Metolious Preserve

Around the Equinox—and the time college students come back to school, but have nothing productive to do at night—Mark and I head to the Metolious for the weekend. We camp at Camp Sherman, buy a sandwich from the store and eat it while watching salmon come up stream, have morning campfires, and take long walks. It begins to bring our world back into balance after the chaos of school starting, both my job and the university.

This year, we decided to walk over to the Deschutes County Land Trust’s Metolious Preserve. It’s a lovely, diverse patch of Eastern Oregon forest, right on the dividing lines of Doug Fir and Ponderosa bioregions. From the campground, it is about two miles to the north trailhead, and then there are several miles of trails within the preserve, wandering over the three forks of Lake Creek, then off into the dusty pines. Black Butte, absolutely symmetrical, rises on one side, glimpsed through the trees.

This year, we spent some time considering regeneration after what appeared to be a controlled burn on the way over. Tufty grasses and wildflowers were looking beautiful—it had rained recently—and the underbrush was coming back. Dogbane and bitterbrush were sprouting new shoots from the bases. Baby ponderosa trees rose up in the middle of the trail.  We’ve seen this pattern before, the regrowth after fires, but we always find it fascinating. And, if you are really lucky in the high country, you might be hiking through regrowth at the peak huckleberry and blueberry production years. We keep our eyes out. This is a fire ecosystem.  Even devastated areas, like the gorge, return with time.

The Preserve, was, as always, almost empty. One car in the lot, three people on bikes. Mark worked on his evergreen identification skills: Douglas Fir, Ponderosa Pine, Larch, Lodgepole Pine, Noble Fir, Grand Fir, and one small Juniper. Pacific Ninebark and roses were in seed and the snowberry was covered in white, often twinned, berries. Some summer blooms, encouraged by the rain, were blooming again—phlox, lupine, yarrow, and scarlet gilia. The sky was cloudy and the air misty as we walked into the center, where there are benches to look through the trees while you eat lunch. We have seen deer in the distance there on another visit, but never people. While we ate lunch, the rain began. True Oregonians, we munched our peanut and apple butter sandwiches in the drizzle, hunched in raincoats. After lunch, we walked over to a shelter and changed into rain pants. “I think it’s stopping,” Mark observed. Just to be on the safe side, we kept the rain gear on.

Walking back, we moved a little more slowly. The world was still and quiet. The rain stopped; in places it looked like it had never started. When we came into civilization, we passed people and their dogs, families gathered at the store, campers watching the river flow by. Our fire pit was sodden from rains, so we set up our campfire and chairs in the CCC shelter, which has one of the best fireplaces—and views—in the country.  The stars came out right before we went to bed.