The Refuge of Waldo

 

Rip 

I drove up to Waldo Lake yesterday.  The weather was beautiful and over 80 degrees, unusual for mid October here.   

I stopped up where the motorcyclist died after the crash.  The road people had installed a new post on the stop sign.  Someone had put a makeshift cross and some flowers where he died.  

There were not a lot of people on the lake.   A few kayakers, a sailboat, a couple canoes.  A strong east wind probably was to blame.   Usually the afternoon winds are from the west but yesterday the winds were from east.

Kokanee still spawning to beat the band.   Large orgies of them.  When I saw them near I'd just drift over them like a log in the wind and they ignored me completely.   The lake level has dropped quite a lot from evaporation, run off into the north fork of the middle fork of the Willamette and lack of rain.  Waldo has no inlet and relies on rain and snow to maintain its level.  Its difficult to access the southwest beaches now from the water, or even navigate around the shore side of the island because the water level is low.

At times, the wind died out, and the lake was serene.

I passed a couple wooden kayaks with two men loading their gear.  "Leaving then" I said and they said yes, but they said the canoes nearby were people just arriving to camp.   South end has some very popular boat in campsites.

At the southwest long beaches I spotted movement near a log.  It looked, from a distance like a dog.  Then I spotted a man, alone, on the beach 50 feet east of the animal I'd seen and assumed he had a dog.  But he didn't.

He was camping with an A frame tarp held up by a rope between a couple trees.   Looked quite primitive.    He said he'd hung his food on a tree and I could see it behind him, about head height hooked on something sticking out of the trunk and thought what's he protecting it from. 

 Anyhow, he was enjoying himself and I probably shouldn't have told him about seeing a small animal farther up the beach from him and tried to dismiss it as nothing because it was probably nothing, maybe an otter or a fox. The guy seemed animal skittish and kept mentioning coyotes and a large pack of wolves.   I went on towards where I'd seen the small animal hoping it was an otter because I figured it would be swimming out to check out my kayak if it was.  But I saw nothing more.

Afterall, I can't be a critical snobby judge of primitive camping ways because when I was a kid, my parents decided it would be great to canoe the Bowren Lake chains in Canada even though we'd never backpacked and never canoed before and that's bear country.   And we slept in plastic tarp tube tents and it rained the entire time.

I paddled down the west side of the lake north but the wind was picking up badly and I thought I better  get this over with, paddling back to the east side, into a strong head wind.   So I buckled down and spent 20 or 30 minutes paddling hard getting splashed by waves coming at me and I had a blast doing it.

I've never seen a Great Blue Heron at Waldo Lake before but I did today.  That Heron somehow knew about the salmon spawning all over the place.   

Sailboat off in the distance

I left the boat ramp area to drive home about 5:15 p.m. and was back home a couple hours later.   Only to find out there'd been a school shooting in Bend and 3 kids and a teacher died.   A civilian with a gun ran after the shooter into the school and killed him.  Probably saved a lot of kids by doing that.   Shooter himself was a kid.  16 years old.   It's all horrifying.

I hope the beauty of Waldo Lake is protected forever as a refuge from the world for those who need it.  Like me.