Meandering on the Way — Nov 30 to Dec 12, 2025

Sunday, November 30th

It was an unexpectedly lovely day today: a few little showers but then partly sunny. We went walking in one of the nicest–and strangest–places in our local forest. The trail starts from Soap Creek Road and takes a tour around the lower portion of Baker Creek. We’ll call it the Baker Creek Loop. Part of the route is in the OSU forest, but a portion of it leads into privately owned land. It’s not an official trail and is not well maintained. It is popular, though, and has always quite been passable, just a bit more challenging than the typical trails. We had been on it many times, but not in recent years.

At first the trail was just as we remembered. We followed it up a much overgrown logging road until we reached the site of a forty-year-old old landslide that had obliterated a big section of the road. From there, we took the detour that other hikers had created long ago. This is a rough, improvised trail that climbs steeply up the mountainside, traverses the width of the slide and then quickly drops back down to the roadbed. We were expecting this and it wasn’t all that hard. About a quarter mile farther on, however, we came to a completely new obstacle. We came to a place where a small stream had always flowed across the trail before flowing into Baker Creek. It had been a little messy sometimes, but never a problem. You just walked across on the driest part you could find. But now, a huge V-shaped trench had been dug across the roadbed. The little stream flowed at the bottom, five feet below the level of the trail. This gave us pause. To get across, we would have to scramble down one muddy bank, step lightly across the stream, and then scramble up the far bank. It wasn’t really what we had set out to do that day, but we guessed we’d have to try. It was fine.

But then, soon after that crossing, we came to another big gash in the road where another stream crossed the trail. This trench was even deeper and the sides were so steep that scrambling down was out of the question. We had to detour off the trail down a steep slope through the brush, find a safe place to step across the stream, and then scramble back up to the level of the trail again. Geez. After that we still had to cross Baker Creek itself. Here’s what that crossing looked like:

After we got across the main creek, things were pretty easy. Eventually we came to a real logging road that we knew would loop down to the place where we had started. Good. We had had enough adventuring.

Monday, December 1st

A has given us a very interesting advent calendar, one that includes a little fifty piece jigsaw puzzle for each of the twenty-four days. We did the first one today:

Tuesday, December 9th

E and A left today for Bozeman, Montana, where they will attend a memorial service for a longtime friend.

M remains at home to fetch the packages in from the front porch and to monitor an unusual event: the replacement of an eighty year old power pole and transformer located deep in our neighbors’ back yard. The electricity will be off for a few hours tomorrow, during which time M plans to power his computer via an extension cord plugged into the EV6.

Wednesday, December 10th

Thursday, December 11th

E returned today from Montana. As she was leaving Bozeman, she noticed this sign at the Alaska Airlines counter:

The funeral that E attended was for her friend Phil, who died recently at the age of 97. For much of his working life, Phil worked in ski patrol, first at Mt. Batchelor here in Oregon and later–when Bend got too crowded for his taste–at Big Sky Resort in Montana. A specialist in emergency medicine, Phil remained in the Big Sky patrol until he was nearly 90 years old. Mountain Outlaw Magazine made a short video feature about Phil in 2017. At that time he was thought to be the oldest active ski patroller in the country.

On Wednesday morning the Big Sky Ski Patrol organized a memorial for Phil, his final trip down the hill. His patroller friends and other mourners went to the top of the mountain and skied down together, spreading his ashes as they went. At the evening service several people told stories, including one about the time Phil was driving home off a mountain in his Subaru and struck a bad patch of ice. His long slide ended with the Subaru turned over on its side, passenger side down, with Phil still belted into his seat on the driver’s side, which was now quite high in the air. Three of his fellow patrollers came along soon after and figured that the old timer needed some help. They went over to the car and started talking about how they were going to get him out of the car. Phil rolled down his window and said that he didn’t need to get out. He was just waiting for someone to turn the car back onto its wheels so he could get home. When they’d done that, Phil rolled up the window and drove away.

Friday, December 12th

We have to say that the last months have been a somber time for us. We are both fine–as well as can be expected–but cold winds swirl around us. Since May we have lost three friends, all of whom were points of light for us. And now two more people that we care about appear to be on the threshold. Not a happy time.

From our living room window we can see hundreds of blossoms on the Mexican orange plant. It may be trying to tell us something. We’re not sure we’re in the mood to listen.

Of course it is still Christmastime. Besides traveling to funerals and watching poles get changed, we’ve got a little tree up and running and managed to complete most of our shopping. Plus, we’ve done exactly half of our advent jigsaw.