Tag Archives: Mount St. Helens

Huckleberry Hunting 101

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I loves me some huckleberries.

If you aren’t familiar with huckleberries – and chances are, unless you live in the Pacific Northwest you’ve never even seem them – you are missing out on some seriously good stuff. Huckleberries resemble blueberries but are smaller in size and a bit sweeter. They only grow in very specific climate zones at higher elevations in acidic mountain soil, and are impossible to cultivate or farm. Each berry must be picked by hand. This probably explains why they’re hard to find other than in a few local farmer’s markets, and command prices of $15-$20 a pint.

They are amazingly delicious, though. And picking them is an adventure in itself. You get to drive up into the mountains, traipse through the forest, and have a grand ol’ time communing with nature. Which is why I headed out Tuesday morning for a drive into the Indian Heaven Wilderness, one of my favorite hiking spots in southwest Washington and a place – conveniently enough – renowned for its bounty of huckleberries that ripen right around this time every year. I got there about 10:45, and the weather was absolutely perfect: sunshine, blue skies, and a cool breeze blowing through the trees that carried with it a not-so-subtle reminder that autumn is about to land with a thud. Right off the bat, I found plenty of wild huckleberries growing all along the trail, and I spent three hours gathering as many as I could. There’s a certain method to picking them: a one-handed maneuver in which you pluck each berry between your index finger and thumb and scoop it into the palm of your hand. I would pick ten or so and then deposit them into the ziploc bag clutched in my left hand. More often than not, I was balanced precariously on a log or a hillside and being dive-bombed by mosquitoes and biting flies during the process. Like I said, huckleberries take a lot of work! But what a sweet reward. I’d estimate I ended up with $50 worth based on their market value, but I’m not selling these babies. At one point a group of hikers passed me and asked what I was picking. When I told them, they wondered what I’d do with the huckleberries. “They make excellent jam,” I explained, “And are really good in pancakes and muffins.”

When I last picked them in 2009, I made a big batch of homemade jam, which has since dwindled to two small mason jars. I figured it was time to make some more, and also enjoy the aforementioned pancakes and muffins, provided I have enough left over. I should…we’ll see.

Betty Crocker, eat your heart out.

I should also mention that black bears love huckleberries. Based on my fear that I will one day be eaten by a bear, I was a bit apprehensive while picking the berries. OK, “jumpy” is a more accurate word. I kept imagining I heard phantom growling, so I’d stop what I was doing and listen carefully, but it was always just the breeze blowing through the treetops. Whew. I’m always happy to survive a bear-encounter-that-wasn’t.

(By the way, I stopped in Big 5 Sporting Goods the other day and inquired about bear spray. They had some on hand, but it was a very elaborate “Bear Attack Defense System” consisting of a can the size of a fire hydrant that required a great deal of finesse in releasing the safety. I figured I’d be halfway digested before I was even able to point the nozzle in the bear’s direction, so I passed).

After picking huckleberries, I embarked upon a 2.5-hour hike up a very steep series of trails to a gorgeous alpine meadow teeming with lakes, wildflowers, and clusters of fir trees, interspersed with gorgeous scenery that included stunning views of two nearby mountain peaks, St. Helens and Baker. All told, I covered about 11 miles yesterday, which explains the aching back and sore muscles today. I’ve been popping ibuprofen to deal with the pain, but I wish my girlfriend’s hands could work their magic instead.

Regardless, it was worth it!

Mount St. Helens - Indian Heaven Wilderness, Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

Huckleberries resemble blueberries; they're smaller and sweeter.

Eunice Lake, one of many I admired while hiking.

It's not every day you see a man leading a pack of llamas through the forest. I told him that and he smiled. Curious what this was all about!

Alpine meadow, Indian Heaven. After a long and steep uphill hike, this was my reward.

What’s That Weird Buzzing Sound?

