~ Blue Bark ~

by

William D. Honey, Jr.

One

Oregon Highway 20 from the community of Sweet Home to Hoodoo Pass, also called the High Cascade Summit Road, was circuitous, monotonous, and most of all dangerous. Near Sheep Creek Bridge, a horseshoe curve claimed the lives of overworked and tired truck drivers who made the last leg of the long haul run from the Midwest to the Willamette Valley. The rusted carcasses of trucks lined the bottom of the canyon below the bridge like some strange graveyard from a Stephen King novel. Why in the hell did he drive Highway 20? The fifteen-mile-per-hour-curves required all his concentration, then some, but he enjoyed the scenery he caught from the corner of his eyes. Besides, it took him by the Mountain House for pie--his favorite food the morning of a climb.

~ * ~

He had pulled into the parking lot in the early morning hours and headed inside for his preferred table overlooking Soda Springs. The Mountain House marked the halfway point between the valley and the summit. The owner and cook baked the best deep-dish logenberry pie in the whole damn world.

Murray Favor methodically scraped the bottom of the deep ceramic dish for every last drop of juice. He had finished the article he was reading in the Sister’s Dispatch, about a climber’s death on Three Fingered Jack, and placed the newspaper back on the table. He rose, grabbed his tan chamois shirt from the back of the chair, and wandered to the counter for a refill of coffee. He poured his second cup from the pot and sipped the hot liquid.

"Time to go," he told the waitress. "Time to go. If I don’t get with the program, I’ll be spending the night on top of the mountain. And I really don’t want to do that."

Murray paid the check, bounded through the door and down the sagging steps to his dark blue 4 X 4. He started the engine, drove out of the parking lot, and continued on his way. As he drove, he thought about the mountain. Three Fingered Jack, as he knew the mountain, had taken the best of the bunch to their death.

~ * ~

Lucky for him, traffic was light today. After two hours on hair-raising curves, Murray reached the Pacific Crest trailhead, about a half-mile northwest of the pass. He parked near a grove of three-hundred-year-old firs at the south end of the parking lot.

Today, an unusual number of horse trailers filled the area. Must be a camping convention at nearby Marion Lake, but then there was always a convention there. The U.S. Forest Service had recently zoned the lake as a high-density land use area--an area most hikers and climbers avoided like the plague.

Born and bred in Oregon, with all the characteristics of Oregonians, Murray was furtive and did not trust strangers--especially southern Californians--and most of all, like other Oregonians, he was environmentally conscious. Too many outsiders were coming into the state, to suit Murray’s taste--especially Californians who brought all their bad habits and behaviors with them.

Old Governor Tom McCall had been right. "Come to visit but don’t stay."

The canopy door to his truck stuck slightly as he reached for his gear: hiking boots, the backpack, and his rack, which he had inspected carefully again and again, along with the pitons, carabiners, cams, web harness, the eleven millimeter perlon rope, and climbing helmet. While other climbers, mostly the pundits, ribbed him about the thickness of his rope, Murray liked the extra security in case of a fall. A rope that snapped during a fall was like no rope at all.

He tightened his low-level gaiters around his ankles and placed the Bundy cord stirrups, he’d fashioned, in front of the heel of his boots. Then, he cinched the straps, made some other last minute adjustments to his pack, and grabbed his "boonie." Boonie hats not only shaded the eyes but also provided protection from UV radiation. He squared the hat on his head like a sniper might do before taking aim at a far-distant target. Finally he made his way to the southern corner of the parking lot to trail number two thousand, the Pacific Crest Trail.

He tried to make this climbing trip a couple of times during the summer and early fall, before the first heavy snowfall, but that wasn’t always possible. This year, however, he would have the time. He had just been fired from his government research job. He stretched his six-foot frame and started for the three-mile hike to the base of the mountain. He wouldn’t worry about the job--at least for now.

~ * ~

The trail wound its way gracefully up the ridgeline. The heavy rains and winds from last winter’s storms had combined to uproot the pines and fir that covered the trail. As Murray passed the Eight Lakes Basin junction at milepost 1.5, he saw that El Nino rains had eroded the trail to an unprecedented depth.

The goddamn horses don’t help things either.

While he hiked above the trail ruts, he caught sight of showy aster, a plant with medicinal qualities, blooming along the base of a rock outcrop.

Murray reached the top of the southern ridgeline and there she stood like an old warrior--the most splendid peak in the entire Cascade Mountains, Three Fingered Jack.

The climb required strenuous physical and mental output. Folks who didn’t know this to be an axiom died on the mountain. Murray shook his head and cleared his thoughts, removed his gaiters, tightened the lacing on his boots, donned his helmet, and trudged toward the first gendarme at the southern base of the mountain.

Approaching the crawl, Murray hammered a piton into the side of a gendarme for added security and hooked the rope into the carabiner in the front of his web harness. Climbing alone violated the cardinal rule held dear by all. Today, however, a solo ascent was unavoidable.

Murray reached the chimney from the southern pinnacle. He adjusted his pack and crammed his fingers into a crack to begin the ascent to the summit.

~ * ~

Two-and-a-half hours later, Murray lifted himself onto the summit of Three Fingered Jack. The view was typically gorgeous. He slipped off his backpack and sat on a small ledge just beneath the slightly frigid and imposing winds on the west side.

His status among the unemployed hadn’t mattered since the trailhead, but now he had some serious decisions to make about his future. The top of this mountain was a good place to do some thinking. How would he get himself out of this jam and get back into the ranks of the employed? He was old, too. Who would hire him now? At 53, there were many limitations facing him such as gray hair, slightly stooped posture and, of course, the aches and pains that came with aging. It was time to think about a new career.

For years, Murray had dabbled with writing. He had written a bunch of unfinished short stories, mostly outlining his life experiences and recollections. Writing always had been therapeutic for him. One idea, though, had stayed with him since his return from Vietnam in the late sixties. An idea that he’d never put to words, but it had occupied his thoughts. He sat looking to the west. The wind began to subside a little, but an occasional gust reminded him of his vulnerability. The view continued to mesmerize him and revived memories of Vietnam.

As part of the Fifth Combat Unit, Company A, Third Infantry, Murray had arrived at Tan Son Nhut Airbase along with several hundred other GIs on January 15, 1968. His particular unit drew the short straw and headed for Fire Base Four just west of Tay Ninh. Although military intelligence knew of the forthcoming offensive, the Pentagon had not yet given it a proper name.

The troops at Fire Base Four were lucky in some respects. Sergeant Major Joe Leonard told a yarn as good as anyone. Murray’s grandfather perhaps could equal the sergeant, but certainly not better him. Leonard told his stories, "bunker talk" as he called them, as a way of breaking from the reality of the war even if that break lasted only a few precious moments. As a veteran of twenty-five years in the military, including World War II, Korea, and now Vietnam, the Sergeant Major had stories to tell and therapy to give. And the sergeant was a master psychologist, too. When he could, he took every opportunity to give his troops something else to think about beside combat and death.

One evening, in a lull between fighting, Sergeant Major Leonard told a story that forever imprinted itself in Murray’s mind. Although the Sergeant Major had exceeded his usual limit of Japanese whiskey, he wove a plot much different than ever before.

"It’s called the Black Death."