THEN
Three miles down Forest
Road 89 from the Rim Road, on the right, lies FR 89a. Thereabouts
begins the main campground of Bear Canyon Lake. About a quarter mile
along and just past the second shitter the road curves to the right
and down to the lake. If you fail to turn, there's a smaller dirt
track that continues about 200 yards to the end of the campground.
The road continues, but
the forest service had it blocked up with a shoulder high hill of
dirt and rock. The Tower Ranger told me it was an old fire road, and
the Forest Service was blocking a lot of the old fire roads. The
forest got a lot thicker past that hill. I'll bet I couldn't see 20
feet further, due to the lush foliage.
The fourth of July was
coming up in a day or two (I would have had to check the dates on my
journals to be sure). The crowds and paranoia of the early days of
forest life drove me about 300 yards further and I set up camp in the
first place I found with an open area large enough to stretch out in.
I tied my rope between
two trees, set up a tarp like a lean-to and unrolled my blankets
beneath. There were another couple of trees on the right, about six
foot apart. I lashed two poles to them, one on each side, and placed
branches I broke down to size between them. It made for a nice camp
table.
I used bits of bailing
wire to fabricate hooks from the main supports and hung my cook pot
and home made coffee pot. By time I had unpacked and set everything
up I had a nice looking camp. I learned how to do this as I went
along, using Clive Ormond's “The Complete Book of Outdoor Lore”.
I walked around, and my
camp was about fifty feet from the old closed fire road and invisible
from ten feet away.
NOW
I
recently camped in the main campground for the first time in over a
decade since the end of my flight to freedom. Things have changed.
Back then, there was a Bark Beetle infestation that lasted a few
years and left about 20% of the trees standing dead. It was
impossible to find a spot to camp that didn't include at least a
dozen trees that could fall on you. It made for some sleepless
nights.
Now,
there are maybe only 20% of the trees left after several fire scares,
they've thinned it out. It's ugly. You can see for a quarter mile in
any direction. There is nowhere to hide.
Our
last night there a few weeks ago, along about dusk, I took my camping
buddy and the Maggie Dog out that fire road to see some elk. 49 of
every 50 trees in that thick part of the forest were gone. There were
piles of slash everywhere. It was ugly. The spot where I once hid
invisibly was now visible from the main campground, let alone ten
feet away.
The
elk can still be found out at the Power Line Trail at dusk, but
distances seem to have gotten longer. What I thought was a three mile
loop hike when I was young, upon further exploration turns out to be
actually six miles. Maybe twenty. It was dark by time we located the
lower leg of the trail that returns to the lake, so we missed out on
seeing the part of our hike where the forest still looked natural.
We
wheezed into camp about 11:30 and immediately crawled in our tents.
Even the dog was tired. I used to do that hike in half the time, come
back to camp, build a fire, cook dinner, make a pot of coffee, and
read for a while.
I
have determined a lack of trees makes me tired.
