There’s nothing particularly special about the woods out back of Zimmerman Butte. It’s all second-and-third-growth ponderosa forest, with a heavy understory of bitterbrush, cross-hatched with logging roads. There are no vistas to speak of, and other than a couple of rock formations, no exceptional terrain features.
I started hiking out there when we first moved to Sisters back in 1993 because it was handy — I could reel off five or six miles and then adjourn to the cinder pit on the butte for a shooting session. Out of that habit, I’ve spent hundreds of hours in that stretch of forest and have come to know it well. The spirits of two of my dogs, Cody and Cheyenne, still run and play out there, chasing rabbits, squirrels and each other.
And, of course, all of that does make the place special.
“The Shooting Woods” as Ceili called the area when she was little, have become a kind of retreat for me. Troubled in mind and heart last Saturday, I donned my new kilt (more on that at another time), hoisted the pack, my rifle and walking staff and set out for a few hours of blessed solitude, followed by a rigorous Frontier Partisan Biathlon. The nightcap was an evening of playing music at Cork Cellars Wine Bar.
’Twas a tonic.
••••
Not to put too fine a point on it, the last half of the summer sucked. With the exception of a number of very fine Anvil Blasters gigs, Summer of 2017 can kiss my ass. We lost most of it to choking smoke from the Milli Fire and a host of other fires across the West. We were evacuated for five days, which was an unwelcome disruption and expense, though we are partially covered by insurance.
Let me tell you folks, waking up most every day for six weeks with the taste of ashes on your tongue and living under a thick pall and an eerie, bloody orange light begins to weigh on a man.
Smoke as thick as a London Fog forced us top cancel the Sisters Folk Festival, a decision that felt very much like putting your dog down: You know it’s right and necessary and it abrades the soul to do it.
The fires weren’t even the start of it. At the end of July, Marilyn earned herself a nasty scalp wound from a fall while in California for a family wedding. The emergency room staff botched the staple-and-suture job so badly that our doc up here was appalled (we’re demanding absolution of the bill). When he removed the staples, the wound fell apart, leaving a crater the size of a nickel and a quarter-inch deep in the top-back of Marilyn’s head.
Good thing that neither Ceili nor I is squeamish, because we spent days packing the wound with saline-soaked gauze, letting it dry, then ripping it out. Marilyn says it wasn’t terribly painful, but it was an extremely uncomfortable sensation that triggered an autonomic nausea response. She developed an attraction-repulsion relationship with tales of scalping survivors, with which I am well supplied.
She’s all healed up and none the worse for wear, but none of that was fun.
I have also been feeling acutely the frustration of worthy projects delayed and deferred due to circumstances beyond anybody’s ability to control.
And, then, of course, we’re in the midst of a significant moment of transition, one that is fraught with emotion. Sending Ceili off to college is bittersweet — we’re a tight little Clan, and we’ll miss her acutely. Luckily, Marilyn and I like each other right well and we’ll be fine in our empty nest.
•••••
All of that is by way of saying that there has been precious little comfort and serenity around here for a while. Hell, there is little comfort and serenity anywhere in the land. Fire, flood and quake; the business of divisiveness is booming; the culture seems to be careening toward a crash of epic proportions. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold…
•••••
One of my favorite spots in The Shooting Woods is an area about 100 yards long and about 50 yards wide, a corridor where a dozen big pondos and a couple of junipers lie where they crashed to the earth in a massive blow-down. Can’t say when, exactly — we’ve had a couple of epic windstorms in my time here — but it seems plain that the trees came down all at the same time; some broken off, some ripped out at the roots. Something in the terrain — something I can’t discern — must have channeled and amplified the force of the wind in that particular spot, for the blow-down is concentrated all in that small area the size of a football field. The sound must have been an otherworldly shrieking, roaring and crashing. I wish I had witnessed it.
I find the Big Blow-Down fascinating and I stop there often to contemplate the carcasses of giants that fell in the face of an irresistible force that came out of the west and scythed them down in moments.
