Hi, Peeplezs!
Something happened during the last few days that made me feel good, and knowing that you folks love nature like I do, I figure I ought to share it.
Back in the 50's, Georgia Pacific Corp. bought out the Booth-Kelly timberlands above us where we lived on Mosby Creek, the valley that runs due east out of Cottage Grove, Oregon. The purchase consisted of almost the entire Mosby Creek watershed. GP then built a railroad up the valley, and it went right through our land. (We boys hopped the train numerous times to go in town.) They then strip logged the entire valley. We detested GP because the beautiful clear water coming down Mosby Creek was badly polluted with mud and silt for quite a few summers, and we kids practically lived in that creek.
But GP finally finished their dastardly deed and moved out. Weyerhaeuser bought the land, replanted the valley and restricted access to it except for hunting season, when they opened the gates and allowed anyone who wanted to hunt, to do so. They are still doing that. I remember a couple of years that I wanted to get some elderberries, because my little freckle-faced gal Linda loves to make jelly out of them, and that stuff is delicious! Hunting season is when they are ripe, and they are everywhere. I must have come back with 10 gallons of them.
A couple of months ago I took my son Zeke and three grandkids up to the gate where some of our old stomping grounds were when we were kids. It's beautiful, and it's now a nice forest that is beginning to take on much of the characteristics of the way it used to be before GP messed the place up. I was walking through the forest and stumbled across the biggest patch of red huckleberries I've ever seen, and the berries were about twice normal size. Zeke and the grandkids were jumping off the bridge into the creek and exploring everything they could see, and one of them even stirred up a yellow hornets' nest and got nailed three times. Basically, I took them back about 60 years and showed them what our childhood was like. They loved it!
But now it's hunting season again, and my brother Doug took some of his kids way above the gate a couple of days ago. Then while they went hunting, he dropped down to the creek to do a little fishing. The creek isn't big that far up. A fella can wade it easily in most areas, and there are some places you can jump from rock to rock and not get your feet wet. Would you believe that he came home with a 29 inch trout weighing about 6 lbs.? They don't even stock the creek that far up!
Maybe there's still a few things right with the world.
Speaking of fishing, I remember when Doug and Jerry (our youngest brother) were about 6 and 7 years old and decided to go fishing down over the bank from the house on a cool, cloudy, rainy day. Needless to say, that's not the best time for fishing, but they persisted all day. They hadn't caught a thing until just before dark, and one of them pulled in a trout that was 5 7/8 in. long. It's not legal to keep any fish smaller than 6 inches.
You can imagine their chagrin! A whole day's worth of fishing only to catch one fish at the last minute and then find that it's 1/8 of an inch too short?? That's awful! Soooooo - they got their heads together and came up with a typical country boy solution. One boy got on one end of the fish and the other boy grabbed the other end. When they got home, that fish was 6 ΒΌ inches long!
Ah, yes. There's a solution to everything!
Tom