I Am the Fruit of the Applegate Trail

Another entry from the occasional blog I keep called LET'S GO: PEAK OIL! I add to it as I travel the country, on vacation or otherwise, in this the era of Peak Oil. Peak Oil is a concept developed by Shell Oil engineer M. King Hubbert to describe the likelihood that the infinite abundance of petroleum could turn out to be relative. It's just a travel blog, not a diatribe.

  ◊      ◊     ◊

DAY TWO: I Am the Fruit of the Applegate Trail

The Rogue River

Southern Oregon has the Klamath River, the Rogue River, the Illinois, the Chetco, Coquille and the Umpqua which mainly travels through the center of the state, but breaks itself well into the south with hundreds of streams and capillaries which run like water off the back of your hand. There are other rivers too or they may just be forks of the same, but they all burst out of the Cascades to the east and rush to the Pacific in the west. Remote as the Oregon coast can be, towns settled long ago at the mouths of these rivers.

Recently I found a campsite on the Rogue, near Grant's Pass, and spent a cloudless night there under warm late summer air. Southern Oregon is September country, gold, green and dusty. The sun is still lively and bright at this time of the year but pitched at an angle that favors the rocky little valleys and waterways. It encourages the yellowness of the earth, without blinding you to it like in July. Meadows don’t have much of a chance here, with the crowding of mountain ranges pushing up from California - the Siskiyou - and east from the Cascades - the Klamath. Instead, cedar and fir shoot up on every slope and cool the corners and bends of the rivers. Despite the state border, Northern California-Southern Oregon is one unified ecosystem. If geography were allowed to settle borders, that alone would qualify this as the State of Jefferson.

The campsite I chose, about ten miles west of the freeway, is the unfortunately named Indian Mary Campground. For a county park, it’s pretty deluxe, with flat grassy yards, showers, and river launch - not for nothing the “crown jewel of the Josephine County Parks system.” I made it in before nightfall and cooled off in the Rogue, just below my site. It was still brisk at this time of the year, moving with purpose. Not the kind to wade into, but the kind to stand in ankle deep on slippery shale and scoop water onto my chest and over my head and under my arms before warming up again, dripped dry under the sun.

But is it the truth?

But Indian Mary Park. It is proud to have been the site of the smallest Indian reservation. I thought I just chose a crown jewel, but here, on the banks of the Rogue, land was given to the daughter of a local native - also unattractively Christainized to Umpqua Joe - who apparently warned white settlers in the 1850s of an impending, perhaps retributional, attack by natives. The settlers survived and in thanks gave him, or probably just put him in charge of, a ferry near here to carry other whites across the busy Rogue. Upon his death, having been shot by his Mary’s husband, Mary was put in charge of the ferry and the flat little area of riverbed around it. This, thanks to the Dawes Act, became her own reservation, which she turned around and leased to the stage line she’d been ferrying for and moved into town, Grant’s Pass. I don’t know what happened to her there. But a local historian, Percy T. Booth has told their story which, hopefully, one day, will be made into an opera of love and regret.

I woke up late in the morning, around 8:30. I headed back down to the river to sit and meditate. I found a small, flat sandy area, shaded by trees above the river and sat happily and quietly. When I looked at the space with fresh eyes, I could see that the sand ended at a little bank where the true forest stopped and though I was about 15 feet away from and a few feet above the river, this was unmistakably once part of the river, the sandy bottom of a pool with eddies curving against the bank with thick roots of overhanging trees and stones caught among them. However many hundreds of years ago, I was sitting on a spot for salmon to be born and die and regenerate.

I headed west and north, mainly following this part of the Rogue, with a quick stop at a river landing with restaurant and patio bar for ice and to spruce up the coolers. I passed through a few intersections which could have taken me the sixty or seventy miles to the coast, which can only be an awesomely lonely drive. At one point, my road gave up running two lanes, getting crammed between the river and mountainside, and I had no idea where I would bail if another car came at me.

