I've been backpacking in one form or another many times before, but this was special – just my friend Chandra and me, alone in the woods, without parents or other guides to save us from any mistakes we might make. She's 19 and I'm 17. In another day and age it would've been common for us to be backpacking around Europe for months, instead of a short 4-day backpacking trip only an hour's drive from home. But we've grown up in the era of too much security and not enough responsibility, and it seemed a little bit scary. I am incredibly thankful that we have reasonable parents who've let us grow up, and not in the glass bubbles some of our peers seem to be raised in.
We'd been planning for weeks, and left fairly early that Saturday morning, with all our things packed in the back of Chandra's tiny car, and we drove for what seemed like hours up the winding road to Henry Coe National Park. We came in the middle of a bike race, so driving up the hill was a slow and scary obstacle course. When we finally got to the top and found parking, we got our camping permit from the rather astonished volunteer rangers (at the mileage and length of our trip – I guess they're more used to day hikers) and set off into the wilderness. We ate lunch maybe an hour later, on a green and flowering riverbank, absolutely gorgeous like everything in Henry Coe in April. By afternoon we had already passed our last human beings as we continued down Poverty Flat Road to Arnold's Horse Camp. First day in, and I already messed up with the navigation – we missed the turn-off to Shafer Corral, but we continued down the road another way, and I do not think the distance was significantly different. We were quite pleased with ourselves when we got to our campsite for the night – I think it proved to us that we could do it, we were in shape enough and determined enough to master anything Henry Coe could throw at us. Gleefully, we explored the creepy old house on the hillside, only slightly concerned that the roof would fall in on us as we poked around the wrecked interior. At first I was very unsettled, as the whole house seemed like someone had just up and left. The mattresses were still on the bed frame, though long since eaten and torn apart by countless rodents. A wire chair remained on the porch, looking out at the river. But after we'd explored each room and been satisfied with its vacancy, I was no longer disturbed but charmed by it. We were further charmed by the dilapidated outhouse with a toilet that no longer connected to a tank – we could see daylight through the bottom of the toilet, and decided maybe that wasn't the best place to do our business. We camped down by the river, within sight of the old house but fairly far away from it. I attempted to carve Chandra a spoon, as she had forgotten to bring hers, with limited success. We cooked thai chicken for dinner, admired the stars, read Act I of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aloud together, and slept. I slept like a log in our cozy tent, far warmer than our last year's backpacking trip in February; Chandra was less fortunate in her sleeping ease, but was at least warm enough.
The creepy old house:
Day 2: Arnold's Horse Camp to Mississippi Lake. At first the road and the creek were synonymous, which was lovely. We decided not to change into our watershoes and just get our boots wet in the hopes that they'd keep us cool during the rest of the day. Soon the road turned up sharply away from the creek, and we began the grueling climb up Bear Mountain. Each peak we thought the last – we saw no higher peaks around it and assumed we could go up no further, but there was always yet one more peak beyond the one we had just crested. Water supplies and morale dwindled, directly proportionally. (t = -k(water); water = k(morale)) Our differences in body type began to be apparent, as I could not last forever with a pack on my back, and Chandra could not go uphill as fast as I wanted to. I began to race up to a bit of shade, throw off my pack in relief, and wait for her to join me, at which point the process would repeat. When we finally crested the last peak and could see all the park unfold around us, as if we ruled every last solitary mile of it, we rejoiced – or at least, I did. Chandra wasn't feeling well enough to rejoice at much of anything. We still had a long ways to go before we hit a stream, and I wouldn't let us take a significant break, and certainly not lunch, until we found it. Chandra began to run out of steam. I, oblivious, continued powering through, in that looks-impressive-but-after-the-adrenaline-wears-off-I'm-going-to-fall-over sort of way. I began to ration my water. Fortunately, she kept drinking, aware that dehydration + colostomy = disaster. Unfortunately, it didn't work – some combination of lack of food, rest, and water made her intestines knot up, a very painful malady she had experienced once before in the hospital, shortly after surgery. We finally reached the stream and pulled out lunch. She couldn't eat, and curled up in a ball around her stomach. I began to notice what I'd been too tired to see before, that she was really not okay. Problem. I gave it a good hour, hour and a half, and then insisted that we had to continue, had to reach camp before sundown. Stoically, she agreed, and we continued along the now much more pleasant path to Mississippi Lake. The path and the creek crossed each other many times, and both were lined with pale green grasses and tiny bright yellow flowers. Chandra couldn't enjoy the view, and I too became increasingly aware of her pain as we went on.
