We were up before dawn and, still sleepy, went down to the mess hall for breakfast with the Forest Service logging crew. Everything you’ve heard about loggers’ breakfasts is true. We had platters of eggs with pools of butter, bacon, sausages, and pancakes in stacks falling off the plates.
After our feast, which we called breakfast, we were off into the mist of the North Cascades morning. As we walked toward the boat that would take us up the lake, we crunched across gravel and then clomped with hollow sounding steps of our vibram soles on the wooden dock. The skipper was cheerful but subdued in the gray damp and welcomed us aboard. In a cloud of diesel fumes we pulled away; the gray smooth waters streaked with rainbows of fuel sheen. The vibration and noise of the boat masked the silence, but we could sense it as we squinted toward our destination, barely visible in the layers of gray ahead. The cool of the fog on our faces was a prelude to the wet of the day – the air fresh and clean with the pungency of the mountain forest. As we approached our landing, the boat slowed and shifted to a low throbbing, then the engine was cut and we drifted ashore, me jumping with a line to hold her in. We three were off-loaded with our gear and watched as the boat reversed out and then continued up lake.
We watched until the boat was only gray in gray form and a whispering growl. Then we turned, now in the silence, and shouldered our packs, sniffing the air like the animals we were and becoming fully aware of what was around us. We oriented ourselves and then took off into the woods, our legs whipping showers from the undergrowth as we passed. We moved deeper into the forest on our way up the canyon, watching for wildlife, but more carefully looking for appropriate traverses for the scat surveys for our deer population survey. The leaves dripped water softly onto the bark covered ground as we trudged by, our breath making clouds in the air – three people, a crude and purposeful presence in a primeval scene.