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tylikThis will be my second try at this post -- I wrote a long, dreamy (sleep deprived) account of our little jaunt last night, and then managed to brush the escape key with the side of my hand. But I will try again...
Sunday was another sleep deprived day for me. I'd gotten to bed late, and had another episode with the five am tunes guy. And of course, I couldn't sleep in. And then we had dim sum, a combination in many cases guaranteed to put the day beyond any hope of energetic activity. But when I said "I think I want to go hiking" to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
canyonwren she responded "Yeah! Let's go.". And so we did.
I'd been wanting to check out some quasi abandoned alpine trails I'd heard about up by Skykomish. They sounded short but steep, and just about the thing for a late starting jaunt. So away we rode in our sleep befuddled states. We've been spending too much time out on the Mountain Loop road -- Highway 2 was refreshing. And the ten miles or so we went on the turnoff started charmingly, shady roads surrounded by a veritable forest apocathary. (I need to put together a "shopping list" -- I know more or less which plants I want, but I need to decide how I'm going to harvest them, which ones can just be dried, and figure out whether I need anything special for those that should be tinctured. Since my still hasn't come through...)
We drove on, and the roads became rougher, and we were eventually surrounded by steep, clearcut hills and a web of gravelly little roads. Of course, what we were looking for was even higher, up in the alpine proper where there is no sense in logging, so we persevered. (I am not as bothered by clearcuts as many people I know. Especially those wherein the forest is reasserting itself are interesting habitat... But this area was getting me down a little. The mountains were so imposing, and yet so bare.)
And then the road up to the trailhead was emphatically blocked. Adding another four miles of walking on a forbidding and unpleasant looking rocky road to our planned hike was not appealling, so we began to retrace our steps.
And from here, the external landscape seemed to be telling the tale as well of an internal landscape. Perhaps it was our own sleep deprived states that made the rest of things seem so strange and dreamlike...
We backtracked a couple of miles, and then saw a fork in the road that we should have seen coming up before, though we had not. It looked more interesting than the ground we had already covered so we took it, and began to ascend, over the course of a great many switch backs, a different face up to the same ridge.
And then we came upon the bandoned construction equiptment. Or so I assume it was. It looked at first to be in pretty good shape, though the shapes of the machines were not quite the same as others I have seen. On closer inspection, much of it was covered with rust, and large parts had fallen off and were lying in pieces on the ground.
The hulks were eerie. Maybe it was the high elevation and drier climate, but they looked once older and more intact than they should have (I'm used to the coast where everything turns green, one way or another). And there they were, waiting or rusting away among the empty hills and largely untrafficked roads.
We climbed on.
Now both Canyonwren and I have spent more than our fair share of time driving over treacherours mountain roads and dodging pot holes on forest service tracks. But these roads were frightening. They weren't more narrow then others, but they were very steep, and the gravel surface provided little traction. It was all too easy to imagine losing control and sliding over the edge, and one could see that it would be even worse going down. But we kept going on, creeping up the one face, past a complicated crossroads, and then heading up towards the ridge.
On one especially steep stretch, C was afraid to stop the car, for fear that we wouldn't be able to resume climbing. And then we had to anyway, having reaching a spinning halt, to lock down the rims so that we could go on. But we did.
Soon after this, it became clear that the car was quite unhappy. We parked, did what we could to make it comfortable, and continued on on foot, hoping that it would have recovered by the time we returned. Sometimes when one reaches a peak or ridge, cellphone reception mysteriously returns. (So it was last we at Lake Serene.) But there was none there.
We climbed higher, up to the ridge proper, and then walked along it. What a strange barren place. And yet unexpectedly lush, as well, at times. The mountains there are made of granite, and at times there would be granite unfoot, a granite cliff rising on one side of you, and a steep rocky fall to the other. Or as we got onto the ridge, a steep rocky fall to both sides...