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$30 Paperweight 

I picked up the phone the other day to call my dad, and got a busy signal. That took me aback – when was the last time I’d heard one of those?! It occurred to me then that busy signals also belong on my list of things that are obsolete nowadays. Thankfully, because they’re annoying. I tried calling back again and again, only to get that same ingratiating tone – one that is slightly less unpleasant than a buzzing alarm clock before the sun has come up. With cell phones, you don’t have this problem. The phone rings even if the person you’re calling is on the line, and either goes to voicemail, or the other person can pick up thanks to call waiting. I love the efficiency in that whole process.

As irritating as the busy signal was (it took twenty minutes of repeated attempts to finally get through), at least I knew what it was. A few weeks ago, Rusty had to call my parents for something, so I handed him my phone. He dialed the number, waited a few seconds, then gave it back to me.

“There’s something wrong with the phone,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“There’s a weird buzzing sound, and nobody is picking up.”

I snatched the phone from his hands, dialed it myself…and laughed. My son had no idea what a busy signal was! I was incredulous at first, but then realized that he probably had never heard one before. That’s either sad or incredibly funny. Maybe both.

My parents have a cell phone – they just never use it. Hell, not only do they have a landline, but the phone in the living room is a rotary dial. You should have seen the looks on my kids’ faces when they saw that for the first time. My parents aren’t exactly “early adopters.” I remember in the early 90s trying to convince them they should invest in an answering machine, and up until last year they still used a VCR to record shows. Thankfully, they converted to a DVR (which, naturally, they love).

Something tells me their cell phone is always going to be nothing more than a $30 a month paperweight, though.

Nature’s Air Conditioning was on Full Blast

Yesterday, my dad asked if I’d be interested in driving into the mountains for a nice little summer hike and an exploration of Ape Cave. I took him up on his offer, but insisted on driving because his car does not have air conditioning (see what I mean about not being “early adopters”?) and we would surely need it since it was, after all, the middle of summer.

We stopped for a picnic lunch at Beaver Bay, a nice little spot situated on the banks of Yale Lake. The sky was overcast, a stiff breeze was blowing off the lake, and we shivered beneath sweatshirts and jackets while eating our sandwiches. This may yet go down as The Summer That Wasn’t, I’m telling you. “It’s just the wind on the lake,” I told him optimistically, but when we arrived at the trailhead – 2700 feet in elevation – the air was every bit as cold. My dad said it felt like we were hiking in an air-conditioned room, and that was a pretty accurate description. The sky remained gray with clouds obscuring the tops of the trees, and the temperature couldn’t have been warmer than about 58. Regardless, it was beautiful, even if the hike to June Lake is all uphill and gains 700 feet. I have hiked many times when it was sunny and 85, and I would much rather have a cool, cloudy hike.

Breathtaking scenery despite low clouds and a crisp August chill.

The smaller of two waterfalls spilling into June Lake, elevation 3,400 feet.

My dad, navigating the entrance to Ape Cave.

Ape Cave was just a few miles away, so we hit that next. This nearly 3-mile long lava tube was formed 1,900 years ago when hot molten lava from Mount St. Helens poured down the volcano’s southern flank and entered a stream channel. The surface of the lava cooled, forming a hard crust, and insulated the lava flowing beneath, which was able to travel a great distance.

/geology lesson.

I had never been to Ape Cave before, despite living here for nearly seventeen years! My parents have gone many times, and even my kids have visited. It was nice to finally get out there and explore it. Caves are fascinating, and this one was fun.

On the drive back, I did turn the A/C on, just so I wouldn’t feel like I had driven my car all that way for nothing.

We didn’t really need it, though. The high in Portland was 69.

Good Things Come in Cardboard Boxes

Later in the evening, I stepped outside to check the mail, and found a package resting against my door. It was a book-shaped cardboard box, and I knew what it contained without even opening it. An advance copy of my novel was due to arrive any day from the printer, and so I tore into it eagerly. I cannot tell you the jubilation I felt when holding my book in my hands for the very first time.

Holding my book for the first time, I felt like a new father showing off his baby.

I stared at it. Flipped through the pages, read the back cover, the introduction. It is indistinguishable from any book you would pull off the shelf in your local bookstore. In other words, it looks “real.” It IS real, of course. I do not believe there is any stigma left in self-publishing these days. Not when the finished product turns out looking so professional.