The Big Blow-Down is a microcosm of the destruction wrought in the Caribbean by winds of scarcely imaginable force, in Texas by floodwaters of Biblical scope, in Mexico by the violent shaking of the earth, which seems to be determined to buck off its putative “masters.”
Comfort and serenity are elusive and illusive. Strange and wonderful is the paradox that recognizing that stark reality in the woods on an autumn afternoon brings… comfort and serenity. Troubles? I ain’t got none.
Paul McNamee says
There’s nothing particularly special about the woods out back of Zimmerman Butte. It’s all second-and-third-growth ponderosa forest, with a heavy understory of bitterbrush, cross-hatched with logging roads. There are no vistas to speak of, and other than a couple of rock formations, no exceptional terrain features.
I would go fishing in the woods a lot and then figured out I was more interested in being in the woods than fishing. It was even easier to hike without the rod & tackle-box in hand. Likewise, I had a good hiking buddy but he was always about conquering the mountain. I appreciate the well-earned vistas from such hike but again – for me it was just being in the woods.
I’m happy with a flat “hike” if I get to see wildlife on the way. One of my favorite hikes is out in western MA where you can hike into the woods and find the town common of the abandoned town of Dana. It was slated for the Quabbin reservoir flooding but the water didn’t reach the center of the old town. First time I hiked there in one day we saw turkeys and had close encounters with a red tailed hawk and deer. That was the first time I’d ever seen wild turkeys – it was before they became the suburban wonders they are now around here.
Sorry you got so damn smoked out this summer and all its fallout. And your wife’s nasty wound. 🙁
First round of empty nest syndrome is sure to compound emotions in these volatile times.
Our cool autumn air has been delayed until tomorrow. I’m looking forward to rustling leaves and horror stories reads for Halloween.
JimC says
Thanks, Paul. I completely relate to your approach to hiking — more interested in “being” in the woods than in a particular mission. I can take or leave fishing; just being out there is what trips my trigger.
Appreciate your words.
Halloween in New England is something I’d like to immerse myself in — it’s the landscape of the season in my imagination.
Matthew says
Halloween in New England is something I’d like to immerse myself in — it’s the landscape of the season in my imagination.—-
Because of Lovecraft and King?
One of the things about moving from Texas was the discovery of finding out that there were seasons in between summer and winter (which in Texas is a lot like fall.) The changing leaves always put me in the mood for Halloween. I always tend to read horror stories during that time. Plan on reading The Ghost Pirates by William Hope Hodgson who wrote a combination of sea adventure and ghost stories.
JimC says
Not because of Lovecraft or King. Probably just my sense of creepiness surrounding the Puritans — as Steve Tompkins once said, they were the only Americans who lived in a swords-and-sorcery world. At NE just LOOKS like Halloween.
Paul McNamee says
Probably just my sense of creepiness surrounding the Puritans — as Steve Tompkins once said, they were the only Americans who lived in a swords-and-sorcery world. And NE just LOOKS like Halloween.
Might be time to re-read some Hawthorne, come to think of it – especially “Young Goodman Brown” 😉
Paul McNamee says
Non New England, I just read Hodgson’s short story “A Tropical Horror” the other night. It’s a good giant scary monster story.
Matthew says
Hope the fall and winter are better for you.
JimC says
So far, so good.
Keith West says
I hate to hear that your summer was so lousy. I knew about the fires but hadn’t imagined the rest. I hope the rest of the year makes up for it.
JimC says
Thanks, Keith. Things are on the upswing.
Felonious Monk says
Jim, when you do your next round-up of all things pertinent.
Please give a (considering circumstances) shout out to: Jack E Davis’s
magnificent history of “The Gulf”. It contains this little pearl: “nature was (is?)
the kindling that kept (keeps?) the fire of Manifest Destiny burning.”
