Chapter 12: Rock slide

The trail into upper Wolf Creek canyon was open; the last snows had melted out of the north-slope shaded areas and the spring floods had subsided. Graydon was restless. He gathered together his packsack gear, some staple foodstuffs, his fishing pole, and told his mother that he’d be going up the canyon perhaps as far as Gardner Meadows at the base of the mountain. He planned to be gone for three days of hiking and early season trout fishing, with two nights of sleeping out.

Actually, Graydon wanted very much to get away from his step-father and to spend time alone in the mountains where he could be absorbed in something larger than himself. He’d heard the old-timers like Patch and Purdy talk about their “pine tree religion,” saying they felt much closer to a greater power in the mountains than in any church.

Graydon couldn’t disagree with this. His step-father had no use for church, probably because he knew all the members disapproved of his ways. But Dee Johns seemed always to be searching for something. She had been dumped in a Catholic boarding school by her adoptive parents until she graduated from twelfth grade. Later she was influenced by a California aunt to study Rosecrucianism. Literature and pamphlets were left laying about whenever she felt a need to soak up some religion. She insisted that her two boys attend the local Methodist church and its Sunday School classes whenever she could get the old Blue Goose started to drive the four miles into town.

Graydon was confused by the theology. It seemed mostly guilt and fear being shoveled at him: guilt for being a sinner, for being born a sinner unworthy of the mysterious saving redemption for which he was supposed to pray; and his disquieting fear that no matter how hard he tried to be worthy, he was destined for hellfire and damnation. He also found it most ungenerous and arrogant when the preacher claimed that anyone not accepting the Christian path to salvation would most assuredly burn in hell for all eternity, no matter how good they had been in life, even if they had never heard the Christian message.

“That’s why we must strive to carry the Gospel all those poor lost souls,” the preacher proclaimed. “If we fail to save them, the responsibility for their torment in hell will weigh heavily upon us!” Graydon figured he had challenge enough, trying to account for his own supposed sins. And he could not square the idea of a loving God against this church’s theology that abandoned the bulk of humanity to hell simply for being born in the wrong place, or at the wrong time, or for following a different path to their Creator.

He’d have called it all a crock of half-baked distortions, cooked up by a caste of men looking to make an easy living for themselves in positions of priestly power. But if he said anything like that, it would certainly result in Hell for him right then and there. He had no doubt that such heresy would land him in big trouble. But he would never accept that a self-proclaimed priesthood of mortal men should impose themselves as gatekeepers between people and their Creator.

Despite his skepticism over church religion, he found himself in total awe of Creation as he saw it all around him. He had only to look upon his beloved ridges and into the deep Wolf Creek canyon. The majestic 9,000-foot peak of Mount Gardner was the only church spire he needed as a reminder of his Creator’s power and beauty. He was far more inspired in the wilderness than he ever was in church.

Thus on a bright summer morning with his war surplus pack frame, an olive-drab packsack strapped to it, he set out for a quick greeting with Jim and Vi Brightman. Afterward he’d take off up the Wolf Creek trail. He’d decide later to make camp at the old cow corral camp at the trail divide between Wolf Creek and North Wolf Creek, or maybe he’d just stay to the main fork for the full ten miles up to Gardner Meadows to camp in the magnificent circle of peaks.

The day was warm. Deer and horse flies had hatched and were trying to feed on him, but his wide-brimmed felt hat and long-sleeved work shirt discouraged most bites. He did turn up his shirt collar and buttoned it tight to limit his skin exposure. Deer flies have a stinging, painful bite, but horse flies snatch out a whole chunk of hide and flesh. He hated them most bitterly and was careful to keep himself covered. Biting flies turned hiking with a heavy pack into hot, sweating misery.

The cool shade of the canyon and the cold snow-melt waters of Wolf Creek were comforting. He lingered for a couple of hours, fishing the lower pools, before taking to the trail again to climb above the creek in a long, upward track towards the trail forks.

He’d decided to camp at the forks and would hike up to Gardner Meadows the next day. Evening meal had been a delight: four native trout fried in his small skillet to a crisp, golden brown; slices of fried potato cut from baked potatoes he carried wrapped in foil in his pack; and a small pot of tea sweetened with honey; all combined to make a good meal. It was too early for huckleberries, so he made do with dried pineapple chunks and raisins for dessert. A small campfire cast a circle of light and warmth to chase the evening chill. He leaned back against a tree, his legs up to support the journal he’d started keeping since arriving in the Methow. He sometimes sketched images to go with his notes and though he was no artist, his sketches helped his memories.

A cold night was settling in. He banked the little fire until it was mostly embers and ashes. He wrapped himself in a wool blanket and slept.

