Quiet Forest

Typical Oregon fall. It was cool and grey when the man paused on the Seven Streams Trail in Post Canyon for a drink of water. He was on public land owned by the county and managed for multiple uses, including as an industrial forest. Indeed, before him was a hillside laid bare several years ago. With the recession and the decline in the price of lumber, the county had not harvested any timber that year. This meant that the forest was quiet without the sound of chainsaws, but it also meant that the county was facing a budget crisis, laying off employees, and cutting services. The man knew something about this, but did not know the full extent of the problem. All he knew was that it was a peaceful place to ride his bike.
He was panting a little bit. The trail had been steep and he needed to catch his breath. He checked his watch. It was 5:30 p.m. and there was no sun; the sky was entirely cloudy. At this time of the year the sun would soon be setting. Although it had been raining all day, it was not raining now. The man was not worried because he was used to the rain. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that in a few more days it would come again. After all, an inch of rain had just fallen. Only about twelve inches typically fell all month. This would pass. It probably would not rain anymore that day.
The man breathed in the fall smells of the forest and looked back on the trail. It had round back and forth along Post Canyon crossing the stream several times. Possibly seven times, but he did not know for sure how the Seven Streams Trail got its name. The stream was still dry at this time of the year. The dry creek bed led downhill to Phelps Creek, which in turn flowed into the Columbia River just west of Hood River. From there, the Columbia flowed sixty miles to Portland where it met the Willamette River and continued on another sixty miles to the Pacific Ocean.
The man was in a riparian hardwood forest of red alder, big leaf maple, black cottonwood, Oregon ash and Oregon oak. The trail system round up the canyon walls nearly 3,000 vertical feet with Douglas fir and other pine trees replacing the hard woods at the higher elevations. The thick canopy kept the stream cool when it flowed, which encouraged cutthroat and rainbow trout to swim upstream. Some even said steelhead trout and chinook salmon made it up there, but the man doubted it, despite the signs posted by the local soil and water conservation district claiming that the stream was such a habitat and urging hikers, bikers, equestrians, and ATV users to stay on the trail to prevent erosion and the destruction of plant life in and along the stream bed.
Although not pristine, Post Canyon was known for having some of the most radical free ride terrain in the world. This was one of the reasons the man had moved here. He also enjoyed the flowing streams and rivers for fishing, the mountains for skiing and snowboarding, and most of all, the mighty Columbia River for windsurfing. But now it was between seasons. It was too cold to sail. Not enough snow had fallen in the mountains for alpine skiing. Although it was between seasons for his favorite sports, this was one of the best times for mountain biking. The rain had dissolved the loose pellets of dirt that had gathered on the hard pack of the trail and made the trail so difficult in the dry summer months. Now it was tacky and smooth. In spots there were mud puddles, which made the man and his gear muddy. It made him feel like he was really at one with mother nature when he got home and looked in the mirror to see himself covered in her.
Not that he took himself that seriously. He was not really in the wilderness. He knew that. He was only a few miles from a small town and about an hour’s drive from a major metropolitan center. He could at times imagine that he was in an untamed place, but mostly he knew otherwise. In fact, he needed to take things a little more seriously. He should have carried more water with him. He should have carried a pump in case he got a flat tire. He should have had a first aid kit. Instead, all he had was his new iPhone. He did, naturally, wear a helmet, but even this he did not take seriously enough, having jammed two foot long branches like antlers into the air holes. He knew better, of course, but he thought it was funny. It was hunting season and he should have worn bright clothes, instead he wore a brown sweat shirt. His beach shorts were of a brown camouflage design. He wore underarmour underneath, which wicked away the perspiration from his skin, preventing chafing, but did nothing from keeping the moisture from penetrating his clothes. He reasoned that if he got into trouble he could just call an emergency service. It they failed to answer, it would not be more than a few miles back to his car. His car had almost every convenience known to mankind, including a five-disc CD changer. He had a first aid kit in the trunk. He would be fine. Besides, usually there were others on the trail. Someone would help him.
It’s not that he would not get injured, but his helmet would prevent the worst of injuries. What else could happen to him? Tendinitis from gripping the brakes too hard? Nothing that a little rest and aspirin couldn’t help. Chafing? Yes, there was always the rubbing of his shorts on his skin. Uncomfortable, but not life threatening. The most serious injury that he’s ever had were some scrapes and bruises from falling or running into branches, nothing serious. Such injuries were to be expected when crashing on a trail.
