A Morning Visitor

On a quiet morning at a lonely ranger station in the obscure town of Cave Junction Oregon, I found myself out by one of the back gates of the compound waiting for the sunrise when an unexpected sound hit my ears.  The rustling of leaves told me it was likely a  squirrel who I'd seen many times before.  But the size of the animal was a bit bigger than a rodent.  It didn't take long to figure it out was one of southern Oregon's residents:  A gray fox.  From the brush he looked at me while huddling close to the protection of a Douglas fir. 

We played a staring game the gray fox and I for some time.  He at times would change position by moving to the other side of the tree, then the staring match would continue. 

I, on the other hand, remained still and quiet curious what my new found friend would do.  I could tell he was both cautious and curious at the stranger in black and green.  I always wonder what the natural world think of us loud and obnoxious humans.  This human would remain quiet and watch.

The gray fox made his way down to the road, stopping and watching.  He crossed the road and again stopped to stare.  His curiosity of me was getting the best of him.  He cautiously edged closer and closer bobbing his head to make sure I wasn't on the attack, stopping just beyond the gate to the ranger station compound. 

As our staring match continued, I have to wonder about the natural world and its clash with human development.  To the fox, the forest with its predators, seasons, food and protection is all they need to live a relatively fruitful life.  The human animal is different.  We build shelters creating artificial heat and cold, changing our own environment to live well beyond the needed core temperature environment of near 98 degrees.  Roads are developed.  Loud vehicles pass.  Cities take over forests and deserts and mountains.  Ecosystems are encroached upon and removed.  Animals scatter from their natural environment sometimes behaviorally adapting to new habitats for which to survive.  For this fox, he lives in the woods of a Forest Service compound where buildings and trucks and people frequent.  We've learned to live together in some unique way. 


I found myself in deep contemplation at the chance to see a wild animal at the gate of the forest district compound.  A rare occurrence I can assure you!  Why was he there?  Was he always there?

I thought about the fires that had engulfed the region.   Taylor fire near Grants Pass.  Klondike fire near Selma.  Nachez fire down just south of Page Mountain in California.  I was literally surrounded by fires and the daily smoke told the story.  Dense smoke that made even the smoggiest cities jealous engulfed the entire region.  Was this fox homeless?  Displaced from the shelter and forests it knew and called home?  Maybe he was only here for survival.  Maybe his curiosity in seeing me was more merely having never been close to people before.  I felt a certain profound sorrow at this as I stood there at the ranger compound looking back at my new found friend.

Within a short time, the fox retreated and went back into the woods for which he came, not even looking back.  I found myself a little in awe of the situation.  Perhaps it wasn't as exciting as seeing the black bear in Alaska with her cubs.  Nor was it quite like running into a moose on a winter morning outside my front door.  But anytime I get to experience some level of wildlife, I stand in wonderment. to experience even that of the elusive fox.

I looked in the direction of his departure for some time following, but he was gone.  I wonder if he'll be back on some other morning.  I turned to go only to be greeted by the morning sunrise.  Life is pretty amazing.

Reflections in the River

My wandering ranger days continue.  Hired as a naturalist in the Cascades of southern Oregon, I found myself just south of Crater Lake national park walking a trail to the headwaters of Wood River.  Standing on the bank, I found myself totally drawn to the green reflections beneath the waters.  Green.  The symbol of ecology and natural preservation.  My job here was to shape the young minds of tomorrow into understanding the deeper meaning of a greener world.

Leaving my familiar territory of Western and Mountain Hemlock that I was so used to in the Olympics as well as Mt. Rainier, I quickly had to adjust to the tall and spread out Ponderosa forest mixed with Douglas Fir, White Fir and a cedar I wasn't familiar with.  Mixed cones of Ponderosa, sugar and Douglas scattered the trail, and after a winter of inactivity, pine needles scatters obscuring the trail often times losing our way.

We made our way down to the head waters of Wood River where the clear cold spring waters erupted from beneath the earth to create the river.  The spring filtered through rock is clean enough to drink.  Rare in this day and age.  Basalt and pumice, evidence of the eruption of Mt. Manama can still be seen scattered everywhere, the pumice creating a green tint to the river.  The spring is said to come from Crater Lake, many miles away.  I suppose the waters have to go somewhere.

