cool and pitch yeast slurry. I pitched the yeast at 6 am on May 3rd and my 3 pm the krausening rate was 13o bubbles per minute. The original gravity was 1.05. The fermentation slowed remarkable after the initial explosion and the gravity fell slowly. Finally, after 50 days I had a final gravity of 1.011 which would give my beer an alcohol content of about 4 percent. I used about 1.75 cups of dry malt extract to condition the beer before bottling.

The Perfect High
Shel Silverstein

There once was a boy named Gimme-Some-Roy...
He was nothin' like me or you,'cause laying back and getting high was all he cared to do.

As a kid, he sat in the cellar...sniffing airplane glue.
And then he smoked banana peels, when that was the thing to do.
He tried aspirin in Coca-Cola, he breathed helium on the sly, and his life became an endless search to find the perfect high.

But grass just made him wanna lay back and eat chocolate-chip pizza all night,and the great things he wrote when he was stoned looked like shit in the morning light.
Speed made him wanna rap all day, reds laid him too far back,
Cocaine-Rose was sweet to his nose, but the price nearly broke his back.

He tried PCP, he tried THC, but they never quite did the trick.
Poppers nearly blew his heart, mushrooms made him sick.
Acid made him see the light, but he couldn't remember it long.
Hash was a little too weak, and smack was a lot too strong.
Quaaludes made him stumble, booze just made him cry,
Then he heard of a cat named Baba Fats who knew of the perfect high.

Now, Baba Fats was a hermit cat...lived high up in Nepal,
High on a craggy mountain top, up a sheer and icy wall.
"Well, hell!" says Roy, "I'm a healthy boy, and I'll crawl or climb or fly,
Till I find that guru who'll give me the clue as to what's the perfect high."

So out and off goes Gimme-Some-Roy, to the land that knows no time,
Up a trail no man could conquer, to a cliff no man could climb.
For fourteen years he climbed that cliff...back down again he'd slide . . .
He'd sit and cry, then climb some more, pursuing the perfect high.

Grinding his teeth, coughing blood, aching and shaking and weak,
Starving and sore, bleeding and tore, he reaches the mountain peak.
And his eyes blink red like a snow-blind wolf, and he snarls the snarl of a rat,
As there in repose, and wearing no clothes, sits the god-like Baba Fats.

"What's happenin', Fats?" says Roy with joy, "I've come to state my biz . . .
I hear you're hip to the perfect trip... Please tell me what it is.
"For you can see," says Roy to he, "I'm about to die,
So for my last ride, tell me, how can I achieve the perfect high?"

"Well, dog my cats!" says Baba Fats. "Another burned out soul,
Who's lookin' for an alchemist to turn his trip to gold.
It isn't in a dealer's stash, or on a druggist's shelf... S
on, if you would find the perfect high, find it in yourself."

"Why, you jive mother-fucker!" says Roy, "I climbed through rain and sleet,
I froze three fingers off my hands, and four toes off my feet!
I braved the lair of the polar bear, I've tasted the maggot's kiss.
Now, you tell me the high is in myself? What kinda shit is this?

My ears, before they froze off," says Roy, "had heard all kindsa crap;
But I didn't climb for fourteen years to hear your sophomore rap.
And I didn't climb up here to hear that the high is on the natch,
So you tell me where the real stuff is, or I'll kill your guru ass!"

"Okay...okay," says Baba Fats, "You're forcin' it outta me...
There is a land beyond the sun that's known as Zabolee.
A wretched land of stone and sand, where snakes and buzzards scream,
And in this devil's garden blooms the mystic Tzutzu tree.

Now, once every ten years it blooms one flower, as white as the Key West sky,
And he who eats of the Tzutzu flower shall know the perfect high.
For the rush comes on like a tidal wave...hits like the blazin' sun.
And the high? It lasts forever, and the down don't never come.

But, Zabolee Land is ruled by a giant, who stands twelve cubits high,
And with eyes of red in his hundred heads, he awaits the passer-by.
And you must slay the red-eyed giant, and swim the river of slime,
Where the mucous beasts await to feast on those who journey by.
And if you slay the giant and beasts, and swim the slimy sea,
There's a blood-drinking witch who sharpens her teeth as she guards the Tzutzu tree."

