Stormy weather

My sister Laurie said she felt like she was in Oz as she watched stuff go flying by her living room window. About twenty-five miles away in the mountains, Bill and I felt like we were competing in "The Amazing Race," one of those couples caught in the ultimate death-defying challenge.

As I read this morning's paper, I'm sure there were thousands of others in this area who wondered if the sky was falling in for a brief period late yesterday afternoon. The sky may still be up there, intact, but there's sure a lot of debris scattered across the earth this morning, reminding us once more who's calling the shots---and it's not us.

This bizarre introduction to the new decade of the 60s has illustrated clearly for me--more than ever--that we're all pawns of fate. What's meant to be will happen, no matter how much we will otherwise. Bill, Kiwi and I left ourselves in the hands of fate yesterday at Boulder Meadows, a place in the mountains northeast of Sandpoint, a spot I hadn't visited for more than 35 years.

In fact, the first and last time I had beheld the beauty of the place off Twenty Mile road north of Naples, occurred on the back of a horse. That was 1971, if I've gaged right, and it was with a group of Gold n' Grouse 4-H'ers and their families on an overnight trail ride. Dan Lund, one of my favorite early students, had invited me along. His mom Ruby was the camp cook, and I'm sure there were several Wood family members along. We set off from the McNall Ranch at Grouse Creek that Saturday morning and spent the night camping in the meadows along Boulder Creek.

I thought those meadows were about as pretty a place as I'd ever seen. So, when Bill told me Thursday night he was headed there the next day, I told him I wanted to go along. Of course, he had ulterior motives---a geocache to place and an opportunity to prove to Tom Johnson that there were, indeed, fish in Boulder Creek. He told me yesterday morning to go to town and get my license, so I did. We took off about 1:30, with Kiwi, fishing poles, geocache container, bikes and snacks. It was going to be a great getaway after the sad events of the week.

We drove to a place where the bridge is closed due to the cave-in of huge holes where earth once provided the pathway. A couple of horse rigs were parked next to the Forest Service john. After parking and loading our gear onto the bikes, we crossed the bridge and set off down the road. It was just over a mile to the meadows, which surprised me. I had expected a longer biking trip. The meadows are set up very nicely for trail riders with lots of well-constructed hitching posts, fire pits and another john.

They're also as pretty as I had remembered them so long ago, so lush, so green, so peaceful. We decided to continue with our bikes along the trail through the meadows that led to the creek itself. Biking wasn't too much fun because of the boards inserted for erosion control, so we ditched our bikes and walked on to the creek.

On the first cast from his fly rod, Bill caught a lunker---almost 2 inches. On my first cast from my spinning rod, I beat him by an inch. One of Bill's goals had been reached; Tom Johnson would know that the creek does have fish.

Bill kept talking about where he wanted to put the geocache, but the desire to fish upstream kept him too occupied to worry about it for too long. He showed me some holes where I might just catch another lunker. With Kiwi watching every move in her dutiful herd-dog manner, I'd throw my line toward the appointed holes. Most of the time, I caught limbs, not fish, and spent most of my time getting unstuck.

Bill had wading boots; I had my hiking shoes. By the time that first black cloud came over the ridge, I was wet up to my knees from walking in the creek. Seeing the cloud, Bill, the consummate fisherman, surprised me when he said we ought to start back because of the storm coming in. By the time we gathered our gear and headed back to the trail, the entire sky had turned dark gray. More dark clouds were billowing in. An ominous wind started, then the pelting rain, then the distant thunder.

I thought the trail back to where we'd ditched our bikes seemed a lot longer than it had going the other way. I almost walked past my bike in my hurry to get to safety. It took Bill a seemingly interminable time to attach his wading boots, fishing poles and other gear to his bike. By this time, the rain was coming down in torrents and the wind was blowing with increased gusto. We jumped on the bikes and pedaled like mad to the hitching post area. Bill suggested that we could wait out the storm in the john and that maybe he would not put out his cache on this day.

The john somehow didn't seem like a good idea but forgetting the cache deposit did. We biked on through the heavy rain. That's when the lightning started striking, and that's when I figured that whatever happened to us would happen. This week had been that way, so pedaling with all my might, I moved that bike on down and up the road like I hadn't done in a long time.