Everything is within a cycle.  We see seasons of warm summers where rivers retreat, animals thrive, and life continues in a lazy way.  In autumn, bears push hard for their last chance calories before hibernation and elk and moose rut hard for the chance of continuing on their genes while the leaves of trees change color ready to fall to the earth to pass on their own nutrients.  In winter, the world rests mostly, although life teams in full concert beneath the snow as mice, picas and other creatures continue on.  Then spring brings renewal.  We humans are mostly desensitized creating environments that match our own luxury rather than adapting to the world outside.  But we too have a cycle.  We live....we die...  Perhaps our own renewal happens on a different place, a spiritual one.

Every forest is unique.  If you take the time to listen, you'll hear something different, or that of nothing at all.  But in it's quiet, depth of solitude unmatched anywhere else.  I'm find I'm happy to have been able to witness but for a day a different place, a different sound, a different solitude.  I'll be back and often throughout the summer shaping young minds into hopefully seeing the reflections I do in nature, and yet obscuring the private reflections within my own life.

Just another Volcano

“The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change -”  - Heraclitus

Change seems to be the only element that is constant in our world of day to day.  Even the slightest change in what would normally be a mundane work week seems to rear its face from time to time.  Taking a group on a private tour to Mt. St. Helens, I expected a tremendous change to be prevalent.  Sometimes change is huge.  Other times its as subtle as a difference in the breeze.  Sometimes the subtlest of change can be the biggest difference.

Mt. St. Helens erupted on May 18th, 1980.  Since March of that year, it began giving a lot of clues:  earthquakes, and small eruptions.  On the morning of May 18th, geologist David A. Johnston was out on the northern ridge observing the mountain as he'd done many times before.  One big difference is that the mountain had bulged out 450 feet.  At 8:26 a.m., the entire north face collapsed in what would be the largest landslide in recorded history.  Then the eruption followed spewing upward and northward and blasting and burning everything for miles.   It would be the last time David Johnston would be seen again.  56 others would perish as well.

As I drove my group eastward on highway 504 toward the Johnston Ridge Visitor Center, I had expected full recovery.  What I saw shocked me. In the act of natural progression, in simple terms, lichens and mosses gather on the exposed bare rock and soil, and make more soil.  Pioneering plants will seed and grow on that weak soil and add nutrients to it staging it for the next levels.  Shrubs like alders and willows will begin growing.  Eventually deciduous trees will sprout, and finally coniferous trees will take over.  In Washington state, typically those trees are Douglas firs, western red cedar and western hemlock in the subalpine regions.  I had expected these deep green forests and trees to have made a young but fruitful recover over 37 years.  What I found was astounding.  For at least 14 miles out from the mountain remained mostly barren land.  The volcano had literally sterilized the land when the heat and ash blew through at approximately 300 miles per hour stunting the natural progression of regrowth.  Most of the rock remained exposed.  Bleached logs lay throughout the terrain.  Only in the valleys and more distant hillsides were there new signs of life.  Alders mostly gathered in the valleys, their rippled leaves apparent.  Young forests had regrown only where the land was protected from the blast due to natural geographic layout like cliff sides facing away.  New lakes were formed and rivers rerouted.  But for a western Washington terrain, it felt like I had landed on a distant planet at some other part of the galaxy.

But although stunted, there was change.  No more did one see the rivers of ash, or the mudflows pushing hard down rivers.  No more could one see a coned mountain, but a cratered opening.  And regrowth was happening.  It will be many years before this land returns to the thick green forest known commonly in this region.  For us humans, it may be beyond memory.  In geologic times, it is merely the blink of the eye.

Looking for Bigfoot

We bush whacked into the woods behind our RV pad near Ashford, Washington.  Andrea and I, looking for trail but only finding pathways where deer and other animals have passed previously.  That day was cloudy, and a grayness seemed to converge over all things, emphasizing the terrain into a misty glow.  We crossed over an old railroad track, long forgotten in which moss covered the medal rails and trees with diameters up to 2 feet had grown between the ties.  We stepped carefully, trying not to trample ferns and other flora that was mostly dormant during this winter month of January. 

Everything was wet.  Recent rains and snows had left things damp and dark.  We passed through a meadow, a forest fire of years past and recovering with new pines poking up with new life.  Andrea walked on with determination, dreams of finding treasures:  a railroad spike, coins from the 1800s or other pioneer antiquities of days long forgotten.  I too was looking for treasure, but of a different kind.  I was looking for something so profound that even as I write these words, I cannot define them.  Something about the depth of life, and the rebirth of spirit.

