COOPER SPUR HAIKU - MT.HOOD, OREGON

Calm and peaceful hike

But I have to ask myself

Why are trees hiding?

Spring’s promise of life

Takes on sarcastic shadings

Before fall’s hammer

A blanket melted

One of life’s loopholes exposed

Deep-cover agents

Puffy land-clouds float

Hide their dangerous orange teeth

Until the sun sets

Absentee ‘landlord’

Occasionally peeks down

“Now what have they done?”

Stacked layers recede

Layer after layer like

Some Japanese print

Warm air envelope

Nurturing my slow ascent

Laughs and disappears

Cold knives slice at clothes

At the edge of the moraine

And yet we linger

Why put these dreamscapes

In a land where nothing lives

Where only fools see?

The shadow stretches

From this vast mountain sundial

Marking time for stars

Unexpected Parallels: Oregon Brewers Festival & Cooper Spur

A friend, wise in the ways of beer, convinced me to attend the Oregon Brewers Festival despite my intuition that however big the beer tents might be, they wouldn’t be big enough.

Determined not to pay for parking, I spent nearly a billion dollars in gas searching for a free parking space which I never found.

When I finally did find a place for the car, it was a stupid distance away from the festival.




I saw many shiny buildings which I found impressive, I think, mainly because of their scale and mainly because of their un-natural order…and did I mention they were shiny?



They also had reflections. I suppose reflections are a clever way to keep one from really seeing a building’s true facade.

Without the reflections and the massive scale, it becomes more readily evident that buildings are clever complexes of stacked cubicles…

…or cells.

Some impressions from the Brewers Festival:

The screaming bitter taste of hops

Becoming a whore for wooden tokens

Ideally beautiful girls dressed in tight shiny Mylar potato chip bags

The special blessing of quick moving lines for those able to exploit the standing room only urinals

The periodic primal cacophony of primates collectively rising toasts in a primitive tribal fashion.

The infinite variety of the human form

The word “fecund”

With beer goggles strapped firmly in place, the city feels like a warm and friendly beautiful place.

But really it’s a kind of scary casino where you pay your money and take your chances. My visit this time was benign. The impact to my wallet was minimal. I didn’t run into any desperate drug addicts in the dark, underneath the harsh concrete overpass. I didn’t stumble in front of an oncoming bus.

I got to meet new people and gain insights into how they ‘gamble’.

I salvaged a brief moment of fellowship.

The next morning I revisited Cooper Spur. From the Cooper Spur trail, Mt. Hood looks impressive, mainly because of the scale.

Sunbeams poked through a spinning hat of indeterminate clouds and lighted the shaded, snow-crusted peak like reflections cast from a disco mirror ball.

From picture post card range, the mountain is unquestionably aesthetically pleasing – even awe inspiring.

Yet if the clouds should thicken – if the wind picks up – if the temperature drops - then awe shifts imperceptibly toward foreboding.

And details of character show that this too is a kind of scary casino – or perhaps a shooting gallery.

Where chance encounters can change everything.

Perhaps it is a wishful stage where the boring novel form is forsaken for the drama of the action-packed, compressed screenplay.

A tree survives.

This animation, When the Day Breaks, is worth watching just to see the rooster's hat. I thought this 'chance encounter' touched upon some of the uncertianty I was trying to conjure up with my scary casino theme.

Monkey-cam Meets Picasso at Cooper Spur

Monkey-cam had been monitoring the internet for weather reports and once he saw the little smiling sun symbols in the weekend boxes, he began begging in earnest for another chance to see Cooper Spur before the onset of serious snow.

Regular viewers may recall that Monkey-cam was in the process of testing some boundaries and chose our last Cooper Spur expedition as the scene for acting out his new found sense of independence.

I kept suggesting lower altitude hikes because I was pretty sure the last weather front had deposited snow down to the 4000 ft. level, but when I got an email from Mr. Lloyd (of Long Shadow Photography - www.longshadowphoto.com) reporting that the road to Cloud Cap was still open, I relented and started rounding up the hiking gear.




Mt. Hood as seen from the Parkdale Ranger Station where you can’t get forest parking permits on Sunday because they’re closed.

It’s a fairly long drive from Portland to Mt. Hood so I was glad to have Monkey-cam’s company. We tried to carry on a conversation, but I’m not very good at it and Monkey-cam can’t talk. I asked him if, in his role as stunt camera-primate, he considered himself an artist. I tried paying attention to his answer, but watching his gestural/sign language meant taking my eyes off the road and I’m afraid I didn’t really catch all that he was saying. He admitted that at first he was into it for the bananas, but hoped that I might soon begin supplementing his rewards with alcohol based beverages.

