EVOLVING ROADS: Car Camping with Kip & Rico (Part Three)

From my supine perspective in the giant mosquito-net house, the snoring noise emanating from the S.E. corner is, by deduction, Kip, who must have migrated from his chair sometime before dawn. But it is the heat-lamp-like beams of the sun that have prodded me from unconsciousness as my body begins to glisten like greasy chicken on a buffet island. I shed my sleeping-bag cover and risk the mosquitoes outside, seeking shade. Outside, I see Rico’s sleeping bag in the shadow cast by his cot. Whether he got there by accidental tumble, instinct, or conscious strategy is uncertain, but I’d guess some mixture of the last two options.

The inexorable advance of the sun prods us to action (even if it is sluggish action). Our sleeping accouterments get folded, stuffed or rolled. Beer cans are policed. Cookware and plates are cosmetically cleaned under a less than rigorous paper-towel protocol. The bags and boxes and ice-chests are re-sorted into the vehicles. Finally, the appropriate lures are chosen from personal fishing arsenals for enticing those particular fish that reason suggests might accumulate at the base of significant falls.

If truth be told, however, my personal fishing arsenal consists of a blunt collection of bass tools that are increasingly obviously not fooling any trout. Instead, I reach for a long lens and lag behind Rico as he descends into the canyon. I try to catch a different kind of magic — all the richness of an instant in time — as Rico plumbs the recesses of the plunge pool.

We stop to top off the fuel tanks in Adel. 

Kip asks, “Is this town named after the famous singer?”  He knows full well that it isn’t. 

The gas pump is at a little island near a patchwork building that appears to be a combo bar, gift shop, restaurant and, curiously,  youth hang-out.  I say that because a trio of teens wearing reasonably coordinated shirts and pants (smartly accessorized with coonskin caps... and side-arms) materialize out from behind the adjacent tiny one-room post-office structure and saunter across the parking lot. They enter the combo-building as if they own it. Struck by the novelty of the coonskin caps, I reach for my camera in hopes of documenting what appears to me to be a rural 'gang'.  But I quickly check my impulse to take pictures despite the attraction of the glorious ring-tailed headwear. I reason that even though my college degree was in Art (which really doesn’t qualify as a college degree)  I might still, because of my unfamiliarity with local customs, be mistaken as a liberal elite. I well remember the day I unexpectedly met my girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend in a small-town Kansas pub only to have my friendliest overtures interpreted as negative comments regarding his mother. Perhaps it would be wise to not draw undue attention in this Eastern Oregon outpost where I am a visitor.

A young mother handles the gas nozzle, all the while simultaneously admonishing the actions of her feral 5-year-old (who runs loose, tasting unlikely objects). When she finishes with the vehicles, caps screwed tight and little doors slammed shut, she manages to wish us a pleasant day as we pull away without incident.

The landscapes begin to impress themselves into the moldable regions of our brains. The high plateaus are overrun with water-hungry juniper bushes — prickly shrubs with sights set on becoming trees. Competing grasses wither and dust devils rise from the parched soil. Basalt crumbles under the assault of alternating hot and cold temperature extremes. None of it seems very hospitable. But in the pauses, in the moments when you catch your breath or sip from a frozen Pabst Blue Ribbon can, or gaze toward blue bands of mountains shimmering on the horizon — subtle movements betray life hiding in the cracks and shadows, sometimes at your very feet. Western Sage lizards start and skitter from crevice to crevice. Cottontails explode out of nowhere into frantic zig-zag sprints, barely touching the earth. Then they freeze in golden grasses, effectively invisible while still. Striped chipmunks display a fatal indecisiveness when attempting to cross paved highways but otherwise materialize here and there as if traversing different dimensions between point A and point B.

Rico, in an uncharacteristic fit of near poetry, attempts to express some fundamental truth of the animating power of nature, and how this truth has been expressed through the millennia and recorded on the rocks we have been examining — by people who hunted and lived according to Earth’s benevolence.

Rico seems to suggest that merely by viewing the ancient petroglyphs, we somehow benefit. Perhaps by some spiritual osmosis, the Shaman’s art enlightens us, though literal understanding eludes us.

To me, this sounds like some shit I might say — not my scientist friend. Certainly, art can touch us at emotional levels and thereby move us to action. Maybe, in the end, that is the power of the Shamans. But rock art seems notoriously able to resist interpretation, and whether it is the work of influential medicine men or the graffiti of idle children remains a point of debate. Regardless, like a hapless Fox Mulder, I want to believe in the power of art.

