Snohomish County's Favorite Hike...The Big 4 Ice Caves

Early visitors at the ice caves.
Photo courtesty of Granite Falls Historical Museum

Hot Weather Weakens Ice Caves. This recent headline told a familiar story. The ice caves at Big Four Mountain are a favorite hiking destination for people in our part of Washington State and have been ever since Big Four Resort was built in 1921 at the foot of its namesake mountain.

Every spring, snow avalanches fall from Big Four’s sheer cliffs and pack to glacier hardness. Cascading waterfalls burrow under the ice, forming caves that tempt the ignorant or foolhardy to enter. Almost every year, in spite of warning signs at the trailhead, someone is hurt. A few people have died under collapsing ice. The newspaper story in question was triggered by another such incident. Someone, probably climbing on the glaciers or the cliffs above, had slipped and fallen. Rescuers passed through one of the caves to help him, and got out just as chunks of ice came crashing down behind them.

But for those who use good sense, the ice caves make a spectacular outing. The trail is smooth and mostly level for a good part of its one-mile length, making it handicapped-accessible to and even past the newly installed bridge over the Stillaguamish. It begins as a plank walkway over wetlands, where you can lean over a railing to watch small trout schooling in the shallow water. Walkers have a choice of turning off on a trail which loops back to the trailhead via the roadbed of the old Everett to Monte Cristo Railroad or continuing on through some old growth trees to the river and up to the foot of the mountain.

Steve and Lenora Anderson on the new metal bridge

Beyond the bridge, the stream from the glaciers enters the river and the trail begins a moderate climb. Along the way, hikers see all stages in the life of the forest, from seedlings growing on nurse logs to decaying snags that house bugs and birds. Once we were lucky enough to see one of these snags topple to the ground without warning. We were also fortunate to be far enough away that the many-ton behemoth missed us!

Yes, if a tree falls in the forest, it does make a noise.

The last part of the trail is the most difficult. A recent winter’s avalanches, adding to the devastation of previous slides, snapped trees in half or completely uprooted them. One of the avalanches took out part of the trail, necessitating a detour. But the new gaps in the forest afford one a sneak preview of what awaits around the last corner. The massive wall of rock, with snowfields sloping upward from the base, is breathtaking.

Below: Avalanche passed this way



















Up close, wildflowers springing from newly uncovered ground bloom madly to finish their cycles before snow comes again.

Tiger lilies and budding fireweed

In fact, in whichever direction you turn, the scene is breathtaking, even with a summer’s worth of dirt begriming the glaciers. Just remember, if you go, obey the signs warning against too close an inspection!














Snowfields at the base of Big Four












Don't climb on this cave's roof !













Cooling off in the rush of chill air from the caves

















Feeling close to creation and its Creator

In Defense of Big Families

Delbert Rawlins and his five offspring, in the doorway of our "new" house.

Today, big families are the stuff of TV reality shows.
In my grandparents’ generation, they were simply reality. Grandmother Rawlins raised seven children. Grandma Schmidt gave birth to eleven, eight of whom lived to adulthood.

Those fifteen children raised smaller families, but still, having four or more babies wasn’t unusual. In the next generation, the size of the families dwindled to two or three children. And now our children are raising children...maybe. Of the five siblings in my immediate family, several of their offspring have no children. Four of the offspring have one child apiece. Only one had as many as four babies.

There are lots of reasons for this. Almost every mother is expected to work outside the home today. Children are not needed to help with the family workload like they were in their grandparent’s day. Young people expect to have a career and to make a good living before they even think about having families, and some wait until their biological clocks are on their last ticks.

Years ago I asked my dad why, when making enough money to live on was so difficult, he and Mom had had so many children, so closely spaced. He looked nonplused. “They just came,” he said.

I had barely turned six when brother David, the last of us, was born. Five children in six years and one month! Poor Mom scarcely had time to recover from the last birth before becoming pregnant again. She said she cried when she realized another baby was on the way. An aunt who prided herself at having stopped at two well-spaced siblings criticized our parents for having “all those children” so close together. “How do you expect to care for them when times are so hard?”