But sometimes it was lined with flowers, fireweed and heather, blueberry, strawberry, aging orange lilies... At the ridge the wind was everywhere, surrounding us and talking to us, drowning out, sometimes, the hooting of something that sounded like a bullfrog. Down below on one side, in one place, stretched a steep emerald meadow, and one of the smallest, and least accessible alpine lakes that I had ever seen.
The bugs were fierce, though somewhat detered by the evil brew from my pack. The sun was not much less fierce. We talked about taoism and tai chi, teachers and students, crushes and exes and cats. The path we were on crumbled away into nothing against another higher rocky outcropping.
After some time, we went back.
We could see the little blue car aways and down below us a long time before we came to it. Blessing on the little car. May it start again.
Closer in, I called to canyonwren -- "look, at your feet! A feather."
She stopped and picked it up. It was big and round and delicate, like and oversized piece of perfectly formed stripy down, or a moonbeam caught in a comb. "It looks" she said "like a feather from the soft underbelly of an owl. Like on a barn owl."
"I don't think a barn owl" said I, indicating a landscape singularly lacking in barns.
"Well no. And as far as I know, eagles have feathers like this."
I called to mind a picture of an eagle. "Um... I don't think so."
"An eagle's soft stripey underpants!" We both grinned.
Well, it could be. Are you going to ask an eagle to show you its underpants?
The car seemed to be in a better mood when we got back. We gave it a long refreshing draught of radiator fluid, and a friendly pat. It purred in response.
Down was a lot less awful than expected, although the brakes might never be the same. We went very slowly, stopping for a snack. At the bottom, we stopped at a bridge, and watched the water foam and tumble over stones. Driving out, I wondered if we looked behind if we would see the same trail we had gone up. I didn't look.
On the highway home, the mountains were obscured by golden haze as the sun turned towards setting. The reminded me of the haze the hung over Ephesus, watching the sun set over that fertile valley, from the basillica of st john, looking over one of the earliest mosques in Turkey, and the sole standing pillar of the temple of Artemis of Ephesus, which had been one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
We finished in Snohomish, at the current favorite restaurant overlooking the river, watching the water and the trees turn deeper blue and darker green, sliding almost imperceptibly into night, and the waxing moon brightened in contrast.
Sunday was another sleep deprived day for me. I'd gotten to bed late, and had another episode with the five am tunes guy. And of course, I couldn't sleep in. And then we had dim sum, a combination in many cases guaranteed to put the day beyond any hope of energetic activity. But when I said "I think I want to go hiking" to
canyonwren she responded "Yeah! Let's go.". And so we did.I'd been wanting to check out some quasi abandoned alpine trails I'd heard about up by Skykomish. They sounded short but steep, and just about the thing for a late starting jaunt. So away we rode in our sleep befuddled states. We've been spending too much time out on the Mountain Loop road -- Highway 2 was refreshing. And the ten miles or so we went on the turnoff started charmingly, shady roads surrounded by a veritable forest apocathary. (I need to put together a "shopping list" -- I know more or less which plants I want, but I need to decide how I'm going to harvest them, which ones can just be dried, and figure out whether I need anything special for those that should be tinctured. Since my still hasn't come through...)
We drove on, and the roads became rougher, and we were eventually surrounded by steep, clearcut hills and a web of gravelly little roads. Of course, what we were looking for was even higher, up in the alpine proper where there is no sense in logging, so we persevered. (I am not as bothered by clearcuts as many people I know. Especially those wherein the forest is reasserting itself are interesting habitat... But this area was getting me down a little. The mountains were so imposing, and yet so bare.)
And then the road up to the trailhead was emphatically blocked. Adding another four miles of walking on a forbidding and unpleasant looking rocky road to our planned hike was not appealling, so we began to retrace our steps.
And from here, the external landscape seemed to be telling the tale as well of an internal landscape. Perhaps it was our own sleep deprived states that made the rest of things seem so strange and dreamlike...
We backtracked a couple of miles, and then saw a fork in the road that we should have seen coming up before, though we had not. It looked more interesting than the ground we had already covered so we took it, and began to ascend, over the course of a great many switch backs, a different face up to the same ridge.