Crashes were not uncommon. One of his friends from law school had taught him a lot about falling. Not by lecturing, but in the manner of the best teacher demonstration. Over beers at the musty Twin Mountain Brewery after one of their rides, his friend had said that it was best to fall into the mountain. His friend had also said that the hoppy smell of the bar reminded him of his house when he was in college. He was a funny guy. He also said that if one managed to keep at least one foot clipped in after a fall, that it did not even count as a fall, it was just setting the equipment down. The man’s friend was an avid skier, so he was entitled to such opinions, the man guessed. He also said that if one fell all the way down the mountain, then one had to be quick about unclipping and try to land on one’s feet. Falls down the side of a hill were not so bad if one rolled with it. After all, it wasn’t the falling that hurt so much as whatever it was that stopped the fall, like a rock, or a tree. As such, one had to look ahead and see where one was going to land and try to find a soft spot, so the man had been told.
Although the man had some knowledge of the sport, he was not that serious about it. He had seen the ramps and the jumps and marveled at them. But to him they were not real. He sometimes thought they had been built as organic sculptures in the woods by maniacs with chainsaws and were not actually for riding. Kind of like the ladders on the back of recreational vehicles or garden gnomes. Not real, just decoration. The man rode a stationary bike at the gym when he was living on the East Coast. To him, this was the same thing, except he could watch three dimensional scenery instead of a flat video screen while he rode.
He turned and put his water bottle back into its rack. His bike was on a hair pin turn at a fork in the trail. He was headed up to Family Man, a staging area with man-made features a foot or two off the ground. These were good to lean on, as many of the trails had narrow bridges five to ten feet in the air. he told himself that was his goal for next year. After all, this was only his first year riding on single track trails. He would need full suspension for really serious riding and probably better tires. His bike just had suspension up front and it was old, having been purchased used from someone in Portland on Craig’s List. It needed new tires, the tires having been worn down on the streets by the previous owner.
He put his toes into the baskets of his pedals and starting pedaling up hill. He was glad he did not have full suspension, he told himself. His bike was light and stiff, which was better for climbing hills. He regretted not having clip on pedals, but he hated the thought of having yet another pair of shoes. He was fine in his light weight hiking boots. He didn’t want to buy too much stuff. Besides, the boots were better for pushing the bike up parts of the trail designed for ATV’s and too steep to ride. He was in no hurry to get special shoes and pedals.
It was not that the man was poor, he had practiced law for many years and saved and invested. Part of his portfolio included mining properties around the world. His companies mined precious metals such as silver and gold. But he also had some companies with uranium reserves. Uranium, that was the ticket in a society that claimed it wanted to reduce greenhouse gases. No atomic power plant had been licensed since Three Mile Island in 1979. Now, thirty years later, the applications had been flooding into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The man knew this because he was a lobbiest in D.C. and knew lawyers who worked for the Commission. They had actually approached him about working with them, there being a shortage of anyone in the agency that knew anything about processing applications. Actually, there were none, since those who had processed the last applications had retired long ago. The man had applied on USA Jobs for one of the three positions advertised. His friends at the NRC told him they had more than four hundred applications with there being so many unemployed attorneys in DC and around the country. He was told it would take three to six months for a decision. That was fine. He had just finished his latest lobbying project, the House having passed a version of his bill. He was waiting for Senate action and had already written the President’s signing speech. He had time until the next project presented itself. But right now, he needed his exercise.
Although the conditions had been excellent the last few days, it had been raining all day. This being the man’s first time to ride in such conditions, he was curious. Never mind that his trail map urged him not to ride in muddy conditions, or that the young man at the Wet and Messy Bike Shop (WAM on his iPhone directory) had warned him not to ride alone. But it had stopped raining an hour ago, so the man had decided to go out and ride. He would see for himself if what the experts said was true; if it really was dangerous. That was just code for “more challenging,” right? Besides, it seemed like WAM was always promoting its Post Canyon rides, where for twenty dollars locals and tourists alike could ride with a professional team rider, then share a Twin Mountain beer afterwards on a bean bag in a loft above the shop. To the man, the advice on riding in groups seemed like a scam to take his money. He would save his money and ride alone without a guide.