Hills seem like nothing when you're on an escape mission. Bring 'em on, and bring on that pickup where we could, at least, get inside and be safe from the storm. Wet to the gills by the time we reached the pickup, I wasted no time putting my bike in the back, running to the john and racing back to try to dry off in the cab.

We brought no coats, so we had to deal with wet bodies. In Bill's case, it wasn't so bad because he was wearing shorts and had changed from his wet waders to his hikers. In my case, I could change my socks and shoes into the pair of Crocs Willie and Debbie gave me for my birthday, but those wet, heavy jeans offered no relief. Kiwi had a towel in the back seat, allowing her to dry off a bit.

Feeling secure and grabbing some munchies, Bill said something about our great adventure and how much fun we'd had. I agreed. We had beat the odds, and now we could drive safely home out of this "isolated" mountain storm and live to tell others about our scary time up there in Boulder Creek. Well, at least, we thought it was going to turn out that way.

It was just after we followed the bull moose down the road, that we realized the adventure had just begun. As the moose headed up a hillside, I heard Bill say, "Oh, no!" I looked ahead to see a clump of three trees downed completely across the road in front of us. This was about 7 p.m.

I did not know that Bill had brought the chainsaw with him, but he did not know if he had any extra gas. Nonetheless, he started sawing. Within seconds he looked up the hillside to see another tree come down, fortunately far enough away from the road to avoid any further problems.

As he worked on, I called my sisters. I thought it a bit strange that their land-line answering machine didn't kick on when there was no answer. Finally, I reached Barbara on her cell phone, a very choppy Barbara. Eventually she called back, and I told her that if we didn't call within an hour or so to announce our arrival home, we were stuck up on 20 Mile Road behind some trees. This was about the time Bill's chainsaw got stuck in one of the trees. I wasn't too concerned but wanted someone to know where we were just in case. That's when Barbara told me they'd lost stuff off their house and lots of treetops at their Colburn ranch. They were on their way to our house to check on Lily.

Barbara called back a minute or so later to report that our mountain ash tree in the front yard was now a three-foot skinny stump, our chase lounges were all over the back yard and part of the lumber pile had blown across the yard. Lily was fine----thank goodness.

The hour I had predicted for our return to the Lovestead less than 30 miles away turned into two and one-half as we encountered half a dozen more trees to cut. Bill got his saw stuck twice during our 20-Mile Road logging adventure, but he did discover that he had brought along extra gas, so we sawed our way out to safety and a seemingly smooth trip home. Things started looking a lot better as we marveled at the small elk herds basking in the post-storm sunshine in two or three hillside openings along the way.

When we hit HWY 95, we figured we were home free. Not so. At McArthur Reservoir, the accident flares started lining the side of the road. There had been no accident, but the sheriff's deputy was letting travelers know they'd be sitting for a while on the road ahead while crews removed fallen trees from power lines up near Samuels. At least a dozen cars were parked near McArthur, and the Schwan's ice cream man was doing a great business from his truck.

We eventually moved on down the highway to the end of the line of vehicles that extended for at least a couple of miles. After fifteen minutes of waiting, we turned out of our spot, drove back to Elmira and turned east off on the road that passes several Christmas tree farms. It's an awful road, a dusty one too, but it took us clear through to Samuels Road.

We arrived home around 10:15 p.m. with no lights and no phone. I wasted no time removing my wet clothes in the dark bathroom but must say they certainly weren't very cooperative in the separating-from-cold-wet skin process. With dry clothes, I started the great June body thaw.

After making sure all animals were safely where they belonged and while listening to the first of the Fourth of July neighborhood fireworks shows, we enjoyed a sundae with fresh strawberries picked from the garden just the day before. Then, it was off to bed.

Today, we're figuring we were pretty lucky, and today we've got a job ahead to clean up the aftermath of this storm of all storms. And, I'm confident Bill's probably plotting just how he's ever gonna get that cache planted Boulder Meadows.

Five days into turning 60, I'm wondering what comes next.