Mountains in the Mist

 Soft rain is suspended in the air tonight, as if reluctant to finish its journey to earth.

It shrouds the mountains in gossamer, raining but not raining.

 Sometimes these mountains of ours are bold and brash, in-your-face stunning.

 Sometimes they are the epitome of serenity and repose

 At times, their dimensions appear to have been layered by a cinematographer placing one transparency upon another.

The Furies whip storms around them, yet they stand resolute.

 Other times, they are gentle giants, soft against the horizon.

 

And on nights this this one, they sleep with soft duvets blanketing their feet.


(Remember to click, then click again for full effect.)

The Resurrection Pass Journals, Chapter Nine

To find the universal elements enough;

to find the air and the water exhilarating;

to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter;

to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring—

these are some of the rewards of the single life.

--John Burroughs

Day Three

Part Two

Thanks to the hospitality of Dan and his daughter at the Devil’s Pass cabin, I was rested, refreshed with cold water, and cooled off. I no longer felt like dehydration was imminent.  After all, I’d drunk half a liter of water at once, and then sipped on the rest before I left the cabin.

I shouldered my pack and set off  in the hot afternoon sun towards Devil’s Creek trail.  I’d walked the southern half of the Resurrection Pass trail, and would take a right turn at the Devil’s Creek intersection at mile 16.7 for a ten mile hike that would bring me to within three miles of my home. 

I'd walked from the point underneath the "i' in National and turned right at the intersection of Devil's Creek Trail.

Finding a place to camp for the night was my primary objective, and it needed to be in this alpine area.  I knew I’d find high vegetation farther down the trail, and little flat ground.

The Forest Service map showed a tent site and bear box about five miles away, but that was too far.  Maybe I’d see a good site much closer, around more beaver ponds. 

I wasn’t a hundred feet down the trail when I spotted tiny blue and gold flowers called Forget-Me-Nots.  They are Alaska’s state flower, the blue and gold also the color of the state flag.  It’s been many years since I’ve found them in the wild and they cheered me immensely.

Wild geranium and Forget-Me-Nots.

Gentian buds.

Bicyclers came in small groups and large.  This was Saturday afternoon, a warm, spectacular weekend day and the cyclers were taking advantage.  I hadn’t realized how popular this trail was with the bikers.

I came to the lovely beaver ponds and saw a likely flat tent site close enough to the lake for water, yet far enough away to avoid most of the bugs that were likely to be lurking there.  I surveyed the surroundings, my feet urging me to take advantage of this flat spot.

Likely looking spot to pitch a tent?

Then, I saw this immense boulder just uphill of my site-to-be.  I knew it hadn’t grown there.   I looked farther uphill.  Okay, maybe not such a good place to camp, not in this land of frequent earthquakes.  I walked on, feeling rather silly.  Maybe I just wasn’t ready to quit for the day.

The boulder that didn't grow there.

More big boulders up there just waiting for me to lie down.

On a large flat plain, I reached the actual Devil’s Pass at 2400 feet.  I’d gained 2200 feet elevation from the trailhead in Cooper Landing.  The next eight miles would be downhill with a 1400 foot loss.

 I hate to keep mentioning this, but my feet hurt.  Aleve wasn’t doing much to hide the discomfort either.  Concentrating on the wildflowers and scenery helped.  I tried communing with my muse, trying to think of stories to write, but the muse wasn’t cooperating.  She said her feet hurt and writing stories in the sky wasn’t her gig when her feet hurt.  I took frequent breaks.

I met three bikers, the teenaged son in the lead.  I said hello.  He was looking down at the path, trying to dodge the rocks in the trail.  At the last moment, he glanced up quickly, smiled, and responded with a greeting.  I thought about that for a while as I walked.  

The bicyclers do in a day what it’s taking me four days to do.  Maybe I should dust off the mountain bike and ride it somewhere other than on pavement.  Then I looked at the budding gentian and wild geraniums and Forget-Me-Nots.

A few steps farther and a spruce grouse spooked at the approached.  She flew off fifty feet, landed, and turned to watch me.  A couple steps more and eight baby grouse took to the air after her.  Another ran through the wildflowers.  I got the camera out of the pouch strapped across my chest and took a few photos.

See the grouse watching me?

As I walked on, another baby ran through the grass in the direction of mama.  I would miss all that on a bike, I thought.  I’d be concentrating on rocks embedded in the trail rather than this awesome scenery.  An incident later on would put an exclamation point on that decision, one in which  I was lucky I escaped without injury.

I crossed Devil’s Creek.  I would follow this creek down the valley.  I passed a large excavation in the bank alongside the trail.  It seemed too large to be a marmot hole, but I couldn’t imagine what else it could be. 

Devil's Creek high in the pass.

Marmot den?

I soon left the low alpine vegetation and headed downhill into grass, cow parsnip and brush over my head. 

