On Oregon Trails
At Shaniko I denied being a land seeker. Yet such I actually was,
although seeking
Oregon, a land of plenty
Where one dollar grows to twenty
not because of the financial fruitfulness the verse implies, but rather
because it was a land where outdoor pleasures are readily accessible.
The logical outcome of land seeking is home making, and so in due course
we became Oregonians; and now from our Oregon home we pilgrimage along
the varied trails of the Pacific Playland, whose beginnings are but
across our doormat, when fancy leads and the exchequer permits.
All of us read with envy of the "big trips," the splendid outings to the
ends of the earth, made by scientists and sportsmen, and those who are
neither but possess the instincts, income, and the inclination. Simply
because we cannot follow such examples is no reason to suppose they
appeal to us less than to the fortunate adventurer _de luxe_ for whom
African expeditioning, Labrador or Alaskan game trails, mountain scaling
in Peru, or hunting along the Amazon are matters of every-year routine.
Some day, we, too, hope for such mighty vacationing--when our ship comes
in, or the baby gets big enough to be left behind, or the boss lengthens
our vacation, as the case may be. But for the present there is a "when"
or an "if" not to be ignored.
So we content ourselves with lesser adventures in contentment, which
after all, for solid pleasureable happiness, are perhaps the best. And
we who live in the Pacific Playland find mountain, forest and river,
fish and game, to our hearts' content; with a modicum of enterprise it
is no trick at all to devise trips worth taking, whether viewed from the
standpoint of woodsman, mountaineer, hunter, or fisher, and all within a
hundred miles of home.
Therein, indeed, lies the answer to this query, which a transplanted
Easterner hears ever and anon:
Why do you live in the West?
For when it comes right down to the truly important things of life, like
fly-fishing, mountaineering, and canoeing, the Pacific Coast is a region
of unsurpassed satisfaction. Out-of-doors is always on tap, and when the
hackneyed call of the red gods comes, it is easily answered.
Adventures in contentment truly--the utter content of simplicity and
isolation. Also, ventures in optimism, for where the trails wind
mountainward there is just one place for the pessimist, and that is at
home.
[Illustration: A trailside dip in a mountain lake]
[Illustration: "Sliding down snow-fields is fun, though chilly"]
The infallible Mr. Webster defines success as "the prosperous
termination of an enterprise." Mr. Webster is wrong, however, when it
comes to camping, as my friend Mac and I recently demonstrated beyond
possibility of argument. The prime object of the trip in question was
game. We were out ten days and returned with no game; the venison we
counted ours still roams the hills, and the grouse are sunning
themselves--except the half-dozen the puppies ate! It came about in this
wise. We started in sunshine and forthwith encountered the business
end of a storm, comprised, in about equal parts, of blizzard, tropical
downpour, and tornado. It continued for four days, soaked and half-froze
us, and swept the highlands clean of game, in preference for sheltered
valleys, far away and inaccessible to us. We hunted persistently,
however, and walked countless miles. Incidentally, we lost our horses,
and spent one strenuous day tracking them. Finally Fortune relented a
trifle and we bagged a half-dozen grouse, which we treasured and bore
homeward for our family tables. But a persistently unkind fate elected
that we sleep beside a forest ranger's cabin where also reposed a litter
of spaniel puppies, who forced an entrance to our packs in the night and
devoured every vestige of grouse except a few of the less nutritious
feathers.
Assuredly that enterprise had no prosperous termination; yet, somehow,
in the illogical way of the woods it seemed to us a success--we had
enjoyed it so!
After all, camping is a queer game, totally inexplicable to the
uninitiated. As with some kinds of sinning, the more you do the more you
desire. Assuredly it is a madness--a species of midsummer madness, in
whose throes the sufferer renounces most of the comforts of
civilization, assuming instead all the discomforts of the wilderness.
These campers are lovers of the Open, and like lovers the world over,
there is no reason in them. In the wooing season they hie in pursuit of
their beckoning mistress, who permits closest approach, seemingly, where
the trails are the least trodden, the timber the tallest, and the
mountains the mightiest.
There are many delightful methods of taking such pilgrimages, but none
more alluring than a-horseback, with all one's worldly goods lashed to
the back of a pack-horse, so that freedom of movement is limited only by
one's will and one's woodcraft.
