Hiking on Sundays: Cedar Grove Trek

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Cedar Grove Trek

This last Sunday, Eric, Carol, and the kids and I went back to Reed College Canyon and met some of our friends there for our hike. So that's a hike I've covered before, which means I will not feel guilty writing instead about one of the hikes we took last week when we were visiting Port Orford.

My lovely supportive family is thrilled that I've been keeping this blog, and before we visited, my Dad talked with one of our family friends, Rick Hazard, who we've known for over 25 years. Rick runs Cedar Grove Farm, complete with chickens, goats, and a large vegetable garden. The farm is on 35 acres and Rick (with a little help from his goats) has cleared several different trails through the property, and he was kind enough to take us on a hike through his forest.

The plan was to was to circle around and end up where his 22 (24?) goats were grazing, so, with a little herding help from Rick's dog Cali, we quickly found ourselves on an easy pine-needled trail. Rick was kind enough to turn off the electric fence that bordered the path, so we didn't have any shocking experiences. After hearing a few tales of bears and bobcats, I was quite thankful it was there. Several trees along the path had died because of bears scratching away the bark, but Rick said he hadn't noticed any bear activity that year. It was striking to see the difference between the areas that the goats had helped clear (where it was possible to walk), and the area on the other side of the fence, which was extremely thick with the undergrowth of brush--salal, rhododendron, thimbleberry, and huckleberry, among other plants. The trail wound around to an area filled with cedar trees twisting into odd shapes.

It was rather like a playground, and the kids climbed around happily for a bit before we continued on.

It was quiet and peaceful until we started talking about mountain lions, and then I was thankful for that electric fence again. Several areas of the trail turned into tunnels, like this:

They were my favorite parts...heading through the tangled darkness to the light on the other side. Ah, forgive me...I took some poetry classes in college and still can't resist it sometimes.

It was a great hike, so fun to hang out with my parents and Rick. Rick is full of knowledge about many things, not the least of which is his trees and land. The part of the forest we were hiking in is a model for sustainable logging--a "working demonstration eco-forest"--and it was great to walk among so many different tree types and have an expert to answer our questions. After just the right amount of hiking time for Jaeden and Stella, we arrived at the area where the goats were, and if the kids' energy had been lagging, they perked right back up when they saw the goats and the goat kids. The goat-milk caramels my mom brought along (thanks Aunt Katie!) to mark our journey's end didn't hurt either.

Then we herded the goats back to the barn, and Jaeden and Stella just joined right in line with them, like they were goat kids, too.

Afterwards, Rick invited us in for lemon macaroons and fresh goat's milk. Which, I can assure you, when very fresh, does not taste "goaty" at all. It was delicious!

Many thanks to Rick for such a great day! For more info. on his farm, check out
http://cedargrovefarm.com

2 comments:

Secret MommyJune 15, 2011 at 10:12 AM
Oh my gosh, that is so beautiful and inspiring! LOVE it. And boy would I like to try a goats-milk-caramel! Sounds divine!
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RebekahJune 15, 2011 at 12:58 PM
Thanks, Kim--would love to meet you and your boys down in PO some day and hike there again with you guys!
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About this blog

For a while two things have been brewing in me: the need for an impetus to write more (yes, motivation is often lacking in me), and the desire to spend Sunday mornings outside exploring with my kids. I’ve started this blog to fulfill both.

I majored in creative writing in college, which made for an extremely enjoyable three and a half years and a somewhat less enjoyable final semester, where in Senior Seminar I was suddenly faced with the cold reality of what being a “writer” in the real world really meant. It meant something I really didn’t want: being prepared to work on one thing (short story, poem, novel) really hard, and then sending it in to thirty to fifty publishers and probably receiving rejections from them all. Until finally I would freak out to find out my poem has been accepted by a tiny literary magazine in Alabama, with a readership of seventy-five. It didn’t interest me. I’d wanted to be a “writer” since I was young…I remember sitting in our living room on our brown tweed sofa, sunlight filtering in through the big window, and my dad saying to me, “Rebekah, when you grow up, be a writer. You can choose your own hours, no one is breathing down your neck telling you what to do, you can just do whatever you want.” It stuck with me. Unfortunately my dad didn’t actually know any writers, so of course his version of the profession was a bit…unrealistic. For my parents, having their children go to college was the dream. Just getting there was enough. I will recommend my children enjoy college but choose a career instead of just a major…hopefully this will help with the job search after graduation. Hopefully.

My children are still pretty young. We don’t go to church, but I like the idea of doing something special together as a family during that time. If I plan it, my husband, Eric will come along. It’s good for us to do things the four of us, because for a long time it’s kind of been me-and-the-kids. I’m a stay-at-home mom now and Eric likes his job and spends a lot of time with it. It works for us, mostly. But we need to be a family of four, not three. I’ve long thought it would be a good thing to hike outside on Sunday mornings, treating a commune with nature as our own version of church.

My goal is not too lofty, I hope: every Sunday (preferably in the morning), we will hike in a different place. And then I will write about it afterwards. We live in Oregon, which means for several months of the year this will be pretty easy to manage. The rainy winter and spring months will make for more of a challenge, but one I know will be worth braving.