I was also looking for Bigfoot.  Sasquatch.  That myth that seemed to be synonymous with the Pacific North West and its deep plush forests.  More Bigfoot sightings have been reported in Pierce County Washington, than any other place in the state.  Some close to where we were.  Although still on the fence as to the true existence of the mythical creature, I couldn't help but wonder if I'd have  a chance to experience first hand and prove within myself its true existence.  So I kept watch.  Looking.  Waiting.

We reached a small stream.  The waters of snow and glacier melt kept it too swift and deep for easy (or dry) crossing, and Andrea and I resigned to staying put for the time, the sound of the rapid waters enveloping our ears.  Our eagerness to cross the stream and see what is beyond the banks, into the woods and the mystery of the  unknown was almost too strong to ignore.  I kept my vigilance of looking around as if expecting some dark haired yeti to be standing there, looking back at us in the same curiousness, then lumbering off into legend.  But the spaces between the thick pine forest remained still.  But I couldn't help but get a sense of energy about me as if we weren't alone.  It was as if all of my senses were heightened for the first time in a very long time.  The Jedi force was working it's magic within me as if even the movement of a snail would be known at that very time and place.  Every fiber of my being was reawakened.  I felt alive.

But with no treasure to be found, and the waning light fading, we made our way back through the forest, across the old burnt meadow and on to our quiet neighborhood of home.  Satisfied we'd experienced something, but unable to define exactly what, we knew that soon we'd be back on our search for treasure, for solitude or for life.  Or perhaps to discover a myth out there or within ourselves that had been previously unsolved.

Deep Snow on the Mountain

Crystal snow reflected the rays of the sun.  The day was extremely clear with blue skies as I trudged along on snowshoes pushing my way through virgin snow.

My journey began a few days previous when I had arrived at Mt. Rainier for the winter season.  Driving in from Ashford and through the park gate, it was like I had entered a new world with the rain and sleet changing to snow, and the clear pavement becoming a sheet of white ivory ice beneath my tires.  Driving at slow speeds through coated firs and pines, around slick curves and steep drop-offs, it took me nearly 20 minutes to arrive at the sleepy village of Longmire, the hub of Mt. Rainier National Park.

Snow fell heavily and had already blanketed everything around the historical administrative building, the museum and various other buildings.  Pines would on occasion cascade and slough off piles of snow from their limbs to the ground, unable to carry the weight any longer.  They looked as if God had poured whipped cream over their boughs so that only shadows of pine green, almost black could be seen beneath the snow.  But a strange quiet rested upon the place as if the snow absorbed everything and blanketed the world from all sound.

I had been told it was a normal year for snow, which hadn't been seen in these parts for years.  Climate change has receded the "normal" amount of snow leaving many places more rainy, and glacial real estate at a declining minimum.  The very next day, we went from Longmire to Paradise, an elevation of over a mile up.  The skies were so blue, one had to squint just to look at it, and in contrast with the new fresh white, it was a perfect day to be on the mountain.

Cascade fox tracks in the virgin snow.

Donning snow shoes and sunglasses, I ventured out into old trail and virgin snow, through thick stands of subalpine fir and mountain hemlock, so thick with new snow you could hardly see the boughs.  Crystal snow reflected the rays of the sun, but seem to reflect even more my own sense of self.  A Cascade fox's tracks could be seen tracking from tree to tree, sometimes following my path (or maybe I was following his path), or breaking off in search for sustenance beneath the snow.  I felt in awe as the shuffle of my snow shoes through thick snow made me feel small and insignificant in the powerful shadow of the great mountain. 

Eventually, I would make my way to a lookout and see the mountain in her majestic stature, waiting...  Waiting to erupt in a long overdue volcanic explosion.  Waiting to change our world and what we know of it, as Mount St. Helens once did and push lava and ash across western Washington wiping out nearby towns and maybe erasing half of Tacoma.  Or maybe, just continuing it's restful sleep unable or unwilling to awake in our lifetime.

I wander back.  As J.R.R. Tokien once wrote:  "Not all who wander are lost".  I continue to listen to the shuffle of my snow shoes in the deep virgin snow.  My wandering was always with purpose, albeit not always with direction.  For in wandering, we often find ourselves in self discovery rather than journeying to a specific location.  But perhaps I am lost.  Perhaps it is only the mere reality of my perception of the world around that I am familiar with, but subconsciously, I have no idea where I am.  I wander onward as those thoughts of philosophy will have to wait, at least for the moment.

In the meantime, the sun fades into the mountains on our own journey around it, the cascade fox will likely burrow into the well of a tree and find it's sleep.  I for one have to leave this place, if not for a night or two.  For I will be back many times, on many back country journeys, and perhaps I too will find my way home.



