Seven “Saving the Wilds” Stories for Oregon Wild

What better way to end 2024 than with compiled stories of often unheralded women and men saving wildlands and never giving up–no matter how difficult the times? Let’s take courage from them as we go forward together. Millions of us care about the future of Mother Earth. Here’s to standing up for the wilds wherever you live. We are in good company.

The year 2024 marked momentous anniversaries– the 60th for the 1964 Wilderness Act, 50th for Oregon Wild, and 40th for the Oregon Wilderness Act of 1984. The following are excerpts with links to the Every Wild Place Has a Story series I wrote for Oregon Wild’s 50th anniversary. After Oregon Wild posted each piece, I added the blog to this website with my layout and additional photos. (Note–see the latest Imnaha post on Oregon Wild’s website for links to the entire series).

I am grateful to Chandra LeGue of Oregon Wild for working with me on the series and for our explorations of Hardesty Mountain Roadless Area and Badger Creek Wilderness. We also hiked among the relict great trees of the Crabtree Valley, and Chandra wrote a beautiful piece: Crabtree Valley: Protecting Forests Never Gets Old. She is the author of Oregon’s Ancient Forests, a Hiking Guide.

The first blog on Drift Creek Wilderness is a prelude from 2023. After I shared the piece with Chandra, she asked if she might include it in the November Oregon Wild newsletter. Soon, we were talking ideas for a series that would fit within the many facets of Oregon Wild’s year-long honoring of champions of wildlands and wild rivers. We sought geographic diversity along with a mix of Wilderness, Wild and Scenic Rivers, and threatened roadless areas. I had a personal interest in choosing wilds with glorious older forests. To find the stories of “who saved this place” took sleuthing and sometimes an unexpected tip from a friend.

Chandra and I also planned a summer backpack trip to the Middle Santiam Wilderness. However, closures from a wildfire meant a pivot to Badger Creek Wilderness. We loved that backpack and…we hope to try again for the Middle Santiam, especially to honor Douglas (Doug) Schoen who passed away from a fall while hiking in late July. An early board president of Oregon Wilderness Coalition (the original name for Oregon Wild), Doug played a key role in saving Middle Santiam’s towering forests from the onslaught of logging and securing protections in the Oregon Wilderness Act of 1984. He remained passionate and engaged until the end. He will be missed.

Before launching in, I’d like to recommend Andy Kerr’s 2004 book, Oregon Wild, Endangered Forest Wilderness–packed with history, ecology, and a vision relevant today. Think big! Never give up! Thank you longtime enviro Andy (one of Oregon Wild’s founding members and author of a savvy public lands blog).

For more on Oregon Wild’s 50th anniversary, see: a chronology of Oregon Wild’s history; 50th gala celebration; and a five-minute video (not to be missed!).

Please give generously to Oregon Wild and to your favorite local environmental groups working tirelessly to save threatened wild places in these dangerous times. Many of the pieces include an action to take–there will be more to come. Thanks for YOUR activism. Happy New Year. For the wilds always, Marina.

SAVING DRIFT CREEK WILDERNESS: A TRIBUTE

Featuring Paul Alaback, Andy Kerr, Bob Frenkel, Glenn Juday

I’m drifting back in time in Drift Creek Wilderness, the largest remaining protected ancient forest in the Oregon Coast Range at 5800 acres. I’ve come here with my friend Sandra to camp at the Horse Creek Trailhead (about 14 miles inland from Ona Beach). Our plan is to hike to the creek–an eight-mile round trip. Memories swirl as I wander the trail with Sandra in the evening light–a prelude before the next day’s immersion, a day that would take us to the drama of chinook salmon spawning in clear waters over polished stones. READ MORE

BELOVED METOLIUS RIVER

Featuring Bob Warren: “My philosophy has always been simple,” he said. “If you find yourself in the right place to do the right thing at the right time, then do it.”

Sunlight strikes a chord across the Metolius. An American dipper, perched on a fallen tree in the water, sings a melody of whistles, riffs, and churrs. The river gives the beat and the hum on a late winter’s day. The great forests seem to rise even higher as if lifted from their roots by the wild aria. I stand still at the Allen Springs Campground, transfixed by a small gray bird dipping and dipping.  READ MORE

LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN: ROADLESS BEACON OF THE OCHOCOS

Featuring Sarah Cuddy and Don Tryon. “People think if roadless areas are small, they are not important, but you have to take what’s remaining and grow the wilds”– Sarah Cuddy, former staff of Oregon Wild

Spring wildflowers trickle like snowmelt from Lookout Mountain. By July, blooms will flood sagebrush meadows in lupine, paintbrush, penstemon, and scarlet gilia. Here, elk shelter within shady fir and pine forests. Pileated woodpeckers drum on life-giving dead trees. Colossal ponderosas grace the lower ridges. Juniper and mountain mahogany sculpt rocky outcrops. Songbirds bustle among leaves of aspen and alder by streams. Hawks, eagles, and ravens draft the shoulder of an open summit. 

Gatherer of flaming sunsets over the Cascades, Lookout Mountain tops out at almost 7,000 feet, the highest in the Ochoco National Forest, east of Prineville in Central Oregon. Where once a fire lookout stood, the peak is like a beacon shining our attention on the roadless wilds. READ MORE

HARDESTY MOUNTAIN ROADLESS AREA: VIGILANCE, CLOSE CALLS, & HEROES

Featuring Francis Eatherington, as well as the Hardesty Mountain Study Group. “When the salvage logging rider was putting forward old timber sales, I knew how to find them… It was pretty bad, They wanted to liquidate the old growth.” – Francis Eatherington.