Leaving the alpine country of Devil's Pass and heading downhill.  I'm looking back at bicyclers.

Now there weren’t any flat spots to pitch a tent.  Now I was committed to reaching the tent site at mile 5.3.  I had no way of knowing how far I’d walked.  All I knew for sure was that it was too far.  I did have a Forest Service map for this section, though, and when I stopped to tape my feet some more, I figured out I still had a ways to go.  Downhill.

Downhill was starting to hurt.

Finally, finally, I rounded a corner and spotted the tell-tale post with tent icon.

“Hal-le-f------ lu-jah!” I blurted.  Then I saw the tent  off to the side.

Big mouth, I said to myself.  I backtracked a few yards and found a nice flat spot on a point sticking out over the valley.  I planted my hiking stick, ditched the pack and took off my boots.  Whew!  This was it.  I wasn’t moving another step.

Except, I did.  I walked down to the creek, spread out my folding bucket and dipped it in the creek.  I filled all three of my water bottles and drank from one of them.  Giardia be damned.   I needed cold water and lots of it.

Then I went back uphill and pitched camp.  I'd walked eight miles today and for the first time in this trip, I felt a tickle of hunger in my stomach.    Freeze-dried chicken and rice was on the menu and to heck with sore feet.

My camp site was where the bear paw icon is--the upper one in the narrow valley, not the lower one in green.

 The longest journey begins with a single step,

not with a turn of the ignition key.

That’s the best thing about walking, the journey itself.

It doesn’t much matter whether you get there or not.

You’ll get there anyway.

--Edward Abbey--Walking

Moments that take our breath away

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, 

but by the number of moments that take our breath away.

--Anonymous

 Three years ago this month as I was heading for home after picking up litter, I came upon Jerome Lake in an enchanted moment and took this photograph if the lake and fireweed in pewter-colored atmosphere.

I think it's exquisite.  It's right out of the camera, with no Photo Shop-ping or tinkering.

I made it my PC's desktop photo a few months ago and every time I climbed up to the loft and approached my computer, this photo took my breath away.  I also changed the appearance of Windows to eggplant and seafoam green, to coordinate with the photo.

A couple evenings ago, when the setting sun turned the air golden, I went back to Jerome Lake to see if I could improve on the photo.  I've posted the results here for your perusing, while I'm working on the next-to-last Resurrection Pass Journals story.

Too bad about the sun flare in this shot, because I really like the light shining through the fireweed blossom petals on the right.

I really like this photo, even with the sun flare.  It depicts exactly what I mean when I say, "golden air," those minutes when the set is setting and still a warm color.

This one's close, but its composition is unbalanced.  This color is a bit gold and a bit silver.

All silver and too late.  The sun's already behind the mountain.   And, again with the balance.  The fireweed aren't tall enough in the original spot where I took the picture, so I had to move downhill.

The original again.  I guess there's no improving on the original.   There must be a life truism in that statement.  Or, perhaps, enchanted moments are enchanting because they come so seldom.

Click on all these to enlarge, then click again to enlarge to full screen.

Let me know if any of them take away your breath.

Fishy Tails

From the river...

To the cleaning board...

To the vacuum packer...

To the freezer.....

The Resurrection Pass Journals, Chapter Eight

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.
-   Walt Whitman

 Day Three

Part One

Morning arrived on the beams of sunshine on day three of my hike to Resurrection Pass.  The dark storm clouds of the previous evening had disappeared, leaving not a trace.

I lay in my sleeping bag in that sweet grove of mountain hemlock and savored the moment.  This was to be as much of a day off for my feet as it could be.  I had only two miles to go to my intended camp site for the day, so I dawdled about getting up, dressing, and saddling up this old hoss.

I dressed outside the tent for a change as the bugs were almost non-existent.  Or perhaps I smelled so bad by then, the insects didn’t want to get near me with a ten foot proboscis.

I thought about the hike the day before, about not finding the tent sites that were supposed to be a mile and a half (DOWNHILL) from here.  They must be on the Swan Lake trail, I decided, but why were they marked with the mileage of the Resurrection Trail and not something like “0.3 Swan Lake Trail.”  I would find out when I got back home.

I’d passed the point of no return during that last mile and a half.  It was now a shorter distance to continue on than to turn back, even though the trail would seem shorter if I went back the way I’d come.  I never would have turned back anyway.

By camping at mile 15.6 today, I would have two days of slightly more than five miles a day to complete the trip.  Perfect.

I packed up and headed for the bear box to retrieve my food supply.  It was such a beautiful morning, I sat on the bear box and ate the smashed peanut butter sandwich that I’d tucked away under my sleeping bag the evening before because I was too tired to get up and put it in the bear box.

Then I saddled up and started walking. 

Bear boxes are good for more than one thing.

You'll notice my walking stick isn't in these pictures.  That's because it's stuck in the ground with my camera screwed onto the top and the timer set on the camera.