Snow shoe trail bordered by Cascade fox tracks.

Anchored into Place (written 2010)

            The sun broke through the horizon and threw its first beams of light onto the city of Anchorage.  The midnight blue that had dominated the horizon now brightened into the break of yet another day, awakening the city.  The Chugach Mountains, now halfway covered with snow, turned from a deep glacier blue color into whites and browns with the oncoming sunlight.  The sun would rise up, but would not reach the heights directly above the city in the season of fall; and each day would lose 35 minutes of daylight descending the sun closer to the southern horizon in its path toward winter.

            I arrived in Anchorage in late September, and with the sun only appearing mostly to the south, it felt like I had settled upon the top of the world.  With exception to the hearty few that clung to the barren branches, the deciduous trees had already lost most of their leaves, and the season’s shade cover was now left scattered and dead on the earth floor.  In later years, I would find myself earlier in the season with tripod and camera, heading up to the nature center in Eagle River and taking colorful hues of red, yellow and orange, mixed in with the greens of spruce, and other coniferous trees; scenery that would parallel New England.  Fall, being among my favorite seasons, I was happy to arrive in this new destination I would later call my home.  Anchorage had become, like many who’d arrived before me, a chance for a new life.  I stood intrigued with the dust of snow on the mountains around me, and a mystique began to grow in wonder as I thought about the wilderness beyond the metropolis of concrete canyons around me.  I hadn’t come to be a part of Anchorage, but of Alaska, and the lands that surrounded the largest city in the state.  As I settled into my new home, I began to wonder about living in such a large city and how it co-existed with the natural environment.  Has humankind driven out the wildlife, or has nature found a way to work within and coexist with man?  How far would I have to venture forth to see the wilderness that I had been longing for; that wilderness that filled my dreams and romanticized my imagination.  I had to start somewhere to seek and sort it all out.  So long as I lived in the city, it would be my foundation, anchoring me to the opportunity to explore within and beyond the city limits.  For me, the adventure was only beginning.

            Despite the population of over 260,000 people, Anchorage is teaming with wildlife.  Black and brown (grizzley) bear, moose, dall sheep, wolves, coyotes, lynx, beavers, bald eagles, Canadian geese, as well as other migratory and resident birds can be seen from time to time within and around the city.  The most common sightings of wildlife for me were moose.  It wasn’t uncommon to see a gangly moose sauntering down Northern Lights boulevard, or standing idly in someone’s front yard.  The first season I lived in Anchorage, a moose cow wandered into my yard one weekend before the snows started falling, and took a nap there for a few hours.  I didn’t take it personally.  I figured this had been her home long before I got there and in some strange sense I saw a touch of wilderness in my own back yard.  She would come back into my life at seemingly strange and significant moments of my life as the seasons went by.  In a way, she became a long and trusted friend that I would remember the rest of my life.

The Chugach Mountains dominate the city, and I learned quickly it gives the inhabitants there methods of measurements in several ways.  Because the mountain range covers the entire eastern side of the city, it provides a compass for which to find your way through town.  As a barometer, it also provides the announcement that winter is on its way.  The peaks will begin showing a snow line that during the fall, will continue to descend down the mountain.  When it reaches the valley levels, Anchorage will see its first taste of snow for the winter.  The locals call this “termination dust”, terminating summer and announcing that winter has indeed arrived.

Deep within the winter months of November, December and January, the sun peaks out over the southern horizon, remaining low in the southern sky as if nothing more than to give the residents of Anchorage a reminder that the light of the sun does exist during the darkest months.  It rises for only a short 4 hours on the winter solstice, December 21st, coming up at around 10 a.m. and setting before 2 p.m.  The lack of sunlight seems to add to the winter cold that shrouded the area. 

            As winter set in, I found myself habitually watching.  Despite the fact I lived in a regular neighborhood on the east side of town with not much to look at besides the neighbors across the street, I found myself looking out the window in constant vigil as if something would happen:  a snowfall, a wandering bear, the return of my moose, or some other adventure I wanted to be a part of.  I didn’t want to miss a thing.  On top of my evening vigils, I found habit enjoying coffee on a Saturday morning looking out at the falling snow, contemplating life, and looking at the change in mystery around me in wonder for much the same reasons.  I also wanted to find meaning in it all.  I wanted this world to change me, cover me just as the snows did all around my little cave called home and immerse me in the wilderness of the unknown.  But I wasn’t in the wild.  I was in the city where humankind has replaced the natural habitats of the native creatures with skyscrapers, houses, bike trails, airfields and hundreds of miles of road.  These things were the comforts and survivability of humankind, but in a way I saw them as flaws, those things that have scarred the land and laid waste to what was.  As I watched the snow come, it brought nature back close to me.  It falls where it will and covers all of the man-made flaws in the world around us.  It blankets us in change, and enables us to hibernate in some way from the contrasts of vivid reality. 