"Well, to hell with your witches and giants," says Roy, "To hell with the beasts of the sea--
Why, as long as the Tzutzu flower still blooms, hope still blooms for me."
And with tears of joy in his sun-blind eyes, he slips the guru a five,
And crawls back down the mountainside, pursuing the perfect high.

"Well, that is that," says Baba Fats, sitting back down on his stone,
Facing another thousand years of talking to God, alone.
"Yes, Lord, it's always the same...old men or bright-eyed youth...
It's always easier to sell 'em some shit than it is to tell them the truth."
Shel Silverstein

Artist's rendition of the Blodgett hitch

The sign to the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness

Craig, Rachel and Portia triumphantly sit upon a rock in the midst of Blodgett's biggest problem

Craig and I use the crosscut saw

Portia, Craig and I on one of the problem logs suspended 6 feet in the air

Snow within two miles of Blodgett Lake

6/23
As I write this, I am 7 miles in the backcountry, Blodgett Canyon in the Selway Bitterroot Wilderness in the Bitterroot National Forest, to be exact. I am here for the next 8 days with my crew members, Portia and Craig. We are here for work, not play and we will spend the coming days using cross cut saws, sally saws and axes to clear fallen trees from the trail to Blodgett Lake, 6.5 miles away and to High Lake, 2.5 miles away on a spur trail. We may also clean some water bars, if we have time. This is the task that my crew will do all summer long, 8 days on, 6 days off. We don’t brush, we don’t construct things, we don’t do anything complicated or requiring more than a saw, axe or Pulaski. I like how simple this is, nothing fancy. Most of our work is in the Wilderness so no motorized equipment is allowed! We work independently to clear small trees with sally saws and together to clear big trees and matchstick piles with a crosscut saw. The two people operating the crosscut saw pull alternately. It is a really cool tool and has a lot history. The old-time loggers used the saws to cut down huge old growth trees in the Pacific Northwest. They would use springboards to help them get high enough to cut above the swell of the base of the tree. Can you imagine cutting down a tree that 5 people holding hands couldn’t hug from five or ten feet up? I can’t! Old-timers were fairly talented!

6/24
I was concerned that our crew would have an awkward dynamic. Portia is the crew leader and has ten years of experience under her belt, but I still have a tendency to challenge her and we both tend to be alpha females. I have been struggling to be more receptive to her leadership. However, she needs to give me more credit and trust that I am knowledgeable and competent as well. Other than that, we get along quite well. She tells great jokes, when she remembers them, and we have had some fairly good chats. In many ways, she is very inspirational. She is strong, independent, well traveled, goal-oriented and has a perfect balance of care-freeness and a feeling of responsibility and professionalism. For example, she insists that we be sensitive to Craig’s plight as the only male on the crew and use the word “elbow” instead of “crotch,” etc… Craig has been fairly aloof all season. I think that he is morally and ethically very upset with his involvement in such a dysfunctional beast as the United States Government. He sees little use in “making work” and can’t stand any paperwork, office work or any work that he deems pointless. In many ways, Portia and I can’t stand the same things that he can’t stand, but we see that there are trade offs whereas he feels that there shouldn’t have to be trade offs in the first place. His distaste translates into a piss-poor attitude for which I don’t really have any tolerance. However, I conceded to Portia’s leadership, she adopted some of my ideas and Craig was just happy to “out” so the dynamic was actually quite pleasant.

6/25
The mosquitoes are attacking us in armies. They are more prolific than I think that I have ever experienced in my life. I am covered in welts and itchyness. I haven’t seen the night sky yet, because I retire to my tent soon after eating dinner in order to escape their maddening pricks. We encountered a giant “problem” of matchsticked trees. All of them were over 8 inches and suspended at least 5 feet off the ground. One had uprooted and fallen in such a way that it’s rootwad was halfway on the trail. Rootwads are heavy to move and we spent a lot of time digging out the soil entangled within the roots. The problem took most of the afternoon and we will have to return tomorrow to move the rootwad.