And then we came upon the bandoned construction equiptment. Or so I assume it was. It looked at first to be in pretty good shape, though the shapes of the machines were not quite the same as others I have seen. On closer inspection, much of it was covered with rust, and large parts had fallen off and were lying in pieces on the ground.
The hulks were eerie. Maybe it was the high elevation and drier climate, but they looked once older and more intact than they should have (I'm used to the coast where everything turns green, one way or another). And there they were, waiting or rusting away among the empty hills and largely untrafficked roads.
We climbed on.
Now both Canyonwren and I have spent more than our fair share of time driving over treacherours mountain roads and dodging pot holes on forest service tracks. But these roads were frightening. They weren't more narrow then others, but they were very steep, and the gravel surface provided little traction. It was all too easy to imagine losing control and sliding over the edge, and one could see that it would be even worse going down. But we kept going on, creeping up the one face, past a complicated crossroads, and then heading up towards the ridge.
On one especially steep stretch, C was afraid to stop the car, for fear that we wouldn't be able to resume climbing. And then we had to anyway, having reaching a spinning halt, to lock down the rims so that we could go on. But we did.
Soon after this, it became clear that the car was quite unhappy. We parked, did what we could to make it comfortable, and continued on on foot, hoping that it would have recovered by the time we returned. Sometimes when one reaches a peak or ridge, cellphone reception mysteriously returns. (So it was last we at Lake Serene.) But there was none there.
We climbed higher, up to the ridge proper, and then walked along it. What a strange barren place. And yet unexpectedly lush, as well, at times. The mountains there are made of granite, and at times there would be granite unfoot, a granite cliff rising on one side of you, and a steep rocky fall to the other. Or as we got onto the ridge, a steep rocky fall to both sides...
But sometimes it was lined with flowers, fireweed and heather, blueberry, strawberry, aging orange lilies... At the ridge the wind was everywhere, surrounding us and talking to us, drowning out, sometimes, the hooting of something that sounded like a bullfrog. Down below on one side, in one place, stretched a steep emerald meadow, and one of the smallest, and least accessible alpine lakes that I had ever seen.
The bugs were fierce, though somewhat detered by the evil brew from my pack. The sun was not much less fierce. We talked about taoism and tai chi, teachers and students, crushes and exes and cats. The path we were on crumbled away into nothing against another higher rocky outcropping.
After some time, we went back.
We could see the little blue car aways and down below us a long time before we came to it. Blessing on the little car. May it start again.
Closer in, I called to canyonwren -- "look, at your feet! A feather."
She stopped and picked it up. It was big and round and delicate, like and oversized piece of perfectly formed stripy down, or a moonbeam caught in a comb. "It looks" she said "like a feather from the soft underbelly of an owl. Like on a barn owl."
"I don't think a barn owl" said I, indicating a landscape singularly lacking in barns.
"Well no. And as far as I know, eagles have feathers like this."
I called to mind a picture of an eagle. "Um... I don't think so."
"An eagle's soft stripey underpants!" We both grinned.
Well, it could be. Are you going to ask an eagle to show you its underpants?
The car seemed to be in a better mood when we got back. We gave it a long refreshing draught of radiator fluid, and a friendly pat. It purred in response.
Down was a lot less awful than expected, although the brakes might never be the same. We went very slowly, stopping for a snack. At the bottom, we stopped at a bridge, and watched the water foam and tumble over stones. Driving out, I wondered if we looked behind if we would see the same trail we had gone up. I didn't look.
On the highway home, the mountains were obscured by golden haze as the sun turned towards setting. The reminded me of the haze the hung over Ephesus, watching the sun set over that fertile valley, from the basillica of st john, looking over one of the earliest mosques in Turkey, and the sole standing pillar of the temple of Artemis of Ephesus, which had been one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
We finished in Snohomish, at the current favorite restaurant overlooking the river, watching the water and the trees turn deeper blue and darker green, sliding almost imperceptibly into night, and the waxing moon brightened in contrast.
