River Drive

On October 12, 2017October 12, 2017 By RopeAndChainIn The Edge Trek, Uncategorized2 Comments

A dark, wet dawn on the banks of the Mississippi

I started the day where the Des Moines River empties into the Mississippi from the west and I ended the day (basically) where the Chippewa River does the same thing from the east. Along the way I do not know how many other rivers first from one side then the other fed the great river. And this is the story of the Mississippi River — it is not one river, it is the sum of all the rivers in the drainage. The Des Moines or the Chippewa may not mean much to you, but think about the Ohio, the Missouri, the Arkansas — these are rivers with entire histories across the east and west of our country and they disappear into the Mississippi. From Keokuk north to Red Wing Minnesota I rarely ventured far from the banks of the Mississippi. To the east, all day, were Illinois and Wisconsin and periodically, civilization got thicker around a bridge making a way across. My bartender in Keokuk, where there is a bridge to Hamilton, Ill., said when I asked if she was from Keokuk, “Oh no, I’m a Hamilton girl.” She’s worked at the same family owned, local Keokuk Iowa restaurant for almost 30 years (I ate at this place in 1988 when it was in the basement of the Iowan Hotel and she said she was volunteering as a busser then). She knows customers by name, calls their orders out to them before they open their mouths, looks, talks and acts like an Iowan. But she’s a “Hamilton girl.” If ever you needed an indication of the strength of the Mississippi River, there you have it.

It would be hard to imagine a better way to go north or south in the middle of the country than the Great River Road. I’ve been primarily on the western side, so I can’t speak for Illinois and Wisconsin, but Iowa and Minnesota are sublime. To me,for a good drive, there is kind of a magic mix among scenery, points of interest/towns, and open road. For the most part, the Great River Road ticks all the boxes very well. I spent 1987/88 traveling all 99 counties of Iowa, but I’d forgotten the northeast corner, which, for my money, is perfect. Hardwood forest, rolling hills and high bluffs, open ground, interesting towns along the way. I do wish the weather were better today. From dawn until 4:32 pm I never saw the sun. Most of the day it was raining. Until about 11:30, the fog was so thick I had no idea if I was next to the river or in it. I did catch a break around 11:30 when I got to the Effigy Mounds National Monument, just north of Marquette, Iowa and the rain stopped for period.

Located just inside the far western edge of the region generally associated with effigy mound culture, the national monument includes a north and south unit, miles and miles of hiking trails, and 206 known prehistoric mounds, 31 of which are animal effigy mounds. Historically, we know humans have been in this part of northeast Iowa for over 10,000 years; 2,500 years ago conical mounds appeared and were chiefly burial mounds; around 1,700 years ago, linear mounds appeared, but there was no evidence they were burial mounds, and some were connected to conical mounds forming what are known as compound mounds; the real art started about 1,400 years ago in the Late Woodland Period when the people in the Upper Mississippi began building animal effigy mounds. Most are bears, or birds. They are typically 2-4 feet high, 40 feet wide, and 80 feet long. But sizes, as they say, vary. What’s interesting to me, is that there is no ceremonial or ritualistic reason for them. There is indication in some that fires were set in the region of the animal’s heart or head, but no conclusive evidence that these mounds are anything other than what I would call yard art. Culturally, there is a link between the bear and the earth and the bird and the sky, so if you were an earth family, you probably built a bear mound mound and a sky family, a bird mound. To be honest, today, you can’t tell one from the other, or either from a small hill; but, back in the day, if you were looking at them from above, they were clearly birds and bears. Now how people 1,400 years ago got an aerial view of their handiwork, I don’t know, and, since from the ground level even then they didn’t really look like much, the mystery deepens. Nevertheless, when you climb the 2 mile trail to the top of the high bluffs over the river, through hardwood forests of Hickory, Oak, Cherry, Maple and Cottonwood and find, on the spine of the ridge amidst oddly clear green spaces, dirt bears, your skin kind of prickles. It’s a spiritual place for sure. Then, after 650 years or so, they stopped. No more effigy mounds. I suppose tastes changed, or the Joneses down the way made a pyramid mound and then everyone just had to have one or some such thing.

A lock and dam on the river (no it’s not curved the panorama just makes it look like that)

North of the Effigy Mound National Monument you are hard into the Upper Mississippi River, which is different primarily by constraint. On both shores, high bluffs hem the the old man in and efforts at man-made constraint — in the form of locks and dams — create pools and “lakes” that make it difficult to tell what is river and what is just lots of water. Above some of the dam and lock complexes, the Corps of Engineers has used the material dredged up from the channel to create man-made islands which they seed with native grasses. The result of this is that in the pool areas above the dam, a waterfowl paradise is born. The islands provide nesting and shelter area, and the slack water of the pool is excellent for feeding. Swans, geese, ducks and all manner of fowl have, thanks to the corps, their Eden. The effect of all of it — bluffs on each shore, the river banging first one side and then the other, the islands and pools and braided lakes on the slow side of the river — is really remarkable scenery.

Man made islands in pool #8 above the dam

Tomorrow the river turns west towards its source in northwestern Minnesota and I will as well. After a visit to the headwaters of the great river, I will finish the day, late I expect, where I last left the edge — in Grand Forks, North Dakota. From there the Fall installation of Edge Trek 2017 will really begin. North and east to the Canadian border with Minnesota, through the boundary waters region and on to Lake Superior. I don’t know how far I will get on Saturday, or care really. As I’ve learned already, the adventure is in the going, and I’m just getting started.

Day One

On October 12, 2017October 12, 2017 By RopeAndChainIn The Edge Trek, Uncategorized2 Comments

In 1937 a little old lady put a wooden cross atop the Wickliffe Mounds on the banks of the Ohio. Across the ensuing 75 years that simple cross would move to the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi and grow to 90 feet. Just because.

The earth has been “making” the Mississippi River for several billion years. Something called the North American Craton has been sliding and crashing about since New Jersey and Marrakesh were connected and, among other things, it eventually caused the Appalachian and later the Rocky Mountains to be separated only by a vast inland sea. Through the various ice ages when sheets of ice a mile thick spread as far south as today’s Chicago, the water had no where to go as the earth between the ranges lifted, except down the Mississippi. When the waters of the Arctic and the vast lakes of Canada finally broke through the ice, they cut a gorge through the upper Mississippi that would define countless civilizations, start and end wars, and ultimately become the busiest waterway on the planet. Portions of the Mississippi River are older than the Atlantic Ocean. Any water south of the Great Lakes, west of the Appalachians and east of the Rockies, finds its way to the Mississippi and from thence to the Gulf of Mexico. 41 percent of the continental US drains via the Mississippi. There are bones and teeth of Mastadons, Mammoths, Giant Sloths, sharks, rays and all manner of prehistoric flora and fauna buried in its mud. I can’t possibly detail all that is the Mississippi, but fortunately, someone has. And he’s done it in prose as lyrical as the sounds of the river itself. Regardless of whatever else you may chose to do, I suggest you get a copy of “Old Man River” by Paul Schneider and read it. I’ve stolen liberally from it and will read it over again once this trip is through. It is a masterwork of history, archeology, culture and language. It is the story of the Big Muddy, The Old Man, The Mississippi.