In just a few more days, it will be available for sale!

I crawled into bed last night and, as I so often do, curled up with a book. Only this was my book, and I can’t even begin to describe how amazing it felt to be reading it. I’ve only ever seen it in manuscript form before, double-spaced on 8.5″ x 11″ paper, and even though I know how the story ends, it is so incredibly cool to be reading it as if it were a book I’d just purchased at Powell’s. I read the first three chapters and can’t wait to dive in again.

Kaboom (A Somber Anniversary)

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Thirty-one years ago today, Mount St. Helens erupted.

I was not living here at the time, and was pretty young anyway, but I remember being awestruck by the news reports. As a kid, I thought volcanoes were “cool” and used to draw pictures of them erupting molten lava into the air. Mount St. Helens claimed the lives of 57 people that day, so it isn’t really appropriate to glamorize the eruption, but one can still be in awe of the immense power of nature’s fury.

When I moved up here in the mid-90s, I made it a point to visit the Mount St. Helens National Monument as soon as possible, and have returned many times since over the years. Sometimes I’ll visit the Johnston Ridge Observatory, and other times, I’ll make the trek to the more desolate, less touristy Windy Ridge Viewpoint. A couple of years ago, I hiked across the pumice plain to Loowit Falls, a waterfall that spills out of the crater. That was a hot and dusty hike, and ended up being one of the most incredible I’ve ever been on. It felt like walking across the surface of the moon at times, the landscape was so barren. And yet, it continues to change; it’s already much more lush and green than it was the first time I visited, some 16 years ago. I consider it a beautiful and sacred place, and a wonderful day trip.

I was there a week before it rumbled back to life in 2004, and over the next few years bore witness to several spectacular steam and ash eruptions, clearly visible on the northern horizon. Mount St. Helens is about 45 miles away from where I live, and on clear days it’s visible all over town. It is always there, a hulking background presence, its peak covered in snow most of the year. The mountain is quiet now, having finished its latest eruptive cycle in 2008, but the lava dome in the crater is still steaming, and we all know that one day…maybe 100 years from now, but maybe tomorrow…it will awaken once again.

Today, on the 31st anniversary of the eruption, I drove up there again. Here are some photos from my day.

The sleeping giant. 31 years ago today, a column of ash rose 5 miles into the sky as the mountain erupted violently.

The drive to Mount St. Helens offers stunning vistas (and scary bridges traversing canyons).

Beyond this point, you would've been toast in 1980.

Johnston Ridge Observatory

Snow is still piled high in the parking lot of the Johnston Ridge Observatory.

Johnston Ridge Observatory

Note to Mother Nature: summer is only a month away!

Lava Dome

Steam still escapes from the lava dome in the crater of Mount St. Helens.

Yours truly, shielding his eyes from the blinding glare of the sun and snow.

Snow-capped mountains receding in the distance as I return home.

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South To Drop Off, Moron!

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After a mere day officially unemployed, I was already chomping at the bit to do something.

Yesterday felt pretty surreal.  I woke up and couldn’t believe that I didn’t have a job to go to.  A paid job, anyway.  Apparently, on these weeks where I have the kids, I run a taxi service.  I was up at 6:25, a definite improvement over my old schedule.  Brushed my teeth, shaved, threw on some clothes, and was out the door twenty minutes later with Kid # 1.  The round trip to his school and back took an hour, thanks to a wacky and completely unfair “compromise” that has him in his mother’s school district.  It used to sort of make sense, because I worked in Camas and he goes to school in Camas, so it wasn’t too inconvenient to drop him off on the way to work and pick him up after.  Now, though?  There ain’t nothin’ convenient about it!  I’m secretly hoping the government is hard at work on building a real-life Star Trek-style transporter so I can beam him to school and back every day.  I got home, brewed a pot of coffee, ate a bowl of cereal, showered, and then it was time to drive Kid # 2 to school.  Again, clear across town.  And that is when my life turned into Mr. Mom.