6/26
Portia, Craig and I are sharing dinner cooking duties. We were packed in by a string of two mules, so we were able to be fairly liberal with the weight of the food items that we brought. The first night Craig cooked little mini pizzas on pita bread. They were so tasty I was simply delighted by them. Imagine having pizzas in the backcountry!!! Portia cooked a tasty curry coconut stir fry minus the curry for the second night and I made burritos the third night. We all brought different forms of pasta to share for the next there nights. I made some homemade garlic basil bread that should serve us well for the three pasta nights in a row. I made a daring move by bringing in a pint of yogurt. Craig brought a dry bag and we have been stowing our perishables in the creek. The yogurt should last me for 5 days worth of breakfasts! I have been having homemade dried fruit medleys, hummus tortillas and trail mix for lunch.

6/27
We cleared all the way to the lake today. The snow began in patches about two miles from the lake and we were mostly cutting out avalanche toppled sub-alpine fir. Finally, the snow got so deep, we lost the trail and stopped clearing. The scenery was beautiful-steel-grey granite ridges back-grounded by bright blue sky. The half moon was rising over the cliffs hung with cornices of snow. Unfortunately, I was grumpy yesterday and my mood was only mildly lightened by the triumph of finishing the trail to the lake. I was grumpy for several reasons. We have been out camping together for 5 days, the bugs have been bad and my toe and heels have been hurting. The main reason that I was grumpy though was because Portia tried to instruct me on how to use the crosscut saw better in front of Craig. She took over the sawing to demonstrate and didn’t let me finish the cut. It made me feel like I was worthless and useless. I was particularly frustrated because I felt like the main thing that she was telling me to correct was the main thing that I was already correcting. I went into a tiff and worked on my own for the rest of the day. However, I thought about it and realized that everyone can learn something from everyone else. So I apologized for my poor attitude and asked if we could do some cuts together and work on my techniques.

6/28
Portia and I cut several logs together this morning and the rest of the day went a lot better. We were working on a spur trail to High Lake. The trail gains 2000ft in less than two miles. That is steep! There are tons of logs down too. We were hoping to finish the trail today but only got about three quarters of a mile up. I am covered in bruises, cuts and insect bites. My pinkie toe hurts and my heels hurt like nothing I have ever felt before. I am breaking in new boots that I got so that my pinkie toe would be less constricted. My lips are chapped, my nose is dry and bleeding, my crotch, or should I say elbow, itches. Right now, I am so ready for a shower, a humidifier, baby powder, a salad and a massage.

6/29
We came up with inspiration quotes for the day. I originally was going to go with Vini, Vidi, Vichi (Ceasar’s I came, I saw, I conquered). But then I decided to go with my own original quote that set the tenor for the whole day. Whenever the going gets tough, just take off your pants.” The quote was inspired by the river crossing that we had to make several times a day which required us to take off our pants and boots. We made it to High Lake today! The last mile was a scramble over snowfields and talus slopes. We dropped our tools and just hiked. It was gorgeous and bug-free at the 7500 feet and it felt great. Portia told a great joke. They always seem to involve body movements. This one was about a couple doing yard work. The guy is in the front yard and the gal is in the back yard. The guy jesters to the girl that he needs the rack by acted out raking. She doesn’t understand and he continues the sign language. The sign language could easily be misinterpreted for “I need sex.” Finally the girl gets it and gestures back by pointing to her eye, her left shoulder, grabbing her butt and then her crotch. The guy doesn’t get it so he walks over there and says it to her face. She replies by saying, “I know! I (pointing to her eye), left it (pointing to her left shoulder) behind (grabbing her butt) the bush (grabbing her crotch). Ha ha. Portia also read us a couple poems around the camp fire in the evening. She wrote one of them and the other was by Shel Silverstien called The Perfect High.

