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    Tales From The Mountainside: Adventures From Youth To Old Age
    Tales From The Mountainside: Adventures From Youth To Old Age
    Tales From The Mountainside: Adventures From Youth To Old Age
    Ebook153 pages1 hour

    Tales From The Mountainside: Adventures From Youth To Old Age

    By Verl Rogers

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    About this ebook

    "Tales From The Mountainside: Adventures From Youth To Old Age" is a collection of essays from mountain climber and outdoorsman Verl Rogers. He recounts humorous and ambitious adventures from youth to his 80s on outings covering everything from climbing to fishing with family in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVerl Rogers
    Release dateDec 21, 2015
    ISBN9781310404931
    Tales From The Mountainside: Adventures From Youth To Old Age
    Author

    Verl Rogers

    Born in Washington State 1927, grew up in Wenatchee WA, graduated high school 1945, joined navy just before end of WWII, served one year, graduated Whitman College 1950. Worked for Social Security (federal),then Safeco Ins, Pemco Ins, Grange Ins, returned to Social Security 21 years, married to Janet Bixler 1953, two daughters, three grandchildren. Lived in Juneau, Marysville, Seattle, Aberdeen, Yakima, Anacortes, Lacey WA. Retired 1988, now live in retirement village Panorama. One daughter died of cancer 2010, wife died 2012. I write one essay per week.

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      Book preview

      Tales From The Mountainside - Verl Rogers

      Verl Rogers is an avid adventurer who has spent decades of his life hiking, rock climbing, skiing and travelling. In addition to writing about the great outdoors and mountains in the Pacific Northwest, he also writes fictional essays and family memories.

      Disclaimer

      This is a memoir, and skeptical readers must be warned that all such writings are distorted by self-interest and damaged by time. I try to be accurate but also, please remember that I am human.

      Names, characters, places and incidents are mostly the product of my imagination or are changed to suit the story. Some essays depict past events. My memory is not complete, nor would I want to set down everything, the good and bad, so these biased accounts cannot be taken as the factual story of what passed.

      The Perfect Christmas Tree

      When we were kids in the 1930s the Christmas trees in the sale lots were priced out of our reach. We usually drove up to the woods in the hills above Wenatchee WA, where we lived, to cut our own tree. Before one Christmas Dad was out of town for some reason, I think for a job. Anyway, the car was not available.

      My big brother Art and I decided to walk up to Number One Canyon, three miles from home, to find a tree. In this semi-desert you must go uphill to find timber. We planned to look in the Douglas Fir groves high on the south wall of the canyon.

      We took an ax and a pruning saw and set out, wearing heavy coats and overshoes. On the valley floor there was a thin snowfall, an inch or two. A light snow was falling: it was a gloomy day with clouds low on the hills.

      We walked up to the mouth of the canyon, then up the road along the bottom to a place where the first trees stood far above us on the south side. We scrambled up the steep slope, only to find the trees were scrawny. More firs stood along the slope a quarter of a mile away.

      We gouged our heels in to walk along the side-hill to the next grove. Those trees were not much better. Art did not want to lose elevation but we could not see any trees around the hill. I wanted to stay up high too, so we went on around the sidehill, climbing all the time. Now we were in cloud and deeper snow. Even though we found no trees close by we kept on.

      I think we must have gone a full mile on that hillside before we came to any trees worth considering. This grove looked much better, with limbs bushy and spaced closely. Mind you, we were still on a steep hill and the tree limbs followed the contour of the ground.

      By now we were getting tired and we decided one of these firs would be the perfect tree, six feet high and bushy. Art swung the ax a few times, then I used the saw and finished the job. Art shouldered the tree and we walked straight down to the road, no more sidehill gouging, then home. I was glad to get off that slope. My ankles were glad too.

      At home we got a mixed reception. Mom was glad to see we had no feet chopped off. Maybe she had not expected much. Sister Shirley was not so polite. She said, You idiots! That's the most lopsided tree I ever saw! It's four feet high on one side and six feet on the other! As I remember, Art replied, Do you want to go find a better one?