Typical of western mountain lakes is Cultas, which nestles on the
eastern flanks of the Cascades not far from the summit. A wooded
mountain of its own name rises from its southern rim, and elsewhere it
is bordered by sandy strands as white as Cape Cod beaches, by stretches
of marsh and meadow and by higher banks studded with giant pines, whose
trunks nature painted golden copper and the sun burnishes each day.
There we cast adrift from civilization; the trail ended and our riding
horses took to the water at the lakeside, knee-deep wading over round,
slippery rocks being preferable to battling through the thickets of
lodgepole pine which cluttered the bank.
[Illustration: On the trail in the highlands of the Cascades]
[Illustration: "A sky blue lake set like a sapphire in an emerald
mount"]
A lake of trout and sky-blue water is Cultas, where the leisurely may
pitch permanent camp to their hearts' content, and revel in the luxuries
of perfect outdoor loafing, tempered to suit the taste with fly-casting
excursions 'round on rafts, and hunting tramps through the timber, where
one need go no great way to spy the tracks of deer and occasional bear,
or surprise grouse perched fatally low. Further westerly, though, the
grouse-shooting is better, and an average rifle-shot can bag a plenty of
the big fat birds in September. Poor grouse! "The good die first," said
Wordsworth, and so with birds; for the good are the fat, who, through an
excess of avoirdupois, lag in flight and alight on lower branches and
are easiest shot.
From Cultas there was no trail other than such a one as mother sense
advised and the compass indicated was properly directioned. Our
objective point was the north and south trail reputed to follow the
summit of the Cascade Range, up whose eastern flanks we were laboring.
Finally we found it, though of trail worthy of the name there was none;
a scattered line of aged blazes alone indicated where the trail itself
once had been. With some floundering over down logs, many a false start
and mistaken way, and a deal of patient diligence, we contrived to hold
to the blazes, winding beneath a fairy forest of giant fir, tamarack,
spruce, and pine, here and there skirting a veritable gem of a sky-blue
lake set like a sapphire in an emerald mount, and occasionally tracking
across a gay little mountain meadow, until at last we hunted out tiny
Link Lake, where we camped beneath trees whose trunks were streaked with
age wrinkles long before Astor pioneered his way down the Columbia.
And so it went for several days; there were miles of pleasant trails,
each mile unlike its predecessor and each holding in store some of those
always expected unforeseen surprises which make trails, fly-fishing,
and (reportedly) matrimony, so fascinating. There were camp places
by lake, stream, and meadow, each and every one delightful,
all entirely attractive either by the glow of the camp-fire or viewed
in the dawn light as one peered out from the frosted rim of the
sleeping-bag--frosted without, but deliciously warm within. Trails and
camps, indeed, so satisfying that any one of them might merit weeks of
visitation, instead of hurried hours.
A word concerning trails, here--offered with the diffidence of an ardent
amateur! Primarily, I suppose, trails are made to be followed; that, at
least, seems the logical excuse for their existence. Yet my advice is to
lose them as speedily as possible--temporarily, at least. So long as
there is grass and water (there is always fuel, and your food is with
you) no harm can befall, and assuredly losing the trail, or letting it
lose you, is an admirable way to drop formality and get on an intimate
footing with the country traversed. One method is like rushing along the
highways of a strange land in an auto; the other approximates a
leisurely following of the byways on your own two feet. The comparison
is overdone, no doubt, but it has the virtue of fundamental truth.
People who "never lose the trail" and always proceed on schedule are to
be regarded with suspicion and pity; suspicion because they probably
prevaricate, and pity because they don't know what they miss! A
schedule should be left behind, in the world of business appointments,
time-tables, and other regrettable impedimenta of civilization. So long
as you know when mealtime comes, to plan further is folly.
Maps, also, are not to be taken over-seriously, or followed too
religiously. Despite their neat lines, and scale of miles and inherent
air of authority, they are deceivers ever, and apt to prove hollow
delusions and snares when given the acid test of implicit confidence.
Sometimes only annoyance results, but occasionally the outcome of
misplaced trust is serious.
Every one who has been above the snow line, under his or her own power,
so to speak, understands that there is no satisfaction quite like that
of getting to the top of a mountain. The most leisurely and unambitious
mortal, once he finds the 500-foot contour lines slipping away behind
him, acquires something of the true mountaineering itch. We inherited
that itch from previous attacks of the mountain malady. So standing
knee-deep in the rank grass of the Sparks Lake prairies, and seeing the
snow fields crowding down close to us, seemingly just behind the
timber which fringed our meadow camping place, we realized full well
that to-morrow's work held for us some five thousand feet of climb.