He should have reconsidered when he arrived at the trail head and discovered that he was the only one there. Normally there were a dozen or more cars parked along the gravel road. Today his was the only car. Then only a few dozen yards into the trail, he had slipped and fallen because of the mud and fallen leaves and needles being as slippery as goose guts. The man tried to be more careful, but he fell a second time a little higher on the trail. The conditions were exceedingly difficult and very unfun. A young woman jogged by him while he was gathering himself together. She had probably jogged up to the trail head from her house, for he had not seen her car, or maybe she had parked behind his car. He thought he recognized her. What was her name? He had met her several times at the Poor House, a local bistro and art gallery. He knew she was from Maine.
The sleek Maine Coone was in excellent shape. She would be much faster than him going uphill. The man brushed off the yellow and red leaves and kept going, trying to keep up with the girl. He was happy to see her turn back down the hill where the trail crossed a logging road where cars sometimes parked. When she had gone out of sight a little ways down the road, he slowed his pace to about four miles per hour, according to the little wireless digital speedometer attached to his handlebars. He liked the gadget. It told him how long he had been riding, what his average speed was, what his maximum speed was, and so on. His average speed was steadily falling at his slower pace now that he was not trying to keep up with the girl, but he kept riding until he got to the fork in the trail at the hairpin turn where he finally took a break.
Trotting along next to the back wheel was a dog, a cross between a pit bull and a boxer, perhaps. It was white and brown in color standing a little taller than its pure bred pit bull father, but having a slightly longer snout than its boxer mother. Actually, it was mostly white, for the man had seen the dog roll in some horse manure in the trail at one point, making it look browner than it actually was in color. The animal was panting hard and shivered a little bit when it stopped to look back at him. The dog was very lean and strong looking. The man did not know how long the dog had been out there. It had been running down the trail at one point toward him, then had turned around and started following him back up the trail. The man noted that it had on a red collar and some dog tags. The tags were shaped like the Rolling Stone’s Lips and Tongue logo. While recovering from his second fall, he had coaxed it to him. The runner had seemed to fear it. As he held its collar, he saw its name and noted the owner’s phone number on the tags.
Phone numbers were easy to remember in Hood River. Until the eighties, every prefix was the same and everyone just used the last four digits when exchanging numbers until the proliferation of fax machines and mobile phones ate up all the available numbers. This was an old easy number to remember. Indeed, the four numerals were identical.
He called the owner from his iPhone as he drank his water at the fork in the trail and an old woman said she would come get the dog right away. The man said it might be difficult to find them and suggested that if the dog was still with him when he finished his ride in an hour that he would call her again. The woman thanked him and said that if she did not hear from him in an hour that she would come up and look for the dog. She apologized again and said that the dog escaped every once in a while, but always went up to Post Canyon. She didn’t know what to do, but was glad the dog was okay.
The other thing about the dog that was easy for the man to remember was her name – “Meggie.” This was the name of the sexiest most beautiful woman the man had ever met. Not one of the sexiest, she was the sexiest. She was one of two identical twins who had escaped from Vietnam in the late seventies with their mother on their second attempt. The man had met her and her friend at a Halloween party in Arlington, Virginia (not far from the historic Arlington National Cemetery). Meggie had been dressed as a cop and her friend as a hooker. Introducing himself with a very creepy Halloween line (“I want to party with you”), he had offered to buy them drinks, to which the hooker, a hard talking hot looking Cambodian American woman in her twenties with a dancer’s legs and ample cleavage had smiled at him, then without comment turned to the bar tender and ordered three “fucking” tequilas.
After drinking the shots, the hooker had asked him to see her underwear. The man had protested in a good natured gentlemanly way that it was too dark, but she had insisted that they were unique in their frilliness. She suggested that he might be able to see better with his hands, to which she placed them on her tight bottom. Within seconds, the man felt a baton on his neck and heard the words “You’re busted.” Fearing the worst, he put his hands up. The cop/Meggie forcefully turned him around and grabbed each of his hands in hers and lowered them onto her backside, then reached up and stuck her studded tongue into his mouth. The man, realizing that he was not really under arrest, began to enjoy himself, luxuriating in her Africanimal scent of aromatic honey. Over time they all became best of friends. The Meggie’s family, as he learned, had come to this country with nothing, but had saved and managed to put her through college. She was now an analyst for a contractor with the U.S. Marines. She had her own condo in the beltway and a sports car with a bumper sticker that read “Licensed to Kill.” She often wore a belt buckle shaped like the Stone’s famous logo. She was a character and he loved every moment with her.
