Return To Owl Farm

Like the Chinook salmon returning to the headwaters of its youth, Rebecca and I ventured up to the genesis of our relationship, the Lake Wenatchee-Plain area in North Central Washington, on October 6-10.

Specifically, our stated mission was to spend time in the wild with Carmen, our golden retriever, enjoy the fall colors (below, at the base of our property at the junction of the Chiwawa and Wenatchee Rivers) in the mountains and prepare Owl Farm for the winter snows.

Rebecca and I first met in June, 1978 at a week-long U.S. Forest Service fire prevention training session held on the Central Washington University campus in Ellensburg, Washington. The training focused on providing background on law enforcement, fire prevention education and natural history for seasonal USFS employees who were in positions that dealt with the public.

That season, Rebecca was a fire lookout (below) on Little Bald Mountain on the Naches Ranger District and I was a wilderness ranger on the Lake Wenatchee Ranger District, both on the Wenatchee National Forest. When she wasn't on the lookout, which had a spectacular view of the east face of Mt. Rainier, Becky lived with her brother Doug and family in Yakima.

Back then, I lived near the Lake Wenatchee Ranger Station in a rental dubbed the "Mushroom Haus" because of the "Alice in Wonderland-like" mushrooms painted on the side of the structure, located across from the historic Cougar Inn on Lake Wenatchee.

Having just returned to North Central Washington from reporting jobs at the Brookings-Harbor Pilot and The Canby Herald, both small weekly newspapers in Oregon, I was looking forward to a summer of hiking and climbing in the backcountry of the Glacier Peak Wilderness and Alpine Lakes Wilderness.

After Ellensburg, we traded road trips on weekends to see each other during the summer, making the drive between Yakima and Lake Wenatchee.

For most of the summer, however, Rebecca was on the lookout and I was patrolling the spectacular Chiwawa and Napeequa River valleys. Here, I was inspecting a hunter's cabin in the upper Buck Creek drainage.

When Becky was laid off from her seasonal lookout gig on the Naches Ranger District, she packed her bags and moved to Lake Wenatchee, joining me at the Mushroom Haus.

Shortly after her arrival, the two of us (along with "Pancake," a mule, and "Jimmy," a burro) went for a week-long trip along the Pacific Crest Trail (right) to collect garbage left over from the "high hunt" and make one last sweep through the backcountry.

On this, our last trip to Shugart Flats for the year, the memories were so thick, you had to brush them away from your face, to paraphrase James Earl Jones in Field of Dreams. Our long weekend was fabulous, spending time with Carmen, who has a keen interest in squirrels, and enjoying "another fine day in the flat."

The summer of 2010 will go into the books as a most enjoyable one, spending time in the backcountry with trips to Lake Minotaur and Lake Theseus (solo), to Lake Valhalla (with Frank Czubiak) and along Icicle Ridge (with Kelly Tjaden).

Kelly spent a considerable amount of time constructing Das Tree Haus (below, with Kelly's young friend from Snoqualmie Pass helping secure the ladder) at Owl Farm: Phase One is 90 percent complete.

Looking forward to more backcountry heaven in 2011.