I found his response somehow depressing and drove on in silence. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell he was watching me. It made me uncomfortable, but I ignored him for a mile or two. Finally I glanced at him only to find him grinning from ear to ear with one of his fingers stuck inside his cheek like a fishing hook. I recognized this as his symbol for ‘hooking me’ – that is, he had played a joke on me. “So you’re not into photography just for the rewards?” I asked hopefully. He responded by hitting me on the shoulder and doing his gleeful shriek-laugh.

As we vibrated along gravel washboards and dodged pot-holes along the last eight miles to the trailhead, we caught glimpses of the mountain through the eternally besieged timberline forest. Every corner of the road that was in the shade presented melting-wet-slippery-ice-ruts which tested the car’s limited two-wheel-drive capabilities and also tested my limited experience at driving on ice.

Even though you can see Mt. Hood from a distance every day in Portland (weather permitting), from up close, its looming presence inspires… not reverence so much as a kind of excitement. Great beauty, great danger or maybe even both may be ahead.

One of the great things about digital cameras is how you can review your pictures immediately after taking them to see if your exposure settings are proper or if you captured what you thought you did. As we sat on the ridge of the Eliot Glacier Moraine, Monkey-cam turned the tables on me and pantomimed the question, “Do you think, in your role as a weekend photographer/ primate, that you ever actually produce art?” The fact that Monkey-cam can pantomime questions like these makes me wonder if he should be considered a pantomime artist.

So I showed him this picture right after I took it and said, “I don’t know if this is art.” I said it because I’ve never really come up with a good definition of art. But I went on to say that maybe this image at least told a portion of a story. It shows a glacier highway. It shows a mountain decomposing over time – a history of rock-falls traced into the slope at left – an instant of geologic time sufficient to show the inevitable trend. Also, I think this moraine picture is better than the ones I took last trip because the lighting is better, I found an angle that makes it look steep, and it has the added dimension of new but melting snow on top. Maybe it’s not art so much as it is journalism or documentation?

And nowadays, glaciers may be on the road to becoming a thing of the past – a memory - which may be another portion of story contained in this image.

Thinking about documenting vanishing glaciers reminded me of an old Kurt Vonnegut quote. He once wrote:

“I was perplexed as to what the usefulness of any of the arts might be, with the possible exception of interior decoration. The most positive notion I could come up with was what I call the canary-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts. This theory argues that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are supersensitive. They keel over like canaries in coal mines filled with poison gas, long before more robust types realize that any danger is there.”

I’ve previously shared the bewilderment I felt upon viewing Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in art history class and how I secretly began to wonder if I wasn’t being forced, metaphorically, to appreciate the emperor’s new clothes (surely Picasso was naked). Ever since then, I occasionally will take a stab at trying to produce something abstract. I showed this image (that I took as we walked across a field of boulders) to Monkey-cam who rolled his eyes and pantomimed the following.

He sarcastically pointed out that you really can’t get much more concrete than a picture of a rock.

I countered by first admitting that, yes, it was a rock, but that my picture was really about primordial, timeless, prehistoric life springing forth from the earth.

He responded with something about it not mattering whether it represented a prehistoric turtle, or an old man’s bony butt crack, the whole point is in NOT depicting objects. Besides, he added with a final complex finger-puppet gesture, you just made the narrative up after you took the picture.

Well, I’m the first to admit that I don’t understand abstract art. I still liked something about the way the crack suggested that the rock may once have had the consistency of cookie dough (though considerably hotter). I let Monkey-cam have the last word and we walked together pondering these things as we approached the Cooper Spur shelter.

Upon arriving at the shelter, we were startled to find Pablo Picasso crouching next to the stone structure, seemingly deep in thought. I don’t know why exactly, but I decided it would be best if Monkey-cam and I pretended like we see naked Picassos all the time. I offered my hand and said, “Mr. Picasso, I presume,” all the while hoping that Monkey-cam would remember how I taught him that his traditional butt-sniff-greeting was not appropriate for humans.

Picasso clasped my hand in his and smiled broadly. His gaze was intense and alive, but he didn’t say anything. I introduced him to Monkey-cam. They immediately began gesticulating together as if they were old friends. It turns out they had shared a few drinks the last time we had come here.

Together, the three of us set off to find and follow the Cooper Spur Trail – not an easy task since much of it was buried in the snow. Picasso and Monkey-cam didn’t seem to care where we went and pretty soon I lost track of them when I started taking pictures of rocks that appeared to have force fields that protected them from the snow.