As the miles pass, we begin to stretch beyond Rico’s familiar spots to destinations unknown to us. Rich locales described in the Loring and Loring book provide an impetus to climb higher and higher into the high desert which has the effect of making the term ‘high desert’ less and less precise (shouldn’t it really be the ‘really high desert' by now?).

Soon we begin to mistake temporary streambeds for roads or imagine the general direction of a turn-off according to a subtle change in the color of the grass.  Kip’s modified Montero with its new manly suspension and virile tires keeps apace with Rico’s time-tested Jeep. 

Since that first night of gentle aerosol showers, the sky has been squeezed clean of clouds so that the atmosphere nearly begins to suck moisture from the ground and from all living things. Following behind the Jeep means breathing a dusty wake of grit and sage pollen. My nose whistles as dirt and drying mucous construct obfuscating booger castles deep in my nostril passages. I long to pick them and feel ready to argue that doing so publicly would be justified.

After half a day of bouncing over road-optional terrain, Rico and Kip eventually remember that reducing the air pressure in their tires improves traction, flexibility, and flotation. By now, the sun is at its zenith. The appearance of two shade trees corresponds with the disappearance of the road we are following.

The Earth has provided shade.

We sit in it.

Rico and Kip adjust their tire pressures.

If you ask a medical device engineer, a project manager and an art major what this is, you’d get an answer something like, an arrowhead workshop. Take it for what it’s worth.

The vehicles climb ever upward until we reach the top of the world — 360 degrees of horizon. The sky seems closer, almost as if you could see through the blue and off into space. Before us lies a vast playa that stretches to the East for miles — a flat basin surrounded by basalt rimrock — a ghost lake laid out before heaven.

Scattered on the surrounding rimrock and isolated boulders, we are pleased to find hundreds of pecked and carved designs.

I have a flashback. I can remember back to an idyllic time when my parents took me and my siblings to a lake to camp with a number of their friends and their families. This temporary community joined together to catch crawfish, and all the children ventured out into the shallow water and contributed to the effort. The adults sat around a large fire with a boiling pot, drinking forbidden beverages and laughing and talking. The cadences of these voices created a background noise that flowed into the night and braided us together, something like a dog’s comfort jacket. I couldn’t exactly hear what any particular adult was saying, but I could feel the ebb and flow of emotions, joy, laughter, surprise and comfortable silences — the telling of yarns, jokes, and secrets. Finally exhausted, my eyelids slowly drifted closed and I disappeared into oblivion.

Here in this dusty basin, in the face of all these images, I imagine I can hear a similar noise — a similar story, but in a language I can’t decipher.

When I catch up with Kip and Rico, they are standing before a virtual chapel of images.

Rico speculates that the production of petroglyphs must have been noisy. I remember my college sculpture studio and the characteristic rhythms of the wood carvers, or the jewelers, or the bronze casters chasing their castings. I wonder what the petroglyph carvers sounded like and vow to create my own petroglyph to find out…

(But not here).

Windblown soil from the plateau above is periodically washed into the basin. Ever so slowly, this process of erosion is burying some of the designs.

We spend as much time here as we can, but eventually re-acquire the trucks and turn our attention to finding our next campsite.

Over the next horizon, it becomes obvious we weren’t at the top of the world after all.

Kip said, “Look!”

I said, “That’s the muddiest lake I’ve ever seen.”

Kip said, “That’s the Alvord Desert.”

We set up camp at Mann Lake at the base of Steens Mountain, from this side, a sheer, 1-mile high vertical escarpment.

Rico casts into the shallow lake. He hopes to add another species to the list of species he’s caught — the desert-adapted Lahontan cutthroat trout. Unfortunately for us, the lake appears to be only 6 inches deep.

The wind acts funny around here. Though it is clear the wind is blowing, the clouds hover in place above us. It calls to mind the way you can, among rapids, maneuver your boat into quiet eddies behind rocks in the midst of the maelstrom.

Kip sets his tent up, throwing his sleeping accouterments into the shelter to weigh it down. 

A steady breeze makes it difficult to use our gas range. We build an aluminum foil wind-break which allows us to make this evening’s edition of our trout tacos. This evening’s cocktails start out as rum and cokes, but there isn’t much rum left so we switch to screwdrivers. When the screwdrivers run out we switch to coke and tequila. 

“What’s coke and tequila called?” somebody asks.

“Joanie and Chachis,” says Kip knowing full well it isn’t.