6/30
We hiked out of the woods and cleared drainage ditches. We also had to clear some trees that had fallen while we were in the woods. It was sheer joy to hear music on the radio! We cleaned tools and did time sheets. Then I gave Mike a call and went to have a beer at the Brewery. I had a single hop that I found to be quite intoxicating and the two old salts sitting next to me couldn’t stop regaling me with stories from the old days. This is how it goes at the brewery, I meet old men that love to tell me stories and I love to listen. Fitz was in old western movies with his horses and Eric has been around the world twice. Al believes that he was a banana slug in a past life and Bill’s dad used to be a ranger for the Forest Service. Bob was a trucker has had four wives and it goes on and on. I finally ripped myself away from them because Mike was preparing grilled portabella mushrooms and brussel sprouts and a salad for dinner, the perfect ending to an epic first 8 day hitch.

"Nature designed a forest as an experiment in unpredictability; we are trying to design a regulated forest. Nature designed a forest over a landscape; we are trying to design a forest on each hectare. Nature designed a forest with diversity; we are trying to deign a forest with simplistic uniformity. Nature designed a forest of interrelated processes; we are trying to design a forest based on isolated products. Nature designed a forest in which all elements are neutral; we are trying to design a forest in which we perceive some elements to be good and others bad. Nature designed a forest to be a flexible, timeless continuum of species; we are trying design a forest to be a rigid, time-constrained monoculture. Nature designed a forest of long-term absolutes. Nature designed a forest to be self-sustaining and self-repairing; we are designing a forest to require increasing external subsidies-fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Nature designed forests of the Pacific Northwest to live 500 to 1200 years; we are designing a forest that my live 100 years. Nature designed Pacific Northwest forests to be unique in the world, with twenty-five species of conifers, the longest lived and largest of their genera anywhere; we are designing a forest that is largely a single-species on a short rotation. Everything we humans have been doing to the forest is an attempt to push nature to a higher sustained yield. We fail to recognize, however, that we must have a sustainable forest before we can have a sustainable yield (harvest). In other words, we cannot have a sustainable yield until we have a sustainable forest. We must have a sustainable forest to have a sustainable yield; we must have a sustainable yield to have a sustainable industry; we must have a sustainable industry to have a sustainable economy; we must have a sustainable economy to have a sustainable society."

Chris Maser

June 14th and I finally feel like summer is on my door step. I can tell because of the sweet warmth that radiates off the of the ground when I am in the woods and there is the smell of dirt, vegetation and pine needles baking in the sun. This smell is a summer trigger for me just as thawing frost is a sure smell of Easter and Spring. Another sign of summer is the fact that I was on the water! I floated the Bitterroot River yesterday in borrowed kayaks with Mike. We did short run from Bell Crossing to Stevensville. We stopped for a picnic on a gravel bar and did some shore line exploration. There were a lot of snags, debris and log jams but none of them were particularly threatening. We were able to float leisurely without having to worry for our lives and it was almost hot enough for a swim!

Garage sales are another summer indicator and they were out in full force on Saturday. I bought a skimpy, sexy black dress at the one right across the street from my house. The women at the garage sale helped me pin it up so that it fit better. The guys next store tried to sell me home made burritos. I love summer and I am so excited to be spending it in the Bitterroot Valley. I am starting to really like Stevensville. It is a bit small for my taste(but much bigger than Moose Pass or Skykomish), but the local brewery and its brewer keep me well entertained. The brewery has live music every Wednesday night and I look forward to meeting up with a crew of regulars: Chance and Reese operate bulldozers and are always good for a laugh, Bill used to be a Forest Service brat and always has a story that goes nowhere, Sandra and her friends are very entertaining, and there are several others who I see and chat with regularily. Everyone seems to be connected to everyone else. It seems as though many people know of me even before I meet them because one of thier friends knows me. I can sit down at the bar or the library and meet several new people who I will probably see in a different context the next day, or at least meet someone who knows them. I really like the ease with wich I meet new people in Stevensville. But small works both ways and I am often alone. However, I appreciate this solitaryness because I know that it will not last.

I wore my skimpy, sexy, second-hand black dress on a double date to a fancy restaurant that requires reservations and has a dress code. I was a little self-conscious but the look on my date's face was worth it. The food and wine was excellent. I had a vegetarian sampler with spinach gnocci. However, the company and the music made the experience unforgettable. The roaming guitar player, Sergio, played compassionate love songs in foreign languages such as the theme from the Godfather. The couple that we went with was really fun as well!