Today was really the first day of the adventure. I followed the Mississippi from Dyersburg, TN to Keokuk, IA via the Old River Road. I got lost. I found a new way. I strained to see the river through the trees and I walked the banks at the confluence of it and the Ohio — which deposits more water into the Mississippi than any other two tributaries combined. I saw industry and agriculture, failure and plenty, and I saw some of the cultural history of some the oldest civilizations our continent knows.

I will know more of the mound builders tomorrow when I get to Northeast Iowa, but as a preview, prehistoric yard art was a big deal. For no reason other than art — that anyone can figure out. My son will be glad to hear that. But that’s tomorrow. Today was a day of wandering, not unlike the river itself, through hardwood bottoms and bluffs, a day to see the power of rich alluvial soils. To realize that the same river that can and has killed tens of thousands with its floods, can feed hundreds of millions with its plenty. My history is so short — the river is in songs from musicals and novels by Twain — but to see it on the ground is to recognize its permanence far beyond any refrain. It is literally absorbing the effluent from millions of years of geologic change and rinsing it all to the sea. As an analog for work, or sins, or impermanence it works well, but as a geologic constant it excels.

Tomorrow I hope to see the effigy mounds of the early Mississippian cultures and get better acquainted with the Upper Mississippi from Northern Iowa into Minnesota. Eventually, I will reach the northern edge where I left off, but for now, I have my hands full of the Big Muddy. Sometimes, when you are headed to the edge, you cross a few lines. I’m going to keep going and I will get there when I get there.

Leaving

On October 11, 2017October 11, 2017 By RopeAndChainIn The Edge Trek, Uncategorized2 Comments

Today is the day of leaving. It’s an odd thing to leave home without a real idea of how long you will be gone or exactly, precisely, where you will be while you are gone. I notice this each trip, but I don’t think I ever really spent much time on it before. Most of the time any of us goes anywhere, we have an exact idea — flight times, hotel reservations, outings, dinners, the works. When I leave, I know which direction I am going and I know the place I last stopped and I know when I have to be back home. That’s it. I believe it makes me more reflective on this first day. Whereas the night before, heck the weeks before, I’m all excited and thinking about the trip, on the day of leaving I tend to spend most of the day thinking about home. About how lucky I”be been to be able to go off on a wild hair like this. About how hard I worked to get that lucky. About how ridiculous it is to have a wife who loves me so much she is excited for me to go off on a wild hair like this. It’s completely nuts. But it also completely glorious. I don’t know how much time I have here and neither does anyone, but we can all make the most of what we have while we can. So, let’s go. Let’s leave.

I’ve talked before about the getting to and the going from. I have to get back to where I last left the edge before I can go from there around the edge some more. I hate boring drives, so I try to make the getting to as interesting, or at least marginally so, as the going from. For this leg, I need to get to Grand Forks, ND and go from there around the northern edge of Minnesota, the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, down the eastern edge of the “thumb” of Michigan and around the southern shore of Lake Erie to Niagara Falls. So, how to get from home to Grand Forks in some manner that holds one’s attention? My choice was the trail of tears to basically the Mississippi River, and then up the Mississippi via the Old River Road to its source near Bemdji, MN, and across the border to Grand Forks. Today was the Trail of Tears.

There isn’t one Trail of Tears. There are several. They represent the pathways some 16,000 or so American Indians — Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Seminole and Chickasaw — travelled from the southeastern United States to Oklahoma. Oddly enough, my Great Grandfather would one day open a general Store in Oklahoma that served the coal miners and what was left of the Cherokee Indians who were trapped there. My Grandmother told stories about serving those people in the store and of their quiet dignity as they found ways to trade for their needs and somehow survive in a manner they’d never been taught among people they did not know. ONe a story of generations on the rise, the other, a story of the inevitably downward spiral of a people who were wards of the state. The tribes on the trail of tears didn’t go because they wanted to. They went at the less than cordial insistence of Andrew Jackson, primarily because there was gold in North Georgia and the Indians were in the way. As many as 5,000 Indians died on the way. I followed what was known as the Drane Route and the Deas-Whitley Route from. Fort Payne, Al to Tuscumbia Landing on the Alabama/Mississippi border. Today, that’s basically US Route 72. I’m sure the landscape was dramatically different back in the day, but there is no escaping the change from the rolling tail of the Appalachian Range to the flat lands of the Delta. A subsistence people must have wondered as they walked — in addition to to where in the world they were going — how they would apply their skills in their new land. How would they hunt, gather and commune in a country so different than their homeland. How they would establish the same pride and leadership without their freedom. How they would mourn those who died along the way, strangers in a strange land. Today it’s just a road from one place to another, but for them it was a death march to an unknown place and an unknown future. For me it is the beginning of a journey, for them it was the end of everything.

I enjoyed the drive — despite the awareness of its history. The soybeeans are yellow in the fall sunlight and, further west and north, the cotton fields reflected bright white in the setting sun. Traffic was light and the road was smooth and good. I was glad to be aware of those who had come before and glad to be able to appreciate their struggle in the context of their own time and in the context of the terrible choices made on behalf of a growing nation. I didn’t have to agree with those choices now anymore that I had to participate in them when they were made. But I did need to know about them. To reflect on them. To wonder how to manage change in a confusing time. And it helped to take it all in.

It’s possible that one way I ease the leaving is to make my first stop at the home in which I grew up. I did this last Spring, and I did it again today. I ended the day of leaving at my childhood home. Familiar, comfortable, and imminently safe. A good spot to leave my real home and proceed to the unknown. There will be challenges, choices, learnings and failings over the next weeks, but I will, like many before me, head off without expectations, hoping to find things of value. Tomorrow I will strike the Great Mississippi River and turn north to follow in the wake of Zebulon Pike in search of the source. I will use the Great River Road on both the east and west banks of the River as I head north, to the source and, ultimately to the edge, again. I have now left, and I’m ready to begin.

