The plan was to climb a 7500 foot exposed rocky peak in a storm, but God had other plans for us today. After about an hour and a half of driving on forest service roads half way to the peak trailhead, my trusty trail truck died in the middle of no where. The engine just stopped with no warning. "Huh" I said to Josie as we quickly coasted to a stop while going up hill on the gravel roads. I got out to check the engine. It was not overheating, not making any strange noises, there was no steaming or bubbling or issue that I could find with my woman eyes. (I know nothing about trucks other than how to drive them real fast and hard off road). I got back in thinking we were doomed to not hike as we might be here for days before anyone comes along. On a whim, I tried to start the truck up and it fired right to life.
Now this was the moment that would change the course of my day. I had to decide if we kept driving another hour and a half even deeper into no where, or if we turn around and either go home to run fifteen miles on the dreadmill (treadmill) or find another hike between here and home. No dashboard lights were on and everything seemed fine, but I could feel in my bones that God was telling me He had another plan for me today. I knew well enough to listen and immediately thought of a trailhead I had passed just a few miles back. It was one I had never done and knew nothing about. But when God kills your truck right near a trailhead, that is surely a sign. I had no map for that area with me, so it would be an adventure hike. "Sounds good" I said and we flipped the truck around and headed back.
Now I am not a person who really likes to deviate from my plans in any way, but I was taking it surprisingly well. There was some mild grumbling as we strapped gear on in the rain, but by the time we hit the trail I was excited for that God had in store for us. I just felt that either He was going to give me something amazing on this hike, or he was saving me from something terrible on the peak (like death by lightening strike). It didn't take long to start to appreciate this trail. It started right along a tight trail hugging a cliff side ravine above a river. The trail undulated up and down like a roller coaster gaining and losing a surprising amount of elevation. There were multiple rivers and streams to cross and I became lost in the beauty. The evergreens were mixed with maples creating a wonderful canopy that sheltered us from the worst of the rains. The forest floor was a carpet of huge ferns, Oregon grape, vanilla leaf and huckleberry bushes. I was shocked to still see ripe berries and was eating them by the handful as we moved along. Everything was shockingly green from the rains. It truly felt like we were in the land of the lost.
As we quickly moved along listening to the music made by the rain on my goretex hood and the surrounding plants, I noticed a lot of nurse logs throughout the forest. Nurse logs are when a tree falls to the ground and becomes a nursery of sorts for new baby trees to grow from. I like to think the soul of the old tree lives forth in the new. We saw all different types of nurse logs, but I think my favorite was the juvenile tree growing up out of the very root ball of a blow down. Then there was the one that was growing up out of a tree on top of a tree. It was like that guy had a nurse log and a candy striper. Here are three types we found for your enjoyment:
Classic Nurse log with a whole plethora of babies. Josie as Vanna White for you here........
Single baby on a nurse log with candy striper.....
Juvenile coming out of the root ball to start high....
Before long we came to a great cliff side viewpoint. The rains backed off just a bit to give us a view. We could hear the river crashing down below us in the ravine and caught glimpes of it as we inched close to the overhang. Josie has no fear of huge drop offs like this and walks right up to them. I swear she does it just to make my heart race...especially when it is slick and muddy like today. We stood so close to this edge of death that my legs went numb from the adrenaline rush. I think the blood was all going to my brain to tell me to back up in that moment. I will admit, I am not a huge fan of heights like this. Weird, I know.
The rain seemed to be getting more serious as the day progressed and it was seeping in around my rain coat. But we were also hiking so fast that I was sweating into my base layer. It was as if I was becoming wet from the outside and inside simultaneously. But luckily my temperature was staying on target and hypothermia did not seem to be something I would need to worry about on this hike. I was carefully watching all around us as we moved up and down the trail. I didn't want to miss any surprises God had in store. This trail felt so remote, so old, so lost and primordial that I dubbed it the Trail as old as time. It felt like hallowed ground where Bigfoot surely must walk. I was starting to feel sure we would find him today and found myself jumping at several strange large stumps that made me think they were him. I had to laugh at myself several times. But as the day progressed with no Bigfoot sighting, I asked God if He was maybe giving me another bear and I hoped this one would let us take selfies with it unlike the last one. But so far God was just giving us mossy, green forests and beauty all around.
After about 7 miles of hiking in I came to a trail junction that I instantly recognized. I had been in that spot before.....one time about 3 years ago. I may no longer be able to remember your name due to one too many head injuries, but I can recognize a trail or forest service road like you wouldn't believe! This was a full circle moment. I remembered that when I had done that hike I had gone 20 miles and didn't have time to explore further. I always wanted to go back. Now I had come back but from a completely different trailhead. "Who knew!?" I said to Josie. I love moments when I can complete a trail system. It is like I mentally get to check a box that was haunting me in my mind. "Wait." I said to Josie. "Do you remember the bridge coming up from here?" Sure enough, after a few more twists and turns in the trail, we came to the very bridge I remembered, although this time hardly any water was running beneath it. This is one of those fun ones to do when you are tied to your hiking partner. The last time I had both Nova and Josie tied to me.....so today would be easier with just Josie and I. This is also one of those bridges that you cannot cross without doing your best Dirty Dancing remake. Come on.....you know what I am talking about right?