            Late one evening, I stopped to look out the front window at the night sky.  It was glowing from the city lights and enhanced by their reflection upon the snow.  It had been a clear night, cloudless, and stars could be seen through the city haze.  There were also two green trails not unlike aircraft smoke trails that glimmered dully across the sky.  I hadn’t seen the Northern Lights before, and I suspected we had just been introduced.  I wanted to see more.  I jumped into my truck and headed a few miles north of town to Arctic Valley drive, a road primarily controlled by the U.S. Army.  It was far enough away from the city lights to give me a better view of the sky.  As I got out of the truck and looked up, the two green trails had mutated into shimmering streams of crystal white that primarily formed what looked like a huge cone, a floating teepee of sorts.  It was like I was looking up into the center of the cone and could even see stars within the narrow funnel at the top.  I looked down for a moment long enough to notice the world around me was glowing brighter.  I looked up quickly to see the cone had changed to what looked like shards of ice and glass showering down upon me as if it would crush me in certain impact.  The awe-inspiring act lasted only but a moment before retreating back into long streams of light, ever changing, reflecting upon my very existence.

            The winter of 2001/2002 was the longest in memory, when thinking of actual cold and snow.  Although the initial dustings of snow occurred in September, the first real storm to substantially remain hit the Anchorage bowl on October 11^th.  We didn’t see the bare earth again until May the following spring.  It was also the winter that shut the city down for 2 days.  Sunday March 17^th.  Even after two years in Alaska, I still found myself on my evening ritual of looking out the front window.  I turned off the lights in the house and glanced out at the street below.  Everything seemed quiet.  Deep snow blanketed the yards of the neighborhood while piles stacked up from the constant need for plowing.  The houses seemed dark, a ghost town, as if I were the only one there. 

            Then I saw movement across the street in the dark between the houses.  Looking closer, I discovered it was my friend the moose cow.  I hadn’t seen her in over a year and wanted to go out and see if she had some stories to tell.  I went out on my deck for a closer look, and not only received a better visual, but an audio impact as well.  The sounds of hooves beating the snow-packed ground along with her snorting could be heard as she seemed to be aggravated by something.  She was facing a young sapling that stood in the yard near the street as if the tree were a threat.  She moved to the other side of the tree by the road, but never gave up her stare of the threatening oak.  As if startled by something new, she ran a full circle around the tree and disappeared back into the darkness between the houses.  She didn’t even say good bye.

            After a moment of silence, I returned to the warmth of my living room resuming my evening duties.  Moments later, I glanced out the window to see the initial flakes gleaming within the streetlight.  Within minutes, they fell thick and heavy.  It took no time for the plowed and tired-scarred road to be covered in a thick white-gray blanket.  It continued to snow deep into the night.  I got up once in the middle of the night to discover it was still snowing.  By the time I woke in the morning, over 2 feet of snow had fallen.  Everything seemed different.  The world had indeed changed.  Roads were gone.  Houses were hobbit holes.  Cars were mole hills.  The 4 foot chain-link fence in my side yard no longer existed, completely buried in the glacier that seemed to have fallen overnight.  Schools were closed.  Grocery stores and businesses were closed.  The military bases were completely shut down.  The only businesses that remained open and employed for the next two days were fire, police and medical services.  And snow plows.  They wouldn’t reach my meager street for over a week. 

I sat in wonder at the event of the past 12 hours, the moose, and the snowfall.  My moose must have felt the oncoming storm and was gearing up for the impact.  It all seemed connected somehow to the natural order of things.  Moose come equipped with waterproof fur shielding the cold along with long gangly legs giving them the tools to tramp through thick snows with heights taller than most animals to forage into the higher branches in search for winter sustenance.  Mankind, on the other hand, has had to use brain and technology to find shelter and transportation, and warm clothing to survive winters in the arctic while destroying the very territory that remained with the moose for thousands of years before the onslaught of human entrapment.  She had warned me of the upcoming snowfall.  I also began to wonder why she had infringed upon my neighborhood.  Or was it I that was infringing on her world?  If we continue to spread out, build more roads, buildings, mine sites, oil rigs and automobiles, what will become with the last remaining wilderness that is Alaska?  Will the moose, lynx, bear, muskox, caribou, and the arctic ground squirrel become extinct in this part of their world?  Was the city pushing out the wild places, or had they adapted in some profound way to coexisting in the world we live in? 