Here's the view from the top of Bear Mountain. You can see the trail winding down below on the exposed ridgeline. No shade, no water, no flat trail.
We finally reached the lake. I set up camp and Chandra retreated to the tent, hardly saying a word. She had the sort of look on her face that was painful to even look at, knowing what her insides must be doing to her. She said she wasn't hungry, so I made myself a little bit of bean soup (unappetizing – I could have improved it with jerky and cheese, but wasn't in the mood) and set up my own sleeping bag outside to avoid being thrown up on. Most campsites are only campsites in name, small flat spaces you can imagine pitching a tent on, but Mississippi Lake actually had an outhouse and a picnic table which I slept on to stay out of the morning dew. It wasn't bad – I've always wanted to sleep under the stars, and it was warm enough, but I still stayed awake a long time listening to Chandra vomit and wandering what on earth I was going to do. I wrote in my pocket notebook to sort out my thoughts:
Plan A) Chandra gets better and we continue in the morning as planned
Plan B) Wait another day for it to subside (Chandra's one previous experience with her malady had lasted 15 hours; she expected this one to be comparable) and to rehydrate, then hike out. (Advantage: no splitting up. Disadvantage: Parents would freak, not knowing where we are, I wouldn't leave on time for college touring.)
Plan C: I hike back to HQ tomorrow, leaving Chandra here by Miss. Lake. I then either drive her car as far in along the road as possible, meeting her at... Los Cruzeros? Or I drive until I find cell phone reception and get help. (Advantages: getting Chandra out faster. Disadvantages: splitting up, too many variables (who gets the pump? Etc.), sounds dangerous.)
I tried to think coldly, logically, pushing away my fear for my friend, and, equally, my desire to be heroic, the side of me that wanted to hike the 12 miles out to base camp all in one day to rescue my friend. The conclusion I came to (after talking it over with Chandra, in one of her less vomit-filled moments) was that, out of plans B and C, B was the better one, because of the dangers of splitting up. We go into the woods in partners for precisely situations like these, so I could take care of Chandra when she was sick, and vice versa if that had happened.
Predictably, the night was restless. I woke in the grey predawn light, and tried to care about the next few hours, but was too cold and sleepy. But when I heard Chandra stirring in the tent, I was suddenly wide awake, aware that in the next few minutes, I'd know which plan it would have to be. She unzipped the tent. As soon as I saw her face, I thanked all the gods I've heard of and don't believe in, and several that I've never heard of. Plan A! She felt better!
She later told me she'd woken at 4 or 5 in the morning, her intestines no longer in knots and her colostomy bag starting to fill. She cleaned up her vomit with water, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper, though (impressively, I must say) she'd gotten most of it into the plastic gallon ziplock bags she'd brought for her austomy bags. We had celebratory hot drinks and oatmeal, and started off on Day 3.
Mississippi Lake in the morning:
Day 3: Miss. Lake to Los Cruzeros
Uneventful morning, except for meeting two young backpacker men who, amusingly, hadn't yet learned the backpacker etiquette that says you are ridiculously friendly to everyone. They seemed slightly taken aback with my presumption that we would stop to discuss where we'd been, where we were going, and how beautiful the weather was. We also found a giant metal ball in a field. We still have no idea what it was. (There are more pictures on facebook!)