When I finally caught up with Monkey-cam and Picasso, I found them engaged in a spontaneous ritual dance centered around an apparent phallus totem. The dance was energetic and frenzied and it looked like fun. Monkey-cam motioned for me to join in. “I can’t dance.” I offered lamely. Picasso just rolled his eyes.

Mostly I just didn’t want to take my clothes off. I rationalized that I needed to be a sane authority figure for Monkey-cam and besides, there were lots of other hikers taking advantage of this unusually nice 1st weekend in November – someone might see me. It was probably easy for Picasso to do whatever he wanted – what did he care? – he was already dead.

I tried to decipher the meaning of the dance. I’m still not sure, but I think they were simply symbolically giving Winter the finger – promising that Spring would ‘rise’ again.

(Note: Click on Images to view slightly larger versions)

It’s clear by now that I’m not a hiking expert, but I think I’ve narrowed it down a bit, and I believe this is the feature we’re talking about when we say Cooper Spur.

The line of phallic totems, one of which Monkey-cam and Picasso had danced around, turned out to be the rock cairns that mark the Timberline trail. This realization made it clear that we had missed the Cooper Spur trail. When we changed course and actually found segments of the correct trail, we determined that the trail was useless and possibly dangerous since without snowshoes or crampons, we could easily slide all the way back down to the timberline if we lost our footing. So we headed back to the Eliot Moraine ridgeline and proceeded upward along its clear but steep path.

Ever since noon, the wind had been picking up, and at the ridgeline, the moraine acted like a magnifying funnel and sent the wind whistling over the edge. Only two months ago, the sun had set on the right side of the mountain. But this time, the sun was already disappearing behind the left shoulder of Hood, and it seemed that perhaps Winter was pointedly responding to the FU dance.

Monkey-cam took this picture to capture an impression of how quickly it turned cold. When he showed the picture to me on the review screen, he pantomimed, “You may not be much of a dancer, but you are a wonderful mucous producer.” I think he was just trying to think of something positive to say.

But before I left the edge of the moraine, I watched a crow perform an aerobatic dance in the teeth of the wind. I was kind of hoping it was a raven, because then I could think about all the trickster symbolism from Indian sacred narratives, but either way, it was beautiful to watch. The …bird… started out at the timberline at the foot of the moraine, and then, without so much as beating a wing, it tacked like a sailboat, angled into the wind, gliding, sideways, ascending (perhaps transcending) all the way up the mountain. High towards the peak almost out of sight, it joined a partner and together they executed a kind of circle dance, flew cartwheels, looked around from on high, and then snuck down a back ravine to come around and do it all again.

Essentially, it seemed they transformed an insurmountable force – potential adversity - into an amusement ride. It was almost as if they dived all the way to the top of the mountain.

It is something our species has tried to emulate, albeit clumsily.

Out of consideration for the Monkey-cam, I decided to head back down while there was still light. We said our goodbyes to Picasso at the shelter, and soon entered the landscape of stunted trees or krummholz.

The trees actually look like they’ve been tortured, but it’s really hard to capture it in a picture. To me, it almost looked like this particular tree was bending back from the weight of some past avalanche, protecting itself as best it could with arms of wood.

Here’s another view of the same tree. The former picture shows the bending trunk, this one shows the outstretched arm. I couldn’t figure out how to get both gestures together.

Later, I tried to express the tree’s gesture by experimenting with an interesting (FREE!) 3-d modeling program called DAZ Studio 1.8. It lets you pose virtual 3-d figures and render images from them under customizable lighting situations. (www.daz3d.com).

I showed this image to Monkey-cam and asked him what he thought. “Nice boobs.” He pantomimed back.

Almost back to the trailhead, we continued to note examples of the extreme interface between Summer and Winter, where Fall can descend in one day – where the dance between life and death is both brutal and ingenious…

…where triune water morphs easily from one state to the other - giving life - freezing time - carving and preparing the Earth…

The Monkey-cam asked me what I thought of Picasso.

I said I admired his lack of inhibition, but that he didn’t talk much. Monkey-cam explained that dead people aren’t allowed to talk to self-conscious beings. Well, he added, it isn’t so much that they’re not allowed, it’s more like a general consensus and a courtesy. Dead people know that if they tell you the answers, they deprive you of the journey.

Oh, I said.

He thinks you should try dancing every once in a while.

Really?

And he’s happy that you’re still trying to learn.

