Thousands of ducks fly a thousand miles to winter here. Then, gunfire on Hood Canal. A few things pulled me out of writing for a couple of weeks. A close friend died. The water heater on the boat burst. My son was here for a week. We made pies for Thanksgiving. The kitchen sink at the pie house backed up and defied the snake. Washing a million dishes by hand was no big deal, then Rotor-Rooter arrived. In three days I drove around Puget Sound two times, once counterclockwise, once clockwise. A dermatology appointment. A trip to Port Townsend for seven feet of heater hose that cost forty dollars. The new hot water heater awaits installation, though I have become accustomed to living without it, and like the soft pulse of water from the foot pump. Maybe I was hasty getting a new heater, but I think I’ll like the hot water when it's back. I wasn’t completely pulled away, and did write Mountain Men, but didn’t take the time to post it. Guess it needed some time to ferment. Still not sure it’s aged enough, but here it is. The plan to hike the Tunnel Creek Trail was mine and David’s for several weeks. The day before we planned to go, the boat’s water pump came on and stayed on. After hitting the breaker, I heard dripping in a cave sounds. The hot water tank had let go. I almost wrote David to cancel because now I had to drive to Seattle to get a new tank, and then install it. It felt pressing, something I had to get on right away. How could I live without hot water? But before I could text him, he texted me saying how much he was looking forward to the mountains, and then it was too late. Our friendship is pretty new. I noticed him online in George Saunders’ Story Club, where his perceptive comments got my attention. Something tipped us off we’re neighbors in the Olympic Mountains, and we arranged to meet for lunch in Hoodsport. First thing, he gave away his love for mountains, mentioning peaks and trails all over the West. He said he was more together online than in real life, then told the story how a short cut got him into rough terrain, and on a hill above a river a branch snagged his glasses and flipped them into the water. He was prepared for a day hike. There was snow, freezing temperatures at night. His vision wasn’t good. He’d go toward something, get there and have to turn around. At one point he was lying prone on a steep snowy slope, hanging on to two sticks jammed into the crust, summoning the courage to move. Immersed in forest he heard the helicopters for several days before they sighted him. They told him they were close to giving up. I thought about how the water heater might control life in the short term. I considered tearing all the plumbing out of the boat, and while I was at it, all the wiring too. People do that kind of thing on old boats. I’d already removed the head and all its plumbing, and replaced it with a composting toilet. With the water heater out I was most of the way toward removing all the plumbing. Why not finish the job? David texted he had some challenges getting going with the day, but things were coming along. Same thing happened the time he brought the family to Brinnon. That day the boy had a morning meltdown. They were over an hour late. Thursday he also showed up an hour after our scheduled time. No big deal. There’s no such thing as wasted time. He said the day started with an argument with his wife, and that if he was to tell me what it was about it would take all day, and still I wouldn’t know what happened, and neither would he. On the drive into the trailhead he talked about his many mountain experiences that ended long after dark. He loves being in the mountains so much he forgets to turn around. About the time hiking at Yosemite in winter along the top of an iced up waterfall, he said, “It became obvious it was slippery, and a long way down.”
Dosewallips River
We had a hard time finding Tunnel Creek Trail. It leaves off the Dosewallips road, which was discontinued thirty years ago when the river washed some of it away. Last summer the sign for it still stood, but lots of the signage in the Olympic National Forests is rotting and falling down. I knew it split off somewhere beyond the stolen tree, and was lightly used because from our side of the mountain the steep grade deters people. Almost no one climbs from the south, they prefer the gradual trail on the north side. I asked David on the way in if we were doing the north or the south side. The south side, he said. Five years ago a six foot diameter six hundred year old Douglas Fir standing near the Dosewallips road fell in a storm. Over the next two years, despite it being illegal, despite the forest service blocking the road with boulders and piles of gravel, thieves stole the tree. Cut it up with chainsaws into manageable chunks, piled it into pickups, drove off. The depression it made in the ground when it fell is still there. Even fallen, that tree was magnificent. We found the trail on the backtrack and started up. Unlike most trails in these mountains, this one still looked like virgin ground, narrow, mossy, covered with leaves. We got high enough the rocky peaks of Mt. Jupiter, laced with snow, came out from behind lesser peaks quilted with Doug fir. The trail was so steep we felt like we were up in the trees. Sunlight lit gossamer threads spun through the canopy. Among the thinnest silver lines a hatch of insects traced atomic circles. What are they doing, this late in the year? This is amazing, said David, I’m already making plans to come back. We talked about our dead mothers. Maybe that’s why we missed the trail and had to backtrack half a mile. He told me how he and his mom hitchhiked here from Fairbanks. When he told her he was going to hitchhike to Washington she said she’d never been allowed to do anything and she wanted to go with him. They hiked this very Dosewallips trail, deep into the mountains, up over Anderson Pass and out somewhere I’ve forgotten. He mentions this trip with his mom often, what a special time it was, not long before she died. I had no such story about my mother. I remember a photograph of her carrying an Adirondack pack basket back in the ‘50’s, but we were not a backpacking family. Nor could I imagine a two thousand mile hitchhiking journey with my mother, and thought of her sitting on a beach working on a watercolor. I talked about Annie, my friend who had died only a few days before. How having known her outweighed the grief, and what she wanted most before she died was for me to move on and find someone to be with. Love, we talked about, and loss. Thinking back on the day, neither mentioned our fathers.
Mt. Jupiter Across the Valley.
We got as high as we would go. I was ready to sit, he would have gone farther. We ate lunch on the edge of a ravine filled with fallen trees and sounds of falling water. Across the narrow valley the colored mass of mountains, purple, green, blue, black all run on. The sun too bright behind the trees. We’d have to start early to get up and back in a day, he said. In daylight, I said. After David dropped me off and drove home, we texted back and forth several times, and into the following day too. What a day! Thank you. Thank you. I’m still up there. Something in those mountains. We both felt it.
Getting a real Raymond Carver vibe here. Must be something in the peninsular air. I enjoyed your recounting of these episodes with the accompanying narrative interiority, especially about those bad-ass mammas. Thanks for this.
Ha ha, I feel like we’re back up there. We will talk about fathers on another hike!