How strange, he thought, that he should run into another Meggie. How strange, he thought, that they both had escaped from home. He hoped the similarities stopped well short of the rolling in manure thing on the one hand, or the studded tongue thing in his mouth on the other. He enjoyed the dog’s company. Not only did she remind him of his friend, but she made him feel like he was not actually riding alone. See, he was taking the young man’s advice at WAM, he thought. He felt bet ter about the ride. She would warn him if there was a bear in the trail, right? “Good dog,” he said to her as he thought about that possibility. Probably the dog would run after one of the many black-tailed deer that were now foraging in this part of the forest, the nearby clear-cut being full of young plants close to the ground for the deer to eat. He expected the dog to run away at any moment, but it stayed with him. “Good dog,” he panted occasionally to encourage her to stick around.
The problem with going up a steep muddy hill is that it is hard to get traction. In fact, the back wheel of his bike often slipped and kicked up mud onto his back as he put pressure on the pedals. His movement up the hill after his break at the fork in the trail was very slow as a result. At one point he was standing still, so he decided to hike the rest of the way. As he pulled his feet out of his baskets, he could feel himself falling. His hiking boots were so muddy and wet that he could not easily pull them out of the baskets. Helplessly, he looked to see where he was going and realized in horror that the hill was very steep below him. The first impact was not bad and he slid a ways before hitting a log with his back, which caused him to rotate back upright onto his wheels. But he was moving so quickly that his momentum made him bounce further down the hill, sending him airborne and flipping him over entirely before coming to an abrupt stop on his right side.
He looked up into the ram rod straight hundred to two hundred foot tall fir trees as he came to his senses. He laughed at first. “I wonder if that counts as a fall?” he said to himself thinking back to his discussions at the Twin Mountain Brewery. It was not only the worst fall he had ever experienced, it was much worse than he had ever seen his law school friend wipe out. He tried to unclip himself when he realized that he had done something to one of his knees. His right knee did not look right. In the minute he had been lying there it had swollen and he could not see his knee cap. He tried to bend it but could not. This was something he had not counted on. Mountain biking was a low impact sport, it was supposed to be good for the knees. Of course, this kind of a fall was not really typical.
The man looked up at the trail and could see Meggie looking down at him. The dog was panting and seemed to be debating whether or not to follow. It did not seem to be worried. It had the same expression on its face. “Stupid dog,” thought the man. The man groaned and picked himself up. He stood on his good leg and made a few feeble hops on the slippery wet leaves. He did not see how he could get back up to the trail with his bike. Below him he could see the part of the trail below the switchback and decided to slide down the slope with his bike to it. Meanwhile, the dog had turned back down the trail and was waiting for him shivering in the cold when he arrived. By now the man was soaking wet from crawling through the wet leaves. He was also chilled since he had not been riding uphill. The man was in pain and dreaded the thought of having to use his bike as a crutch to get back to the trail head. The man also noticed that it was starting to rain. He realized that it had probably been drizzling for a while, but that now the canopy could not absorb it any longer, so it was falling with full force to the forest floor. The man felt a bead of water roll down his spine and blew some water off his upper lip as he felt it dribble down his face. This was definitely not fun, he thought to himself.
He hopped along for a couple of hundred yards along the narrow slippery wet single track trail and decided to call his law school friend in Portland. Unfortunately, there was no answer. Next, he called the WAM Shop, but by now it was closed. He thought about calling 911, but thought better of it. He was wet and miserable with a bum knee, but this was not an emergency. Then he realized that since most of the trail was down hill, that all he had to do was get on the bike and coast home. He did not have to use his knee, only his hand brakes. Painfully, he climbed aboard. Slowly he started to accelerate down the trail. The dog stayed right on his heel as they barreled on down. “No problem,” thought the man.