COOPER SPUR / ELIOT GLACIER - MT. HOOD

My backpack sat open on the driver’s seat. I was stuffing last things into it. I made a little nest out of a fleece pullover, put half a dozen bananas in it, and carefully stowed it in the top of my pack where it wouldn’t get squished. (Monkey-cams, in general, become very cross on those occasions when you proffer bruised bananas as reward for risky photography work.)


I could see the Monkey-cam sitting in the passenger seat of the car, staring out the side window, sulking. (Note: The Monkey-cam and I, by mutual consent, have agreed not to call each other by our given names. We believe that this policy will help depersonalize our working relationship and allow us to more easily recover from grief should disaster befall one or the other of us during our photo expeditions.)

I ducked down and leaned into the car. “O.K.,” I relented, “would you feel any better about it if I agreed to carry all the water?”

The Monkey-cam whipped his head around and glared at me as if I was the world’s most stupid child. He scrunched his lips together in a stereotypical chimpanzee frown and shook his head back and forth so that his lips and oversized ears wiggled in a parody of whiplash. Then he extended a long hairy arm and pointed at the digital readout on the dashboard radio. The chunky green numerals said 3:29 P.M. He bounced up and down in his seat to emphasize his point.

“So what.” I said. “The hike isn’t that long. We’ll have plenty of time.” I placed my roast beef sandwich next to the nest of bananas. I put extra batteries, a flashlight, and my keys in there too.

The Monkey-cam just got more agitated, especially when he saw the flashlight. He quickly raised his hands to his ears and stuck his elongated fingers up in the air as if they were some kind of horns or elaborate antlers. Then, quite without warning, he screamed and charged at me as if he were a bull. People don’t seem to realize that chimpanzee’s are typically much stronger than humans. Monkey-cam’s pantomime charge was impressive enough that I flinched. As soon as I flinched, he retreated with his hands held over his eyes all the time pretending to run into things.

Suddenly it occurred to me that he was describing the incident at Lava Canyon which had been somewhat traumatic for both of us. I could see that he was worried about getting caught out in the wilderness after dark.

“Look, it’s only about a three mile round trip to the shelter. Besides, we’re practically at the timberline…there isn’t much dark forest to worry about.”

There was no convincing the Monkey-cam. He screamed and pointed a quivering finger at me. Then he pantomimed driving a car, turning the steering wheel back and forth. Then he pointed at himself. Finally he grabbed himself, squeezing his disproportionately large ‘berries’.

I tried to ignore his comment. “Ya’ know,” I began, “technically, you’re not supposed to be able to construct novel sentences like that.”

He went back to sulking and staring out the passenger window. As a kind of casual afterthought, he flipped me ‘the finger’.

Now it was my turn to get agitated. “Listen you!” I tried to sound assertive. “I’m going to take care of some business at the Cloud Cap trailhead restroom, but by golly, when I get back you had better have that camera ready and your pack packed or I’m taking you straight back to the zoo!”

I stormed off to the restroom.

When I came back to the car, I noticed the Monkey-cam was rooting through my pack…no doubt pilfering bananas. I tried to sneak up on him, but I guess there’s a reason for those disproportionately large ears. I almost caught him when he had to dive past me to get to the campground, but once he made it to the trees it was no contest.

It was probably just as well. I wasn’t sure how I was going to tell him that I had forgotten to bring the guidebook again anyway.

I picked up my pack, slipped my arms through the straps and cinched up the left one a little bit because it was loose again. I locked the car doors and shut them. I walked through the campground to the trailhead.

It looked to me like there were three, maybe four trails to choose from and it seemed that all of them were unhelpfully labeled ‘timberline trail’. Without the guidebook, I just guessed and went up and to the right. I eventually wound up at the base of the east edge of the Eliot Glacier Moraine. When the glacier is advancing, it pushes rock and ash before it as if it were a giant bulldozer. When the glacier recedes at the end of summer, or during bouts of human triggered global warming, it leaves a tremendous scoured out path.

(click on this image to see larger version)

NOTE: There are signs at the trailhead warning that parts of the Timberline trail are impassable - I think particularly heading west to Elk Cove. I believe this section of trail rising out of the West side of the Eliot Moraine is the problematical area, though I suppose getting across the Eliot Creek is also a challenge. From my distant vantage point, it looks like a detour path is beginning to stand out over the top of the slide. The part that worries me is the unstable nature of the moraine wall in general. There are big rocks just waiting to tumble down and it seems that walking down to the bottom of the moraine and out again is a little like playing Russian roulette.

