On Oregon Trails
T 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.
A trailside dip in a mountain lake
"Sliding down snow-fields is fun, though chilly"
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.
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.
On the trail in the highlands of the Cascades
"A sky blue lake set like a sapphire in an emerald mount"
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.
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.
The trails are not all dry-shod
"Our trail wound beneath a fairy forest"
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.
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.
An Oregon Trail
From a photograph by Kiser Photo Co., Portland, Ore.
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!
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.
