‘Graceful, yet drippy:’ Seven miles on the Salmon River Trail

“Is that water?”

“It might be sap.”

Either was completely plausible.

We were hiking in old-growth forest on the Salmon River Trail in Oregon. Hundred-foot-tall evergreens soared above us.

Ferns. Mushrooms. Tree limbs so coated in moss they looked like troll havens, water droplets shimmering on the moss.

“Graceful, yet drippy,” Teresa pronounced it.

When you hike with a former president of the American Copy Editors Society, you’re going to get a pithy headline out of it.

We detoured to the bank of the rushing river to see if the water was cold (it was).

We passed a man with a basket of foraged mushrooms (he did not want to talk about them.)

We rested at a point where the trail had begun to climb and the cool green forest let in some blue sky. It looked like the viewpoint we’d been aiming for was just around the bend, but we’d both been fooled by that before.

As the trail kept climbing, we entered another ecosystem, the air drier, the smells different.

We were about ready to turn around when we had to step aside to let a large group pass, one by one, on the narrow trail. They assured us a killer view was, this time, right around the bend.

And it was – an open ridge with forested mountains dropping steeply away on all sides. We soaked up the sun there for half an hour.

The walk back down was faster, more high-contrast. In the parts of the woods tucked away from the sun, it was deep and dark, like someone had switched off a light. Then, around a bend, late-afternoon sun spilled through the trees, lighting up the moss and highlighting all the shades of green and brown around us. Soon we heard the river’s rush again.

We saw more, our eyes adjusted to the colors of the forest: a rock squirrel scampering along a log, a two-tone beetle on the rocks underfoot.

Neither of us had anything resembling this water-rich ecosystem at home.

We drank it in.

Hike length: 7 miles

Difficulty: moderate

Trail traffic: moderate

Wildlife spotted: rock squirrel, crow, butterflies, beetles, lazuli bunting (?) (on road)