Remember the movie, with Michael Keaton?  Out-of-work guy suddenly has to take care of the kids, and he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing?  There’s a scene where he drops his kids off at their school, and pisses off the regular moms because he’s driving the wrong way (“South to drop off, moron!”).  Well, that was me.  Not only did I drive the wrong way against a big, white painted arrow across the parking lot – getting in the way of cars who were trying to exit – but I also entered a “do not enter” section of the lot, and to top matters off, nearly ran over a crossing guard.  In my defense, a rat could find its way out of a maze easier than that.  I need to have a word with the principal…

I finally got out of there without killing anybody, and made a few stops on the way home.  First up?  Kohl’s, for a sweater (because I have apparently turned into Ward Cleaver) and a couple of t-shirts.  One early advantage of unemployment: shopping at odd hours, you don’t have to deal with crowds, and the sales associates are tripping over themselves to take care of you.  Normally I have to wait in a line a mile deep when I’m ready to pay, but this time, I was out of there in less than a minute flat, and the cashier was chipper as hell – probably because it was 9:45 in the morning and she hadn’t dealt with anybody too annoying yet.  Next up was Best Buy, where I bought a printer because my old one wasn’t wireless or Mac-compatibile. Ostensibly, I’ll need this for printing up resumes and cover letters.  Wonder if I can get a tax write-off?  My final stop was Chuck’s Produce & Street Market, a new upscale grocery joint in The ‘Couv that’s kind of like Whole Foods, only without the high prices.  Despite the fact that Chuck’s was selling some twenty different varieties of apples, I still gotta say I like Whole Foods better – there’s a much bigger selection there.  Finished with my shopping, I finally got home…and then it was time to turn around and pick the kids up from school.  Seriously, I barely got a chance to sit down.  I’m wondering when I’ll have time to actually, you know, find a job when I’m shuttling kids around in the car for three hours a day.  Well, there’s always next week, when I’m kid-free.

So anyway, I didn’t feel like coming home and sitting around the house today, even though this is only Day Two.  Autumn is definitely in full swing around here, it’s been rainy and cold, and I figured I wouldn’t have too many opportunities left to go hiking before the weather closes that door for the season, which is why I found myself driving north, out into the country, after dropping off my daughter.  My destination?  June Lake, one of the trails just south of Mount St. Helens.  It started raining before I was halfway there, and by raining, I mean pouring.  It was as if  a giant tap in the sky had been turned on full-blast.  Nevertheless, the drive was scenic, all greens and golds as the maples intermingling with the evergreens showed off their fall foliage, and low clouds obscured the mountains and treetops.  I had good music playing – Built To Spill – and as I turned onto Forest Road 83 up past Cougar, my pulse quickened.  I couldn’t wait to hit June Lake!

Pulling over to play in the snow.

Suddenly, fat rain splattered my windshield.  This is a term I coined (much like OLFR and “velcheetah“) because I crave world domination it is the best way I can describe rain that is mixed with snow.  It’s wet and slushy and, well, fat. I was beginning to wonder if it might turn to snow.  I didn’t have long to wonder, because the road continued to climb in elevation, and now the tops of the trees were dusted with white.  Excited, I pulled over to snap a picture.  Ha!  I was about to encounter a lot more snow than that!  Within minutes, the fat rain had turned to snow, and it was falling thick and heavy.  The road became slushy, and then snowy.  I finally had to turn around a few miles short of my destination, because there was at least 6″ of snow covering the road, and nary a plow in sight.  Of course there wasn’t – it’s still October, for chrissakes!  The weathermen have been predicting a cold, wet, and potentially snowy winter for the Pacific Northwest thanks to La Nina.  If today is any indication, I’m thinking they might be onto something there.