The network of Oregon trails

After awhile I blundered into Wolf Creek where I hoped to catch up again with the 5, and it’s here the supposed usefulness of Joe and Mary’s ferry came to mind. There’s not much that I could see that made up Wolf Creek, but there was the Wolf Creek Inn, very proud of and happily sporting its National Landmark status not only with a plaque near the door, but an entire nature and history trail packed into its tiny front yard. It was already hot out, but I followed it from one sun weathered panel to another guiding me to the habitats of local flora and fauna (hemlock, spruce, tanoak; bears, hawks, otters) to the hardships of the Applegate Trail. I’d never heard of it, but here I was standing on it, outside of the inn which at one time was the haven of mule trains and settlers headed to the calmer, friendlier Willamette Valley.

Like the rivers out here, the Applegate Trail was one of the off shoots of the Oregon Trail. In order to avoid crossing the Cascades and/or the Columbia at any point on the way to settling in the Willamette Valley, the Applegate brothers had the idea to outflank the Cascades by coming in from the south. Meek's Cutoff inspired a movie with its deadly, questionable try at hitting the Cascades head on. Applegate's idea was thought preferable even though they first had to cross the Black Rock Desert of Nevada (which today is still only habitable by nomadic ravers and artists clever enough to cart in bicycle powered refrigerators, ice castles, yurts and temperate Bucky Ball domes one week out of the year) before jackknifing north. There it heads across the Southern Cascades, Klamaths and hits the Siskiyou Pass at the California and Oregon border, a mere 4500 feet.

But even here the traveling must have been dogged, with the countless hills and crags and descents and fordings, thank you Indian Mary. The trail succeeded, ultimately, after settlers killed and relocated the natives and discovered gold for a short while. It succeeded enough for someone to start the Inn and bring in paved roads and gas stations and to be used in parts as a starter road for Interstate 5.

###

I Try to Leave Town

This is a recent entry from an occasional blog I keep called LET'S GO: PEAK OIL! I add to it as I travel the country, on vacation or otherwise, in this the era of Peak Oil. It's just a travel blog, not a diatribe.

M. King Hubbert

For those who want to be educated, Peak Oil is a concept developed by M. King Hubbert, a geologist for Shell Oil in the mid-1950s. He drew a bell curve to describe the ramp up and then down of each oil field exploited. But he then extrapolated that the same simple bell curve could predict America's oil production overall. The tail of this bell curve touched down somewhere between 1965 and 1970. And at some point in 1970 or '71, American oil production hit its peak.

Under a rubric like this, car travel is a special challenge to those who like to see their life as a pinnacle expression of the times they live in, like me. It encourages you either to embrace the concept of a diminishing economic structure with nihilistic abandon, ostentatiously exult in the freedom you think only God can grant this country, or ignore it altogether and hope for the best vacation ever.

 ◊      ◊     ◊

In September 2012, after what felt like a year of working one stressful project after another, all I wanted to do was leave town and see something different. I'm not entirely certain why I chose the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, but I don't think that really matters, the why. It's the journey, right?



DAY ONE: I Try to Leave


Is it assumed that when traveling the first steps out the door are the hardest? Maybe not for business travel - there’s something at stake. And we have systems in place for business travel. Carry-on luggage, personal hygiene containers that fit just so inside the carry-on luggage, shirts that won’t wrinkle, and securing the right amount of Ambien.

But if the point of vacation is encouraging the nothingness and the stakeless, dawdling in the first hours is really just practice for letting go. It’s all in handling the dawdling and the dukha you create by dawdling.

This is the first camping trip of the year, even though it's coming late, in September. But the crowds should be thin. I know enough about myself that, even though I dream, dream wistfully with hand under chin and staring off to the right, that I will be on the road before 9am, I know such a dream is impossible without packing first. The night before.

I was already half-packed in the morning, some camping gear, some clothing, a small of box of utensils. A better start than usual. I was riding a little preparatory high bringing the last bag of clothes (of only two bags; this one was mainly hiking shoes and emergency wear like anoraks and sweaters) when the suspicion that I was leaving something behind crept up. And I was: there was no sleeping bag. I went back into my apartment and pulled out the sleeping bag, which I keep next to the tent. Right. Got the tent. I pulled both out and found the self inflating bed roll. Oh that’s right, I pitch the tent and put down blankets and unfurl the bed roll and lay the sleeping bag on top. That’s my process.  All but forgotten, but into the car they went. Such a roomy little rental hatch back, too, I decided. There’s plenty of room left.