A few minutes later, he looked at his odometer. He was getting close, he thought. He just had to make it across the last bridge over the stream. The man had been across its thirty foot span many times before. The bridge was a tree that had been sawed in half and placed flat side up a few feet over the rocky stream bed. It was only about fifteen inches across, wide by Post Canyon standards. He was not concerned as he lined himself up for it. With the rain and additional organic matter that had fallen on it since he had passed by earlier, however, and unbeknownst to the man, the surface had become incredibly slippery – almost unnaturally so. The man knew he was in trouble as soon as his front tire touched the wood. He had absolutely no control as the bike slipped off the bridge into the gully landing on its front wheel and sending the man flying over the handle bars. The man instinctively knew to keep his head down and chin tucked in to stop from breaking his neck, he also put his hands out in front of him to break his fall. The force of the landing traveled up his right wrist and forearm to his shoulder snapping his collar bone. The pain was searing.
The man came to his senses as he lay in the gully and realized it was really starting to get dark. The man was not sure if he had passed out from hitting his head or from the pain in his shoulder. One of the branches in his helmet had broken in half. He laughed at how funny he must look as he reached up to break off the dangling wood. The laugh and his movement, however, triggered pain in his chest and caused him to cough, a cough that sounded like pneumonia – thick and wet.
He’d had pneumonia years ago and knew the sound of fluid in the lungs. The man knew that he did not have pneumonia. There was something else wrong with him. He felt his shoulder and knew from the bulge that he had broken his collar bone. He shivered at the thought of having punctured his lung. The shivering continued and he realized that it was because he was getting really cold. The man was a little frightened now. He couldn’t get warm and he was in a lot of pain. The veteran rider from WAM had been right about riding in groups. The man had ignored him and now realized his mistake. He tried to make the best of it. He’d had an accident, he was alone, and now he had to save himself. He could do it, he thought. He just had to keep his head. He would be fine. The dog looked down at him from the top of the stream bank. She did not know anything about riding in groups. She did know that she’d had enough. It was one thing to be away from her yard to get some exercise, it was another to do it in the dark in the rain. This was a good time to be back in her master’s house after being dried off with a towel, then having a long drink of water and eating a bowl of dog food before lying down in front of the wood stove fed by the sweet smelling dried apple and cherry logs harvested from the orchard the year before. The dog was not concerned about the man. Yet there is a special relationship between dogs and men. Dogs know who is master and innately want to please, so when the man whistled for the dog to come, it ran back and forth along the stream bank then jumped down.
The man did not know why he whistled for the dog to come. Perhaps he just wanted some company. As the dog approached, he thought that if he could grab it that perhaps he could be warmed by it. He was now shivering violently. He’d had hypothermia before, but that was in Alaska when he got frost bite the winter he had taken off between college and law school. Since he did not feel the same tingling burning sensation in his fingers and toes, he did not really understand what was happening to him. In fact, it was not cold enough for him to have frost bite, but plenty cold to be hypothermic. The man was not thinking clearly. Still, it seemed like holding the dog might be a good idea. He spoke to the dog, calling to her, but the dog was hesitant, hearing something strange in the man’s voice. Something was the matter and its suspicious nature sensed this. It flattened its ears and hunched down a little, just out of the man’s reach. The man became upset and got on his left knee and dragged himself to the dog. The unusual posture frightened the dog and it backed away. The man stopped and sat back, coughing with the exertion. He looked into his hand and saw blood and realized that his situation was getting worse.
The man stood up on his left leg. He felt light headed, but he knew he had to get out of there. The stream bank was about chest high. He was probably losing a lot of blood. His blood pressure was going down. He was getting weaker. Perhaps he could climb out of the stream bed and drag himself down to the road, he thought. It was not far away. The road paralleled the trail from there. Then it was only a mile or so to the trail head. He felt a little dizzy and reconsidered what he was doing. Then, seeing that the dog was in reach, he lept for her and grabbed her. Before she could get away, he encircled her in his arms and held her against him. The dog snarled and whined and struggled to get away. She was strong and quick and slippery, again similar to his friend Meggie, thought the man.
