fire on the mountain run boys run
I am here, in Seiad Valley, sitting in my tent, in the pouring rain, at dusk, typing this on my laptop.
Seiad Valley is one of the creepiest places I’ve ever been. We are here for three days to survey some upriver sites which are too far away to drive to from Somes. Aaron and I are camped at Fort Goff, a small, forsaken National Forest campground next to the river. About one car goes by every hour or two. Across the highway, there is an old cemetery. Houses are small and decrepit and there are few of them. People are poor. It is awfully desolate up here. There have been some monstrous wildfires up in this area in the last week, and the valley is unbelievably smoky-if you looked at a picture, you’d think it was all fog or mist or clouds, but in fact that white haze obscuring anything more than 500 feet away is smoke! Little pieces of ash fall from the sky constantly as a reminder that it is, indeed, a wildfire, and after a while your lungs start to burn. Today after surveying, we wanted to try to go somewhere to get out of the smoke, so we thought if we went up in elevation we might rise above it. Try as we might, on several Forest Service roads, it soon became apparent that to get out of the smoke layer, we’d have to go up to at least 6000 feet, which wasn’t possible because of the bad roads. I feel as though I may as well have smoked several packs of cigarettes today. There was a cloud layer over the smoke layer today, which meant that there was no wind in the afternoon as there usually is, which meant that the smoke just sat in the valley, muffling everything, including our hopes that it would go away. When the sun occasionally shone through the haze, it was a strange yellow-red sphere with a corona, casting a red shadow. I feel as though I am in an alternate, perhaps post-apocalyptic, world. Other lovely aspects of our delightful camping trip, besides unbreathe-able air, have included mosquitoes, rain, and some of the most disgusting water we’ve yet snorkeled in. Despite this, I am actually having a bemused and awestruck and resigned sort of good time.
The project is going well. Amazingly, we only have three days of surveying left to do on the Klamath, and then we’ll move on to the Salmon-something we’re both looking forward to, for the Salmon is a crystal-clear, pure river that isn’t possessed of a mean current and is conveniently located right across the street. We’re past the days of stress and frustration, and past the majority of the really hard work. We’ve been putting in some eleven-hour days on the river lately, or working in the evenings to catch up on data entry and such. But we’re all done with having to kayak to our sites now, or drive far upriver, and we’re getting really efficient. I’m certainly glad I ended up with Aaron as a research partner. I honestly don’t think I could have asked for anyone better. Aaron is the sort of boy who flosses daily, always does his dishes (and sometimes mine) promptly, balances his checkbook regularly, and keeps me from being slipshod and cutting corners where thoroughness in data collection is concerned. (In contrast: I am the sort of girl who never flosses or balances her checkbook and tends to leave dishes in the sink.) He is also the sort of boy who enjoys quality rock and roll, knows how to make tabbouleh, picks up interesting river rocks, points out mink tracks, drinks beer with gusto, hikes on his days off, and says endearing things like “Bother” or “Oh, balls” when something goes wrong. If you add all these aspects (and more) together, what you get is The Perfect Research Buddy. In general, Aaron is a magnificent human being, and I probably should not poke fun at him as much as I am prone to do.
There’ve been some marvelous moments in the past week or so of our project. Flossing the Dragon’s Tooth rapid, and not flipping!!! was one. Attending a traditional Karuk salmon bake, with National Geographic writer & photographer in attendance, was another. I was so intimidated by the National Geographic folk, who walked and talked and ate just like normal people, not the gods they are, that I completely forgot to ask them exactly how I could get their jobs. Rarely have I felt so honored and so priveliged as that evening, for a variety of reasons. And rarely have I eaten salmon and venison so delicious, smoked over a madrone fire on redwood sticks, filleted by J.J., a 22-year-old Hoopa Tribal Member who's been learning the tricks of the trade since he was 14. Seeing Irongate and Copco dams, and the ugliness and foulness of their toxic algae-filled reservoirs, was a landmark moment if not a marvelous one. Again, I had the rewarding and slightly unsettling feeling that I am living my EnvS-Bio major in the best of ways--out of the classroom, hands-on, with no strings (like grades) attached.
I went to the Redwoods last weekend, camped by myself. Mist, ferns, huge bull elk treeing me for 45 minutes, chilling on the beach watching the sun go down, and ancient, ancient fire-scarred trees, running along the coast through meadows and groves of alder and spruce.
One phone call.
