<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The crew at the West Coast Bureau sent me a copy of one of William L. Sullivan\u2019s numerous books about hiking the great Oregonian out-of-doors.\u00a0 To best describe Sullivan\u2019s passion for the topic of hiking in the wilderness, let me offer the following summary from the back cover of his 1988 opus <\/span>Listening for Coyote <\/span><\/i>(OSU Books – reprinted in 2000):\u00a0 \u201cThe Spirit of the wilderness is an elusive quarry.\u00a0 William Sullivan\u2019s quest for it took him on a 1,361- mile solo backpacking trek across his native Oregon.\u00a0 His remarkable route traversed four mountain ranges and eighteen designated Wilderness Areas.\u00a0 It led through fogbound rain forests, windswept glacial cirques, and sunbaked desert canyons – from Oregon\u2019s western shore at Cape Blanco to the state\u2019s easternmost point at the bottom of Hells Canyon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I read the above passage before cracking open the front cover and my first thought was, \u201cHe hiked with a 60 pound pack approximately the same distance that Lewis and Clark travelled by boat up the Missouri River in their first summer of travel.\u201d\u00a0 When Elizabeth from the WCB moved to Boulder, CO at the start of her MA program at UC Boulder, we covered the same distance in two days in the pick up I borrowed from my dad (packed to the gills with her college gear). \u00a0 To hike 1,361 miles in 64 days (roughly 20 miles per day), to my way of thinking, is mind boggling to say the least.\u00a0 The fact that he has authored eight books about hiking in Oregon and is known as \u2018Oregon\u2019s walking guidebook\u2019 is hardly surprising.\u00a0 Growing up in the Upper Peninsula means I spent my whole life in close proximity to, if not roaming in, wilderness areas, but I couldn\u2019t hold a candle to the distances Sullivan covered each day on his trans-Oregon hike.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Sullivan explained his rationale for this undertaking when it came to him as a wandering thought of being in the mountains:\u00a0 \u201cI knew the United States has set a world record for wilderness preservation – over eighty-five million acres in forty-three states – but I wondered, could the spirit of wilderness within us have flickered out in the meanwhile?\u201d\u00a0 He poured over maps and visualized a Wilderness Hiking Trail that would follow the \u201cW\u201d shaped Wilderness Areas that cut diagonally across Oregon from the southwest to the northeast.\u00a0 It took more than six months of planning and training for him to realize his vision of the \u2018New Oregon Trail\u2019 which is now included in Oregon\u2019s recreational trail plan.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0How does one pack for such a trek?\u00a0 Sullivan gathered topographic maps showing the public right-of-way paths he would travel.\u00a0 He sorted his two months of rations into packages and mailed them to selected friends, relatives and volunteers along the route so he could re-supply himself at intervals.\u00a0 By the end of his training routine, he was knocking off eleven-mile hikes in two hours and twenty five minutes while toting a backpack containing fifty pounds of firewood.\u00a0 With his preparations completed, he bid his wife Janelle and their two children goodbye and boarded a bus to Port Orford, Oregon.\u00a0 This is the closest bastion of civilization to Oregon\u2019s western most point, Cape Blanco.\u00a0 His kit sported a patch his wife had made and attached to his backpack – <\/span>Hell\u2019s Canyon or Bust<\/span><\/i>!<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Sullivan\u2019s narrative about this hike isn\u2019t just a blow by blow account of each step he took.\u00a0 He weaves a lot of Oregon history into each geographical area he crossed.\u00a0 He peppers the story with the random people he met along the way.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t dwell on the effect the hike took on him physically, but he offers enough details to remind the casual day hiker this was no day trek on a chipped trail.\u00a0 One of the more interesting elements of his book is hinted at in the title;\u00a0 <\/span>Listening for Coyote<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 It seems there are multiple Native American origin tales that involve the prankster of their culture, Coyote.\u00a0 Coyote is to Native culture what Loki is to Norse mythology and Sullivan relates his experiences with the real coyotes he encountered on his hike while searching for a connecting thread to the mythical Coyote.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Near the end of his hike, Sullivan is literally picking them up and laying them down in a trance-like state induced by the longer than average distances he had been covering to keep him on schedule.\u00a0 His final pick up point at Hat Point required a final hike into and out of Hell\u2019s Canyon.\u00a0 Hell\u2019s Canyon is deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon and in his effort to cover the last miles on time, he had to cover forty miles on his third to the last day.\u00a0 A mysterious bright light from above pulled him out of his trance-like march, so he pulled up for the night.\u00a0 As he bedded down, he noticed a strange, flickering fire some distance away and he pondered whether or not he was too tired to investigate. \u00a0 An eerie coyote howl reminded him of the tricks the mythical Coyote could play.