www.singingfalls.com/seine

I've spent the last few days going in circles on old back road systems of Umpqua National Forest in the hope of searching out fish barriers on Poole Creek and Coffin Creek of the Jackson Creek "Fifth Field" watershed. Yesterday I went round and round on roads the didn't match the topographical map and forest service map for the region.

To complicate matters a major wind storm last late Autumn has left millions of board feet of old growth, mid growth and early growth trees strewn all over the highway system. Not to mention the veritable miasma of boulders of assorted sizes associated with such disturbances.

Today, day two of the search, led me to a decrepit road I almost dared not traverse. But traverse it I did...and it led to a dead end...and the answer to my dilemma. A very large segment of the particular road I was looking for had been decommissioned some time back. A landslide had occurred some time back and a significant segment of the road ripped and planted with a variety of tree species. All of the signs were wrong and misleading. Fir, Sugar Pine, Ponderosa Pine and Western Incense Cedar were planted in short intervals on the once well established logging road. Many of the young tree tops were eaten by the ungulates. The hike to Poole Creek was not easy going. The gouging of the soil had left an unnatural uneven surface to stumble over.

Alternate stands of formally clear cut sections and old growth majesties of great magnitude graced my arduous path. Having captured the data for the database I wondered where two more days of the remains of my life have gone. The wilds are particularly suitable for the consideration of things holy and other dimensional. Who will give account for all that has been done?

The heat of the day was in the nineties. The hike was long and treacherous on the steep grade. The water waiting at my vehicle when I returned tasted like elixir.

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Tomorrow, at the Annual Watershed Council gala, I am installed as president elect of the watershed council. This is difficult for me having lived so many years as a recluse in the non-populated haunts of the earth. Mashiach gives me strength to go forward. I am much more at home with adversity in the wilds.