[Illustration: The trails are not all dry-shod]
[Illustration: "Our trail wound beneath a fairy forest"]
Once, in Central America, I stood upon a peak whence were visible both
the Atlantic and the Pacific. Again, in western Washington, from the
summit of Mt. Olympus, I have seen the silver waters of Puget Sound to
the east and the Pacific Ocean westward. From the South Sister we saw no
ocean--no water other than the myriad lakes nestling broadcast among the
foothills. No water, but two seas--eastward a brown sea of sagebrush and
grain lands, the plateau of Central Oregon, and westward the billowing
sea of smoky Willamette Valley lowlands, blue and hazy and softly tinted
as any soberer canvas of the color-master Turner. Two vast panoramas of
land reaching to the horizon, the one bounded by the truly blue Blue
Mountains that marked the whereabouts of Idaho, the other by the low
cloud banks hovering over the coast hills flanking the Pacific--those we
gazed down upon to the east and west, while north and south straggled
the great ridge of the Cascade Range, cleaving the old Oregon country
into two astonishingly dissimilar halves.
South we glimpsed the pride of California's mountains, glorious Shasta.
North, a filmy white spectre, harassed by a turmoil of darker cloud, was
the peak of Mt. Adams, some two hundred and fifty miles distant.
Nearer--yet scarcely close at hand, for almost two hundred miles
separated us--stood Hood, guardian of the Columbia, whose valley could
be guessed by the shadowed depressions in the hill lands. Nearer were
Jefferson, Squaw Mountain, Broken Top, and lesser peaks. As mountain
views go, it was perfection--and all mountain views are perfect.
We ate our snack of lunch, drank our canteen dry, smoked our pipes, and
reveled in viewing the world below us. Then, like the hackneyed army of
the Duke of York, we marched right down again. Only be it noted that the
descent was a marvel of rapid transit, especially where the long snow
slopes were concerned. If you have done it, you know. If you haven't,
suffice it to say that one sits upon a portion of one's architecture
designed for general repose, and upon it slides to lower altitudes with
a speed that often takes breath away and always materially dampens that
afore-mentioned anatomical portion, if not one's ardor. Snow sliding,
however negotiated, is exhilarating and great fun--even if the slider
becomes tangled with the attraction of gravitation, completing his
descent head foremost!
[Illustration: An Oregon Trail
From a photograph by Kiser Photo Co., Portland, Ore.]
At dusk, we reached the camp, with tired legs and a mighty hunger. It
was late--too late to attempt much in the way of an elaborate meal, even
as "elaborateness" is reckoned when you have been on the trail for a
fortnight. So we compromised on a "light" repast, which included, if I
remember aright, such infinitesimal items as a couple of quarts of
coffee, a panful of bacon, a can of peaches, a package of raisins, and
sundry other lesser matters.
"To-morrow," we agreed, "we will have a feed. A real feed, worthy of the
name. A feed that will go down in campers' history. A feed, in short,
that will make us feel that we have been FED."
With that resolution we set to work. It was tiresome and sleepy work, to
be sure, but thorough for all that. It was, indeed, as if we made our
gastronomic will before ending the trip, for ere we clambered into our
blankets the pride of the larder, the best of what was left in the
pack-saddles, was placed in our biggest pot.
It was to be a mulligan--a mighty mulligan. In it there were venison,
ham, bacon, potatoes, onions, a dash of corn, a taste of tomatoes,
remnants of bannocks, some persistent beans, and a handful of rice; it
was freckled with raisins and seasoned to the king's taste. Almost
devoutly we laid it to rest, placing the big pot upon the fire and
reinforcing the dying blaze with lasting knots. Then, with contented
sighs, we dove into sleeping-bags and blankets, and forthwith passed
into the land of dream-mountains, where one coasted for eons down
comfortably warm snow slopes, and venison mulligan flowed in the streams
instead of water.
Alas for dreams! Like the proverbial worm, the log turned--and with it
the pot, bottom up. In the wee small hours the sound of sizzling ashes
waked us, and we roused to discover the fragrant juices of our precious
mulligan oozing into the hungry ground.
Tragedy? Truly yes; a sad, sad campers' tragedy. But what could we do?
It avails nothing to cry over spilt mulligan. So once more we nestled
in the blankets and drifted off into the Land of Nod, dreaming sadly of
wrecked mulligan and gladly of future excursions in the wondrous,
pleasant mountain land of Oregon.