Returning to the edge

On August 23, 2017 By RopeAndChainIn The Edge Trek, Uncategorized1 Comment

A journey is in order. An opportunity to strip away the noise and commotion of real and imagined problems, actual and created grievances, and return to the simple realities of a life on the road. You will recall that last we were together on the edge, was at Grand Forks, ND, a short distance form the Canadian border and essentially the easternmost end of the flat, straight 49th parallel agreed to as a delineation between there and here back in the Treaty of 1818 which, in typical bureaucratic pace, settled matters resulting from the War of 1812 which actually ended in 1815. I won’t officially leave the 49th until International Falls, MN, but essentially, the days of straight drives are over.
Getting to the starting point is always a source of some internal debate — hurry along to get started, or, find a way to make the journey to as interesting as the journey from. For this leg, I will choose the latter and get to Grand Forks by ascending the Mississippi River via the Old River Road from somewhere near Dyersburg, TN all the way to the source of the River at Bemidji, MN and from there northwest across the ND border to Grand Forks. Hopefully the bulk of this ride will be on the western side of the River, but at the very least, it will adhere to the River itself whichever bank. I haven’t really seen the Mississippi River on my trek around the edge since it was floating barge traffic above my head on the way to Venice, LA at the start of this entire ridiculous adventure. I look forward to returning for an extended visit along the shores of this redemptive ribbon of drainage.

From Grand Forks, I will head east along the northern edge through International Falls, Voyageurs NP and the Boundary Waters of Minnesota before running slap into Lake Superior — the big lake they call Gitche Gumee. I will follow its western and southern shoreline through a patch of Wisconsin and out onto the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, cross between Lakes Michigan and Huron to follow the eastern shore of the “thumb” of Michigan all the way to Detroit, and then make a decision. I’ll either follow along the southern shore of Lake Erie to Buffalo, NY before turning for home, or, I’ll head back from Detroit and pick up there in the spring.
In addition to marking another segment of the edge off the list, I’ll get a chance to visit childhood noises like International Falls — which was always the spot the weatherman said was the coldest (weird memory fragment that) — and personally investigate the area that claimed the Edmund Fitzgerald, in the hopes of vanquishing that ever-present Gordon Lightfoot ear worm. Hey, it’s the little things. As always, I hope if you are so inclined you will check in each night to see what drivel I’ve spilled on the page and maybe offer a few comments. I’ll spend the next few weeks preparing the truck and organizing things, but should be on the road within the next 30 days or so. Go to http://www.ropeandchain.com and you can register your email to get a notification whenever the posts go up. Click on Edge Trek at the top left to see the so called rationale for this whole journey and review previous posts.
I’m ready to get out there.

7,929

On April 21, 2017April 21, 2017 By RopeAndChainIn The Edge Trek1 Comment

After nearly 8,000 miles of travel over 7 mountain ranges, four time zones, and 20 states, I am through with my latest trip to and around the edge. Since beginning, I have been from Venice, Louisiana on the Gulf Coast, to the Straits of Juan de Fuca at the northwest corner, to Grand Forks, North Dakota, just south of the border from Winnipeg Canada — the long way around, as they say. It has taken three trips from Atlanta to cover this much of the edge. My most recent was the most ambitious, and covered the most mileage, included the most diverse terrain, and took the longest time.

This is the part where one wonders what the heck one is doing. I’m exhausted and a bit overwhelmed by the nature of being on the road, living out of the truck, for almost a month. I’m also a little off kilter from having essentially been alone, processing all this experience, for so long. So it helped to have a little over a thousand miles from Grand Forks to Atlanta, blitzing down the interstates, to try and get a rational assessment of the edge trek, where I am on it, and what it means to me.

I’ve covered the natural aspects of the trek — the exceptional beauty, diversity and just sheer wow factor of how much there is to see — in the daily posts. And, I’ve tried to cover the cultural aspects of what is like to live on the edge in the various regions, and how different it is as you work your way around. What I don’t think I’ve done particularly well, is step back and take a more general look at what this trip is doing towards the original impetus for it: assessing the relationship of the edge to some definition of America.

The first thing is that there is a big difference between the natural edges (Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Ocean) and the political ones (Mexican-American and Canadian-American). I know this sounds like the most obvious thing in the world, but it feels very important when you are on the ground riding along. The natural edges are places where people look over the side and think about what they can do to survive, profit, or otherwise benefit from their relationship to the edge. On the political edges, there is historical evidence that the same was once the case, but today there is more a sense of tension there. Even on the Canadian border. The result is that there is a stronger sense of difference, this is America, that is not; which makes the edge more defining. It seems like more a feature of America where it is a natural edge, not a defining characteristic. If that makes any sense at all.
The second thing is that I am absolutely convinced, totally, that those of us in major urban centers, replete with communications and accessible comforts, are completely and utterly full of ourselves. The amount of time we spend gnashing our teeth over the state of things (or wandering around the country and writing blogs about it!) is very, very different than that of the folks living on the edges. For the most part (there are some large urban centers on the edge). Everywhere I have been, people are busy. I only ran into one instance of ranting about politics and that was on the northern border in a bar, and the offending patron was in distinct violation of the bar’s rules for drinking in the bar. Now, I’m not naive, I realize there is plenty of bitching and moaning going on out here, but here is the thing: it doesn’t define them and consume them. The edge means putting important stuff first — like dealing with the weather, or the local economy, or the broken truck, or your neighbor 20 miles away who needs a helping hand. Whatever. The land and people and work immediately around you on the edge is what occupies your attention first, second and maybe even third; before you get to anything else at all. I saw this same sort of ethos crossing the country to get to the edge and to return from it.

I tried to think about the different reactions I see at home and in the major urban centers with the ones I see out on the edge, and in the rural crossings back and forth. I think it boils down to folks who know that a great deal of what they have to deal with can not be fixed by anyone or anything. It’s too hot, or too cold, or too wet, or too dry, or too stormy. The storms blew something down, or washed something away. The mineral vein ran out, or the oil dried up. The fire burned through the forest and burned up the hay field. The power is out. The well is dry. The satellite is out. You can blame someone or something and be angry about this stuff, sure; but out here on the edge it also has to be dealt with. So they deal with it. Sometimes they need help dealing with it, and their neighbors help. In the end, I think this self-determinative, independent, pioneering, if you will, attitude is very much in keeping with what defines America. This is not to say everyone out on the edge is conservative, Christian, and wants to return to the good old days. They embrace technology, many are pining not for the olden times so much as Woodstock, and I saw more legal marijuana and assorted chill communities than I ever thought I would. It’s a diverse group out on the edge — but uniformly and fiercely independent. And, honestly, very nice. I suspect folks may be putting on their best when they talk to me — they seem interested in what I am doing — but everyone is nice. Seems like at least once around this trek I’d run into someone having a real bad day, but I haven’t yet.