\u00a0 He went to bed that night disappointed he had not made the edge of Hell\u2019s Canyon that day.\u00a0 The next morning, he realized how lucky he was to have Coyote snap him out of his trance-like state.\u00a0 Stopping when he did likely kept him from blindly hiking over the edge of the canyon in the dark, something that could easily have happened with him trekking in a state of near exhaustion.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Most of the people Sullivan writes about are in some way or another conservationist worried about the state of Wilderness in the United States.\u00a0 Where Sullivan expected to find hiking trails, he often found logging roads being constructed to allow remote wilderness forests to be cut.\u00a0 The strange part, he found, was the Federal government was spending more money to prepare areas to be logged than would be gained from the logging rights.\u00a0 If it sounds like the forest products industry has a strong lobby and some members of congress work diligently to make sure their home state industries can gain access to these lucrative wilderness forests, then you get the picture.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As a lifelong resident of Michigan\u2019s Upper Peninsula, I have spent my fair share of time in the woods.\u00a0 With that said, I am not much of \u2018wilderness hiking and camping\u2019 type, yet have done both activities in small enough doses to make me appreciate \u2018camping\u2019 at our family camp on Huron Bay.\u00a0 My version of \u2018roughing it\u2019 includes indoor plumbing, a fireplace, a sauna and central heat.\u00a0 The older version of The Swamp was heated by a wood stove in the main room and a small oil heater in the back bunk room, but even that 1958 to 1986 version of our camp was a far cry from sleeping bags and tents.\u00a0 Even the wild areas we hunted around Huron Bay were crisscrossed with old tote and logging roads.\u00a0 Whether we were road hunting, bushwhacking cross country, or snowmobiling the foothills of the Huron Mountains, we weren\u2019t far removed from signs of civilization.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There were two cross country routes we would drive to get to Huron Bay.\u00a0 One connected to the Triple A- a road that more or less connects Big Bay with either the hinterlands of Ishpeming and Negaunee or the area around Michigamme, depending which fork in the road one took.\u00a0 The farthest northerly passage branched off at a locale known as Anderson Homestead and deposited us at Big Erik\u2019s Bridge, not too far from the small village of Skanee at the northeastern end of Huron Bay.\u00a0 The other route ran from the mouth of the Peshekee River at Lake Michigamme and followed the route of the old Michigamme and Huron Bay Railroad grade.\u00a0 This wild railroad grade was hacked and blasted out of the rocky highlands separating Huron Bay from Lake Michigamme.\u00a0 We never ventured into these wild areas on a whim – in the days before GPS and cell phones, a vehicle breakdown in one of these areas meant a long walk.\u00a0 Had we not arrived on time, we at least knew someone would be coming to look for us before we had to contemplate walking out of the wilderness.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During the three summers I worked in the kitchen at the Huron Mountain Club, I made the most of my time off to explore some of the trails in groups and on some occasions, alone.\u00a0 By volunteering to deliver food caches for some of the kid\u2019s program overnight campouts,\u00a0 I got to see parts of the Huron Mountains some of the club members probably never visited.\u00a0 With the club truck loaded and a key for the gates in hand (the roads to the interior of the club property were gated to bar unauthorized vehicles from restricted areas), I would set off to make my deliveries.\u00a0 At times, the hiking group would want the truck left behind as an emergency vehicle and I would hike back to the club.\u00a0 Other times, I would make my delivery, hike a new trail, and then drive back to the club.\u00a0 On one occasion, I was parked below a trail that went to a rocky overlook on the west side of Pine Lake.\u00a0 As I was taking in the view, I heard the truck I had parked down by the lake start up and drive away (one always left the keys in the club vehicles).\u00a0 Having stopped for a short hike, I had to hustle a little to get back for my next shift in the kitchen as my return trip on foot took a little longer than I had planned.\u00a0 It turned out that a day hiker had broken a bone and one of the club hiking guides just happened to find my truck on their way to get help.\u00a0 They were happy I had followed protocol and left the keys in the ignition and I was glad I had stopped to hike to the lookout, otherwise they would have had to hoof it all the way back to the club compound.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first college summer I did not work at the Huron Mountain Club, I found myself living in a different kind of wilderness south of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore east of Munising.\u00a0 The glacial flatlands and swamps in the area surrounding NMU\u2019s Field Study Station at Cusino Lake may have only been 100 miles from the Huron Mountains, but the landscape seemed to be worlds away.\u00a0 We spent the better part of our Field Geography class using the tools of the trade to trek through and map some extremely remote areas. \u00a0 While GPS and Google Maps were years in the future, we did have excellent topographic maps and aerial photographs to guide us.