The Geography of Wonder

Life in the Hells Canyon Wilderness

From the wall of north-facing windows, diffuse morning light streams into the University of Idaho's map room. I'm here researching locations for backpacking in the coming season. The walls are lined with filing cabinets designed for holding large maps and bookshelves full of atlases. There are four old wooden library tables arranged end-to-end in the middle of the room. What catches my eye is a map left out on one of the tables. It details the seismic faults that intersect the Snake River between Idaho and Oregon. Movies of my past backpacking trips in the canyon flood the screen in my head — they refuse to be locked up. My legs want to saunter on the trail again. To dance with the wind. To be serenaded by the elk bugling and the wolf howls, held captive by the siren song of the eagle. These memories push their way into my awareness, looking to be relived, looking to reignite the spirit.

This is an animal story and a story of the place they call home. This is about a Golden Eagle, a herd of Rocky Mountain Elk, a Gray Wolf encounter, and a pair of fire lookouts.

Hells Canyon is the deepest river gorge in America. The Snake River began cutting its path on the Grand Ronde Plain following fault lines in the earth's crust. In 6 million years, the canyon slowly grew 9.6 miles wide and over one and a half miles deep. Then suddenly, 14,500 years ago, the glacial Lake Bonneville in Utah burst, releasing a tsunami that scoured the canyon as it raced down the Snake River at 35 MPH. ›[[202112080925]]‹ ————

There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The still spring morning air was moist with the humidity of the dew. It smelled so fresh and clean, announcing the potential of the day ahead. The air was drying out as the sun poked over the treetops. The sweater I'm wearing will soon have to be stowed in the backpack. I start up the trail in the cool shade of the forest canopy. The trees are motionless like statues planted on the hillside. First mature Ponderosa Pines, then mostly Douglas Firs further up as it gets steeper near the pass over Freezeout Saddle. The previous week's torrential rains have turned the trail into a quagmire of mud puddles. Swollen seasonal creeks cross the trail creating challenges to keeping boots dry and free from the messy muck.

Higher up, I settle into the rhythm of back and forth on the trail's three dozen or so switchbacks. I set a slow, methodical pace in a vain attempt to make the steepness bearable. The forest opens up, the path perfectly oriented for maximum exposure to the sun. In just a few weeks, the temperatures here will regularly flirt with 100ºF. Approaching the saddle, I see dirty remnants of the winter's deep snowdrifts. Anticipation grows as the path ahead merges into the horizon.

The Freezeout Saddle is situated at the headwaters of the aptly named, Saddle Creek. It is an open grassy area about the size of a basketball arena. The memory of the heart-pounding ascent vanishes, replaced by sudden wonder in the face of the canyon's sunlit expanse. I can't stop smiling at the inexpressible grandeur. This feeling of awe fills the body, consuming all worries and all pains. It is like the curtains being pulled back, exposing this surreal vista. Before me lies a hole in the earth that is like an immense upside-down mountain range.

Where Saddle Creek pours into the Snake River, Pete and Ethel Wilson raised nine kids. When they arrived in 1915, they started to scratch out a living with a big garden and by running cattle. Their original homestead included land and a cabin Ethel said was "big enough for a bachelor if he left his dog outside." Over that first winter, she went for five months without seeing another woman and went on to raise enough children to start a school.

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A dark shape darts into view, passing me like a bullet, its trajectory projecting it over the canyon's rim. Lost in the sun, then reappearing 400 feet above me, riding an invisible sky elevator. Slowly, its pattern of movement reveals its bird nature. She's a Golden Eagle, with her dark brown plumage, black beak, her collar of lighter brown feathers encircling her neck. She has no white markings at all, revealing her maturity. Her wingspan is as long as a basketball player is tall.

Above the gaping canyon, she rises on invisible thermals, circling in a broad pattern, counterclockwise, gaining 50 feet in altitude with each rotation. She is in her element; she enters it with ease like she is screwing herself into the sky.

She looks down on the open slopes of blooming Arrowleaf Balsamroot, dotting the canyon sides with dabs of green and gold like an expressionist's painting.

She looks down on the river weaving its way through the canyon bottom. The river is roaring, full of runoff from rain-soaked ground and the melting snowpack. The river is washing away what remains of the frigid darkness of winter.

She looks down on her hunting grounds containing an abundance of her favorite meals: Whitetail jackrabbit, Snowshoe hare, Mantled ground squirrel, Western rattlesnake, Blue grouse. She's being known to attack the canyon's Bighorn sheep and Mountain goats, grabbing them, pulling them off their cliff ledge perches, sending them plummeting to their deaths.

She looks down on the snow-covered mountains to the east. We call these mountains the Seven Devils. They were named by a Nee-Me-Poo legend of seven child-eating monsters that came every year moving through the tribes' encampment taking children. Coyote was recruited to punish these monsters by solidifying them into mountains so they could no longer come to kill the tribe's children.

