CHAPTER XII
Passed Loggers to the Oregon Border

It began to rain again at Logan Lake, so we stayed zippered up for another day. I rigged a 'cook shack' shelter, so Bernice was able to continue her tradition of fine foods for famished folks. We spent the day by reading, curled up on soft foam pads and down sleeping bags. Not all that uncomfortable of a way to spend a drippy day, except that I was gloomy as the clouds above.

Here I was, a web-footed Oregonian, hiding from a little bit of rain. I know that without showers, you don't have flowers, or green grass. Yet, I still had the feeling I had chanted, "Rain, rain, go away/ Come again, another day," as a child, once too often, and the day of reckoning had arrived.

Perhaps I was overly sensitive to the rain on account of our spending so much time under a desert sky last summer, and winter: or, from driving up from the heat of the Sacramento Valley into the sudden crispness of the mountain air. Whatever, now the sight and smell of cat-tails rotting in the mud along the shoreline of this shallow lake, or the homestead cabin itself, with roof half-fallen in, filled me with a feeling of doom.

Of course, I made sure not to share any of my personal 'all wet' depression with Bernice, so it was a surprise to me when she herself threw back the door of our tent the next morning with the declaration, "I'm alive!"

An early morning sun rippled across the waters of the lake that now reflected a heavenly blue. Birds happily swooped through the air. There was a freshness about, not so much from everything having recently taken a bath, but more from a shower of sunbeams. Yes, Bernice was right. It was good to be alive.

It was with this jubilant celebration that, after breakfast dishes were done, we all went to explore the cabin. Each of us conjectured what must of have happened in one day in the life of those that had lived here before.

With these thoughts in mind, once again we followed the Emigrant Trail. Without park service signs, we knew we were experiencing it as it had been. North, from the cabin, the pioneers couldn't have gone any other route. We had come to the first of many lava fields we were to cross in the Cascade Mountains. The way through was dictated by the pattern the flows of molten rock had faulted and fissured.