\u00a0 Some of my fellow students from more urban areas put on a brave face when we contemplated how far out in the toolies we were on some of these mapping expeditions.\u00a0 Even with our location pinpointed on an aerial photograph, they were visibly relieved when we finally stepped out onto a road at the end of our mapping day.\u00a0 Going into the wilderness with the proper mapping tools made it hard to get lost and luckily for us, we never had to go looking for any wayward groups.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The closest I came to getting lost at Cusino Lake was on an evening fishing trip.\u00a0 My boss and advisor Pat Farrell suggested I take a couple of high school students brook trout fishing on a short leg of a creek.\u00a0 I was familiar with our entry and exit points to the creek.\u00a0 We started at the end of a short logging road which we hiked a quarter mile to get to the creek.\u00a0 There was a bridge just down the main road and this is where we were supposed to come out of the woods.\u00a0 Apparently I didn\u2019t question Pat enough on exactly how long the fishing would take us to get from point A to point B.\u00a0 With the creek\u2019s many twists and turns, the half mile between these two points ended up being a lot farther than we expected.\u00a0 This meant it\u00a0 took us a lot longer to navigate than we figured it would.\u00a0 Of course, being absorbed in fishing didn\u2019t help matters.\u00a0 When my companions started ruminating about us having to spend a night in the woods, I sat down and sketched out where I thought we were in the dirt on the creek bank.\u00a0 No sooner had I told them, \u201cWe can\u2019t be more than a couple of hundred feet from the road,\u201d a vehicle of some kind whizzed by us on the gravel road.\u00a0 We were no more than thirty feet from the bridge we were heading for.\u00a0 Suffice to say, we stumbled back to the road in the pitch black and felt our way back down the road to where we had parked the truck.\u00a0 Pat laughed and assured me he would have come looking for us had we not returned by morning.\u00a0 I should have thought something was fishy when we were leaving after dinner – Pat made it a point to ask me if I had matches with me \u2018just in case\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0There are so many truck trails, old railroad grades, and logging roads in the area south of Pictured Rocks National Park, I was extremely glad Pat had taken me on a tour of the different ways one could get from one location to another.\u00a0 During my second summer session at the Field Station, there was a Biology professor leading the group of high school teachers and students who were taking a four week outdoor education class.\u00a0 I was auditing the class for a directed study (tagging along and journaling our exploits) because I needed a certain amount of credits to get a reduced tuition.\u00a0 The prof was not at all familiar with the area so on the first day, Pat told him, \u201cAsk Ken how to get to where you want to go.\u00a0 When he worked here before, I gave him the grand tour and it will save you a lot of time.\u201d\u00a0 Needless to say, he was not the type to admit he didn\u2019t know how to do something so we spent many hours eating dust as we bumped along this road and that road in the open back of the university truck.\u00a0 When he finally got fed up, he would (reluctantly) ask me how to get here or there and I would tell him.\u00a0 I even managed to NOT say, \u201cWell, why didn\u2019t you ask sooner?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The students did not mind because a) I was able to tell them where we were and b) they got to see a lot of areas most people wouldn\u2019t be exposed to when sticking to paved roads.\u00a0 On the last outing, we were sitting at the intersection in Melstrand where the road to the Field Station meets the paved Pictured Rocks southern boundary road, H-58.\u00a0 The prof opened the rear cab window and asked, \u201cWhat is the easiest way to get to Miners Beach?\u201d\u00a0 He probably thought I was yanking his chain, but I had to confess it was the one place in the National Lakeshore I had not been to.\u00a0 He drove off and his teaching assistant glared at me through the rear window.\u00a0 We were on a paved road, there was no dust to eat, and before long we arrived at a very large Park Service sign directing us to Miners Beach.\u00a0 It just goes to show – driving down a paved road through a wilderness area isn\u2019t exactly the same as hiking, but one can still experience wilderness by car.\u00a0 In Upper Michigan, whether you are in a town or on a paved road, you are never far from some pretty wild country.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Hiking songs are hard to find, but one does find Trees aplenty in the wilderness!\u00a0 Rush proves it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The crew at the West Coast Bureau sent me a copy of one of William L. Sullivan\u2019s numerous books about hiking the great Oregonian out-of-doors.\u00a0 To best describe Sullivan\u2019s passion for the topic of hiking in the wilderness, let me offer the following summary from the back cover of his 1988 opus Listening for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-humor","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2349"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2352,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2349\/revisions\/2352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}