A short time later, as Kip eats his second fish taco, we hear a noise that sounds something like a speeding train. The noise grows in volume until suddenly Kip's tent bounces into the back of his head as part of the leading edge of a vigorous wall of wind. As suddenly as it arrived, it’s over. But Kip gets the hint and ties his tent to his Montero.

The eddy-surfing clouds accompany us into the night. Beyond, a spiral arm of our galaxy once again marches across the sky

I stare transfixed — until exhausted.

My eyes slowly close.

I disappear into oblivion.

Continue to PART FOUR?

SEE ALSO: PART ONE

SEE ALSO: PART TWO

WILLEXIT

Kip showed up at the bar with a detailed river-keepers' map and guide-books that explicated his proposed route down the Willamette River. He had performed a careful analysis of the water route, marking potential launch sites, sensible campsites, and devising preliminary outlines for shuttling the boats. He had even spaced the campsites apart according to his estimates about river velocity based on seasonal water volumes and the river gradient, and also which sections of river would require extra time for thorough fishing. It was almost as if he was some kind of project manager. But as the early July launch-date approached, it became clearer and clearer via meteorologists that the trip would test our resilience to rain—lots of it.

Though  I often imagine myself to be a daring and self-sufficient outdoorsman (and by often I mean whenever I spend several hours at a bar), the fact is that so far, my camping experiences in the rain have been accidental, infrequent and generally less than vacation-like. Realistically, when it comes to surviving in the wilderness (if I even manage to reach the wilderness), the only reason I think I'm still alive is because I appear to have a self preservation instinct strong enough to keep me from putting myself in life-threatening situations (I'm a big chicken) and more often than not, I've been lucky. It's like when the three of us make the now tacit agreement to eat only the things we find or catch on the fishing excursion (which doesn't apply to beer) yet, because of my keen appreciation for my own fishing skills, I find myself inclined to hide potatoes and sausages out of sight in my cooler. So, at the bar, while I pretended that a little rain would never hurt me, I was relieved when Uncle Rico and Kip began suggesting that perhaps we should come up with an alternate plan—maybe one that would tuck us into the rain-shadow extending East beyond the Cascades.   

On decision day, our two car caravan pointed Southeast and after hours of driving, we entered the maze of forest-service roads beyond Oakridge where malevolent, tipsy trees had previously jumped out at me in the night and left their impression on my truck, impressions written in wrinkled sheet metal and the shocking revelation of primer-coat (at least I'm pretty sure that's how it played out). This time, although we arrived in the day time, the maze was no less confusing. Thankfully, I was riding with Kip in his vehicle because he charitably recognized my fear of these particular trees. Occasionally the caravan would stop as Uncle Rico consulted the GPS or as the evil branch fingers reached out and impinged on our path like fences in a slaughterhouse (or maybe something more like gillnets), driving us into a single file.

Somewhere in this puzzle landscape, we established a base of operations on high ground next to some nameless meandering minor tributary of water, manifesting as a creek for now, but showing evidence for the capacity to become wetlands or even a lake. For now, instead of a lake, we were perched at the north tip of a vast flat field, perhaps 5 miles in circumference, all of it decorated with sparkling ponds strung together by tentative necklaces of crystal clear water.

Despite our best efforts to escape the predicted rain, a nimbostratus cap of clouds concealed the sky and gently explained to us that we should take some care in preparing the evening's shelter. Kip rose to the occasion by providing a —well, I think it was something like a transportable house— which not only provided protection from rain, but also a defense against mosquitoes, who though we did not know it, were silently waiting undercover for the arrival of dusk and the cessation of an initially gentle but present breeze.

Compared to the energy Kip had put into planning his Willamette River proposition, our situation was very much ad hoc. We had meant to fish in our various watercraft, but the tributary we camped next to was better suited to roving fishermen on foot. Fortunately, we had an old book (I can't remember if it was Uncle Rico's or Kip's), a sacred out-of-print text of sorts that listed all the nearby lakes and what kind of fish could be reasonably expected to be harvested there.

An article on Crescent Lake incentivized us to wage a small campaign in pursuit of capturing Kokanee salmon. The first step in our campaign was to gather intelligence. We infiltrated a bait shop close to the lake and Uncle Rico, speaking the native tongue of the fishermen, was able to glean some helpful data about the condition of the lake and what bait the resident Kokanee considered attractive. This information informed our decisions to purchase giant reflecting spinners in silver and bronze, heavy kidney shaped sinkers, and leader-lines with imitation squid thingies hiding multiple hooks festooned with corn underneath their colorful umbrella of plastic wiggly arms. For my part, I kept my distance from Kip and Uncle Rico because I was afraid my inability to understand or make comments using the secret vocabulary of fisher-people would accidentally reveal us as outsiders and perhaps prejudice the locals to feed us misinformation.