            The thick snow had added to the mystique that had become my Alaska.  It had become part of the adventure.  I spent these moments in wonder, thinking about the changing world, and how snow covers up the flaws of man and returns to nature: the natural order of things.  Northern Lights open up a dark winter replacing the sun with mazes of shimmering light.  Reflections of snow off the city also plays a part in creating light in a dark winter.  As I drove my man made four wheel drive suburban through the unplowed streets of my neighborhood and stopping to help out a stranded Nissan, my moose friend gave me yet one more appearance to cap the event of the past 12 hours.  As I stood there next to the open door of the Nissan, she bolted back out between the same two houses and ran two circles around our vehicles in the street.  She was almost close enough to reach out and touch in her race around us.  She then disappeared up the road.   It was the last time I saw the snow fall like that in the city.  It was also the last time I would ever see that moose.

            When I think back on those cold dark winter months, I often wondered why I was so attracted to living in such a place when many want to retreat to the golf courses of Arizona and California.  Perhaps it’s the transition from seasons that creates a parallel to life as we follow the transition of the sun and the tilt of the planet.  Perhaps winter was that time to slow down, see the world from a different perspective, gaining perspective and appreciating the warmth of new life in springtime.  Perhaps it’s just a change from knowing life in the days of summer when fishing, hiking and camping are a constant, and the season gave me time to slow down, relax and reflect.  As I write these words, I’m more in awe that the winter world I experienced up there brought nature to my very doorstep, lit my skies with the Aurora Borealis, and gave a comfortable place for a moose to nap.  Whether it be change or adventure, I will always remember that time as special, and it will always keep me grounded within myself,  and anchored into this place.

Through the Veil

 I was in search of other things.  A moment of quiet.  A moment alone.  A sense of solitude.  I could hear my breathing pounding ever harder within my chest as I traversed up the trail in quickened pace.  I often did that when looking for a piece of solitude on a visitor busy access trail.  As expected, families from all over were on this popular trail to Meremere Falls, and their voices carried through the trees all around me as if I was really in the outer reaches of Rivendell and would be greeted by the elves at any moment.

But I was in search of other things.  A moment of quiet.  A moment alone.  A sense of solitude.  I did that often after being pummeled with information technology, telephones and computers and a life filled with the troubles of the world.  My goal was not to walk in harmony with the happy faces around me, but to get away from it all, as we rangers often need to. 

I turned off the main path to the water fall, and traversed a less popular Barnes Creek trail.  There was no close destination at the end of this trail, for this path took people for rarely no other reason than to spend a few days in the howling wilderness, with tent, bear cans and a sense of adventure.  For me, I was one of the rare who came here just for a moment out of my busy day.

From the moment I entered this new realm, my world changed.  Out of cell range, no chance of that contraption pleading for me to answer a notification.  The voices of the previous trail faded away.  Before me was a plush forest trail running along side the creek.  During a previous storm, two clumps of trees fell over the path.  So large were these trees, I had to clamor over and under and through the tangle.  Once I was past all of that, a quiet descended upon me.  Only the sound of the creek could be heard.  I had literally entered a veil into another world.

I walked on for some time, stepping around muddy puddles and marveling at the thick canopy of Douglas, Western Hemlock and Western Red Cedar.  The creek, still swollen from the rains, pushed it's way aggressively down hill in search for the ocean.  I kept going, wanting to see the mountain, the lake or any other possible secret this trail had to show me.  The sounds of a woodpecker could be hear tapping off in the woods a ways.  Fallen logs nursing new growth and blanketed in moss surrounded me.  I stopped walking and let my breathing come to a quiet.  The creek, the woodpecker, and a gentleness of breeze were all that I could hear.  For every forest has a feel to it--a uniqueness unlike any other.  Usually it's missed.  But I've found if I stop and listen, smell and taste all that my senses can endure, I can put a name to that forest.

With senses renewed, I headed back down.  Breaking through the veil and into the world of people once again, but ready to take on the world anew.  Somewhere down the trail stood my ranger station, my computer, the contacts of my cellphone and ultimately my walk home.  For my purpose fulfilled:  I had found my moment of quiet, my moment alone and a sense of solitude.  But there will be other places.  Mountains much higher.  Trails much deeper.  Other veils for which to find my own piece of wilderness.