The remainder of the edge trek with be on natural borders, save for a small section of Northern New York, northern Vermont, and all of western and northern Maine. But, it will be a lot closer to people and urban centers. It will be interesting to see if this makes any difference. I will return the edge, probably in the fall, at the northern Minnesota/North Dakota border and head east around the Great Lakes. The geography seems a lot closer, but the edge is probably longer — if you could straighten it out — for the rest of the way around. I’m hoping three more trips will have me back in Venice, Louisiana where it all started. I look forward to all of them.

Post-Script

I can’t miss a chance to talk about my partner in all this wandering around — a 2002 Toyota Landcruiser. It is a remarkable vehicle without which I couldn’t be doing this. The confidence it gives me to be out here, alone, is a testament to its legendary reliability. The attention to regular maintenance, and the additions I’ve made to it, allow me to know that I can go anywhere, in any conditions, get set up and comfortable, and get back. It is equally happy crashing along the old Mojave Road or down the interstate. I won’t make any changes to the truck for future trips.

I may adjust gear a little. I’m not happy with my camp table, or my stove. And, I think it’s time to figure out a fridge/freezer solution that will expand my culinary options. Storing food in a cooler is a hassle that turns into a mess, that turns into a bad day. Coolers are for beer. And backpacker freeze-dried meals, as good as mine are – get boring after a week or so.

Finally, I had a friend join for a few days of this trek and it was awesome. He flew out to a an airport along the route, I picked him up and he just road along for a few days. I hope more will do so in the future. It’s one thing to have me blather on about this, and another entirely to see for yourself.

If you’ve been reading along since the beginning, thanks for the indulgence. And feel free to share your comments here, or via email, at matthew.s.lewis@me.com. I’d be surprised if I haven’t said something in these blogs that was upsetting to someone and I hope if that was the case, he or she stopped reading.

Till I head out next, have a great life and go out and find your edge.

The Edge of Boomtown

On April 19, 2017 By RopeAndChainIn The Edge Trek1 Comment

I have been traveling around a bit for a while, and I’ve seen some things. But I haven’t yet seen ice fog. Until this morning in Havre, MT. So, for the uninitiated, among whom I counted myself until today, ice fog occurs when the thing that causes fog (which is related to dew point and something else I can’t remember) happens at the same time the temperature is below freezing. I don’t know how common this is. The net effect is that you wake up to a dense, milky fog which is freezing on everything it touches. Which is everything. In the words of Todd Snider, “It’s odd. I think.” Anyway, it melts right off the car as soon as it is warmed up and I head east with the new Rigid Industries lights making daylight out of murk. I can see the road, but nothing else, so I don’t have a lot to report on the early going. This lack of distraction gives me time to remember the night prior when I got my first sense of tension on this northern edge.

By and large the northern edge has been a naturally spectacular place, with all manner of flora and fauna and topography impressing at every turn. But the relative scarcity of people has meant there hasn’t been much sense of what it is like actually being on this edge. Unlike the shared southern border, this one has basically been a cultural non-event. Until I started drinking at the local pub. My barkeep was an affable fellow wearing a Kangol flat cap and madly pouring beers along the bar. He had to do a little extra work for my glass of whiskey, which is apparently not a local choice. This gave us a moment to chat, during which I remarked on how crowded the place was for a Monday night with no football. He said it’s the Canadians, they all come here. Because we’re Canadian-friendly. And there a bunch of Canadians who are down here for work during the week. I asked him if the other local spots were not Canadian-friendly. He said not really. I waited an appropriate amount of time for him to serve the other folks at the bar and during a lull re-entered the issue at hand. What’s the deal with Canadians and the other spots I said. Oh, everyone’s a good guy, he said, and they’ll help anyone out who is in a pinch, but they just sort of prefer to hang out with the local people. Why is that I asked. No real reason, I mean if you went in to one of the other joints, they’d be nice and serve you, but they wouldn’t go out of their way to talk to you like I am, so it’s not a Canadian thing, it’s a local thing. It’s just people around here have something in common and they like to hang out with folks they know, who are local, who do stuff and think about stuff like they do. Like Brooklyn, I said. He didn’t get it.

The barkeep liked my accent, and I liked his two rules for drinking at the bar: No discussion of politics or religion. As I thought about it in the ice fog of US 2 whirling through north central Montana, it made some sense to the general order of things these days. The people up here on the northern edge are uniformly nice. But given the choice, which they are when it comes to where they drink, they drink local. No real judgement about anyone not from here, just a preference for their own people who have shared similar experience and dealt with it in a similar way. One could call this unenlightened, but then one would have to explain the out of the way trips to purchase eggs and beer and vegetables only grown locally, which seems to be the rage amongst the hipper set. I think it’s kind of, well, normal; and doesn’t speak to any larger issue of our general polity at all. While I enjoy the irregular oddity of drinking in a strange place, given the choice, I will drink with those I know. This doesn’t speak to any proclivity for one type of person or another, it speaks to comfort.

Philosophizing accomplished I wait patiently at 70 mph for the sun to win the battle over the fog so I can see the country. Which it does around 11 o’clock. What I see is buffalo country. These wide open grasslands of central and eastern Montana were once the home of millions of buffalo. The Indians followed the herds, rounding them up on foot or driving them off cliffs before horses, and used all the meat and all the hides to see them through the tough times. Once they could steal horses, the Indians hunted them for sport and to demonstrate bravery, but always with some sense of conservation. White mean settling the west showed no such deference and simply killed them all. So now the buffalo country is cattle country, fenced and divided and still providing the lush graze that feeds us our porterhouse Pittsburgh Medium Rare at the steakhouse.

The source of the ice fog, I think, was the Milk River. The northernmost contributors to the Missouri River drainage — as Lewis and Clark discovered, not northern enough — it makes its appearance around Havre, coming in from the north, and tracks US2 to the east where it finds the Missouri. The result is that for most of north central to north east Montana, I am in a wide swale, with a ridge to the north on the Canadian border and a ridge to the south that turns the Milk River east to the Missouri. This swale is full of fog because of the Milk River. Eventually, somewhere around Ft. Peck, the two ridges come together and the Milk dumps into the Missouri. From there the route is higher, and there is general sense of the Missouri River to the south, but I can’t see it. More buffalo country and big sky prevail until I enter North Dakota. There is a big sign that says so.

In addition to the sign, shortly after crossing into North Dakota there is Williston. And all Hell breaks loose. Williston is ground zero for the Bakken Oil boom. Originally thought to hold a total of 2 to 3.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil, the Bakken shale formation is now thought to represent as much as 24 billion barrels. In 2010, over half a million barrels a day were being drawn up. This is because of fracking and because of horizontal drilling. The immediate result is that Williston is a modern day Tombstone. It is wall-to-wall money. Entire towns of temporary housing abound, along with every manner of supporting business from Boomtown Babes coffee shop to an executive headquarters hotel, to trucking companies, logistics companies, welders, fitters, drillers, riggers, tanning salons, bars, pilot car operators and more. North Dakota has over a billion dollar surplus in its treasury and the lowest unemployment rate in the country. It is now the second largest oil producing state in the country – Alaska included.