The next step was to find the lake and then find a suitable launch point. Finding the lake wasn't that hard, but a suitable launch site was somehow more difficult. Dogs, when they are looking for someplace to poop will often conduct extensive surveys for just the 'right' spot. This evidently is a complex calculation for a dog which involves considerable sniffing and walking first one way and then another and then back again. Finding a suitable launching site was something like that.

Eventually, we found our spot. Uncle Rico set off in his inimitable AquaPod, while Kip and I set out in our sleek kayaks. Our makeshift fishing fleet then proceeded to 'troll' the lake. When we started, the lake was smooth for the most part, but as time wore on, low dark clouds blew in on wind that stirred the lake and raised rolling waves. In this setting the kayaks performed like futuristic independence-class littoral combat ships in comparison to Uncle Rico's Edmund Fitzgerald-like AquaPod. Because of it's low pancake-like profile, the AquaPod has unsurpassed stability, but that same low profile means that paddling into waves and wind is an invitation to take-on water with no appreciable gain in nearing a specified destination. Despite this gap in technology, Uncle Rico was the only one of us who managed to catch the stunningly-bright-silver land-locked salmon. We speculated it was because his vessel's inherent trolling speed was best matched to the fish's preferences. I don't know about Kip, but I was also having a hard time visualizing how deep the hooks were running in the water in relation to the amount of line I had out, how much weight I should have on the line, and how fast I was trolling. In the process of making adjustments to my rigging, keeping plump corn-kernels on the hooks, and positioning my pole holder so the pole didn't interfere with my paddling, I managed to drop the pole holder over the side of the kayak into the depths of the lake. Evidently for me, it isn't really kayak fishing until I lose a pole over the side or some other essential bit of gear.

This photo copyright 2016 by Kip

Sometimes, the weather relents and stops doing the troubling thing that it's doing. But the wind kept blowing and waves ran the length of the lake, gathering momentum and breaking on the shore as if we had been traversing a mini-ocean. The work-to-fun ratio was veering sharply to the work end of the scale and with the sun long past its zenith, the temperature was reaching new lows.

Kip uses his cage-fighting instincts and refined sense of balance to ride his kayak ashore on the lake-surf

Here and there you could see the gray slanting smudges between cloud and surface that betrayed approaching rain.

We packed up the boats and headed back to our base-camp to see if our trout catching efforts would be better rewarded.

Fish are beautiful. They are also tasty. Having to (there isn't a easy way to put it) kill your food somehow adds a level of holiness to the process of eating. It reminds me that the preservation of my life comes at the cost of another's life—whether that life is a fish, a cow or a carrot. When I eat a fresh fish, pan-fried in butter, I am thankful in a way that I never am when I eat a processed fish stick. Will I become a better man, making the world a better place? I don't know. But I feel like I owe it to these fish.

Branches of meandering streams carved their little arcs into the grassy field. According to the vagaries of gravity and erosion, some arcs become isolated, transforming into 'C' shaped ponds. I suppose from an airplane one would be able to read a long history of the river's writing. The streams rise or fall according to season and precipitation, to melting snow-packs, and to strategically placed beaver damns. Mysteriously, trout are omnipresent.

Hiding back from the edge of the stream, I emulated Uncle Rico and Kip and cast doomed earthworms into the water in order to trick trout into biting the sharp hook concealed inside the worm. I treated the worm like a puppet, moving it as if it were just an ordinary drowning worm with no strings attached. Sometimes I saw torpedo shaped shadows draw close to the bait, or imagined I did. Sometimes they would strike, like an electric shock. Each step of the process is one more level up the improbability slope for me so that, when a fish does bite and I do manage to reel it on to the bank, it is a thrilling gift.

Of course, what isn't evident in these pictures is that while we were acting as if we were apex predators, we were actually being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Frightening clouds of them would hover about our heads and settle on our leeward surfaces, taking time to poke through any material less thick than their proboscises. I sprayed enough Deet on me to poison myself, but the perpetual hovering mass before my eyes convinced me that I needed more.  Even with lips swelling and eyes tearing-up from the toxic insecticides, I felt compelled to repeatedly slap myself wherever I felt a tickle on flesh. Still, those little bastards found plenty of ways to leave their infuriatingly itchy marks. The trick is to become fully entranced in the moment, to fixate on the project of fishing. Any other route leads to hysteria—like a fat man of limited endurance freaking out, screaming and trying to outrun the buzzing aerial plague only to collapse in a quivering heap of itchy scabs, unable to breathe (I'm not saying that actually happened).