It is warm enough to sit on lawn chairs outside on the deck and grill late into the evening and to watch the stars and the moon. This is exactly what I have been doing. Summer is in the air! The mountains and rivers are waiting and romance is afoot!

The west side canyons of the Bitterroot Mountains as seen from Sawmill Pass

National Trails Day volunteer day turnpike project

National Trails Day Volunteers

Guitar-playing photo shoot

Kayaking the Bitterroot River

I was spouting off about salmon to a co-worker about how much I like and admire the salmon species. She brought me this 20 page short story by a woman from Moscow Idaho about looking for salmon in the Selway River. The opening paragraph was stunning. It went like this:

I keep thinking about salmon. About how their lives are all about going home. Home to a patch of upturned gravel on the upper Selway River. About how their river home is chosen for them by previous generations of spawning ancestors. They don't choose it. I keep thinking about spawning females. I've never seen a spawning salmon but her image shimmers in my mind. The way she roughs the gravel and drops a hundred eggs for the male to milt. The way she flips her tail over the gravel to cover those eggs. I'd love to see this and capture it in a photograph. He leopard spotted tailfin working violently. The water riffling above her gravel nest and downstream, those riffles disappearing in the Selway.

I do keep thinking about salmon. They are running in Alaska right now. I was trying to put my affinity for them into words and I think that their lives seem to be mirroring my own...born in a small town, lived there for a few years before moving to the big city and subsequently traveling, growing and expanding their world view. Now I am swimming back home. I don't know exactly why I have this desire to be in Montana. I have some general reasons such as wanting to be closer to friends and family and wanting to explore and take ownership of the place where I was raised. However, there seems to be some deeper intangible pull and the fact that the salmon are doing the same thing make me feel better. I read that salmon are considered to be the wisest of animals in Celtic tradition. The standard depiction of the salmon's journey to the spawning grounds shows this animal struggling but when it jumps upstream, it doesn't fight the current. It simply jumps over it, or finds the reverse current which flows beneath the surface. I also read that this form of leaping inspired the word somersault, which is actually derived from the Celtic term salmon-sault, whatever that means. I think that I am trying to understand my history and reconnect and/or create roots. I want to be a part of something bigger then myself. I think that I can make the most difference here. I need to return in thought and feeling to my childhood and my old stomping ground for that understanding. I guess that wherever we are, we are always going home and life is about the journey not the destination. I just like salmon, it's as simple as that. I also really like polar bears but I'll save that for next time...

According to Flathead Indian legend, the bitterroot flower, from which the valley, mountains, wilderness, national forest and river take their names, was created when one morning at dawn, the rising sun found an old woman weeping by the river for her starving people. The sun took pity on her and sent a beautiful guardian bird to comfort her. “Your tears will cause a new plant to rise,” said the bird. “The flower will have the white color of your hair and the rose of my wing feathers. Though you’ll find the root bitter from your sorrow, it will nourish you.”

I returned to Montana on April 22nd or so. I furiously tilled and planted a garden at my mom's house, brewed a beer and started squash in the kitchen under heat lamps. Then I started my summer job on a trail crew with the Bitterroot National Forest.

I am on a three person level 1 crew that logs out and maintains the western front of the Bitterroot Mountains. You may see us crosscutting on one of your favorite trails such as Blodgette Canyon, Kootenai Creek, Chaffin Lakes or Big Creek. Currently, I am living in Stevensville and working Monday through Thursday. We took two weeks to build a bridge on the South Fork of Lolo Creek. It was a really cool project and I got to use some carpentry tools that I had never used before. My initial feelings about this crew and this forest have all been positive. My supervisor is supportive, organized and motivated and my coworkers are hard working, fun-loving, like-minded folk.