      Swimming in the River

      For swimming in Wenatchee in 1934, there was a Natatorium, privately-owned, and the Columbia River. The Natatorium cost admission money that we did not have. The river was cold and full of strong currents, but it was free.

      Mom chose the river. She insisted that we learn to swim well. Our house was about a mile from the river, an easy walk.

      One June day Mom gathered us four children together in swim suits and led us to the end of Miller Street. The pioneer Miller Trading Post building was there still, in bad shape. Below is a gully that opened to the river. Here was a shallow channel that we waded, then a series of high sand banks capped with willows.

      This is just where the Wenatchee River joins the large Columbia. In those years, shallows and a row of sand banks extended to the main current of the Columbia. Three big eddies in a row swirled below the banks, each one deeper. Mom stopped at the first eddy and said, This is where we can swim until the water drops later. We're safe below the sandbars.

      The river crests each June. It takes that long for springtime snow-melt upstream in British Columbia to arrive at Wenatchee, so the high water comes in summer. The water is cold, but Mom never turned blue like the rest of us.

      My two brothers and sister, all older, already could swim. Mom tried teaching me to float while she held a hand under me. I was seven and skinny and could not float. I had to scull with my hands to stay up, so she let me try that awhile, still with a hand underneath.

      At that first session I learned the frog kick and breast stroke, and managed to go a few feet. As the weeks of summer went by we swam once or twice weekly. I learned a strong side stroke and an easy back stroke as well as the breast stroke.

      The inner eddy was small, maybe thirty feet across, so we had to turn often. As the water level dropped through the summer, we left the inmost eddy and moved to the center eddy, then to the outer one. Just a few feet beyond the end of the last sand bar, the main river current always threatened us. I tried the bare edge of it once, enough to scare me silly.

      One day, brother Harold dragged a five-foot plank to the swimming hole. With Sis and brother Art, we scrabbled to build a support system of big flat rocks.

      Harold tried the board and all the rocks fell! Mom kept on swimming while we fooled with the diving board.

      We hauled more rocks, and this time they held. Harold dived twice, Sis, Art and I got one dive each, then Mom said, You took all the time we had to build that thing. Time to go home.

      Next week we dived a few times, but it wasn't very good. Sis said, All that work isn't worth it. Let's just swim!

      A few years later we moved into town. There was a new public swimming pool, clean and warm. Kids could swim for five cents, and there was a real diving board!

      Rock Island Dam downstream was raised by twenty feet about 1950. The water backed up to cover our old swimming hole and the sand banks. Now a few children at the nearby Confluence Park swim off the river bank in hot weather. There's no current now, but they still turn blue with cold.

      My First Mountain, Misnamed Twin Peaks

      Everybody in Wenatchee calls the big hill Twin Peaks because that's what it looks like. A pioneer built an upland ranch nearby at Horse Lake, so the hilltop's name on the map is Horse Lake Mountain. We still call it Twin Peaks.

      When I was eleven in 1938 all I knew was that Twin Peaks was the big hill at the top of Number One canyon and my big brothers wanted to climb it. One Saturday in spring Dad let Harold, my older brother, take the car with my other brother Art, Sis and me, so we could go climb Twin Peaks.

      You don't go up Number One canyon, Art told me. You go south, take the road up Number Two, wind around behind, drive as far as you can, park and walk north up a bad road to the top.

      We drove to the end of the good road and started walking, but then Harold scouted ahead and said, There's a farm with a sign that says 'Martin—NO TRESPASS.' We have to take a loop around the farm and come back to the road beyond.

      So we crashed through some brush to a ridge that led us around a big bowl that held a pasture and farm buildings, and we thought that ridge would never come to an end.

      The ridge did end and we reached the road beyond the farm. Across a flat, the road sloped up steeply to climb the last hill and we found

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