This is all, of course, very controversial, though not among the 2,000 millionaires a year being created in North Dakota. Fracking is a new technology and not without its detractors. What happens to all the water jammed into the earth with a force sufficient to split the rock layers? Is it contaminated? Does it leach into the ground water and deform future generations? And what about the whole idea of fracturing the rock on which we stand? Does it just settle back and hold firm? Does the fracturing trigger other seismic activity that threatens us all? These are fair and important questions, and are not unlike similar types of issues with other new technologies. But nobody in Williston is signing up for the debate. They are coining the money as fast as they can and, based on the statistics, are all the better for it. Median income in the county is among the 10 highest in the United States.

So, in general, the people in and around Williston, don’t want to talk about the risks — they think they know them and they think the rewards out weigh them — and the people not in and around Williston want the fracking to stop. Because it is bad. Journaled and credentialed experts line up on each side and shout at each other about it all everywhere except in and around Williston. In Williston, they make money. Here is what I will say: Williston is a typical boomtown and it’s interesting to see such growth and success in the middle of fracking nowhere, though they need to address zoning if you ask me. As far as the countryside goes, it’s a non-event. The wells are unobtrusive and generally spread out. Each one is four or five tanks about the size of a car and one or two nodding donkeys pumping away. A view across the grasslands is decidedly less antagonized by these than by 1,000 giant wind turbines. And the bar ditches and ponds along the way are thick with waterfowl, none of which appear to be glowing. All this is, of course, anecdotal and worthless to the real debate, but it does represent the life of the folks around Williston — who are getting fat rich. So any discussion of the terrifying effects of fracking, has to accommodate the enormous benefits of fracking in order to be heard. It generally doesn’t, and it generally isn’t — at least around the Boomtown Babes Coffee Shop.

By the middle of the state, there is no evidence whatsoever of oil or Boomtown. I can’t find a rig when I head into Minot (where a chain motel advertisement says “we welcome Canadians” as if to differentiate…). It is cattle and grain and cattle and grain all the way to the eastern border. One surprise, to me at least, is all the water. I don’t know whether it is the presence of the Missouri and all its glory somewhere to the south, or a shallow water table, or what, but there are potholes and ponds of water all over the grain fields and pastures. And everyone is filled with waterfowl. Geese walk the road shoulder like hitchhikers, and countless varieties of ducks from Mallards, to Canvasbacks, to Widgeons, to Shovelers, to Scaups ply the wetness dabbling away. I don’t know what this flyway is or what the seasons are, but I intend to find out.

At the end of all this is Grand Forks, basically on the Minnesota border. It’s 50 miles to Canada and I’m at the eastern end of the straight line border of the 49th parallel agreed to lo those many years ago. From here east, the northern edge is a chop chop of lakes and rivers and vagaries — notwithstanding the flat top of Vermont — that I will have to take another trip to understand. From here, I turn south to home. If you have your mental map handy, I made my way to the western edge at San Luis Obispo, CA where I turned North and followed the western edge all the way to the corner. Then I turned east and followed the northern edge from the Straits of Juan de Fuca to Grand Forks, North Dakota. Of course, I had to get all the way out there to get started, and now I have to get all the back to get finished. I will have total mileages once I’m finally in Atlanta, but it has been epic. The final push home will be as fast and efficient as roads allow, but I’ll have time to think and write about it all. So maybe two more installations of this gibberish before I put it away for a while and think about the next journey. I hope it’s been as fun for you as it has for me (it hasn’t, sorry). I’m headed home.

An Edge for the Ages

On April 18, 2017 By RopeAndChainIn The Edge TrekLeave a comment

I will blunder through this and generally make a hash of it, so let me start with a simple plea: if you can make, or ever have, the opportunity to travel from Northern Idaho through Glacier NP and across northern Montana, do it. The entire route is shatteringly beautiful, diverse, and restores a sense of pride in a nation that can hold and protect lands and people such as these at the same time it argues on Wall Street and in Washington, DC. The simple fact that we will fight and defend this land in equal measure with any other part of the country is a testament to our national fabric. That we will also support an enlightened polity to protect some parts of it on behalf of all of us, redoubles that testament.

So first a bit about the northern edge. We share this edge with Canada and it sprawls for around 4,000 miles, not including the shared border with Alaska. First discussed in 1783 after the war for our independence, we agreed to a border that handled Nova Scotia down to New York (what is now Vermont) at the 45th parallel. We further said in 1818, after another war in 1812, that a line would follow the 49th parallel as far as the headwaters of the Mississippi River. This was a bit of a problem since the headwaters of the Mississippi didn’t go that far north. Surveys ensued, we drug the Louisiana Purchase back out which gave us everything in the drainage of the Missouri River, argued some more and, in 1846 settled on the 49th parallel all the way to the Pacific. These sorts of things can be a bit bothersome when you are arguing with your parents. I will eventually travel all of the shared border, but for now, I’m dealing with the part agreed to in 1846.

I left Sandpoint, Idaho this morning in a cold rain and climbed up the stovepipe to the Canadian border along US 2. I went on about it yesterday, but northern Idaho is great. It is scenic and peaceful, it is lush and sparsely populated, and it is an odd little pokey thing sticking up between Montana and Washington. I like all of that. It also has a big section of the Kootenai River in it. The Kootenai starts up in British Columbia, but eventually makes its way down and into the Columbia and from thence the Pacific Ocean in Oregon. As a river it is a glorious beast of a thing. It carries as much water as the mighty Columbia, but it does it at a much steeper grade and through much tighter spaces. When a gold strike hit in British Columbia in the late 1800s, a guy named Edwin Bonner decided to mine the miners and he set up a ferry across the Kootenai that shortened the route to the gold for folks. He did so well they named the town after him. I crossed at Bonner’s Ferry, but there is a bridge there now. Just upstream from the old ferry crossing are the West Falls of the Kootenai, and there you get a sense of the power of this river. In addition to the 237 signs along the trail to the falls telling you how it will kill you, there is the thundering noise. I expected, as I clambered down, some monstrous falls, when it is actually just a really tight spot and short drop. (You can see a video of it on my Instagram @mlewis1965) But the entire river has to get through it because of the canyon walls. I got a real sense of how these rivers became barriers to migration west and why so many routes moved north or south to find ways across. They are like the mountain passes of the Cascades and Sierras.

