The afternoon is cold and damp as I guide my worn boots up a narrow and slippery mountain bike trail that’s covered in colorful wet leaves. I’m familiar with many of the trails in this forest, though haven’t hiked this one in a few years. It’s obviously still in use by the bikers, evidenced by the fresh tracks in the slick clay. If it weren’t, it would be impassable by now, blocked by fast-growing blackberry vine tendrils that have marred more than one article of my hiking gear. The air that fills my lungs is typical late-fall Oregon. It’s musty but fresh, blown in from the Pacific and filtered clean by 50 miles of lichen- and moss-covered evergreens. I’ve seen no one for miles, typical of these mountains. Even when the trailhead lot is more than half-full, the miles of trails almost magically absorb all the nature-seeking souls that enter.
But I know I’m not alone. As the semi-arid summer becomes the rainforest of winter, the tracks reappear. Tracks that remind all visitors – if they choose to look – of the permanent residents that live here. Though everyone talks mostly of our healthy cougar population, tracks in the mud and occasional snow also reveal the presence of others. Elk, raccoons, rough-skinned newts, squirrels, bobcats, deer, bear, and a myriad of other animals call our forest home. And there are the birds. Many times I feel I’m being watched from the underbrush, and other times – when I’ve wandered too close – a critter will bolt from where they hide and flee. This almost always scares the heck out of me as the peace of my walk is temporarily shattered.
The more inclement the weather is when I’m hiking, the more likely my thoughts consider how all these creatures reside there day and night, regardless of how bad it gets. It is not a pleasant thought to me, being hunkered down in a thicket during a driving rain with temperatures near freezing, and I wonder if I’d even survive. And yet the animals do it every day. My thoughts then might turn to how weak we humans have become, physically. While our brains have grown larger over the millennia and allowed us build shelter and produce an abundance of food, our physical ability to survive in nature – our original home – has almost completely withered away. Without the fridge and the thermostat we’d be goners. Thus, I’m frequently in a state of awe regarding nature – not just for its beauty, but also for its robustness. Especially those incredible animals. Our planet’s true survivalists.
-Russ
Random Thoughts 