We children were blissfully unaware of all that. We didn’t even know that a new brother was joining the family until the evening Daddy picked us up from various neighbors who’d been caring for us for nearly ten days. He drove us to the hospital in Everett.

Daddy left us in the car with an admonition to be good. “I’ll be right back with a surprise,” he said. In minutes the doors of the hospital swung open. Light flooded out, and we saw a white-uniformed nurse pushing a wheelchair toward our old car. Mama sat in the wheelchair, holding a bundle on her lap.

Daddy stowed her suitcase in the trunk, then took the bundle while the nurse helped Mama into the car. He placed the bundle in Mama’s arms as we children crowded close to the back of the bench seat to hug and greet her. She turned around with smiles and a few tears at seeing us again. Of that moment, she later said, “I’ll never forget all those little round faces peering like moons over the seat back.”

Then the bundle squirmed and made odd little noises. Mama folded back the blanket to show us little-round-face number five, twisting itself into an outraged wail. We had a new baby, and with five children in the family, we would never lack for someone to fight with or have fun with.

Children are precious and should be treasured. There’s a lot to be said for big families.

Baby Grace Mooring makes new friends at a family reunion.

Wildfire!

A glance at the clock this morning told me it was time to get up. But something was amiss. The bright sunshine which has greeted us most mornings this summer had taken temporary vacation. Gray light filtered through the blinds. Overcast skies threatened rain...needed, of course, but not particularly appreciated. We’ve been spoiled!

On the other hand, most of us like variety. Daughter Lenora in Tucson, Arizona, called yesterday to say that it was cool enough to leave the house and sit on her patio. For her, that was cause to celebrate!

Here in western Washington, we comment when the wind kicks up. Evenings we stand at the window to enjoy the interplay of setting sun, clouds, and salt water. We love storms, too. At dusk recently, we walked down the street, marveling at the light show going on in dark clouds over the Cascade foothills. The sky above us was clear, the thunder too far away to hear, but the show was better than fireworks...and just as dangerous in our dry forests.

(One of many lightning-caused fires smolders in the western foothills. This one is too small for serious concern but officials keep an eye on it.)

On the east side of the Cascades, wildfire is a constant hazard. This summer a number of lightning-caused fires sent firefighters from all over the state to try to save property. Friend Carolyn and her husband recently moved to Omak in the northern part of central Washington. They love it there, but in two years they’ve watched two fires from their home.

Here’s what she wrote about the most recent conflagration:

"We saw it begin this afternoon. Three little tan wisps of smoke curled slowly into the sky behind the hills in the west. They didn't look like much, just a bit of smoke that would soon disappear.

"A couple of hours later, the sky began to take on a grayish cast. Joe tuned into the sheriff's radio frequency. Bits and pieces of conversation crackled. Fire units called to Buzzard Lake. Evacuations likely. Old Highway 97 closed.

"We looked to the west again. A burnished orange glow backlit the hills, with smudgy brown clouds billowing above. A brisk north wind blew the ugly clouds toward the south. By supper time the orange glow became a neon light on the hilltop. The entire sky turned brown and gray and white. Dusk deepened as the orange glow pulsed, turning red, back to orange, then fading only to reappear and begin again, all the while moving behind the hills to the south. Monotone voices on the radio droned about road closures and shifting firefighter units. They gave directions for citizens seeking evacuations.

"Since we worried that some of our property might be in the fire's path, we hopped into the truck and headed south on Highway 97,parallel to what we thought was a fading fire. Out beyond the town, the sky turned black. Then the acrid smell of smoke began stinging our lungs,and cinders and bits of blackened foliage floated down in front of the truck. About 6 miles south, we couldn’t believe our eyes. A jagged line of red orange flame exploded out of the night and burned angrily down a steep hillside toward an access road. Looking above the fire to the top of the hill, we could see a second line of fire streaming down the other side. Black smoke billowed above flames which looked like molten lava.

Credit: Al Camp/The Omak-Okanogan County Chronicle

"Enough. We turned around and headed home. We are grateful for professional firefighters who have gotten all residents safely out of harm's way, for family and friends who have taken them in, who are monitoring the flames and doing all they can to protect livestock and property. Nothing else can be done till morning.”

