New First Expedition

[catsittingstill]

It's a rough trail, studded with limestone cobbles. A mile farther along, thousands of passing soles have polished away the the dirt to leave crazysnake tangles of roots worn smooth on the top like a jumble of bones. In some places the forest is open and airy, roofed with changing leaves lit from above like stained glass. Patches of shorter conifers wait below the canopy, seeded late in the dappled shade, heirs apparent to the forest's pride.

Sometimes the conifers crowd thick around the trail, shadowing it like a forest secret. Somehow even here scarlet and yellow maple leaves dot the ground, blown in, perhaps.

And here--through a tear in the leaf canopy a scrap, a patchwork's single swatch of a larger view; the far hills fluffy with bunched balls--trees turning their separate considered shades, like women trying on dresses before a mirror; shall I wear the orange yet, or the green a week longer? What do you think of this nice red with the gold blushing through near the bottom? Some try on color a little at a time, like a reluctant swimmer; from windward to leeward, perhaps, or from branch tip gradually to trunk.

We cross a stream on a tree trunk split lengthwise and--strangely enough--paved, the only paved portion of the trail. The trunk bounces under our weight, adding a little pre-dance spring to our step. I find myself grinning. Upstream, rounded stones, soft with moss at the water's edge, a pool of clear water running shallow over gravel. Downstream more stones, hiding the water, but casting its voice back to me, ever peaceful, never still.

The forest service miles pass slowly--when I think we are a bit over half a mile along the splotched and faded sign says we've come three tenths of a mile. When I think we must surely be nearly there the next sign says we've come about halfway. The signs are wood, the letters and numbers carved in deep as the width of my thumb; someone meant them to last a long time. They are so faded, the grain so worn in, that I have to stand within arm's reach to read them, however.

There are plants I thought I'd left behind in the west coast rainforests--rhododendrons and madrones, ferns, bracken, like the faces of old friends--not the same as I remembered, as if changed by time and experience--but recognizable.

We turn off the main trail at the last little sign for Hen Wallow Falls, two miles from the trailhead, carefully small-stepping down the steep path that clings to the side of an even steeper hill. Above us rise great boulders, big as elephants, big as houses, but eerily rounded to eyes used to the younger volcanic rocks of the west. Mosses and brush and even trees perch atop them; green toupees and hats over blank stone faces.

At the bottom of the trail we find ourselves at the base of the falls, and take a seat on the cold stone of the jumbled boulders, watching the endless dance of the water down the undulating rock face. It's a small cascade, under tall trees dropping yellow leaves, sometimes by ones and twos, fluttering or spiraling down, sometimes in flocks. Some of them land on the wet rock, sticking or sliding down as the water took them.

We are lucky; we've passed a half dozen groups on the way in, but we have our twenty minutes alone with the falls; no sounds but wind and water, birds, and the two of us munching Balance Bars and dried apples and passing the water bottle back and forth. What was meant to be a substantial snack, instead made rather a spartan lunch.

It is only a four or four-and-a-half mile hike round trip, but it takes us two hours. Perhaps partly because we have to watch our feet, which find little surprises when we spend too much time looking before, and behind and around and up.

A very nice hike. I can see why the park is so popular.