I hadn’t made it to June Lake, but when it comes to snow, I’m like a little kid – I can’t get enough of it.  And now that I had found myself smack dab in the midst of a winter wonderland, I wanted to play in it!  So I found a place to pull over, and went exploring.  Happened upon a trail – yay! – and hiked that for approximately a mile, all the while risking ruining my newish camera because I was taking a million pictures and it was getting wet thanks to the steadily falling snow.  It was a beautiful walk; nature still thinks it’s Autumn even though it felt like the middle of Winter to me, so there were maples with golden leaves still clinging to their limbs, weighted down by several inches of snow and ice.  I loved the contrast.  I finally came to a sign that indicated I was on a snowmobile trail that was off-limits to hikers.  Err…oops.  Fortunately, there were no snowmobilers around (because it’s still October, remember?), but I figured it was a good idea to turn around there, just in case. I made the trek back to my car, and then the drive home.

Autumn v. Winter!

And now, what a shock – it’s time to go pick up the kids!  But hey, who can complain?  Instead of being trapped inside the gray fabric confines of a stuffy office cubicle today, I got to play in the snow.

You know, being out of work isn’t so bad, after all…

Dead Is Dead

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A friend of mine shared an internet article with me today. It was a tragic story, about a couple from the local area who were killed in a mountain climbing accident while on vacation in Colorado.

“Well,” she said reflectively, “They died doing what they loved.”

That may be the case, but it doesn’t change the fact that they still died. Dead is dead, end of story (literally). Plus, I’m thinking, during their final moments, those poor folks suddenly didn’t love mountain climbing quite as much as they’d thought, anyway. I’ll bet they wished they’d taken up a safer hobby. You know, one where they weren’t at the mercy of Mother Nature, who decided to dish up a serving of thunder and lightning and high winds followed by a rockslide. Like stamp collecting, for instance. Your biggest danger there would be in accidentally paying your water bill with a rare stamp worth, say, ten bucks rather than 44-cents. A bummer, to be sure, but certainly not life threatening. Plus, that’s a potentially lucrative hobby.

Find one of these and baby, you're rich!

Stumble upon one of those famous upside-down airplane stamps – the “Inverted Jenny” – and you could end up pocketing a cool $977,500. The most famous reason for climbing a mountain (“because it’s there”) kinda pales in comparison.

Similarly, I doubt the skydiver plummeting to earth with a parachute that won’t open is thinking, well, this sucks, but at least I’m about to die doing something I love! No, sir. He’s probably ruing the day airplanes were ever invented while simultaneously cursing out gravity. “Damn you, Isaac Newtooooooooon….”

Likewise, the bull fighter who is taking his last tortured breaths after being gored is probably wishing he’d stuck to petting kittens, and the surfer who has just been mistaken for a seal by Jaws and whose severed arteries are now pumping blood into the Pacific must surely regret ever leaving the shallow end of the pool. I could go on and on, but I trust I’ve made my point.

Having said all of that, I’d prefer a cool death over something lame. Everybody’s gotta check out sometime, and I figure, better to go out in style, right? At least then your surviving family members have a great story to share. Anybody can drop dead of a heart attack while standing in line at the grocery store, or wither away to nothing while cancer eats up their insides. I’d rather be trampled to death by an elephant while on an African safari, or sucked up into a funnel cloud over Kansas. In the latter case, I would hope for an “Auntie Em” joke or two during my funeral. Don’t worry about sounding insensitive or offensive; if I’m looking down from above, trust me, I’m laughing.

"If the mountain goes, I'm going with it."

I guess that’s why I sort of envy Harry Truman. Not the 33rd President, but the cantankerous old proprietor of the Spirit Lake Lodge. When Mount St. Helens rumbled to life in the spring of 1980, Harry became a celebrity by refusing to leave his home of 54 years. He stubbornly stayed put, despite the increasing danger, telling the press, “If the mountain goes, I’m going with it.”  The mountain did go, of course, erupting on May 18th. Harry Truman is buried beneath 150 feet of volcanic landslide debris, along with sixteen cats, a pink Cadillac, and a whole bunch of money from the lodge safe. 

It’s sad that he perished, of course, but think about it: he was 83 years old, his health was failing anyway, and he probably never felt a thing.  And today, he’s a legend.  That is a good way to go.  

 Besides, he died doing what he loved.