Mother nature is clearly in distress but the frontier partisan can not help (like Turtle!)
to turn to her for nurture, inspiration and dare I say redemption.
It beats dumping on athletes or engaging in a pissing contest with a crackpot dictator.
Godspeed to you !
JimC says
Will do!
John C. says
Kilt?!
deuce says
Here’s hoping for a much better fall and winter, Jim. If you want to get a jump on the New Year, just celebrate it at Halloween. That’s the Old Celtic way of doing things. Ham, colcannon and apple cake never hurt anyone. Not me, anyway.
JimC says
I aim to do just that. I’m going full Celt on it this fall.
Paul McNamee says
“Never go full Celt!”
Actually, do that. Go full Celt from head to toe.
JimC says
Paul McNamee says
Hell, yes. 🙂
Breaker Morant says
Regarding special patches of woods. One of our farms is a patchwork of sloughs, woods and arable land. Personally, while most farmers hate them, I love odd shaped fields and so forth.
There is a about a 10-acre patch that is an old farm grove. I have told my kids many times, that if any other farmer owned the land the grove it would be gone and converted to cropland.
I love that patch of woods for many reasons. One is that my (Now) 16 YO daughter and I have found that the biggest and best wild plums are found there. You can’t buy memories like we have of finding that jackpot and picking plums there. Those memories are priceless.
JimC says
There you go. you get it, exactly.
Paul McNamee says
Where I grew up, there was a triangular wooded patch attached to our woods. My father researched it, he wanted to buy it. He learned it was in town records as “owner unknown.” He left it at that as a near-secret – he figured if it went to public auction a contractor-speculator would gobble it up and jam in a house.
As a boy, I spent *many* hours in our woods and that unofficial annex.
JimC says
Every kid needs his own wood lot. And a screen-free zone. Look at how god you turned out…
Matthew says
I lived in the suburbs for the most part but my grandfather had an acre of forest in Alabama. I’m very grateful that I grew up with that. Of course, in the summer it was sometimes too hot to go outside.
Ernie says
Whenever you two get lonely, feel free to cross the street and join Beverly and I for a beer or glass of wine. You’re always welcome here!!
JimC says
That’s gotta happen!
lane batot says
A KILT? My memory of wearing a kilt–as the ghost of Bonnie Prince Charlie on the TV series “Christy” back in the mid-90’s–was that it was hot as heck! Not very comfortable except in the coldest, dankest weather(which luckily is exactly what it was the day we filmed it!)! I’m more into the extreme MINIMAL here in the hot, humid Southeastern jungles(at least in the Summer….) I will add I’m rather reticent to admit I once portrayed the Bonnie Prince on film, after his more recent useless twit interpretation on “Outlander”, of which I’m through about half of season two now. Of course, if you ever see my portrayal of him, remember not to blink, or you’ll miss it!….to be continued….
JimC says
Mark me… the Outlander portrayal is in the x-ring. A fool, a twit. You’ll be glad to get back to Scotland in S2. France, bleh.
lane batot says
Yeah, interesting in it’s own way as the exile in France is, I am about bored to tears in some episodes. I just keep reminding myself that this series is coming to my homestate’s pioneer days eventually! But doo naught totahlee deesreegardee’ zee francais, mon ami; reemeemburr, yoo speek wiss zee GRAYTEEST UV AWL FEELM COUREUR DE BOIS!!!
JimC says
The France episodes never bored me, but the French court just gives me the creepy-crawlies and always has. That nipple dress though!
Matthew says
but the French court just gives me the creepy-crawlies and always has.—
You’ll have to elaborate on that. I haven’t seen Outlander and what I know about the French Court was from the History Channel. That and everything that led to the Revolution. It doesn’t seem to me be creepy.
JimC says
Not the horror kinda creepy-crawlies. Louche decadence skivs me out, makes my skin crawl. Smells of rot.
Matthew says
I understand what you are saying.
