Seeing a single California Redwood, especially for the first time, is astonishing. As the tallest trees on the planet, which some call sacred or holy, they never fail to impress. Walking among an entire forest of these giant trees is an unforgettable experience. As the walk goes on, the memory of what anything other than this landscape looks like recedes and perception shifts to seeing people as small, rather than seeing the trees as tall. That was what it was like for us to hike the James Irvine Trail in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in California. I hiked this trail for the first time six years ago on a trip to the Pacific Northwest with my daughter, Mary. We happened upon it because it was the closest trail to our camping cabin in the state park. On that summer day, we hiked the entire James Irvine to Miners Creek loop, a full day trek which takes one on undulating trails through giant Redwoods, on to the brilliant green Fern Canyon, and across a stretch of sandy beach before winding back into the Redwoods. It’s been written up in hiking reviews as the best of what the Redwoods parks have to offer, wrapped up in an 11.5-mile day hike.
John and I set out early in the day on the James Irvine and were struck by the sense of aloneness we felt. Not only did we see few people, we saw almost no wildlife. In this environment, with its giant tree canopy and lush understory, we saw only a few squirrels and birds. Nothing else. When we stopped to listen, we heard only silence.
Hiking past a tree that had been cut to clear the trail, I noticed a bright yellow blob on the crosscut. It took a moment for me to see that it wasn’t sap or fungi: it was a banana slug! The banana slug is native to the Pacific Northwest, particularly California. Just as we saw it, a couple of tow-headed boys ran up the trail to see: “Is that a banana slug?,” asked one, “and did you find it?” It turns out that their parents, following just behind, had told the boys that the first one to find a banana slug would get $10. Since we were the ones to find it, and not the boys, the parents decided to split the booty between the two of them. Perhaps the parents had devised a Redwood Forest scavenger hunt designed to engage kids who have grown up in a world of gamification in which everything is a game that offers points, a medal, or, in this case, cash. For us, it was enough to just see a banana slug. It would be the only one we came across in our six weeks in the Pacific Northwest.
Silver Falls State Park: Trail of Ten Falls or Trail of Ten Trickles?
Silver Falls State Park served as sort of a consolation prize for us having to miss going to Crater Lake after a wildfire closed the road. It was just as well. Mary and I were at Crater Lake during fire season in 2018 and, on the day we arrived, standing on the rim of the caldera, it was impossible to see that a lake was at the bottom, due to the dense smoke. It makes us so sad that wildfires have become a predictable calamity out West in the summers. As with hurricanes in the Southeast where we live, no one knows where, when, or how severe, but we know that summer brings fires in the West.
Silver Falls is the largest state park in Oregon and is known as the Crown Jewel of Oregon State Parks, which is high praise, considering the wealth of natural beauty and sheer number of state parks in Oregon. It’s a 30 minute drive southwest of Salem and is just about as ideal as a state park could be. In addition to outstanding hiking, it offers campgrounds, camping in primitive cabins, or in cabins that are tricked out like hotel rooms, plus a pretty good restaurant. It’s also got nice common areas, with a gift shop, films about the park and its history, and a snack bar. We decided to hike the full length of the Trail of Ten Falls, a popular 7.2 mile trek. The hike itself is a beauty, with lots of old growth trees and, of course, waterfalls. Given that it was August and the area was experiencing a drought, we thought that we might be in for the Trail of Ten Trickles and, while the falls were not at their most dynamic and impressive, it was an excellent hike. We rewarded ourselves with huckleberry ice cream at the end and called it a great day.
In praise of hiking poles
John and I are fortunate that, at our ages, we don’t have mobility issues. Still, we decided a couple of years back to invest in a couple of trekking poles for tricky and technical trails or steep downhills covered in scree or loose rock that we sometimes encounter. As time has gone on, we’ve found that we take them on most trails for a couple of reasons. The first is that it’s not always easy at the outset to tell what may lie ahead on a trail. It may start out as paved and easy, but then become steep and rocky. The second reason is that having a hiking pole means that, if we do catch a toe on a root or a rock, the hiking pole will catch us. This creates confidence to allow us to spend less time looking at the ground and more time enjoying the sights, smells, and sounds of the trail we’re on.
Happy trails, y’all!
You and Me, Odyssey 