Several days later, Carolyn wrote:

“By Saturday morning, the flames on this side of the hills had been extinguished. A layer of smoke like cotton batting lay over Malott (a nearby town) and wrapped around the hills. The fire now had a name--the Oden Road fire. Two residences and a vacation home were destroyed."

By Tuesday, Carolyn said, the fire was mostly out, with only a smoky haze still drifting up and down the valley.

East-siders and “coasties” alike, we’re much aware of the hazards of wildfire. As we watch the current destructive fires overrunning hills and residences in southern California, we are grateful for the sacrifices of firefighters and others whose work keeps us safe.

Time for Blackberries

Ready for the picking...come and get 'em.

Less than two weeks left in August! Thistledown and fireweed fluff float through the golden air. The native plants in our front yard are well on their way to becoming a mini-forest. Flowering red currants and twinberries are loaded with berries, as are huckleberries, red osier dogwood, and snowberry shrubs. Rose hips are reddening. Flying creatures buzz, dart, and flit through sun and shady patches—black-and-yellow bees and wasps, smaller insects too, as well as butterflies and birds.

The thermometer reads close to eighty, but a feeling in the air tells us fall is near. Is it leftover chill from the cool morning? Is it something added by the changing angle of the sun? Maybe it’s the scent rising from the fields below our hill where crops are ripening. Or the sweet smell of blackberries ready for picking.

Whatever it is, something of my childhood returns to me every year at this time. I remember the giddy anticipation of a new school year—old friends, brand-new pencils and tablets, new things to learn. We're reluctant to say goodbye to the unstructured days of summer. There's a depth of sweetness in end-of-summer activities. The cold river has finally warmed enough to spend entire afternoons splashing in the swimming hole. Our mother's labors in the kitchen make the house smell of peaches and pickling spices. We bring in huckleberries from the woods for her to turn into our favorite jam. And she makes our other favorite jam, blackberry, from the little mountain berries we’ve picked as a family in the high, logged-over areas on nearby hills.

The little berries were hard to find, but we knew our best chance was to search a recently- logged area. The vines sprawled over stumps and dead brush and crept along the ground, hard to see unless we knew what we were looking for. The biggest, juiciest treasures grew in the shade of other plants. When we found a patch, we called the nearest parent or sibling to come share the bounty.

Nothing is tastier than those native blackberries. They can still be found in open, recently cleared spaces, but an interloper has crowded its way into many of the haunts they once claimed...an interloper with larger, more bountiful, easier-to-find fruits.

The Himalayan blackberry came from seeds imported and developed by none other than Luther Burbank, the genius who gave us many new or improved varieties of plants back in the mid-1800s. It’s a vigorous, adaptable grower whose stout, sharp thorns discourage those who try to dig it up. Birds love the sweet fruits and disperse the seeds far and wide. The masses of canes, up to thirty feet long, overwhelm native plant life and crowd it out. It’s a bully of a plant.

Genesis 1:31 says, "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good." Even those pesky Himalayan brambles have something good about them. The berries are delicious. Hank and I picked a couple more gallons this morning in less than two hours. Tonight we’ll have blackberry cobbler. I’ve already made jam. And we’ll have pies this winter to remind us of these golden August days.

Hank at work in the blackberry patch.

Cape Flattery Perspectives

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV).

Hank and I walked from the dimness of the Makah Cultural and Research Center museum at Neah Bay into bright summer sunshine. I love the feeling of history that pervades that place. It’s not at all like most USA small-town historical museums. No stagecoaches, no old-time wash machines, no photos of early-day street scenes. The history here goes way back, thousands of years before the European arrival on New World shores.

Five hundred years ago, a mudslide buried the Makah village at nearby Ozette, perfectly preserving everyday household articles, tools, basketry, ceremonial objects...all made of ordinarily perishable fiber, bone, and wood. Archaeologists and modern-day Makahs rescued these artifacts and used them to reconstruct parts of the ancient culture lost with the coming of the white man. They built the museum to share that culture with visitors and to teach it to their young people. The past, the present, and the future come together here.

