As soon as we got in the car, Pongo started whining. He refused to sit in the back seat and stood up with his front paws over the gear shift. This makes it very hard for me to drive, but I have tried several commercial dog seatbelts and Pongo always gets out of them, earning him the nickname of Houdini Po. I gave up on those long ago.
As I drove the backroads to Buckley, Pongo whined and yipped with excitement. He didn't used to do that. I believe he learned it from my sister's dog, Calder. Calder is an obsessive-compulsive ball dog and will whine incessantly in the car when he knows you are going somewhere he perceives has a big reward at the end ... i.e. a park or river where you will throw the ball for him. Pongo and Calder became best friends the summer of 2006. I was contracting with the Federal Way Schools District, so I only got paid the nine months I was working. I ended up working in Moscow, Idaho that summer at Gritman Memorial Hospital. I lived with my parents and often biked the ten miles or so to work. I took Pongo and Calder for many hikes, runs and walks over those two and a half months.
A year later, my sister was diagnosed with breast and thyroid cancer at 37. While she was going through chemotherapy and radiation, Calder came to stay with me for about six weeks. She didn't have the energy to provide him with the daily exercise he needed. I would take Pongo and Calder to the dog park to play ball and Calder would whine the entire way there. Pongo began to imitate him. I noticed after Calder had gone home that Pongo continued to whine on the way to the dog park. Gradually, he began to do it to other places he liked, and the behavior was generalized. This is a good example of how dogs learn from each other - both positive and negative behavior! Thanks, Calder!
To get to Skookum Flats, we drove from Buckley on 410 to Enumclaw then continued on twenty five miles. Soon after passing the town of Greenwater, we came to Forest Service (FS) Road 73 and turned right. We passed over a one-lane car bridge spanning over the White River to a small parking lot . There was only one other car in the lot. We found the trailhead on the left side of the road.
I chose this particular hike because it has very little elevation in climb. It is a fairly flat trail that meanders along the White River. Though you cannot always see the river, you can hear its rush continually as you hike to Skookum Falls. The perfect hike for an aging dog.
Although the temperatures were in the sixties, I felt chilled as we set off. I wished I had a jacket, but had come only with a thin, long-sleeved, synthetic Nike shirt. It took me thirty minutes of hiking before I finally warmed up. But I quickly fell in love with this trail. There were old decaying cedars along the way.
The trail wound through the forest and then back to the river, never veering far away.
There were enormous downed trees that had been cut to let hikers through. We traipsed over boarded walkways that covered shallow streams, where Pongo often stopped to drink. Which was a good thing, because when I sat down on a log and pulled my water bottle out from my backpack, I set it down on the ground momentarily. Thirsty, Pongo decided to help himself to some water and knocked it over. I grabbed it quickly before all the water could drain out.
At one point, a steep rock face wall hugged the trail as it descended. To my delight, it was covered in starry moss, tiny shoots of ferns, and leaves that looked like a climbing vine. I put my hand out and touched it as I stepped down over tree roots and around rocks. It was luxurious as velvet.
We came across many different mushrooms growing up out of the forest floor. Other mushrooms grew on the trees, jutting out of the bark like hand holds on a commercial climbing wall.
We were alone on the trail for more than half an hour. I doubted whether we would see another soul. But then we came across three older gentleman coming towards us with hiking poles and packs. I wondered if they belonged to the Subaru I had parked next to which had a Northwest Trails Association sticker in the window. One asked me what my dog's name was and I told him.
"Congo?" he asked.
"Pongo with a P," I replied. I get that a lot. I understand. P and K are both unvoiced, high frequency sounds. They are hard to hear. Congo is a more familiar word and people's minds fill in the unheard sound with something that makes sense to them. (There's a little speech pathology trivia for you.) "Pongo was the daddy dog in 101 Dalmations," I continue, "not that he looks anything like a Dalmation."
They tell me I am near the falls and continue on their way. Once we get closer, I am delighted that I can hear the water. I thought that after a long, uncharacteristically hot summer in the Pacific Northwest, that it might be dry. Perhaps the two weeks of recent rain had made it flow again. Half-way from the top of the falls and a pristine view of the water cascading down, I found a log to sit on. I took off my pack and decided it was a lovely place to eat lunch. Pongo sat facing me, staring up at me with his playful eyes, begging for bites of my peanut butter sandwich. It is our hiking ritual. I broke off bits - one for you, one for me. To my dismay, my camera phone had stopped working, and I am unable to get a photo of the falls.
After we had finished eating, I decided to try to hike to the top before turning around. Pongo bounded up the steep trail like a mountain goat, or a young dog. I chuckled to myself. He continues to surprise me. He paused to look back at me, "Come on!" he seemed to say. I hadn't brought my hiking poles. It was steep and my running shoes slipped periodically on the moist surface. Still, I was more worried about Pongo falling than I was of myself. Three quarters of the way up, I decided to go back down.
Then, as we headed back the way we had come, I began to jog. I was in my bliss. Dwarfed by trees, the sound of the river in my ears, Pongo bounding ahead of me on the trail, then coming back to make sure I was still coming, his laughing smile and cocked head reminded me of my favorite childhood book, Where The Red Fern Grows. The story of a boy and his hunting dogs, they spend endless days together in the forest. I can't help think that this is where man (or woman) and their dogs belong - in nature together.
Pongo and I trade the lead, running, walking back to the trailhead.
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