Yesterday I hiked to the top of Mount Bolivar. At 4,319 feet, it is the highest point in Coos County. Although the trail up is only 1and 1/4 miles, it involves a lot of huffing and puffing because the trail is mostly a set of switchbacks climbing up the mountain side. I had lunch, emergency stuff, and four bottles of water in my daypack and my binoculars. Mount Bolivar is on the northern edge of the Rouge River Wilderness so I thought I might see some unusual birds.
The day was beautiful, but I wasn’t. In the bright sun I trudged along with sweat dripping into my eyes, my feet slipping on the loose rocks. I have no cartilage in one knee so I ease the banging of bone on bone with two hiking poles. It’s not that high but my aerobic conditioning is terrible so I am often stopping to catch my breath. That’s when it happens: I look up and see a branch moving where a bird had been perched.
I can tell by how much the branch is moving that is not the wind and that a bird had just taken flight. Who knows what it might have been or how long it had watched me slogging toward it? This happened twice to me. The third time I heard something high in the branches right above me. I saw a flutter of wings and then flash of red. In a small opening in the trees I glimpsed a red-tailed hawk soar away on the breeze.
Although the top of the mountain offers beautiful views of surrounding forested hills and the deep Rouge River valley to the south, it is a miserable and ugly place. The watchtower that had once been there burned to the ground. All that is left now are the foundation footings, rusty nails, and clumps of melted and shattered glass. Big flies of all different kinds loudly buzz over the area. Early in the year red rock penstemon and candy-striped lewisia bloom, but in August only the stone crop is blooming. On this day there was no shade and no breeze.
I ate lunch in blazing sun. Then I prayed and tried to write in my journal. I felt nothing—except hot. I didn’t encounter God, hear his voice, receive a revelation, or anything that makes for a great story. For some reason I kept thinking of the moving branch. The branch was empty, but it was definitely moving. I was not alone.