I spent two days teaching wilderness trail skills to grade schoolers from the valley. We used an interpretive trail and lots of props and games to teach them Wilderness history, ethics and law and Leave No Trace skills. I had a really good time and felt like I was able to pass on some very valuable knowledge and stewardship values to the students. I also got to teach along side some of Wilderness Rangers and make a good impression. I haven't been doing a lot of recreating because I was sick and then I hurt my foot. But I found some Morel mushrooms out on the trail the other day and I am hoping to float the Lochsa before the water goes down.

Squash starts in my kitchen one week after planting

Squash starts 3 weeks after planting

Belgian Wit beer krausening

Ranger Rachel in her pickle suit teaching Wilderness Trail Skills

The 139 year old Doug Fir that we cut down to use to make the bridge

A diagram of the bridge we are about to build

Supervisor Steve and co-workers Craig and Portia move a log with block and tackle

Canting (making the surface flat) a sill for the bridge

Canted stringer

The location of our bridge with bank stabilizers

The first sill is set

The two stringers are on the two sills and need to be set

The decking is almost complete and the approach is being filled with crushed rock

The approach is complete and running boards and bull rails have been added

Rachel, Portia and Craig on the finished bridge

Part VII Southern Utah
April 4 to April 19

I woke up minutes before the bus arrived in St. George. There is no real bus station so I made my way to a nearby Denny’s. It was crowded on that Sunday morning and I was keeping a sharp eye out for FLDS members. St. George is only an hour or so away from Colorado City, the home of the polygamists that I read about in Escape. Larry arrived none-to-soon and we had a joyous reunion. Larry and I were co leaders two summers before for Northwest Youth Corps. Katie and I had stayed with him briefly in St. George a couple of months earlier while on a different road trip. I had really enjoyed the stay and had asked Larry if he would be interested in a backpacking trip in Escalante. He works for a Wilderness Therapy company and his schedule is a week on and then a week off. He decided to take a week off of work and therefore have three weeks to explore and backpack with me. He had a really cool trip planned in Escalante.

We spent the majority of the day reviewing his maps and organizing our gear. We made some pizza and a bunch of his friends and co-workers came over. It turned into quite a party. I really enjoyed myself and fit in easily with his outdoorsy, quirky and huggable friends. Some of the characters include Clay, the grey dread head, 60 years old and dating 25 year old Jess, their poofy-haired dog, Nick, from Pittsburg, Tennessee and her cocktail cup with the Eiffel tower and word Paris written under it that looked suspiciously like the word penis instead, Luck, who could talk your ear off and doesn’t understand body language but who can swing dance, Eric who doesn’t drink alcohol but instead sucks down energy drinks, Dave and Deirdra and her sister and mother. Then of course there was Larry’s roommate Benson and some others that I don’t remember.

Despite the fact that we partied late, we were up early, packed and ready to go by 10:00 am. The drive to Escalante was very scenic. We got permits at the information center and filled up with water. I had no expectations or ideas about desert hiking save some very false stereotypes including arid endless flat scapes of rolling sand dunes and cacti and very little else. However, as Edward Abbey describes, the desert is indeed alive and thriving in its own delicate and unique way… “There is still too much to see and marvel at, the world very much alive in the bright light and wind, exultant with the fever of spring, the delight of morning. Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life is not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.” Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

“This would be good country,” a tourist says to me, “if only you had some water.” He’s from Cleveland, Ohio.
“If we had some water here,” I reply, “this country would not be what it is. It would be like Ohio, wet and humid and hydrological, all covered with cabbage farms and golf courses. Instead of this lovely barren desert we would have only another blooming garden state, like New Jersey. You see what I mean?”
“If you had more water more people could live here.”
“Yes sir. And where then would people go when they wanted to see something besides people?”
“I see what you mean. Still, I wouldn’t want to live here. So dry and desolate. Nice for pictures but my God I’m glad I don’t have to live here.”
“I’m glad too, sir. We’re in perfect agreement. You wouldn’t want to live here, I wouldn’t want to live in Cleveland. We’re both satisfied with the arrangement as it is. Why change it?”
-Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Several times, during the couple of weeks that Larry and I spent backpacking, I felt like the tourist from Ohio; my god, this is a nice place to visit but not to live. The dry grit of the sand got into everything, my clothes, my eyes, my food and even my ears. The place was prickly too. Almost all of the fauna of the desert has developed some form of defense against predators and I was constantly getting scratched or removing small thorns with duct tape. The lack of reliable and known water sources also caused huge logistical problems. We were reticent to hike too far away from the big river lest we not find a water source to get us through the next day.