After a bit more hiking, we stopped to sit on a log and eat our supper. I put on one more coat over the two I was wearing over my base layer. I knew I was going to start to get cold as I was now completely wet through all layers down to my skin. You just can't hike in rain for hours without getting soaked no matter how good your gear is. If the rain doesn't soak you from above, the wet plants that brush against you do their best to do it. I'll admit, I was starting to feel a bit miserable, but kept trying to look on the bright side. I told God that he must have been saving me from something pretty bad on that peak since I hadn't had any bucket list moments on this hike yet.
As we headed back for our truck in the darkening forest my mind was carried away thinking about problems. I am a problem solver and if you give me a problem, I will gnaw on it forever. Sadly this felt a bit like my brain was being hijacked and I was growing frustrated because I did not want to think about work, I wanted to think about this glorious trail as old as time! I started to pray to ask God to help me get my mind off those troubles and keep me focused in the here and now. Clearly I needed danger to distract me. While crossing a river something caught my attention and I stopped and back tracked to it. Looking down I saw a large stone in the river that was almost exactly the shape of a heart. "Well, we have to have that big heart rock in our rose garden," I told Josie. But it was too big to fit in her pack and it was raining so hard I had no desire to take my pack off. "I'll just carry it in my arms back to the truck. Should only be a couple more miles." I said out loud, while clutching the wet stone to my wet chest.
It was just about 7pm and the rain started to really pound down. The kind of downpour where you can't hear anything but the rain and practically need windshield wipers for your face. "Not cool God." I told him. So Josie and I decided to do what is only logical to us. We started to trail run. That is one of the only ways we can warm up. Now can I just say it is real awkward to run while clutching a large stone to your chest. Plus we were running up hill on a slender trail snaking up the side of a ravine. The trail clung to the edge of the cliff with a 200 foot drop on our right straight down to the river. As the trail curved tightly to the left in front of us, our entire mellow hike changed in an instant. I was about to have my favorite Mountain Lion encounter of all time while running in the rain of course.
But let me first remind you about two of my other favorite Cougar moments on trail up to this date. So one was long ago. Long before I had Nova or Josie and I was actually hiking alone with no doggie companion. I was up in an area well known for cougars on an early spring hike. I was hiking through a forest and intensely felt that I was being watched. I then crossed a cliff top trail covered in virgin snow where my prints were the first there. After about a mile, the snow stopped and there was a rocky outcropping that was being warmed by the spring sun. It was too much to pass up and I just had to lie down on those warm rocks to rest. I immediately fell into a super deep sleep. I have no idea how much time passed, but I awoke to a loud and familiar voice calling my name. It was a woman's voice and it was so real that I sat bolt upright from a dead sleep and yelled back across the canyons "What????" Then I realized that I was in the middle of no where with no humans. My own voices echoed off the ravines to silence. Let me just say that freaked me out a bit. It was the first time I had heard a guardian angel's voice. (Since then, all my angels I've caught on trail have been men). I sat there stunned for several minutes, but then decided I needed to pack up and leave. It was then that I saw something that put my heart, liver and kidneys into my throat. The snow no longer held just my boot prints alone. Right up next to where I was lying, and for a mile back across that open ridge to the treeline, there were huge Cougar prints following right along with every one of my boot prints. Now I know why I needed to be woken up. I can only assume that cat was standing over me and my sitting up hollering out across the lands scared it back away from me. I never saw anything but the pawprints on this big cat though. But I remember it like it was yesterday.
Now the next most memorable Cougar encounter was on a 16+ mile hike where my bad knee went out miles from the truck. It was all down hill in the dark to get back and I was hurting really, really badly. In fact, I was hurting so bad that I was grossly limping and with almost every step there were involuntary whimpers and gasps coming out of my mouth. The last two miles from the truck I realized we were being flanked by a Cougar. It was just Nova and I on this hike and the cat stayed just downhill from us to our right. I could barely see him in the dark and he stayed just outside my flashlight beam (yes, I was hiking with a wimpy light then). I knew that I looked and sounded like easy dinner. He kept following us and following us. As we were almost back to the trailhead, he suddenly passed in front (again staying just outside my flashlight beam) and stood in the trail in front of us. I could just catch the glint of his eyes. That is when the screaming started....not mine. That cat did the biggest and loudest cat scream I had ever heard. Think two un-neutered male cats having a fight.... kind of screaming, but in an over 100 pound cat body. Every cell in my body just stopped. I did what any cat person would do. I said "Here Kitty Kitty" in my nicest high pitch voice to him. This cat did not scream just once. He then screamed 3 times until I was sure we were dead. I dropped my flashlight which turned off and plummeted us into total darkness. I lost my favorite trekking pole that I was trying to use as a cane for my bad leg. I turned off the trail and ran through the underbrush to my truck where we jumped in as fast as we could and locked the doors without taking off any gear or changing clothes. My heart raced long after I peeled out of that parking lot with my tires churning up all kinds of gravel. But I never really got a good look at that cat either....so kind of a bummer.