Lunch at Willow Ridge Spring. A very pleasant afternoon (especially since we had about 1,000 feet of altitude to lose between the spring and Los Cruz) that heated up as we went, until we arrived sweaty and victorious at Loz Cruzeros, our campsite for the night. The afternoon was still quite young, and we spent much of it happily submerged in the icy river, sunburning ourselves. We only put on pants when some mountain bikers showed up unexpectedly, but I don't think they noticed us until we were clothed. Lazy, well-earned afternoons in the sun – I wish my whole life consisted of them. Los Cruz is also my favorite campsite in Henry Coe, even though last year I had a nasty experience with a tick on that same riverbank.
Los Cruz, from high up on the trail:
Day 4: Loz Cruz to HQ
Largely pleasant, uneventful day. Anything seems doable after nearly being defeated by Bear Mountain, I suppose. We didn't make it out by the overly optimistic 1pm I had told my father, and it was about 4pm by the time we were finally home. We were disappointed not to have time for the traditional post-backpacking Subway trip (we can usually eat a footlong apiece, after 4 days of camp food and strenuous exercise), but I wanted to be in Oregon by nightfall. So we got home, I took a 5 minute shower, hopped in the car again, and left with mi padre to go college shopping.
----------------------------------------
College tours and TSA shenanigans:
(Sadly, I forgot the camera and don't have any pictures to break up this second massive wall of text. Use your imaginations.)
We landed at around 8:00 Tuesday night in Eugene with the weather closing in fast – my dad was considering landing on some other dirt strip if he couldn't make it to Eugene. (In case you're new here, my dad is a pilot, and we were flying in his Cessna 185.) It wasn't obvious which way to go once we'd landed and found tie-down spots at the base of the old control tower, so we started walking (in the rain) to the brightest lights, which was the main terminal. As we got closer, we saw the outside of the connecting tubes and things that mean a commercial airport, which I didn't know it was at first. Most airports we end up landing at are little dirt strips, often with not even a control tower. It was cool to see the commercial stuff from the outside. But we couldn't find a way inside the terminal, so we decided to follow the right-hand rule and walk around it. My dad's idea was to walk over to the other airplane parking terminal, where the tower told us we could park for $60, or at the base of the old tower for free. Pshaw. Not a lot of tough decision-making there. But I said no, of course we'll find a taxi where the main terminal is, to take away commercial passengers. So we kept looking for a way in, and ran into someone, a guy named Dan. I even walked toward him, hoping for directions, but he was Not Nice and deemed us a "security breach" as we were inside the "secure area." He asked how we got in, which gates with big red flashing lights and Do Not Enter signs we had gone through -- we'd gone through none, because we'd just walked over the tarmac where the airplanes go. (Dan insisted that that was impossible – we couldn't have walked over the tarmac because that would be dangerous, and surely my father as a pilot would know better. Apparently it didn't occur to him that we have to park on the tarmac, and thus must walk on it unless we spontaneously develop powers of levitation.) Throughout the whole incident as they were investigating us, we kept insisting (the truth) that we'd just walked in a straight line from our airplane looking for a place to go, and there were no gates or signs or nothing. They didn't believe us. It was very frustrating.
So Dan took us inside and soon he had a little clan gathering of TSA officers mumbling to each other in a confused little circle about what to do with us, as we sat on some gate waiting chairs and looked cold and innocent. Dad said "Well that's one way to get inside." I laughed, but they kept us there for about 2 hours, so it wasn't really worth it. I think there were about 8 TSA guys just standing around trying to figure out what to do with us, which led me to remark quietly to Dad, "You know the WPA and PWA of the New Deal, how FDR kept creating jobs for the sole purpose of employing people? Ahem. TSA." Only the WPA and PWA were actually more useful than TSA. Anyway, they took our bags and jackets and shoes, scanned them and us, scanned them again, took out all the fishy things my dad has in his toilet kit (pocketknife, credit card knife, leatherman, but strangely enough not his cutlery knife (could do more damage than credit card knife) or can opener or anything), and swabbed all of them for drugs/nuclear radiation remnants or something as well. Everyone was pretty civil to us (the police officer was actually really nice, asked me about my college visits, and just seemed to realize it was a random unfortunate situation) except Dan, who clearly thought we were idiots and seemed to have a little testosterone problem going where he needed to be so important as to make us a really big deal. We overheard him on the phone with lots of people: "...check and make sure they did not place any suspicious packages..." "did not ask directions from tower..." Yeesh. I think if the first person to have seen us had been anyone but Dan, they would've just pointed us the way out and not made such a big fuss over it. So we just chilled (literally, as they took our jackets) and made small talk for 2 hours while Dan called the head TSA person of the whole NorthWest region of the US and she called her superior and he probably called his superior. (Too much bureaucracy, anyone?)