However, the more we hiked and camped, the more I realized that there is a rhythm and a flow to the desert. The heat, the lack of water, the prickles, all of it simply takes a readjustment of thought. My background, of course, is the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska but with a little guidance from competent teachers such as Larry, the desert made itself more than welcoming.

We spent several days hiking up and down washes around the Escalante River. I carried a map and compass and tried to follow our progress through the canyons. The topo maps contours were like nothing I had ever seen before, chocolate smudges of lines indicating sheer cliffs and crazy islands of polka-dots representing mesas with pillar like features on top. In some cases, the topo map attempted to indicate undercuts. My eyes swam with its unfamiliarity and I often thought that if I were in a life or death situation, I would surely die due to my complete incompetence with a map. In the canyons, triangulation is futile because you can only see the canyon walls and the bend in the river ahead and behind you. Those are your only indications of location. Larry had a GPS unit that we would use to confirm our location.

The moon was waxing to full and the nights were so bright we could read aloud without a head lamp. We slept on a tarp and let the evening wind blow over us. Some nights we found giant alcoves to sleep in. Other nights, the sky threatened to storm and rain and we set up the tarp over us in a sheltered spot and packed tumble weeds around the openings as wind breaks. The weather was very temperamental and we changed our route several times in order to avoid hiking up slot canyons that could be very dangerous if a torrential downpour occurred. I started to carve a spoon from a juniper branch and Larry collected pieces for bow drill sets. We started a fire in this manner a couple times and would stay up late into the evening burning sage and chatting.

We carried in a lot of food. We ate oatmeal, apples, trail mix, tortillas with cheese, hummus and avocados, Thai peanut curry, beans and rice, tea and chocolate pudding. We carried enough water for the day. We thought we might do a couple nights of dry camping on a mesa but decided we weren’t too excited about carrying and extra 20 pounds of water with us.

The day we hiked out a haggard Jesus-looking man exploded out of the bushes and flagged us over. He was wide-eyed and strung out. He spoke quickly and urgently and gestured wildly. He explained that he and his sister were camping for a week and they couldn’t get their brand new water filter to work so they had been boiling all their water. Now they didn’t have any fuel left and they were really thirsty. He asked us if we had any iodine to spare. We didn’t have iodine but we offered to purify some water for them with our chemical purifying system. He brought us all his water holding containers: a liter-sized pot and an Odwalla juice bottle. While I purified the water, Larry attempted to fix the filter. When Larry couldn’t make it work, I took a look at it. It was covered in sand and when I took it apart, all of its pieces and o-rings were covered in sand. The filter itself wasn’t clogged. As I rinsed and lubricated everything, the man explained that he had several health problems including anemia and that he had just changed medications. He told us that he and his sister had been in survival mode for days. The more I listened to his crazy talk, the more determined I became to fix their filter. I didn’t want to have to rescue these folks. The weirdest part of the whole ordeal was that we encountered them about 4 miles from the trailhead and their vehicle. I wondered why they didn’t just hike out when they realized that their filter didn’t work. I got the filter working and the man offered us oxy-cotton and several other pain-fighting drugs in return. We declined and hastily hiked away, eager to create some space between us and them.

We spent a couple nights car camping and doing day hikes in Escalante. The weather was increasingly chilly, windy and rainy. We woke up one morning to a 3 inch blanket of snow. One of the slot canyons that we hiked in got so narrow you had to turn side-ways to fit through it. We hiked to Calf Creek Falls and watched the brown trout in the creek and dodged huge families of tourists.

We tried to escape the weather by going to Bryce Canyon National Park. We thought we would do some backpacking there but the ranger told us the backpacking wasn’t that scenic and that the trails were covered with snow anyway. We decided to car camp and I did some day hikes while Larry showered and reflected. It turned out to be colder then ever and we spent the evenings huddled around the campfire. We made an extravagant Easter meal of hard boiled eggs, roasted potatoes, onions and peppers.