Even a lover of ancient forests likes being on top of the world. Lingering on Mount June, I watch turkey vultures tipping wings at eye-level. The month of June is prime time for wildflowers, warblers, and verdant beauty in every shade of green. Oregon Wild’s Chandra LeGue and I bask in the Hardesty Mountain Roadless Area, the largest wild place within an hour of Eugene and Springfield at about 8,000 acres. READ MORE

SAVING THE BIG TREES OF BADGER CREEK– A LUCKY BREAK

Featuring Dave Corkran and Ruth and Ken Love, Mt. Hood Study Group

“Brock (Evans) organized us. He’d say, ‘Draw a line around the roadless area. Start agitating for the area to be set aside. Draw a line. That was his message to us. Draw a line! So, we did.”– Dave Corkran

Puckery sweet huckleberries lined the upper Badger Creek trail within easy reach. Ancient western red cedars flared branches like bird wings. Noble firs, Douglas-firs, and silver firs rose columnar and elegant among Engelmann spruce, western white pine, and mountain and western hemlocks. A Pacific wren dueted with a silvery stream. Badger Creek Wilderness, at 29,000 acres, protects many centuries-old trees and ecosystems of breathtaking diversity. READ MORE

NORTH FORK UMATILLA WILDERNESS: SAVED BY A TROUT?

Featuring Bill Fleishman and Marilyn Cripe, founder of MEOW (Maintain Eastern Oregon Wilderness)

“I thought since the trout was fine, I’d fill the cooler with water and bring the fish along.” –Bill Fleischman

It was 1979 at dawn when Bill Fleischman acted on impulse. Why not take the long way from his home in La Grande to Pendleton for the wilderness hearing? He’d hike a short way up the North Fork Umatilla River for a little fishing. What better way to get inspired to speak up for this obscure roadless area to be part of Senator Mark Hatfield’s proposed wilderness bill (a smaller-sized version before the Oregon Wilderness Act of 1984).

Sure enough, a half-mile upriver, he caught a 13-inch rainbow with extra shiny black spots. Lining his wicker creel with ferns, he lowered the wriggling fish inside and hurried back to the trailhead. The clock was ticking and he didn’t want to be late. But he would take time to clean the fish and have his catch with him at the hearing—adding a flare to his testimony. However, he had lined the creel so well the fish was still alive. That’s when things got interesting. READ MORE

IMNAHA RIVER–WOLVES, WILDERNESS & THREATENED WILDLANDS

Featuring Mike Higgins, one of founders of Friends of Lake Fork, and current advisory board member of Greater Hells Canyon Council

“Our responsibility as life tenants is to make certain that there are wilderness values to honor after we have gone.” – William O. Douglas

Snap snap, SNAP! Then came the whooooooosh and a thud that shook our popup camper by the Imnaha River in the predawn. Wes and I felt the reverberation from 150 yards away. Later, we found the Douglas-fir bridging a river channel near a beaver dam. The gunfire-like snaps were roots popping as the living tree tipped over and pulled up a wall of soil and roots 20 feet high, plus shaking loose a snaking section of the bank.

Curious to look at the tree’s crown, we waded across the frigid waters to the other side (with the help of two beaver-chewed sticks for balance). Among a whorl of green needles, I spotted something bizarre— brown fur, dainty hooves, and a skull. How had an elk calf ended up draped over a branch way up high in the fir? READ MORE

THOUGHTS ON WILDERNESS

I’ll end with an excerpt from the Badger Creek Wilderness story. Let’s keep dreaming and never give up.

Wild areas are far more than lines on the map. They are headwaters of drinking watersheds, strongholds for great forests capturing and storing massive amounts of carbon, havens for biodiversity, corridors for wildlife, and sanctuaries for the human spirit.

Draw a line….Trace the wilderness boundaries on a map with your finger. Celebrate Wilderness—the green protected places free from roads, logging, and all that is motorized. And then? Draw the lines around Oregon’s more than five million acres of roadless wilds on national forests. Name them. Agitate for them. In this year of decade anniversaries—60 for the Wilderness Act, 50 for Oregon Wild, and 40 for the Oregon Wilderness Act—there’s no better time than now to pull out the maps and dream big.

It’s never been easy to save Wilderness. To keep up our spirits and remember why it’s all worth it I believe in revitalizing our spirits often. Dip into the wilds near and far.  Closing my eyes, I am back on the Badger Creek trail picking huckleberries until my fingers stain purple. I kneel to notice the low-down way of vanilla leaf and twinflower. Run my fingers over ferns like feathers and into icy spring water trickling by a tipped-up tree root of a great fallen fir.  Spread my arms wide around the buttressed trunk of a western redcedar. Watch bats fluttering among larch, fir, and pines before I zip open my tent beside Gumjuwac Creek, flowing under great downed trees to a confluence with Badger Creek.

I give gratitude to all that shapes wild forests and is so often misunderstood—fungi, budworm, mistletoe, beetle, ant, fire, and trees packed tight together in their way of companionship. Huckleberries sweeten every thought. Abundance. Generosity. What is the way of reciprocity? Draw a line. Honor the legacy of those who came before us. Learn from our elders. Save the wilds.

PHOTOS OF FEATURED LOCAL HEROES