But why?

Damn. No coolers. I usually bring two of them, with food.

I need food. I need to stock the coolers with food.

I remember there’s a system for that too, the sub-routine of any camping trip: sustaining food in the coolers with bags of ice. While hiking that trail, immersed in the illusion of living closer to the level of nature, the bags of ice in the coolers are always thawing. It’s an on going maintenance program, part science (how close can I keep food before it warms past the line toward botulism) and part creative engineering involving proper drainage of ice melt and keeping food from greasy submersion. To reach that problem, which I know will be the only problem to solve while camping, I have to buy food first.

Actually, to do that, I need to go to the bank first. I have this check that needs depositing, the check that will pay for my vacation.

Actually, to do that, I need to go to the laundry mat to get change to put in the parking meters outside the bank because the bank’s parking lot is being repaved. I remember how, three days ago, I was stopped from pulling in by yellow caution tape dangling across both entrances and then couldn't back out. Someone making the same mistake was behind me and neither of us could move because a stack of cars was lined up at the intersection waiting for the traffic light, pinning us both to our mistaken expectation that our bank would have a parking lot waiting for us. We were stuck for several minutes, waiting and shrugging in different, frustrated ways. A third person ultimately had to let both of us back out in front of them so we could unravel ourselves.

I had to look for parking then and need a space to be available, metered or otherwise, now. But to park, I need to break this twenty.

I know, I’ll buy some gum from the gas station. My rental doesn't need gas, but I'll go to a gas station which is built for easy coming and going, to buy gum and receive change. The gas station looks full. Several people stand holding hoses to their cars in a space that is neither easy nor going. There’s a panhandler who waves me towards an empty spot on one of the pumping islands, but I decline. I just want change, I say a bit out loud, not that he can hear me, though I smile making my way slowly to the curb outside the food mart where someone else is parked. I defy the law and leave my car behind theirs, barely leaving room for people to exit the gas station.

Inside the food mart there are aisles of packaged food I’d never eat unless I needed change or instant calories while on a long drive. They don’t have the flavor of gum I like, but that’s ok. So is the small line of people asking for a gas receipt or directions to the highway or if the guy behind the counter has a colder can of soda than the one just grabbed from the refrigerated section. I feel empty handed approaching the counter with just gum and no gas purchased outside. The guy at the counter handles us all swiftly. But he can’t break my twenty.

“Hhmpt,” he says. “I don’t have enough ones.”

We both consider the tall stack of twenties pinned under the bill catch on one end of the register tray and the one or two worn dollar bills pinned in their slot. The tens are not so full, the fives are crowded and plentiful. Two quarters rest in their curved slot, compared to a heap of nickels. “I’m supposed to have a delivery come soon.”

I guess he means a money delivery. Like from Brinks.

“Just take the gum,” he says. He pushes his lower lip up into the top, almost like a frown, and adds a quick brush with his head, an easily understood international gesture of concession, friendship and conspiracy. You got the best of this deal, it says, now go. He throws in a wink for good measure when I don't heed it right away.

“I can’t. I need the change.”

This is more banality for him. Our conspiracy is gone. “I don’t know what to tell you. Go to a store. Next.”

I don’t get change, but I still want the gum for some reason, so I give him my debit card. He asks if I want money back. No, I don't. I have a check that needs depositing which will now mean double parking outside the bank and hoping I don't get a ticket. I still have to go food shopping and while doing so debate with myself on whether getting a container of humus will only add to the yuck of melted ice water in the cooler. Oh, I haven’t bought ice. I haven't left town. I have to drive almost seven hours to reach a campsite in Southern Oregon before the sun goes down. I have to get to a camp site that still has spaces, and set up a tent when it’s dark. And I’ll still have to eat. Which means cooking in the dark. Which means I’ll have to build a fire either right away when I get a campsite or make my way around with my propane lamp and try gamely to set up my propane stove.

Which, I remember while walking to my car unwrapping my new pack of gum, is sitting on top of a shelf at home, placed at eye level so I wouldn’t forget it.

###