US 2 is turning out to be my favorite road so far on this journey around the edge. It’s not directly on the border, but it is the closest east west road to it, and each little town has a sign on the north street where it crosses the highway that says “Canada.” The road is laid right on the ground and makes no attempt to hide the topography over which it runs. There are no blasted cut-banks, or tunnels, or manufactured ways to avoid anything; it simply follows a route probably set out for a wagon trail at some point, and shows you the country. For much of the way it is on, or about on, the route used by Lewis and Clark.

Riding US 2 out of northern Idaho and into Montana is a non-event. You don’t so much cross into Montana as you simply find yourself in it. There is no sign or great fanfare about the Big Sky state or anything. The tarmac changes from black to brown and the speed limit changes from 60 to 70. Not that you can safely do either for most of the time. Likewise, the ecology remains essentially unchanged. Deep valleys and sharp, dark canyon walls with pine forest wherever a root can grab ground is the order of the day. It is spectacular and constant basically until you hit Kalispell, MT, fight a little traffic and come upon Glacier National Park.

I keep t doing my Katherine Hepburn impression…”The Looooons, the loooons”

Glacier is over a million acres and today, most of it was closed. But from the first moment after entering the west gate, it was like a church. With even limited access I found the park to be unlike any other I have visited. We share it with Canada as it crosses the 49th parallel and we have rules about that, but from any side and any angle, it simply stuns. Glaciated peaks feed crashing streams that fill lakes so clear they look empty when you stare into them. Deer walk along the roadside and eye you like you are a terrible bother, while loons and other waterfowl swim around the lakes looking at the water like I did, wondering what they are floating on. I got to see all around McDonald Lake with all its great views, and take a couple of short hikes into the cedar and pine forests. Locked gates kept me out of most of the park. Without question, I will be back here in another season to spend a significant amount of time learning more.

Stopped and chatted with this crowd, but they were not interested

It’s really not fair to call my alternate route (instead of the road through the park, US 2 around its edges) a consolation prize. The drive from West Glacier to East Glacier is practically worth an admission ticket. You get constantly changing views of the mountains in the park, and you ride on the banks of first the Flathead River and then some river I don’t know the name of and countless other creeks for the entire route. I don’t know how anyone who drives this road regularly ever gets anything done. In addition to more deer, I saw a flock of turkeys, two fat coyotes and too many ducks to count. With all of that and the scenery, I felt lucky to keep the truck on the road.

The road turns south through Hungry Horse and into Essex before bending back east and heading down into Browning. Just before you get to Browning you round a corner next to a nice little stream and bang. Big Sky unfolds corner to corner and top to bottom like a freshly laundered sheet. Gone are the jagged peaks and conifers and in their place, all at once, is sky and rolling grassland forever. The wind comes screaming down out of the mountains and gives the old landcruiser a shove and we lope out into the vast open spaces of the Blackfeet.

The road here passes generally through the area named Camp Disappointment by Lewis and Clark on their return trip from the Pacific. You can go to the actual camp when the four wheel drive road is open, which today it was not. Looking back at the now sunlit snow caps of Glacier from here it is hard to see how disappointment enters into the equation, but Lewis and Clark were set on proving the Missouri drainage went past the 49th parallel all the way up to the 50th so they would have a case for us getting more land. From their camp here, the scouts determined this was not so, hence the disappointment.

East Glacier looking from the area of Camp Disappoinment

From here on the topography is one for buffalo and Indian ponies. The sky wraps around you and tucks itself in along the edges, and the ground rolls in subtle rises punctuated by loose folds around coulees and ponds. It’s just uneven enough that the light colors it in shadows and mottles the otherwise monochromatic grass and grain into something captivating. And always there is the sky, which, as I cross Cut Bank Creek fills with clouds so that the fresh pastel sheet is replaced with fleece blanket.

I go way over my normal 8 hours on the wheel today, and I really don’t notice it all until I get to Hingham. By then I’m over 9 hours in and its getting difficult to concentrate. The toll of all the winding and gawking of the earlier part of the day is being paid. I zoom by a pair of Pronghorn Antelope standing right on the shoulder of the road before I even realize it. They are gorging on an early meal. As the fleece blanket sky turns to a heavy gray wool I begin to think they know something. I finally call it a day at Havre, MT, spent but satiated. I’ve made enough distance that it is possible tomorrow will be my last day on the edge for a while. If I make Grand Forks, ND, that is where I turn south for Atlanta. It will be an interesting effort tomorrow, with weather and the ghosts of the Yanktonais Sioux hanging about the entire way. But it is the edge, and with each day on it, I learn and see more, and grow fonder and fonder of this incredible country we call home.

East

On April 17, 2017 By RopeAndChainIn The Edge TrekLeave a comment

Sunset at Lake Pend Orielle Idaho. Thank God for Idaho.

I am headed east. Not since starting this adventure along the edge at the mouth of the Mississippi River near Venice, LA, have I have traveled east on the edge. Today, I dropped off the family at the Seattle airport, aimed north to find and the edge and then headed east. Although I am traveling against the tide of the historical settlement of this great land, I feel like I’m heading home.

This is not so easily done as said – this heading east. One of the things that is leaving a real impression on me about traveling both to and along the edge of the country, is that out here away from the urban centers, you can’t just do what you want. Nature and topography play a huge role what you are allowed to do. You have to establish an objective and then figure out a way to accomplish it within the bounds of what is possible. We would do well to understand this ethos as we seek to understand our fellow man, particularly those outside our immediate environs. Life is different out here, and attitudes about life are correspondingly different as well. As I try to find a pass through the Cascades that is open and that will get me to a reasonable route east, I live this out. Almost 30 miles of State Route 20 through the pass at Ross Lake in North Cascades NP is closed for snow removal. Until Memorial Day. I end up finding a way through further south on US 2 which, as it turns out, will be my road until the western edge of Minnesota. It’s mildly frustrating because this means I will be some distance from the edge through eastern Washington, but such is life. I have GPS, a high-powered motor vehicle, climate control, access to food and water, etc. Imagine the challenges of those who mapped these few passes through the Cascade Range. From the Canadian border to the northern border of Oregon, there are like four passes east-west through the mountains. All along this massive range of mountains, men trekked and plotted and found four ways to get through. To be honest, I don’t know how they found four.

It’s pretty amazing to go from the madness of an international airport to a snow capped pass through the mountains in a matter of an hour or so, but that’s what I did. The trip through the Cascades was spectacular. Every corner created an expectation of “getting through” only to render another climb, another twist, another car-roof-high bank of plowed snow on the shoulder. Until, finally, the last corner comes. It feels like everything takes a deep breath all at once, and you stare, as you twist away downhill, at what seems like an endless horizon of space. It really seems like you won’t see another mountain ever again. Most immediately, however, what you get is fertility. For at the eastern base of the range, where the Columbia and Wenatchee Rivers come together, is a rich, broad valley of apples, vineyards and growth. In the eastern shadow of the mountains, protected from the worst weather, and fueled with the waters and nutrients of two great rivers, the orchards grow old and productive. Apple trees as thick as volkswagens are black-barked with age and yet still spread lacy branches wide and low for picking and, today at least, heavy with buds of new flowers.

