Chapter 15 ~ Page 209
Instead of backtracking up to the main trail the next morning, I decided to follow the old loop route north. My step-mother rode Pokey. The girls drove around with their grandfather to Watum Lake to help blow up his air mattresses, cook fried chicken, and eat all the candy he had brought.
They missed a day on the trail that also brought back a lot of memories. Recent ones, as bushwhacking our way through in California. This loop had been abandoned so long that we had to chop out windfalls, and walls of brush. Unfortunately, our ax had been packed away. Barry and I had to slip, and re-tie, a diamond while hanging on to the horse with one hand, using the other to throw the hitch, and a third to keep from falling off a cliff. Sound impossible? It was.
The girls laughed themselves silly when they heard about No-Name going around a huge log by jumping off a bank, downhill,and leaping back up again out of sheer fright after triggering a rock slide. All I could do was hang on and pray. With our guest along, cursing was out. No other horse was dumb enough to follow this lead. So, it took a half hour of hard work to advance two feet. We covered six miles in six hours; another six in a third of that time, once back on the trail.
The next morning it was Bernice's turn to be left out of all the excitement. She returned to Portland to arrange with my sister, Mary Margaret, to meet us with a cache at a camp along the Columbia River. Charlie Horse, strutting along only carrying an empty saddle, set the tone of the day. Everyone else, but him, missed her pleasant optimism, her appreciation for the beautiful.
I know she would have caught her breath in more ways than one when we stopped for lunch at a highpoint where it was possible to lazily dangle a leg back and forth while setting at the edge over a drop-off of 4 ,000 feet into the Columbia River Gorge. As we munched on cold chicken, the ants invading our picnic seemed to be a tiny tug boat and barge on the water below, or a truck and trailer on the interstate highway. We could even look down upon a light plane, buzzing about as if a dragon fly.
But without mother to keep us kids in line, we all started arguing over who got which piece of chicken. I lost my temper and threw a wing at BJ. It missed, and hit Bernadette. She started to cry, picked it up, and flung it back past my ear. It sailed out to fall forever, to the freeway below.
Nothing like working out frustrations. Coming off of that mountain it took eight miles of switchbacks to cover less than one horizontal mile forward. But, instead of worrying about the danger of descending this cliff, we laughed at the idea of one fried, falling chicken wing being reported as an unidentified flying object.
They missed a day on the trail that also brought back a lot of memories. Recent ones, as bushwhacking our way through in California. This loop had been abandoned so long that we had to chop out windfalls, and walls of brush. Unfortunately, our ax had been packed away. Barry and I had to slip, and re-tie, a diamond while hanging on to the horse with one hand, using the other to throw the hitch, and a third to keep from falling off a cliff. Sound impossible? It was.
The girls laughed themselves silly when they heard about No-Name going around a huge log by jumping off a bank, downhill,and leaping back up again out of sheer fright after triggering a rock slide. All I could do was hang on and pray. With our guest along, cursing was out. No other horse was dumb enough to follow this lead. So, it took a half hour of hard work to advance two feet. We covered six miles in six hours; another six in a third of that time, once back on the trail.The next morning it was Bernice's turn to be left out of all the excitement. She returned to Portland to arrange with my sister, Mary Margaret, to meet us with a cache at a camp along the Columbia River. Charlie Horse, strutting along only carrying an empty saddle, set the tone of the day. Everyone else, but him, missed her pleasant optimism, her appreciation for the beautiful.
I know she would have caught her breath in more ways than one when we stopped for lunch at a highpoint where it was possible to lazily dangle a leg back and forth while setting at the edge over a drop-off of 4 ,000 feet into the Columbia River Gorge. As we munched on cold chicken, the ants invading our picnic seemed to be a tiny tug boat and barge on the water below, or a truck and trailer on the interstate highway. We could even look down upon a light plane, buzzing about as if a dragon fly.
But without mother to keep us kids in line, we all started arguing over who got which piece of chicken. I lost my temper and threw a wing at BJ. It missed, and hit Bernadette. She started to cry, picked it up, and flung it back past my ear. It sailed out to fall forever, to the freeway below.
Nothing like working out frustrations. Coming off of that mountain it took eight miles of switchbacks to cover less than one horizontal mile forward. But, instead of worrying about the danger of descending this cliff, we laughed at the idea of one fried, falling chicken wing being reported as an unidentified flying object.
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Text and Photographs © Barry Murray 1971-2007 Mac&Murray Multimedia