Within One Watershed:

Essays from Hackleman Creek

Part 1

The Uplands

A Sense of Urgency

Fire fills my thoughts this morning. A watercolor wash of radiant blue paints the smokeless sky thanks to favorable winds, but the charcoaled smell of a burned forest fills my nostrils, an invisible reminder of a wildfire eighty miles away in the southern Oregon Cascades.

A long-forgotten two-track lane, barely discernable under the encroaching bushes, leads me toward the east end of Browder Ridge and another day of high-country rambling. I inhale unseen particles of Douglas-fir, huckleberry, vine maple, sword fern, brush rabbit, fawn lily, raven, moss, black bear, lichen: all that’s been incinerated in the blaze. My head understands that fire can be a beneficial part of a forest ecosystem; it clears the woods of built-up fuels, reducing the intensity of future fires. My heart feels something much different: fear at the very idea of flames burning even a small part of my watershed, a beloved landscape with which I identify strongly. I feel compelled to explore every corner of the Hackleman before a future fire brings great change.

Hiking west toward the base of the ridge, I startle a couple of black-tailed deer. The doe bounds up a hill to my right, dark tail held erect in the universal alarm signal. Her still-spotted fawn bolts out of the shrubs directly in front of me and follows its mother. The doe’s single offspring suggests that she is a first-time mother. Female black-tails typically give birth to one baby during their first pregnancy, then have twins with each succeeding birth. Nature gives the mother a break when she’s new to the business of raising young. Both doe and fawn stop to look back at me with limpid brown eyes, then slip away into the forest.

Vegetation grows completely across my faint route; I recognize the shiny oval leaves and white flower clusters of a species of “California Lilac,” or Ceanothus, native to this area. This shrub is the first to grow in an area disturbed by logging, road building or fire. Its seeds, covered by a hard coating, need to be cracked in order to germinate. Heavy equipment scraping the earth did the trick here several years ago, but the heat of a wildfire is the most effective way to open the seeds. When ripe, three-lobed capsules eject seeds into the surrounding soil where they can lie dormant for up to 200 years, waiting for flames to trigger germination. Once germinated, the plants grow rapidly in open sun, creating the first layer of post-fire life. Later, trees will overtop the Ceanothus, making too much shade for the shrubs; they gradually die out, having done their job of colonizing the singed landscape after a fire.

I struggle through the Ceanothus thicket and once again find traces of the narrow road. In a few steps the forest’s silence is shattered by an explosion of feathers and flapping at my feet. I’ve flushed a chicken-like Sooty Grouse from the undergrowth. I watch as the brown hen flies low between the trees and disappears. Two steps later her nearly-grown chick erupts out of the bushes beside me. The Sooty Grouse depends on camouflage for protection. It will freeze on the spot when danger approaches and rely on its cryptic plumage to blend into the surroundings. If a predator or an unsuspecting hiker comes too close, as I have, the grouse will explode into flight.

These birds may have been eating berries or swallowing grit from the ground to help with digestion. They will separate as the youngster becomes independent with the onset of cold weather. While other mountain creatures hibernate or migrate in winter, the Sooty Grouse toughs it out by roosting alone on snow-covered branches and eating conifer needles.

It’s time to climb. Leaving the relative flatness of the nearly-vanished road, I ascend an extremely steep tree-covered slope. Navigation is easy in this trail-free terrain: I keep a recently dried seasonal creek on my right and simply go up. The forest around me is a mixed stand of noble fir, western hemlock and Pacific silver fir. Stiff curved needles cover the blue-green nobles, growing upward from twigs and branches like the bristles on a hairbrush. The lower portions of the trees’ columnar trunks rise completely free of branches; near the treetops, cones stand erect like fat green candles. The hemlocks have delicate short needles and droopy branches; their olive-sized brown cones generously sprinkle the ground. Pacific silver fir needles shine dark green on top and silvery below; they grow horizontally from each side of the twig and point forward like ski jumpers along its top.

Struggling to catch my breath, I gaze at this diverse forest assemblage, my mind still preoccupied with fire. The variety of trees here tells the story of recovery after a burn. Sun-loving noble firs were the first to appear on this steep slope after the last fire, perhaps 100 years ago. They grew in tight masses, each limbed all the way to the ground. After a few years, the stand thinned itself, the tallest nobles outcompeting their shorter kin for sunlight. As the forest canopy closed, it shaded the lower limbs; they died out and dropped, creating tall branch-free boles. Decades passed as shade-loving western hemlocks and Pacific silver firs established themselves under the noble firs. Eventually most of the tallest nobles aged out and died, leaving only a few of their species towering above the canopy. As time goes on, the Pacific silver firs will outgrow the western hemlocks and replace them as the major component of this forest, perpetuating themselves in a state of relative stability. One tree species makes room for the next in a succession of growth stages until the next fire burns through the forest, resetting the entire process back to the beginning.

Pushing on, I climb over several old logs. A moth with a wingspan of at least four inches drops to the ground at my feet: it’s a pandora pinemoth. Not found in great numbers here in the old Cascades, it’s common on the east side of the mountains where it periodically defoliates large swaths of pine forest. Black and yellow bands stripe its thick furry body; brown-and-black forewings partially cover its gray-and-pink hind wings. The bright-yellow feathery antennae indicate that it’s a male. Females have small lightly-fuzzed antennae. The large size and feathering of the males’ scent-detecting headgear create a greater surface area for an increased number of smell receptors, enabling them to single out pheromones emitted by females miles away. Apparently, this moth located a female and mated, then fell to the ground in the throes of death, his mission accomplished. The female will die after she lays eggs. I move him to the base of a tree and climb on.

After gaining 1000 feet of elevation in a half mile, I break free from the forest and see the bare ridge above me. Climbing through a rock garden of purple larkspurs, white buckwheat and lavender phlox, I zigzag back and forth to avoid stepping on any of these plants, each of which has worked very hard to produce blossoms in this harsh environment.

Twenty yards of scrambling up a sun-warmed patch of gritty soil finally brings me to the top. Angular lava fragments welded together by an ancient volcano’s heat make up the bedrock along the narrow crest. Eroded remnants of volcanic vents point skyward like gnarled fingers, framing the velvety meadow-draped northern peaks across the Hackleman Valley. I sit on a knuckle of one of the fingers and wait for my heart rate to return to normal after my taxing climb. Immediately below me, forested slopes plunge to the valley floor. To the west, Iron Mountain pushes its enormous wedge shape above the horizon. A thin avalanche chute lacerates the face of Echo Mountain.

Side-hilling below the jagged crest, I head north along the short side of the L-shaped ridgetop and reach its end. This perch allows me to see the entire stretch of the long side of the L, which is the main part of Browder Ridge. Near the point where the sides meet, a glacial cirque cups Heart Lake in an elevated bowl. I see a thin crescent of the water’s dark surface; the rest of the lake is hidden by a jutting shoulder slope. This hanging valley is the only part of the Hackleman high country that I haven’t seen until now. My collection of upland explorations complete, my thoughts turn again to fire.

Closing my eyes, I imagine what this watershed would look like if it were burned. The grim monochromatic scene in my mind’s eye includes blackened snags, scorched earth, eroding hillsides and a sediment-choked Hackleman Creek. Whether it happens as a patchwork of smaller blazes or a huge conflagration escalated by climate change, fire will one day come here. But nature heals itself, and the forest will return over time. Recovery wouldn’t happen in my lifetime, though, so my desire to know the living landscape of this little watershed in its current state feels urgent and intense.  

Next time: We leave the uplands and explore the valley.