Stormy Night on the Mountain

By Sue Van Hook, Board President

One of the greatest experiences MFFC affords the visitor is a night or more stay in one of the cabins. Recently, I spent two nights at Ned’s Place, a lovely two-story cabin nestled on a south facing slope of Mount Antone. I’ve treasured scores of cabin stays for the past three decades with varying degrees of winter weather excitement, but this last trip had me thinking “This isn’t Kansas anymore!”

Momentum for the storm had built over two days and nights, coming to a crescendo the second night with gusts of 60-70 miles per hour lashing the mountainside and providing a certain feeling of liftoff in the cabin. Awake for most of the night, I kept saying to myself, the cabins have survived decades of these storms, Ned’s is not going anywhere tonight. I listened to the crashes of nearby tree branches, the pelting rain against the tin roof and the whir of the wind between gusts. I thought about the Barred Owls that called outside the cabin the first night and the chickadees I’d see that morning foraging among the underbrush and wondered in what tree cavity they had found cover for the storm. Life continues whether we are there to witness it or not. I felt fortunate to have been a witness. Sometimes we learn the most about ourselves outside our comfort zones.

Once back to the parking lot on Day Three, we saw only two cars – ours. It turns out no other campers ventured out amid flood warnings to spend this particular night in a wild rainstorm. We had been the sole souls on site and that felt very special. During our stay, the entrance road to MFFC had washed away. Four heavy equipment operators, among the staff and local providers, set to work rebuilding the road at dawn so that dozens of campers could come to spend the weekend in the cabins.

Whether stormy or calm, an overnight stay in a cabin, lean-to or in a self-organized tent area is an experience you may not want to miss.

David Wagoner (1926-2021) was a leading figure in poetry circles, especially in the Pacific Northwest. Mr. Wagoner, who taught for decades at the University of Washington, won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, one of the most prestigious in the field, in 1991.

The poet Rita Dove, a judge in the Lilly competition, told The Seattle Post-Intelligencer why she thought Mr. Wagoner deserved the prize. “He has never imitated himself,” she said. “He has always moved in deeper directions; he has always been exploring something new.”

Mr. Wagoner was a conservationist and a hiker, finding awe in the landscapes of the Northwest but also lamenting humanity’s cavalier treatment of nature. “Lost,” his 1972 poem that recommended taking a quiet pause in a forest, powerfully drew on both sentiments.

Lost

By David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees and the bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and to be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you.