We’d observed how the Makahs adapted to the changing natural cycles: gathering roots, berries, shellfish and other necessities; fishing; seal hunting; whaling. Their long houses built of cedar planks were well-suited to the cool, rainy climate. We marveled at their ingenuity—from constructing end-to-end whalebone and driftwood drains to carry rainwater away from their houses—right down to the tiny torches that seal hunters wore on their headbands while searching dark sea-caves for their quarry.

We drove through the town of Neah Bay to Cape Flattery—the westernmost headland of the contiguous United States—to one of our favorite places: a three-quarter mile trail leading through fir and cedar forest to the point of the Cape.

It’s a popular trail. We lingered while other hikers passed us on the new boardwalk, noting scars on cedars where Indian women had once harvested bark for making mats, baskets, hats, capes, and other articles of clothing. We imagined them picking huckleberries and salmonberries, thimbleberries, and salal berries like those growing in the understory beside the trail.

In weather less calm than this, visitors hear waves crashing into the cliffs long before they see the ocean. On this day, we heard mostly the cries of seabirds echoing through the forest. Then the point narrowed. From either side of the trail we looked down into blue-green waters reflecting the sedimentary bluffs and sea stacks.* Arching caverns yawned deep into the bluffs. The scene looked like it hadn’t changed for an eternity, but a sign posted along the trail informed us that on a stormy day, we would feel waves crashing into those caves, shaking the whole point. Someday, who knows how far into the future, the roofs of the caves will collapse and the point we stood on will erode into the sea.



Fog had closed in by the time we reached the final viewpoint, hiding nearby Tatoosh Island from view. In summer, Makah families once camped on the island to dry their winter’s fish supply. Whalers set out in sea-going canoes to intercept their migrating prey. Later, the Coast Guard used the island. An inoperative lighthouse still stands.

On my first-ever visit to this magical place, I peered into the dark caves where bold hunters once swam in pursuit of seals, imagining them armed only with spears and the tiny torch flames on their headbands. Even from above, the water looked frigid.

Suddenly, a pale shape rose from the nearby depths. My heart nearly stopped as the apparition grew larger and larger. A big, sleek head popped up, followed by huge shoulders and flippers. Two-thirds of the creature was still underwater--the biggest sea lion I’d ever seen. Two dark, inscrutable eyes peered into mine. The creature blinked and sank straight down and out of sight like a spirit from the deep.

Today, the waters are full of orange hemispheres trailing whitish tentacles. Squid? “No,” said the Makah ranger, a woman, stationed at the overlook to answer visitors’ questions. “They’re migrating jellyfish. It happens about this time every year.” She didn’t know where they came from or where the current would take them. But as far as she knew, they always came and always would come.

That would be nice. But history—ours, the Makahs’, that of the ocean creatures—tells us that nothing lasts forever. Yet, God has set eternity in the heart of man, and he has made everything beautiful in its time. He has done that to turn our hearts to our Maker. I think that’s what I feel most powerfully when I walk the Cape Flattery trail.

* Columns of rock cut away from the main mass of rock by wave erosion and standing alone, often crowned with their own small forests.

Surprised by Serendipities

When my husband suggested a vacation trip recently, the tedium of a long car ride loomed large. Projects needed doing. I preferred to stay in my familiar holding pattern. But obviously, Hank wanted to go, so I arranged with a feline-loving friend to take care of our cats Popcorn and Peanut and to water our flowers.

Hank’s home-town high-school reunion was to be only a little more than 200 miles to the southwest of our home. But we took a long way around to get there. First, we drove north to cross Deception Pass bridge, then south down Whidbey Island. My enthusiasm quickened when I sighted dozens of brightly colored sails moving across the sunny waters near Oak Harbor. From a restaurant in Coupeville, above Penn Cove, we watched dozens more sailboats gliding back and forth in a slow motion race...a lovely serendipity.

We crossed Admiralty Inlet on a ferry so small that every storm halts its operation. Near Sequim we stopped to walk a sandy path topping the dramatic bluffs at Dungeness State Park. The pale bluffs contrasted with the deep blue of Puget Sound far below. Suddenly, a fountain of spray broke the undulating pattern of swells. A whale’s long, dark back broke the surface, then disappeared. Again and again, we saw spouts from at least three gray whales feeding in the shallow waters. More serendipity!