The French court doesn’t hold much in decadence to the Japanese Imperial Court during later Heian period (roughly the time of the crusades.) The men where effete to the point of absurdity. There are tales of them fainting at the sight of cockroaches. They were horribly disgusted by people having tans from being outside. The women where kept segregated (though they could own property) which did not stop liaisons. Most of the court officials spent more time on adultery and writing poems than running the friggin country. They increasingly relied on hired warriors to the real work. These warriors would later become the samurai caste. The peasants spent their time starving and running from bandits. The only thing that came out of the court during that time was the first novel The Tale of Genji from which we get most of our information. Reading would have given Robert E. Howard conniptions.
lane batot says
…..and as for special patches of woods–my life has been full of them! So many have been totally destroyed, over the years, by “progress”, alas. I don’t think you ever know a place like the one where you grew up(if you got to have a stable long-term home, as I was fortunate enough to do)–I knew every tree(climbed most of them!), rock, rivulet, and field INTEMATETELY, in a way you can never as an adult. And alas, there is hardly a trace left of my childhood-early teen-agehood home. I fought a bitter guerrilla warfare to try and save the last patch–I could write a book about that desperate last stand(and I cost the invading wasichu a LOT of them green frogskins in the process!), and I think it might be safe enough to do so now–statute of limitations should long ago have expired on that conflict. But it is very sad for me to even recollect–I ultimately lost, of course. I have luckily known many other such places, and have a decent range here in the Uwharrie Forest, for which I am very thankful. And I too, just like “being” in the woods–I don’t have to be doing anything particular! Just be “OUT” there! An escape and refamiliarizing of myself with what is TRULY the “real world”, is THE BEST antidote for the overly domesticated “white man’s road” most all of us have to walk to some degree to support ourselves.
lane batot says
…..since the reply supply ran out on the above subject(the French Royal Court in the 1700’s), Ill elaborate my opinion of it’s portrayal in “Outlander” a bit more here. I don’t want to give the impression it is poorly done–it is most assuredly not–the costumes, props, and sets alone are well worth seeing(and some mighty fine horses!), but my intellect(or lack thereof) finds it difficult and oh so tiresome trying to keep up with human intrigue and prissing about–I’d just like to take a tomahawke to the lot! I get damn well enough of THAT kinda crap in navigating the civilized aspects of my own life(like–ahem!–the workplace!)having to show restraint when you dang well KNOW what needs to be done to certain overly domesticated twits, that should in no uncertain terms be allowed to perpetuate the species! And then to havta sit through that watching the tele—AAAaaarrrggghhhhHHHH!!!!! I certainly will be glad when the storyline moves on(as I have been assured it will)–I am only about halfway through season two just now…..
JimC says
You’re feeling about the same as Murtagh ;). And about how Sam Heughan felt filming it…
You’re heading back to Scotland soon.
Matthew says
By this Ax I rule!
lane batot says
Aye, Murtaugh IS one of my favorite characters!
Evan says
Good looking hat. May one inquire the maker and model?
JimC says
Baldwin Custom Hats, right here in Sisters, Oregon. He calls it the Longmire. I slouched the brim.
Baldwin Hats
M Rogers says
I think my favorite thing to do is to stump shoot (roving, per the English) in Central Oregon with a primitive bow I made or a traditional bow with wood arrows. Basically it is roaming off trail and shooting targets at unknown distances. The target can be a stump, a pine cone or a blade of grass. After the shot one retrieves the arrow and moves on. You can shoot from point to point or meander about. Unless I know the area I take a compass heading and follow that direction for a set period of time then make a 90 degree turn and eventually another 90 degree headed back.
Besides being a lot of fun and quiet, it is a great way to explore. One can also work on stalking skills.
Most traditional and primitive archers love nothing more than to shoot. It is important to maintain loosening an arrow skill which is very perishable. No sights, it is all instinctive kind of like hitting a golf ball.
JimC says
This — yes! I’m going to unlimber my longbow next week and do a bit of this myself.