And I'm suffused with it, rosy, filling up the interstitial spaces, slowly bubbling up through the hollows in my marrow. And I want more.
Seiad Valley is one of the creepiest places I’ve ever been. We are here for three days to survey some upriver sites which are too far away to drive to from Somes. Aaron and I are camped at Fort Goff, a small, forsaken National Forest campground next to the river. About one car goes by every hour or two. Across the highway, there is an old cemetery. Houses are small and decrepit and there are few of them. People are poor. It is awfully desolate up here. There have been some monstrous wildfires up in this area in the last week, and the valley is unbelievably smoky-if you looked at a picture, you’d think it was all fog or mist or clouds, but in fact that white haze obscuring anything more than 500 feet away is smoke! Little pieces of ash fall from the sky constantly as a reminder that it is, indeed, a wildfire, and after a while your lungs start to burn. Today after surveying, we wanted to try to go somewhere to get out of the smoke, so we thought if we went up in elevation we might rise above it. Try as we might, on several Forest Service roads, it soon became apparent that to get out of the smoke layer, we’d have to go up to at least 6000 feet, which wasn’t possible because of the bad roads. I feel as though I may as well have smoked several packs of cigarettes today. There was a cloud layer over the smoke layer today, which meant that there was no wind in the afternoon as there usually is, which meant that the smoke just sat in the valley, muffling everything, including our hopes that it would go away. When the sun occasionally shone through the haze, it was a strange yellow-red sphere with a corona, casting a red shadow. I feel as though I am in an alternate, perhaps post-apocalyptic, world. Other lovely aspects of our delightful camping trip, besides unbreathe-able air, have included mosquitoes, rain, and some of the most disgusting water we’ve yet snorkeled in. Despite this, I am actually having a bemused and awestruck and resigned sort of good time.
The project is going well. Amazingly, we only have three days of surveying left to do on the Klamath, and then we’ll move on to the Salmon-something we’re both looking forward to, for the Salmon is a crystal-clear, pure river that isn’t possessed of a mean current and is conveniently located right across the street. We’re past the days of stress and frustration, and past the majority of the really hard work. We’ve been putting in some eleven-hour days on the river lately, or working in the evenings to catch up on data entry and such. But we’re all done with having to kayak to our sites now, or drive far upriver, and we’re getting really efficient. I’m certainly glad I ended up with Aaron as a research partner. I honestly don’t think I could have asked for anyone better. Aaron is the sort of boy who flosses daily, always does his dishes (and sometimes mine) promptly, balances his checkbook regularly, and keeps me from being slipshod and cutting corners where thoroughness in data collection is concerned. (In contrast: I am the sort of girl who never flosses or balances her checkbook and tends to leave dishes in the sink.) He is also the sort of boy who enjoys quality rock and roll, knows how to make tabbouleh, picks up interesting river rocks, points out mink tracks, drinks beer with gusto, hikes on his days off, and says endearing things like “Bother” or “Oh, balls” when something goes wrong. If you add all these aspects (and more) together, what you get is The Perfect Research Buddy. In general, Aaron is a magnificent human being, and I probably should not poke fun at him as much as I am prone to do.
There’ve been some marvelous moments in the past week or so of our project. Flossing the Dragon’s Tooth rapid, and not flipping!!! was one. Attending a traditional Karuk salmon bake, with National Geographic writer & photographer in attendance, was another. I was so intimidated by the National Geographic folk, who walked and talked and ate just like normal people, not the gods they are, that I completely forgot to ask them exactly how I could get their jobs. Rarely have I felt so honored and so priveliged as that evening, for a variety of reasons. And rarely have I eaten salmon and venison so delicious, smoked over a madrone fire on redwood sticks, filleted by J.J., a 22-year-old Hoopa Tribal Member who's been learning the tricks of the trade since he was 14. Seeing Irongate and Copco dams, and the ugliness and foulness of their toxic algae-filled reservoirs, was a landmark moment if not a marvelous one. Again, I had the rewarding and slightly unsettling feeling that I am living my EnvS-Bio major in the best of ways--out of the classroom, hands-on, with no strings (like grades) attached.
I went to the Redwoods last weekend, camped by myself. Mist, ferns, huge bull elk treeing me for 45 minutes, chilling on the beach watching the sun go down, and ancient, ancient fire-scarred trees, running along the coast through meadows and groves of alder and spruce.
One phone call.
And I'm suffused with it, rosy, filling up the interstitial spaces, slowly bubbling up through the hollows in my marrow. And I want more.