From there we drove on to Port Angeles to

visit my sister Patty. For the first time we
saw Patty’s new home and garden; small
but beautiful jewels reflecting her creative
skills. The next morning, she suggested
we drive to nearby Hurricane Ridge in the
Olympic Mountains to see the wildflower
display. Up a narrow, winding road we went,
heading into the sky. The steep slopes above
and below us wore borders and splashes and
carpets of wildflowers. We pulled off for a
face-to-face inspection. They were lovely.
I have photos to prove it.

From Port Angeles, we drove on toward Neah Bay,
Washington’s westernmost town. The road winds along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with picturesque sea stacks, wild beaches, and views of distant Vancouver Island. We walked the shore and watched fog drifting in and out and even rising from the damp sand beneath our feet. Another serendipity.

We hiked to Cape Flattery where the Makah Indians once hunted whales. We visited ocean beaches to the south, along Washington’s coast. We stopped at a village called Taholah. A spit piled with huge, silvered logs and stumps--a graveyard for the bones of old growth forest--guards the mouth of the Quinault River where it slows before discharging into the surf. Lines of stakes curve out into the calm river where Indians still fasten their nets in an age-old method of set netting. I’ve seen Alaska natives on the Yukon and Koyokuk do it the same way.

On Highway 101, between Aberdeen and Raymond, we passed through thousands of acres of forest leveled by 125 mile-an-hour winds in December, 2007. Trees lay like spilled toothpicks, tops all pointing in the same direction, an awesome sight. We’re not supposed to have hurricanes in Washington, but tell that to foresters trying to clean up the mess.

By now I’d lost count of serendipities. We arrived at Washougal, Hank’s former home at the entrance to the Columbia Gorge. After a wonderful reunion with high school friends as well as relatives, we attended his former church. I hugged our 90-year-old friend Hazel and her husband Clias. Hazel had been felled by a simultaneous stroke and heart attack the year before. We never thought we’d see her again...but here she was, walking and laughing and thrilled to see us. I stroked the velvety head of her newest great-grandbaby. These church folks had been my friends for only nine years, but some of them had crossed into old age in that time and young people were now middle-aged. We stood talking with Hazel and Clias about the changes in the church. Clias looked from the newborn to his wife, and said, “Yes, one by one, we come...and we leave.”

My heart flooded with gratitude for one more chance to reconnect with these people we loved. The trip I dreaded had surprised me with such a shower of blessings, I can’t even remember why I didn’t want to go!

Reunions

There's nothing like a good reunion to hammer home the brevity of life. How can it happen that one day we're young, with limitless possibilities ahead; the next, the years of our lives have whirled into the past as if carried away by a speeding train?

We’ve just returned from Hank’s small town high-school reunion in Washougal, Washington. It’s been fifty-seven years since he graduated. Some schoolmates present graduated in the early 1930s; others, in the late ‘60s. Some never left Washougal. Others came from all over the United States, not having seen their classmates since they graduated. Hank’s bemused expression let me know that he, like everyone else, was searching countenances etched with a lifetime’s experiences for the fresh-faced teenagers he remembered. Name tags helped. Before long the meeting room resounded with laughter and joyous reconnecting. I listened to the stories swirling around me and marveled at the way life changes us.

Hank’s first girlfriend was there. But he went away to college and never looked back. I heard him apologize to her for that. She married someone else and raised a wonderful family. It’s too late to regret what did or didn’t happen, but still...do they wonder, What if?

One of the school’s former star athletes sat across from us. He seemed very quiet. Then I learned that he suffers from Parkinson’s disease. Another graduate, a watcher and listener like me, had brought his book to sell...a collection of memories about growing up in Washougal. I bought one for Hank because the two shared similar experiences even though they barely knew one another.

The oldest graduates there were in their nineties; the youngest still busy at their careers. Committee members’ adult children and teen grandchildren served at the banquet. The whole gamut of life—energetic youth to slow and painful old age—was represented in that room.

I couldn’t help wondering what those polite young people were thinking. I hope they find it incomprehensible that someday their smooth skin will sag and wrinkle, their strong backs will bend under the weight of years. They deserve their time to dream. I hope their possibilities become realities.

I hope their realities include the kind of life-long connections and good memories that will someday bring them back to a reunion like this one.