His sleep was shattered with a feeling of blinding, searing pain, of confusion and helplessness. He felt trapped, pinned, and he could see nothing. Red flashes of pain stabbed through him.

He jerked upright. Shaking off his blanket, he felt nothing holding him down. Reaching to grasp his legs, running his hands quickly up and down and fumbling about himself he could feel nothing on or near him, yet he had been jolted awake with those certain feelings!

Foreboding: awful, clinging, penetrating, fearful foreboding ... something was terribly wrong. Pain! Pinned! Trapped! The feelings flooded his mind and he knew it was not himself, but someone else...

The faint trace of pre-dawn was beginning to reflect off the high snow fields of the peaks at the head of the canyon. In a short while, the ghostly grey light would spill between the trees and he could see the trail well enough to follow it.

He hugged his knees, willing his panicky emotions under control so he could decide what he must do. First, he needed to lace on his boots and pack up his gear. By then he could see well enough to move.

His pack loaded up, he glanced down the trail and there, standing silently, was the ghostly figure of the old man in buckskins, fading in and out of his sight. Blood flowed down his forehead and face, streaming from a wound on his head. His arm hung crookedly to one side, and his leg seemed to be crumpled, twisted at an odd angle. The apparition reached out his hand, beckoning in a “come here” motion. His mouth moved, forming silent words. Graydon felt waves of pain, of helplessness and need.

The man disappeared and the pain washed away. Graydon felt emptiness. Where the man had been, a deer, a spike buck, stared directly, boldly, at Graydon, its shining eyes and white-tipped muzzle bright against the forest shadows. Its big mule deer ears swiveled forward and pointed straight at him. It lifted its small forefoot and stamped impatiently, then wheeled half around, twitching its black-fringed tail while looking over its shoulder in a “come now” motion at Graydon.

It wheeled back and stamped its forefeet again, flung its spike-antlered head about, then made two bounds down the trail towards the north fork direction before stopping to look again at Graydon.

“Okay, okay ... I get it!” Graydon muttered, slipping into his pack frame before starting down the trail to follow the deer. They moved onto the North Fork trail and began a steady climb upward, the little buck trotting ahead, then pausing, looking back, waiting for Graydon to catch up. It was a long slog. Graydon figured he’d been led about five miles up the trail when the deer vanished. One moment it was there; the next moment it bounded around an outcropping and was gone.

Extending ahead along the steep canyon side, the trail scrabbled across a talus slope of rocks and boulders spilled down from the granite ramparts. The cliffs had yielded to ages of water infiltrating their cracks and fissures, freezing, expanding, splitting off slabs of rock that tumbled down the rock-strewn slope, falling down through the broken forest to the creek bed below. Graydon could see in the brightening dawn that a huge new rock fall had just swept down the slope and torn through the timber below him. His sense of foreboding returned. If anyone had been down there, they were hurt or dead.

Peering down, he saw the wreckage of trees ripped out, uprooted by the avalanche of rocks that had surged down the steep slope. It lay as a tangled mass of limbs and shattered trunks. He could see no one, nor any sign of a camp. Something tugged at him; the feeling of pain and need was strong in his mind.

“Hoooooo ... whooosh!” A nighthawk shot past his ear and dove down the slope in a flash, then lifted sharply upward, soared around in a tight circle and fluttered in Graydon’s face. It spun away and with a series of short glides and swoops, descended downslope again. It disappeared behind a tangle of limbs and broken trees, flew back, hung before him on fluttering wings and cried a rapid string of “eeep eeep” calls.

“Right!” he thought to himself. “So there I go!” He eased himself to the edge of the rock fall to make his way down the slope, carefully, slowly, avoiding the worst tangles and digging his boot heels between the rocks, clinging to handholds wherever possible to keep his footing. The slope was steep and he must not fall. That could be a fatal misstep in this wilderness,.

The buckskin figure lay crumpled, pinned, nearly obscured by the debris that had been sweep down upon him. His left leg was under a tree trunk, pinned and crushed against a rock. The man’s face was half covered in dried blood that had flowed down from a tear in his scalp. He lay on his back, his left arm bent at an odd angle, caught under a twisted limb. His right arm and leg were free. He had obviously lain there for some time, unable to work himself loose.

Graydon hurried to the man. Setting his pack aside, he pulled out his water bottle and a clean bandanna. He could see a glaze of intense pain in the man’s eyes. They were a deep sapphire color.

“Do you hear me? I came to help. I have some water here. Will you take a drink?”

The man blinked once, slowly. Graydon held the bottle to his lips and tilted gently, careful not to tip more water than the man could swallow. After a moment the man finished and closed his mouth. Graydon wet his bandanna and softened the caked and matted blood from around the man’s eyes and forehead, careful not to touch his torn scalp. He would tend that later.