Miles and miles of stream were laid out like a particularly sinuous snake. As I followed along the bank, I saw long undulating plants stretched out as if in an underwater ballet—reaching to break the surface and touch the sun. These stretches were interspersed with deep pools and sheltered undercut banks and sprawling sunken tree stumps where I imagined smart trout ran silent and deep.

Nothing but an occasional game trail interrupted the continuity of the tall grass, and heavy with fallen rain, the grass clutched at our legs thereby impeding our progress and weighing our pants down with all the water thus imparted. As we regressed toward the forest and found ourselves among the shelter of the trees, the mosquito plague briefly expanded exponentially. I think this is partly because of the wind-break provided by the trees, but also partly because standing puddles of water in swampy ground is an ideal environment for mosquito eggs.

Uncle Rico seems 'excited' to discover this tree. Though expert outdoorsmen often participate in conservation efforts, this activity does seem to transcend classical examples of 'tree hugging'.

Photo copyright 2016 by Kip

When we finally found a sun drenched clearing on dry ground, the mosquitoes seemed to disappear, and we relaxed briefly and basked in a rare outbreak of sunlight.

Schrodinger's forest. 

Unfortunately for this forest (that was both dead and alive while depending upon the outcome of a quantum superposition), it collapsed into the definite state of death when it was finally observed.

Rain showers walk the length of the plain, like long skirts worn by giant rain ghosts.

I took a hike along the stream one evening with the goal of reaching a railroad trestle Uncle Rico told me about. In my head, I imagined one of those tall, precarious, picturesque, wooden-trestles so I set out with a camera and one of Rico's GPS walky-talkies. Like most technology that isn't your own, I had only the faintest glimmerings how to use Uncle Rico's GPS walky-talky. Since its voice transmitting feature stopped functioning after about a mile or so, it didn't really matter. In any case, Uncle Rico didn't think it would take me very long to finish the hike. But in retrospect, he didn't know how slow I was, and I didn't know how far it was, and right about when night fell, I realized I didn't have a flashlight.

The trestle had turned out to be a rock and earthen embankment, topped with rails and also with a stone tunnel at its base to accommodate the stream. The bank along the river was pockmarked with what I tend to call nutria burrows, which made walking in the daytime challenging, and which, in the dark, made it something more akin to scary. Generally, there is a lot of light available after sunset, and I continued walking while I watched that light slowly fade. But the heavy clouds had not dispersed which left no hope for redemption by moonlight, nor did the clouds stop dispensing showers. This ensured that I was soaked from the waist down as I  plowed through the high grass. Venturing into the brush-choked woods beyond the flood-plain returned me to the domain of the mosquitoes who were now invisible but still sonically distinct. I alternated my time between the two unpleasant options—all the time growing more and more hopeless until I stopped and started planning how I might find shelter until the morning. My plan; something I call the mud and stick blanket. But just as I started searching for sticks, the wail of distant coyotes broke the silence. They seemed to be howling the word, "Tacos!" which is when I realized it was Uncle Rico and Kip in the distance, giving me a beacon of hope in the darkness.

It turns out Uncle Rico and Kip, while they sat by the fire, had been able to monitor my progress with the map feature of the GPS (the walky-talky I carried served to identify my position on their map). So they had decided to put-off making the 3-species tacos until I returned. When it became evident I had stopped, they filled the night air with the one word they thought would most likely spur me to action.

Often I feel sad like I don't have any friends. But that night I learned I have real friends who would even postpone eating 3-species tacos for my sake.

That night, eating the sacred fish, sitting before the warm fire instead of sleeping in my proposed mud and stick blanket, I felt rich and comfortable and was content to watch sparks from the fire naively attempt to ascend to the heavens from beneath the interminable drizzle. And uncle Rico's beers were still icy cold.

Later, passing through Woodburn, we discovered a wealth of Mexican Restaurants (not pictured). As is customary, we ate at one and appreciated the little things like clean plates, napkins and a marked decrease in the number of mosquitoes.

Even later, while examining the hull of the AquaPod, I noted the existence of aboriginal drawings. As I do for native American artwork, I later subjected these images to computer analysis...

...but did not arrive at any conclusions regarding the psychological state of the aboriginals...though I do have some concerns.