“Got you my dear,” he said to her, thinking how nice it would be if the twin was there with him. Perhaps the dog thought that the man was going to hurt her. Perhaps it had heard the story of a man caught in the frozen wilderness who had tried to kill his dog and bury his hands in the warm body in the hopes that the numbness would go out of his hands enough to light a fire. Whatever the reason, the dog continued to struggle. The man was weak with cold and the loss of blood and could not continue to hold the dog and she got away, scrambling wildly up the stream bank with her tail between her legs snarling at him. Out of reach, she sat down and looked back at him, panting and shivering, water dripping off of her in the rain. “So much for man’s best friend,” the man sputtered.
Then it occurred to him that he could call its master and have her get the dog and rescue him at the same time. He pulled out his iPhone and redialed the number. There was no answer. An answering machine invited him to leave a message, but he declined. He was putting his phone away when he heard the sound of a car coming up the hill. The dog heard it too and lifted her ears and looked down the trail. Faintly, the man could hear a woman’s voice calling for Meggie. The dog looked back at the man. She considered the man, how wet it was, how dark it was getting, and thought about the towel she knew the old woman would dry her with and the dog bowls filled with water and food waiting for her at home. She gave a short bark, got up and ran down the trail to her master. The man again got up and looked over the stream bank. Through the trees he could see the lights of the car slowly coming up the canyon. He was so close. He tried yelling to get her attention, but his voice was weak. Besides, the woman could not hear him over the sound of the engine. The man could see that the car was now stopped and was presumably collecting the dog. If the man could just climb out of the stream bed he could hop down there and get a ride to the hospital, he thought. He tried to lift himself up, but the pain was unbearable and he collapsed in a heap.
When he recovered, he found himself in a pile of wet leaves. The leaves were helping him to stay warm, he thought. They were like a blanket. Somewhat encouraged, he reached for the water bottle in his bike. The bottle, a cheap plastic affair with a snap on top he had been given at a department store promotion, unfortunately, had broken open in the fall and spilled its contents. The man thought again about the advice from the bike shop. If he had a companion, he could drink his companion’s water.
He pulled out his iPhone again. It was now an emergency. He was either going to bleed to death or die of hypothermia. He dialed 911 and waited. Unfortunately, due to budget cuts, there was no one to answer the phone. The man let it ring and ring and ring, but no one answered.
He laid back into the leaves and pulled the phone to his chest. “I’m done,” he thought. The leaves were actually kind of comfortable, those under him padding him from the rocks scoured clean of sand by the stream. The man by now was quite tired. If he could just take a nap, he thought, he would feel better. If he died in his sleep, well, that wouldn’t be so bad. He was so cold now that his body did not have the energy to shiver, though the man did not know it. He looked at his phone and remembered that he had downloaded an application of a lighter. He turned it on and the warm glow filled the little stream bed with light. The flame moved as he rotated the phone. It looked so real. What he wouldn’t give to have an actual lighter or a box of matches. He watched the flame and thought about his law school friend from Portland who was supposed to ride with him the next day. He imagined his friend finding him and looking at him lying in the leaves. If he was still alive, they would go down to the Twin Mountain Brewery and have a beer and he would tell people how dangerous it was to ride alone and how unpleasant it was to ride when the trails were too wet. He would tell them that you can never have enough water. His eye lids felt heavy as he watched the flame.
The screen faded to gray and the man thought he saw the image of the veteran rider at the bike shop replace it. He thought he could see him quite clearly behind the counter working on a bike. “You were right young man; you were right,” the man mumbled to the Post Canyon veteran.
The man drowsed off into what seemed to him like a comfortable sleep. He dreamed that he was in a pile of dry warm feathers. After a time he woke up to cough up a feather, which was actually some more blood. When he was done, he noticed how quiet the forest was at night, especially now that the rain had stopped. As he sat there, he thought he heard the sound of a truck approaching on the road below. With the last of his energy he poked his head over the stream bank and could see a truck coming down the road. A Q-beam spotlight was shining out of the passenger window. The man thought that it must be the Sheriff searching for him. The truck stopped at the junction between the trail and the road and the spot light made its way up the hill until it shone directly into the man’s eyes. The man tried to speak and lifted his good arm up to block the light.
As he did so, his helmet exploded as a 30-caliber 168-grain bullet plowed into his skull at more than two thousand feet per second, the polycarbonate tip mushrooming the bullet as it did.
“I think I got one!” said the boy in the truck as he lowered his rifle.
“Good shot, son,” said the poacher.
The poacher put the transmission into park and turned off the engine. The forest was quiet once again.