Eventually they let us go, and that was that, with vague threats of an "investigation to follow." We got into our hotel at around 10pm, and had burritos from a fairly delicious 24hour Mexican fast food place next door. I would say these shenanigans make for an interesting story, but it was just frustrating and not particularly eventful. Now, if Dan had tackled us to the ground and we'd been hauled away in chains, that'd be another matter entirely...
I tried to keep the incident from affecting my opinion of Eugene, and I'm unsure how successful it was. I pretty much liked it, the university far more than the town. The town was very football-crazy and sort of... full of hillbillies, since I can't think of a more polite way to say it. That might just have been the TSA folks and the cab drivers, though.
I do love the weather, undeniably. I love the proximity to great outdoors experiences and the lovely campus covered in big old mossy trees, ready for climbing. The academics were fairly unremarkable, as fairly well-qualified big colleges go. In general it merited a spot on my list, but not particularly high.
We decided to leave after my tour, as the tour was very long and there was nothing more I particularly wanted to investigate. We landed in Seattle in the afternoon, and had a few hours to kill before dinner – naturally, we went and watched the Hunger Games, since there was a movie theatre right down the street from our hotel. I loved the books. The movie was okay, but didn't do the book justice.
Then we went and found some delicious Indian food. We ordered 2 entrees and a naan and got enough food for dinner then, lunch the next day, and a little left over. Yum.
Thursday was our extra day, since my tour was on Friday. We were initially going to try to move everything earlier, but the weather forecast didn't look good until Saturday, so we just booked an extra night at a hotel (a different one, actually, since the first one was full). We spent our morning at the famous underground tour of Seattle, which was quite funny and informative, and then back to the hotel for Indian leftover lunch. I attempted to do homework but fell asleep, and then we spent late afternoon and evening exploring the University district and getting delicious Thai food. (Man, Seattle has some top-notch restaurants!)
The University District is like a little college town inside a nice big city, which is just about perfect. Seattle in general is lovely, enough culture and nightlife for any city girl, but covered in green-- ivy, grass, trees, because of the constant rain (another bonus). It's also a perfect city in location, to feed my hunger for the outdoors: right near the ocean, next to Lake Washington, near mountains for skiing and forests for hiking, generally in the midst of outdoorsy opportunities. My tour of U-W in the morning was equally promising: We had a very engaging and funny tour guide who appeared to love his school, the campus was beautiful, and they have a lot of programs and options, especially study abroad programs, even to strange and fascinating places like Antarctica, Cameroon, Senegal, Madagascar, and all sorts of places most universities don't travel to. Splendid!
I guess there really wasn't that much remarkable, except that it's exactly what I'm looking for (along with Madison and some of the others): a big, good university in a nice location. Doesn't sound remarkable, but most colleges manage to fail at least one of those criteria. After our tour, we briefly explored some stacks (which I try to do in every college tour, though no college has yet managed to beat McGill in terms of impressive libraries), got lunch in a res hall cafeteria (pretty tasty), and wandered through the music building, listening to a pretty darn good jazz band in rehearsal. In the evening we wandered over to the Museum of Flight, but were 40 minutes past closing time. Seattle thoroughly explored, we ate some Thai and Indian leftovers and went to sleep, to fly back home first thing the next morning.
Choices! It's not going to be fun choosing. Can't I just go to ALL the universities?