The moraine walls are steep and not very stable. Rocks about the size of Volkswagens periodically tumble down the wall. Unfortunately, it is hard to get a sense of the immense scale from this image.

There are four or five mountain climbers headed back down the mountain on the trail at the right of this picture (at about the midpoint).

As I continued to climb, I suddenly heard the commotion of car horns blaring and tires squealing. Though I could make out Cloud Cap Inn perched on a little hill at the base of the moraine, the trees from the campgrounds obscured the parking lot, and I was unable to discover the source of all the noise and evident pandemonium.

As I gained altitude, Mt. Adams - previously invisible - began to poke out above the clouds.

The crest of a moraine edge provides a wonderful vantage point for observing the intricacy and character of glaciers. It is hard to imagine a more paradoxical presentation of the concept of motion – paradoxical in the sense that every crack and fissure shows that the glacier is pouring downward under the relentless tug of gravity, but as far as your eyes are concerned, they might as well be looking at stationary rocks.

(click on this image for larger version)

This is where rivers are born.

I ran out of negotiable moraine and was forced to traverse over to Cooper Spur proper.



It wasn’t too long before my path intersected the Cooper Spur trail which meandered its way through a field of truck sized boulders. The trail switched back and forth a lot and thereby resulted in a very reasonably graded path. What wasn’t so obvious was the fact that all the switches to the east were a little bit longer than the switches to the west so that ultimately, the net effect was to cause the hiker to actually progress around the mountain in a clockwise fashion. Suddenly, topping a crest, the whole southern horizon came into view.

I kept expecting to run into the Cooper Spur shelter - the one I described to the Monkey-cam - but by the time I reached this windbreak, I began to suspect that I had somehow missed the shelter long ago and that I was now on the more difficult, longer trail rather than the short easy one. I decided the best plan at this point was to utilize the wind break and eat my sandwich. I opened my pack and pulled out the sandwich. “That’s funny,” I thought to myself, “none of the bananas are missing.”

At 8000+ feet, I learned a hard lesson about photography. When your fingers are numb from cold and your body heat is wicking away at a dangerous rate because of your damp cotton/polyester blend T-shirt, setting up your tripod really seems like a low priority task. However, when you get back home and review all your blurry, not sharp pictures, you realize setting up your tripod is the whole reason you went there.

Winter never goes away. It just stays up high swirling around the mountain tops, waiting impatiently for any excuse to start its yearly campaign for territory.

I got the uncomfortable impression that the sun was accelerating as it neared the horizon. The shadow of Mt. Hood began stretching inexorably toward the East. I felt kind of rushed eating my sandwich.

Eventually, a full moon peeked out from behind a band of clouds. I relaxed a little as I began to anticipate its silvery light for accompaniment on my long night journey.

I passed through the plains of giant boulders with nothing but the moonlight for illumination. It was quiet and beautiful, both strange and familiar. I started singing quietly, “I hope that my legs don’t break…walking on the moon.”

Eventually the trail led me past the shelter I had given up finding.

I lost the trail when it descended into a valley of looming shrubberies - hidden from the moon. Fortunately, I had previously established a useful waypoint on my GPS device. Though I was essentially lost in a dark depression, to my left, the massive wall of the Eliot glacier moraine thrust up into the night sky and glistened in the moon-glare. This landmark - coupled with my waypoint - it was all I needed. All the same, I was glad to have spared the Monkey-cam this brief moment of uncertainty.

When I got to the campground, I stopped briefly to get my keys out of the pack. I knew they had to be in there somewhere, but as I dug around and probed the deep recesses of the pack, the horrible realization began to dawn on me that I had lost them. Maybe it was at the windbreak when my hands were numb? Maybe they fell out when I grabbed the sandwich? But just because my hands were numb, I reasoned to myself, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have heard them if they did fall. I was stumped.

Then it occurred to me. Maybe the Monkey-cam took them when he was rooting around in my pack. And then…Oh no. Maybe that explains the turmoil in the parking lot.

In a cold panic, I ran to the spot where my car should have been. It looked a lot like my car except it was missing the rear bumper. All the windows were rolled down and the radio was playing mournful cowboy tunes. Through the back window , spread out unconscious among an extraordinary quantity of beer cans and whiskey bottles, I could see the Monkey-cam, snoring loudly and quivering spastically now and then to dreams that only a chimp can have.

The keys were in the ignition.

Not too much later, I found my bumper hanging on mile post 3, its chrome flashing under my high-beams.

That monkey is going to get such a spanking when we get home.