I wish I could say this idyll lasted for a while, but it didn’t. Just as soon as I had grown to appreciate the fertile valley, I was climbing, even cliff hanging, out of it along US 2 up onto what turns out to be the real response to the eastern shadow of the Cascade Range. Absolutely nothing. In a weird twist of geography, invention, and weather patterns, I managed to find a stretch of eastern Washington that is nothing more than high, dry, scrub grass and grain fields for as far as you can see. It is uninteresting, unattractive and really, really big. Like the worst blind date you could imagine. It’s in the rain shadow of the mountain range, and it’s denied natural water by the Grand Coulee dam to its north. That dam, more on which in a second, does, however, irrigate up to a million acres of land SOUTH of this section of Washington. I’m driving right below the dam, but the irrigation is being used so far south of me I can’t even see green that direction. In fact, I literally drive across the lower dam that creates the largest holding area of water south of the actual Grand Coulee dam when I go through Coulee City, and the place is dry as a chip. I mean the reservoir is there and you can fish or whatever, but the surrounding landscape is practically lunar.

There is a deep and controversial history of the Grand Coulee Dam. I’m not going to go into all of it, but the cliff notes is that businessmen and lawyers fought about whether a dam or a canal was the answer to providing water for irrigation and power downstate. Then, with the dam-builders winning over the canal builders among the populace and politicians, there was an argument over low dam for power or high dam for power and irrigation. No where in all this was much discussion about the people, businesses, highways, cemeteries, etc. that were about to be underwater, low or high dam. Anyway, the bureau of land reclamation moved forward with a low dam and when they brought out President Franklin Roosevelt to see the progress, he saw two things: 1) progress and 2) an good project for the WPA to help make some work for everyone in the depression. So, like a good politician, he praised the work and promptly ordered a high dam. In one of the more ironic twists of history, Woody Guthrie was paid to write a song about the effort, which he did, and in which he calls the Columbia River a “wild and wasted stream.” The poet of the forgotten man forgot, momentarily, the fish and Native Americans and small business people who lost everything. I’m not saying the dam was wrong, I’m just admiring the realities of capitalism when it comes to folk singers. Finished in 1932 and improved in the late 70s, Grand Coulee generates more power than any hydroelectric facility in the US. And it helps make this stretch of US 2 I travelled today as dry and boring as a math test.

In an absolute demonstration of a higher power, eastern Washington gives way to western Idaho. Which is absolutely lovely. The forests are back, the rivers are rushing and there is a snow capped peak in every vista. Everything seems immediate, which makes sense given the narrow nature of this northern Idaho stovepipe. But mostly it is a relief from the vast bore of eastern Washington. For me anyway. I’m overnighting in Sandpoint, Idaho, and my spirits are high because not only am I back on the northern edge where I will be able to remain for a while, but I’m also headed into country I know is not boring. Tomorrow I promise more photos as I traverse Glacier National Park and northern Montana, hopefully just past the middle of the state to somewhere around Havre. After that, I will have the Missouri River at my southern side for a full day or so. It all holds the promise of grand country and adventure. I look forward to it.

Olympic National Park

On April 9, 2017 By RopeAndChainIn National Parks, The Edge TrekLeave a comment

Note: I am going to post this in both “The Edge Trek” and in “National Parks,” but the posts for Sunday-Wednesday will all be “National Parks.” I am technically off the edge, so to speak, right now to go deep into Olympic National Park with my son. After Easter, I will return to the edge for a few more days and will be posting notes there accordingly.

Today was a day to straighten up the rig, re-supply a bit and generally get ready for a different sort of adventure for the next few days. Part of the getting ready for me, involves doing a little learning about where I’m going to be and its history. I generally do this the same way anyone would; by consulting multiple sources, cross checking them against each other, reaching out to noted experts in the field for their unique perspective…Actually, I use Wiki for a quick overview, and then I dig into the bits I think are interesting directly by reading the cited articles and any subsequent threads to which they lead me. For example, there is a study on old growth forests of the northwest cited in the Wiki write-up that was written by two US Foresters in 1993 and is 32 pages long. I will read that tonight because I’m interested in it. Anyway, today’s post will be a brief fact sheet on where I’ll be for the next few days. The posts from the park will be more my typical type.

There have been humans on the Olympic Penninsula for over 12,000 years. Until the 1500s, those humans were all likely predecessors to, or part of the indigenous Indian cultures we still find on the penninsula today. The Hoh, Ozette, Makkah, Quinault, Quilente, Queets, Lower Elwha Klallam and the Jamestown S’Klallum tribes are the current representation of those cultures. There are parts of the penninsula which belong to them, and which they control and own completely and which are neither National Park nor National Forest.

The official efforts at protecting the Olympic began in 1897 with good old Grover Cleveland (I don’t really know anything about Grover Cleavland, but it sounds like his name should always be preceded by “Good Old” for some reason). He designated the bulk of the area as a Forest Reserve. In 1909, Teddy Roosevelt named Mt. Olympus a National Monument in an effort to protect a unique strain of elk without having to discuss it with Congress. The effort was successful and the “Roosevelt Elk” now roam all the way into Northern California. There is a picture of some a few days back in the blog. These elk don’t exist anywhere else and are bigger and genetically different from other elk in North America. Finally, Franklin Roosevelt got the deal completely done and created Olympic National Park as we know it in 1938. In 1976, it would also gain the designation International Biosphere; in 1981, World Heritage Site, and 1988, Congress would designate it National Wilderness. I feel like I’m going into the Michael Jordan of National Parks.

Alot of this fawning over the area and unique genetic material is because Olympic is almost cut-off from anywhere else. In the natural world, this separation creates special opportunities for plants and animals. Opportunities that can’t or don’t happen in areas where migration and cross-pollination are commonplace. You can sort of think of Olympic as a steep, high pointed hat with a broad fishing bill on the western edge, hanging on a hat rack. The hook on the hat rack connects it to the rest of the state of Washington. The high peak is the Alpine Zone, highlighted by Mt. Olympus at almost 8,000 feet and representing the highest concentration of glaciers of any non-volcanic peak in the lower 48. It has one glacier over 3 miles long. To the east of the peak, the side of the hat is dry, old growth forest ending at Puget Sound. To the west of the peak, the side of the hat is temperate rain forest of conifer trees. There is 100 inches of difference in rainfall between the two sides of the hat because of the rain shadow created by the Alpine Zone. Finally, at the bottom of the western side of the hat, is a coastal area along the Pacific. There are 62 miles of it and it includes the longest continuous sections of undeveloped coastline in the lower 48.

