Trail Talk – October 2025

TO PARAPHRASE PAPA, “It was a long summer, it was a hot summer, it was a dry summer. It was a long, hot, dry summer.” Weather prognosticators teased relentlessly about possible showers, about a fictitious cooling trend just “a week to ten days” away, all to keep a modicum of hope alive for cooler weather somewhere just over the horizon. And for lifelong residents of Southern Oregon, it’s not at all imaginary—average summer temperatures are almost 5°F warmer than 60 years ago.

As one would expect, this warming climate has affected our local forests. Fire season starts earlier, becomes Extreme Fire Weather sooner, and lasts longer than a generation or two ago. Observant eyes see our once dominant Douglas fir forests in recession, many of the 30–40-year-old trees no longer able to survive the heat and drought. Without an overstory, deer brush proliferates, creating inhospitable thickets where young trees struggle to survive.

And fire, natural fire from summer storms, is no longer the friendly ground creeping variety that spares the large trees with their thick bark, but now a ravenous beast, whose towering flame walls engulf all in its path. Where once one expected a park-like setting post-fire, desolation reigns, prone to the heavy erosion of any remaining healthy forest duff and topsoil.

The summer walkabouts took us into such desolate shadows of former grandeur. In places, entire fire-scarred hillsides had sloughed soil in heavy rain events, leaving jagged gullies and exposed bedrock in place of former sylvan glory. While some brave pioneer plants have regained a foothold here and there, large areas remain bare soil. Multiple trees, scorched by the flames, had succumbed, their remaining silver-colored stems and trunks rapidly losing the battle with gravity, and now appearing as so many “pick-up sticks” across the mountainside.

We attempted to find the remains of the original trails, but alas, between the blowdown of lifeless trees and that insidious erosion, almost none of the tread remained. An occasional scorched trail sign on a post or snag was all that indicated that this was indeed a route we’d once hiked or run along. Not a single green thing stood on some of these sub-alpine slopes, even though the fire was a few years ago. Ironically, the old motorcycle tracks from illegal riders into this wilderness area, visible in the soft pumice soils for decades, were now obliterated.

Wise people have told us that we plant trees for our grandchildren. And fires have torn through these mountains for countless ages. Knowing this, we can find hope for the future of our forests. While we, as individuals, may never see the return to glory of these once verdant slopes, we, in the collective sense, can look forward to exactly that. Our conscience can grasp the notion of a future world stewarded by wise individuals where those forests once again stand proud. Trails can be rediscovered, reclaimed, and rebuilt into these special places. In our minds eye, we see our progeny going there, making tracks, making tracks….