We went back to Escalante and backpacked along the river to a natural bridge and then further to a natural arch with ancient ruins and petroglyphs beneath it. I finished carving my spoon and began sanding it with the sandstone near our camp. I also harvested sage to take home with me. We explored the area and found some cool poor offs and slot canyons. The crypto-biotic soil in some places was 2 or 3 inches high. We didn’t see many animals but we became intensely interested in what plants we could use or eat. I tried to skin a prickly pear but wasn’t patent enough. Larry found Mormon tea to chew on. It gives you a rush more intense than coffee.

We made one final attempt to escape the crazy weather by going to Goblin Valley but the wind was blowing so hard that we ended up getting a hotel in Green River and spending the evening the bar drinking Polygamy Porter. We found a southwestern cook book that described how to harvest yucca root and how to make tamales. We decided to go back to St. George and regroup. The weather was not cooperating and I was tired of being cold.

In St. George, we had several parties and cooked good food including tortillas and salsa. I learned how to play corn-hole, beer pong and flip cup. Larry and I planted part of his garden with peppers and squash and watched a couple of movies including Wrist Cutters.
We went on a final hike in Zion National Park to a place called the Double Arches.

All of the landscape was so beautiful and unique. I find it very hard to describe to you what I saw. I think that Ellen Meloy describes some aspects well. “The ridge runs from a crumpled mountain range in southern Utah to the Arizona desert, jumping a river along its way. It is an elongated, asymmetrical reef of Mesozoic sandstone with a face and a flank, two sides so different you thing that you are somewhere else when you are in the same place. The face rises brick-red from a broad wash, nearly vertical but for a skirt of boulders along its talus. The flank is the crazy side; an abruptly sloped flexure of ancient rock beds tilted upward into a jagged crest. Most of the massive slab is Navajo Sandstone, the Colorado Plateau’s famously voluptuous field of windblown sand dunes now consolidated into nearly pure quartz crystals. Against the steel-blue sky of a summer monsoon, the ridge bleaches to while. Moonlight blues it, and bright sun turns it pale cream or, if you are making love atop it, blush pink.”

“From afar the stone reef appears continuous, exfoliating here and there into flakes the size of small European countries. Look more closely and you will see that box canyons cut across its length ending in deep alcoves. Smaller fissures run unexpected directions, and narrow valleys hang high toward the crest, where faults have filled with sandy soil held stable by the living organism of a black crypto biotic crust. Yucca, a single leaf ash, Mormon tea, black-brush, and other shrubs find purchase in the pockets and cracks. However, most of the ridge is bare-boned slickrock. When you hike it in midsummer, you are lightning bait. It is the far edge of winter, no longer bone-cold, not yet spring’s exhalation of green. The surface of the slickrock is neither icy nor warm, just touchable.” –Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise

Part VII Backpacking Southern Utah

April 4 - April 19

St. George Utah, the view from Larry's back stoop

We begin our hike down Harris Wash with the remains of a dead cow; As a pioneer once said, "this country is a hell of a place to loose a cow."

Hiking down Harris Wash with a full moon in the sky

Dried cracked mud

Yoga near the Escalante River

Hiking down Harris Wash

An arch that is about 5 inches tall

The confluence of Harris Wash and the Escalante River

White Navajo sandstone

Moonrise in Escalante

Hiking up Silver Falls Wash

Trees beginning to bud in the desert

In which the cows and Larry engage in a stand off

Indian Paintbrush in bloom

Peekaboo Canyon

Unexpected winter weather hits our camp

Panoramic view of Escalante and Calf Creek

Calf Creek Falls

Panoramic views of hoodoos in Bryce Canyon National Park

The Cathedral Rock in BCNP

Larry prepares for our Easter egg hunt in BCNP

Panoramic view of the Escalante Canyon

Natural Bridge

Natural Arch

Archeological site beneath the natural arch

Petroglyphs beneath the natural arch

Scaling a slot canyon

Planting tomatoes and peppers in Larry's garden

Zion National Park

Double Arches in ZNP