The vegetation turned from tall grass and brush to wildflowers, wildflowers never seen before in such abundance.   Acres of wildflowers everywhere I looked.

On and on I walked through red and blues and whites and yellows.  Beaver dams came into sight.  I met a couple guys and we stopped to chat.  Eventually I asked about bear sightings and one guy said, “You’ve got your bear bell.  You’ll be okay.”

“You mean my dinner bell?” I responded.  He hadn’t heard that old joke before and appreciated it.

Looking back at Juneau Lake.

More beaver dams, and still more.  The day got hotter.   I was running out of treated water again.  Eventually I came to my intended camp site at 1 p.m.

The trail leading to the bear box and the tent sites was –unbelievably—uphill.  Diabolical, I thought.

I looked for a shady spot to pitch my tent, but couldn’t find one.  It was fully in the open or rocks and steep hills.  There were a few bugs, and a couple nasty horse flies, but not too bad.  I took off my perspiration-soaked clothes and draped them on hemlock branches to dry in the hot sun.

An unwelcome visitor--a horse fly.

Then I got in my tent and enjoyed the rest.  For about five minutes.  There was only the slightest breeze.  The sun beat down on the tent and raised the internal temperature by the minute.  I lasted an hour before I climbed out that sauna and put on my now dry clothes and hit the trail.  It was 3 p.m.

Click to enlarge to full screen.  The Devil's cabin is visible.  Devil's Creek trail goes down the valley to the right.

Maybe I’ll find a nice spot to camp where the Devil’s Creek trail intersects the Resurrection Pass trail, I thought.  I got hotter and hotter.  By now I was wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat.

I stopped every hundred feet or so and drank water and lemonade, until I was almost out of liquids.  I reached a small wooden bridge over a creek and stopped.  A gust of wind blew my sun hat into the creek.

Flies browsing on a cow parsnip blossom.

I fished it out with my hiking stick and relished the cool water dripping off of it.  The half mile to the Devil’s Creek cabin seemed as long as the two miles to the tent site I’d abandoned.  By the time I reached the turn off to the cabin, I was in danger of dehydration.  I had to get out of the sun or I’d be in trouble.

I talked with some bicyclers who were resting at the trail cut off, then took the trail to the cabin.  Ignoring Forest Service that requested privacy for the cabin permit holders, I reached the cabin and knocked on the bottom step.  A teen-age girl answered the knock.

“I apologize for disturbing you, but I’m overweight, overloaded, and dehydrated,” I said. "Do you mind if I rest here for a bit?"

 “Come on in.  It’s cool in here,” she said.   I asked her dad about the water source for the cabin and he gave me a quart of water he’d just filtered from a nearby creek.  I drank half of it.

A welcome sight--the Devils' Creek cabin and outhouse.

A hour later, cooled off and ready to trudge on, I hoisted my pack and started walking towards Devils’ Creek trail.

The next bear box was almost five miles away down Devil’s Trail, so I was looking for a nice flat area with a water source to camp for the night.

So much for plans, I thought.  So much for a day off.  The whole thing reminded me of Robbie Burns:  “The best laid plans o’ mice and men, gang aft aglay.”

Tempest in a Tea Pot

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

 --Shakespeare--Macbeth

Have you heard all the accusations and lamentations emanating from Washington D.C. like toxic radiation from Chernobyl? 

Some even called the Tea Party members of Congress terrorists. 

Well, back in the good old days, those days when Boston Harbor was accessorized with floating chests of tea, they were called revolutionaries.  Guess it depends with which side you’re aligned.

This is what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev, had to say on the floor of the Senate:

“I welcome them all,” Reid said of the new Tea party Senators, “but as result of the Tea Party direction of this Congress these last few months has been very, very disconcerting and very unfair to the American people.”

Reid said the Tea Party “stopped us from arriving at a conclusion much earlier,” to this problem.

I wonder how the Tea Party stopped them from arriving at an early conclusion?  Did they, alack and alas, stick to their campaign promises?  Maybe they stood up for their beliefs and re-election be damned.  Or was it that they tried—OMG—to bring new vision to entrenched politicos and buck the way things were always done in D.C.?

You know about campaign promises, right?   They are those beguiling, enticing, seductive promises left on the door mat like yesterday’s newspaper the day after elections. 

Love them or hate them, join them or don't touch them with a ten-foot tea bag string, you have to admit those freshmen Tea Party members in Congress have enlivened the political circus with a new act, and admire them for abiding by their campaign promises.  

What is this country coming to when politicians remember their promises?

(Pardon this post, please.  I hesitate to comment on politics because, not only am I  a political neophyte, but also because I am isolated from much of the news and machinations in D.C.  However,  I've really enjoyed this past week when the circus came to town.)

Stay tuned. We will return to our regular programming later today:  Chapter Eight in the Resurrection Pass Journals.