Now I will say that after that cat incident I realized I needed to man things up a bit. I needed to better prepare myself mentally for this sort of thing. So I would go through drills on the trail for how I could better handle this sort of encounter in the future. I would tell myself over and over to just pull my gun out of the holster and shoot into the air if needed. I reminded myself how with bears you play dead, but with cats you have to look as big as possible (kind of hard when you are 4 foot 10 inches tall) and fight back....and never, ever run.
So back to this evening's hike in the pouring rain. We were trail running up hill. The Mountain Lion was trail running down hill....yes directly on that same cliff side trail heading toward us and probably the river we had crossed recently. As we both came around the same corner toward each other, we nearly had a head on collision. We all skidded to a stop mere feet from one another. Now in a matter of just a few seconds I had a rush of thoughts come into my brain. First, because the beast was literally running on the trail, my first thought was that it was a huge off leash dog running ahead of an owner. But he had no collar or harness and I knew no one was hiking at 7pm at night in the pouring rain but us. My next thought was that if it was a big dog, he had really small ears for such a huge head and I almost laughed at him. He was easily half again larger than my Wolf.....and she is a big girl. He was pure muscle and super long in body. Because he had skidded to a stop coming down hill, his huge feet were closest to us and his shoulders pulled up with his head down. I could tell that we had surprised him as much as he surprised us. "Great" I thought, "surprising a Mountain Lion is probably not the best idea."
I was still clutching my heart shaped stone to my chest so my hands were not free to unzip my camera bag or open my holster. I stood frozen. Josie the Wolf was frozen and since she was in front of me, her face was truly only a few feet from the frozen Cougar. We were all completely stunned. I don't think any of us breathed or blinked for several seconds which truly felt more like a lifetime I can tell you that!
Now I know, I should have dropped the rock and waved my hands in the air to look big. I should have pulled out my 38 Revolver with the hollow tipped bullets to be ready. But I did neither of those things. I held my rock and stared. Just as the cat's body language made me think he was going to pounce on Josie and all I could think about were his four giant paws full of retractable claws tearing my girl up while they went into some sort of death match on this cliff side trail in the rain, my body did something I did not know it was capable of.
I have told you before that when rattlesnakes and bull snakes strike at me I scream a high pitch shriek like a small child on fire. That is not what my body did. My mouth opened as wide as it ever has and the most chilling, deepest, guttural sound I have ever heard roared out of me and went on forever. It was like a league of demons emptied out of my body through my mouth. If you had told me that a Grizzly bear was standing on his hind legs behind me slashing his front paws in the air while roaring, I would have completely believed you. Even Josie turned her eyes off the Cougar and looked at me completely stunned and impressed. As the roar emanated from my body, my eyes were locked into the soul of that cat through his pupils and I saw his own eyes widen and his ears flattened to his head. He instantly shifted his jump and as if springs were in his legs he flew up the ridge above us and disappeared into the ferns and underbrush in an instant. As he turned to make that jump upwards, his incredibly long tail whipped toward us and I had a moment in my mind where I feared Josie would grab it and we would really be in a world of hurt. But luckily my roar was still coming out of me and she was too distracted to grab that long tail. We moved forward to where the cat had been standing (I was still somehow roaring) and tried to see him. But he was gone...just like that. When the roaring finally ceased, I must say it felt amazing (except my throat hurt). But then, still clutching my rock, I bent over and screamed a loud word for a very long time. Okay, yes, it rhymed with truck. By the time that word had ended, I am quite sure every single wild animal in a 2 mile radius had stopped what they were doing to stare at the sky surely thinking the world was ending. For the record, I am normally a very quiet person both on and off the trail. Clearly I was on total adrenaline overload. Josie was too, because now she wanted to trail run as fast as she could to keep smelling the Cougar up the trail that he had clearly been on for some time. As we ran, I kept looking back over my shoulder and tried to remind Josie we aren't suppose to run around big cats. But she reminded me with her smirk that I was in the back. "Thanks Josie." I said breathlessly.
We made it to the truck barely feeling how wet, cold and tired we were. As I stripped down to change into dry clothes, I realized that God had given me one of my bucket list experiences today....an up close and personal interaction with a Mountain Lion....truly face to face, eye to eye, beast to beast. I don't think He could have given me a bigger cat or closer one that is for sure. I absolutely stopped thinking about anything stressful in life and was living on the high from that for the rest of the night. Nothing could take this high away from me! The thing I was most pleased about, other than God taking such great care of me of course, was that I realized I have apparently fully transitioned from human to beast. I could not be happier about that. The only thing that would have made the day better is if I had gotten a selfie with the Mountain Lion, or been able to pet and squish his huge head with my bare hands. Alas. Maybe next time. In the mean time, my new heart shaped rock looks real nice in my flower garden.
コメント