A Cold Night in a Dead Tree
as promised:
xposted to swinney and myspace
Lao Tzu, the mythic first Taoist master supposedly said, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I’ve been told that it’s a mistranslation; in reality, the proper meaning is more akin to “a journey of a thousand miles begins with the ground beneath you.” If that’s the case - and I believe it is, considering the right-now immediacy of Taoism - then it’s hard to say exactly when our trip up Hanson Ridge really began. There are a few events that could easily be considered our zero mile marker. It might have began at the trailhead, as soon as I stepped out of our borrowed, high-mileage, freakishly reliable Escort onto the rust colored duff. It could be when Gabe and I spotted a juvenile bald eagle floating in lazy circles above our heads - a sight we interpreted as an auspicious beginning to our trip up the ridge. Both of these would make obvious starting points, but, in truth, the beginning was months before, in a scrubby dune forest on the Pacific coast of Humboldt County, California.
Adventures often begin in liminal spaces, and we had a triple dose - it was twilight in late October, and we were picking our way through stumpy trees and scraggly dune brush after a failed fishing expedition at the mouth of the Mad River. Our party - Gabe, his wife Maya, and I - had made an impromptu trip to the river to catch a fish for dinner. We had a late start, the wrong bait, and the fish weren’t striking anyway. Gabe, a reedy six-foot-four Sonoma transplant, was ducking under low hanging branches - scanning the hills for coyotes and other twilight-loving creatures. He was talking about tracking, and, caught up in his own primitive living conversation spiral, shifted gears to natural shelter building. “You know,” he said, “we could spend the night out here. Look at all this grass - all these branches - we could totally build a debris hut. We’d be warm and everything, man. It’d be sweet.” I’d been listening halfheartedly up to this point -not from lack of interest, but from necessity. I’m not by nature much of a multi-tasker, and I was focused on avoiding holes in the trail and stray branches. Gabe’s idea snapped me out of the task at hand. “What, like a tipi or a wickiup?” “No, man, nothing that complicated,” he said. “More like a pile of leaves and grass over a simple frame. It’s small, uncomfortable, dry, and way warmer than a tent.” This idea totally fascinated me. I’ve worked off and on in high tech for years, and I’m an admitted gadget whore, but the ideas of minimalism and efficiency are equally appealing to me.
Normally, I’d dismiss talk of debris shelters out-of-hand; most of my friends are not exactly in touch with the natural world - mistaking repeated viewings of “Man versus Wild” for real survival training. Gabe, however, is a different sort. Gabe grew up in western Sonoma County, the product of a back-to-the-land ethic and the small intentional community where he grew up. He was running around the neighboring forest from the time he was little, and knew more than most about how to live close to the land. I knew that he was getting to be quite adept at making his own bows and arrows, flint knapping, and foraging. Maya, his wife, is also a Sonoma native, and knows her fair share about plants and herbs. My partner Jenn and I have joked that when the zombie apocalypse comes, we’re packing up the cats and heading for Gabe and Maya’s place.
So, after considering the source, I opened my mouth: “yeah, we should totally do it. I need to learn how to do that stuff. You never know when you might need it. Besides, self-reliance is a good thing.” After that point, I’m fairly sure Gabe and I were rabbiting on about different essential woodsy skills, the appropriateness of different sorts of shelters, and related chest thumping, when Maya interrupted. “You guys should do it.” Suddenly, we were through the pale: we’d been called out, and we’d have to back up our talk with action. In my mind, our trip up the ridge started with Maya’s comment.
There are more than a few weekends between October and December, but between school and work neither Gabe nor I could seem to sync our schedules up for an overnighter. Soon, Thanksgiving was looming. It would’ve been easy at that point to dismiss the trip until spring, but there was a question of commitment. If 2007 passed without our shelter camping trip, our ability to follow through would’ve been in serious doubt. To further complicate matters, we’d decided that the trip would make the perfect project for our nature writing class. We’d nervously joked about the silver lining: the more complications, the better the story. The week before Thanksgiving, we sat down and got serious. The only weekend that would work for both of us was the narrow sliver between the end of regular instruction and finals week. That would give us two days and one night in the outdoors, and two days to hammer out a paper for class. It was close, but it was doable - barring any major catastrophe.
Thanksgiving came and went, and the North Coast temperatures began to drop as we neared the winter solstice. Short days at high latitude make for cold, even on the coast. The high humidity of the temperate rainforests turns the dial from cold to aching bones cold. With that in mind, I was beginning to feel some real trepidation about our adventure. After kicking around a few possibilities, we’d settled on a six-and-a-half mile ridge climb in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. The campsite was on an edge forest along Hanson Ridge Multi-Use Trail, and it was up at about 2200 feet. We’d be above the cold fog, but we’d have to contend with a bit more elevation and the possibility of rain followed by clear skies and freezing temperatures - a perfect recipe for hypothermia. Health issues complicated the situation: Gabe had been battling with Lyme disease for several months, which often left him physically and mentally exhausted. I’d injured my right heel while running earlier in the fall, and I’d yet to really push it again. I was somewhat concerned about how well I’d be able to climb a ridge with a pack - short hike or not. Ultimately, my concerns didn’t matter. We’d prepare as best we could, and leave a note on the car and our destination with a work buddy. We were committed, come rain, shine, or Amanita-crazed black bears.