Over the next few days, we will visit and camp in three of the four regions — the old growth forest, the pacific coast and the temperate rain forest. Much like learning about the edge by being on the edge, there is nothing like taking a walk in the forest to see what you really think about it. I don’t expect to have much if any cell coverage (thank God), but I will record it all in word and picture and look forward to posting exactly what I think about it all here.

The Corner

On April 8, 2017April 8, 2017 By RopeAndChainIn The Edge Trek2 Comments

Pacific Beach looking north up the western edge

Another early start today, from Aberdeen — which calls itself “The Gateway to the Olympic Penninsula.” Rather than being Chamber of Commerce stuff, this is actually very true. The body of water known as both North and South Bay combines with Puget Sound in the east, to make the Olympic Penninsula a penninsula. And Aberdeen sits right at the eastern head of the bay. So, I opened the gate and headed out.

Rather than go on and on about the rain, I’ll just say; 1) the weather people are calling it a major storm, and 2) the local guy at the gas station shook his head at me and said “man, this is a nasty one.” Of course the latter was standing in the 42 degree downpour with a steady 25 knot wind, wearing flip-flops and a t-shirt. So, judgement is an issue in his case. Regardless, it was a brutal weather day to head up the western edge basically into the teeth of the storm.

The ride goes from a steady dose of striking, fir-lined beaches, to the rain forests of the Olympic. And finally, to Cape Flattery — as glorious a little piece of rock and forest as I will ever see. I really like the beaches here more than any to date. They have the right mix of action and calm, rock feature and sand, and, most of all, they have wonderful groves of fir right to the edge that make them feel like evergreen Tahiti. In a freezer. With rain. They appear to be catching on a bit as well. In between Copalis Beach and Pacific Beach, a planned community called Seabrooke has sprung up. Georgeous, million+ homes with varied but familial designs, are neatly arranged in a couple of neighborhoods all clustered above beautiful beach with a mountain stream crashing through the rocks into the ocean. I don’t know what I could have expected less.

I run out of beach road at Moclips because of the Quinault indian Reservation. I’m certain there a beach roads, or close to it, in the reservation, but I don’t have any maps, or any cell signal. So I follow the Moclips road inland to the base of the mountains, hug that base north, and return to the beach on the other side of the reservation at the town of Queets. Between Queets and Oil City, the National Park actually owns the beach and I will camp here with my son next Monday. Today, I cruise the campground and make a few mental notes and save the details for my time with him.

The mountains reach the sea at Oil City and the road builders decided not to risk it. There is no way to the northwest corner from here. The only choice is to “cut off” the end of the Penninsula and come to the northwest corner from the east. This requires some fumbling around with multiple roads all of which can go back to the place from which you came somehow, but I eventually wander into the right solution through the towns of Sappho and Clallum Bay. From there it is a tight squeeze along the northern edge to Neah Bay, Classet, and finally, via the Makkah Indian Reservation, to the point called Cape Flattery.

Cape Flattery was “discovered” by Captain James Cook in 1778, who also named it. It is the northwesternmost point of the lower 48 states. To its west is the North Pacific, to its north is the Strait of Juan de Fuca (more on which in a minute). It is part of the Makkah Indian Reservation and for many years, long before we started worrying about edges, the Makkah were here; using the point as a look out, and hunting seals on the rock island just a few hundred yards off the point. Today, the Tatoosh Island Lighthouse is on that rock island and the seals appear to be safe. The 1,600 or so members of the Makkah Tribe that live in the US, all live here. They earn a living from this small area by managing the forest lands. To their immense credit (in my book) there is no casino — at least that I saw. You have to park and take a hike out to the point — a mile and half or so round trip downhill out and uphill back. The hike is fantastic because the Makkah people don’t go out of their way to make it easy. You clamber over roots in the deeply forested approach, and when trees fall, they are left for you to climb over. Where possible, narrow boardwalks span low areas, or provide a semblance of stairs. All of it is enwreathed in vegetation, moss, fog, and lichen covered branches from multiple species of trees. If this isn’t on your bucket list, consider this: the only other people out there with me were two French folks. And they were there. Now, they could have been French-Canadians just there to figure out what happened in all the fur trade business that cost them this, but whatever. They were great and I helped them get their picture together and we all just marveled at the place.

Near the end, you get views both to the south and the north where great cliffs fall away to the sea. Cook said the presence of caves on one side looked like an opening that “flattered them with the hopes of finding a harbor” — hence the name. Those same caves were the recent site (2 days ago) of tragedy when a second year student at Dartmouth ventured down to the “Hole in the Wall” to explore and was swept away by the sea.

From the overlook at the end of the Cape, you can look north across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Vancouver Island. As the first section of my northern edge journey, the Strait of Juan de Fuca is of some interest. He was a Greek born in the 1500s who worked for the Spanish King as an explorer. Apparently the Spanish couldn’t figure out his Greek name, so he took something close to it in Spanish. He sailed all over the world, including China, and ended up getting his ship seized off the coast of Cabo and himself dumped ashore on the Baja. Once he got himself together, he undertook two voyages for the Viceroy of Spain hoping to get rich from his discoveries — both of these were to the northwest in search of a “strait” that would shorten future routes. Thing is, he never got paid, and there is no actual record of what he found. Broke and irritated with the Spanish, he went back to Greece where he died. He supposedly identified a Strait at 47 degrees latitude — the actual Strait is 48 degrees — but the only evidence of his discovery is writing from another explorer from England named Locke, who never really discovered anything. Locke named the Strait for de Fuca. Such are the vagaries of life on the edge.

I follow the so-called Strait of Juan de Fuca back along the northern edge to Port Aberdeen for the night. Tomorrow I head close to Seattle to a real city — probably Olympia — to clean out the rig, re-supply, and get ready for my son. Sunday morning, we go into the rain forests of Olympic National Park for a few days of camping before returning to Seattle to meet the rest of the family for a few days on Vashon Island, and Easter. I will get back to the northern edge on the mainland after that for a couple of days, but today, I checked a big box. I’ve now travelled the edge at the Gulf of Mexico, the entire shared southern edge, and the entire western edge. I am making my way around. Every mile from here on will feel like heading home — but it will also be against the tide of development that built the nation. Today I marked a journey end that was essentially the only thing that stopped us — The Pacific Ocean. We have ventured further, successfully if painfully, but only when provoked and only in defense of the ground on which we stood. This edge, this western edge, was the point from which we reached back inland, from which we recognized the power of a diverse and prolific landmass when knitted firmly together as a nation. The leadership was from the east, but the glory was in the west, and in the getting there. Today, I feel like I got there.

Rope and Chain

Category: The Edge Trek