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The Idaho side of the Hells Canyon Wilderness has three vegetative zones; glacial, forested, and grassland. On Oregon's side of the canyon has a long, nearly flat bench at 4200' that breaks up the otherwise steep slope. This is where the 20 miles long High Trail 1751 traverses the wilderness. It cuts through open fields of bunch grasses and wildflowers, through groves of trees, past seasonal streams, and springs, across long grassy ridges. It meanders through an abandoned homestead and past the grave of Charlie Gordon, a fur trapper found after the especially hard winter of 1918/19 "sitting against a tree where he had frozen with his rifle across his knees. Half a deer hanging in the tree."

The elk had vanished from the canyon, leaving it feeling empty like coming home and finding nobody to greet you. They had paraded down the trail single-file, turning the trail into a path of freshly plowed earth that, combined with the previous week's rain, formed a river of soft, deep, black mud. The perfect medium for preserving tracks. Tracks that told the story of the elk's migration out of their wintering grounds. The herd had marched out of the canyon, which would be soon plagued by the scorching heat. They were searching for areas with more cover in preparation for the calving season ahead.

The canyon is watched over by two fire lookouts. Like sentries on duty watching over a fort's inhabitants from ramparts on opposing sides of the canyon. The 82' tall Hat Point Lookout situated high on the western rim is capped with a small room - 7' by 7', surrounded by a narrow catwalk. Sixty feet up, there is an observation deck skirting the tower, making the lookout look like a treehouse on stilts. The squat two-story Heaven's Gate Lookout is the other guardian situated on the eastern canyon rim in Idaho. The Heaven's Gate Lookout got its name to counter the satanically named Seven Devils, Hells Canyon, and Snake River. Between these two guardians, the Snake River slithers along the boundary between Idaho and Oregon.

During fire season, a lookout guard's time swings between the quiet, reflective solitude that comes from being surrounded by the natural beauty of the canyon and the heart-pounding excitement of a fierce thunder and lightning storm doing its full-court press on the canyon. He sits on his wooden stool, glass jars on its feet to insulate him from the electrical surges of the lightning strikes. He's surrounded by the tools of his trade, binoculars, a communications radio, and the lookout's old Osborne Firefinder. The Osborne Firefinder is mounted in the center of the lookout. It is made of a map on a disk surrounded by a rotating ring and gauges. It is used as a periscope to get the bearings on small, almost invisible, wisps of smoke indicating the start of a forest fire. During the storms, winds can reach 100 miles per hour with blowing rain, pounding hail, close roaring thunder, and lightning all around. The tight, cramped quarters of the lookout, put tremendous pressure on the lookout's ability to stay vigilant.

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Mixed in with those of the elk herd, I see a different track in the wet mud. It was left by - Canis lupus. Pushing the elk herd as they moved out of the canyon. The print is like a dog's paw print, only larger, like comparing a man's hand with a newborn baby's hand. The muddy trail is a written record of the pursuit.

Bending down to inspect the tracts, I fall into a trance, wondering about the elusive animal that once stood in this precise place. I close my eyes and picture the wolf's faint outline striding, tail swaying from side to side as she trots down the trail, ahead of me, in pursuit of the elk. All that remains is this wolf's aura and her shadowy paw prints cast in the dirt. I am following behind the elk herd and the wolf pack adding my tracks to the record.

April 9, 2016, near the spring at the intersection of the High Trail 1751 and the Hat Point Trail 1752, at the head of Smooth Hollow.

I'm not sure what time it was, but it was dark, dark, dark. It was so dark it got brighter when I closed my eyes. The night air was crisp. The canyon was silent. The night's stillness engulfed me. All its inhabitants had been sleeping, including me. The close proximity of the howling and yipping shot me full of adrenaline. Bolting out of my sleeping bag, my senses instantly were on high alert, my eyes scanning the darkness for any signs of movement, searching for a flashlight, or anything to put in my hands. Ten seconds and it was over. It was over before I could register what was happening. There was a little rustling in the brush, then a return to silence and more inscrutable darkness. As quickly as they had come, they had left. I was of no interest to them other than something to be avoided. You know you are alive when you're among wolves.

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The wild of the wilderness is only a faint evolutionary memory that lies dormant for most. Knowing that wild places exist touches your heart where the open sky meets the vastness of the horizon. Wilderness is, as Wallace Stegner once said, "… part of the geography of hope." It nourishes your soul. Wilderness is really a feeling. A feeling that you can be conjured here in the university's map room, on the street, at work, with friends, with family. Wilderness is a pointer, a beckoning, a summons that feeds its energy into your sky nature, your mountains and rivers nature, your canyon nature.

You don't see what the eagle sees, you don't hear what the elk hears, you don't taste what the wolf tastes. The canyon is wild in a way the word "wilderness" never quite captures.