The Bear Went Over The Mountain

Day 159: You know the song. You probably sang it in Scouts or Guides or even just with your family while sitting around the campfire roasting marshmallows.

"The bear went over the mountain,
To see what he could see.
And all that he could see was
The other side of the mountain.
That's all that he could see."

I've lived my life by those words, and it's really been bothering me that I hadn't found an access to the Mashel River from Nisqually State Park, no matter how many bunny trails I went down. Oh, yes, there are other places to get down to river level, even along the north and west sides, but I wanted to get closer to the river's confluence with the magnificent Nisqually at a point opposite the end of a Pack Forest road. There had to be a way, although I was beginning to think I might need to take a rope. Yesterday, in an effort to socially distance myself (and more on that in a minute), I found not one but two routes down and a spur which dead-ended in a blackberry thicket. Neither of the trails terminated at anything even remotely resembling a sandy beach or rocky shingle, but my feet were within a foot of the water's edge at both sites, and that was good enough for me. In the process, I discovered another network of bunny trails, adding roughly two miles to my walk. Even so, I encountered one family who obviously had had the same thought that the woods would be a good place to achieve social distance, but when I got back to the parking area, I was horrified. Pick any warm, summery day in memory, and you would recall no more than three cars and one horse trailer occupying the spaces. On this occasion, it was packed! So much for sheltering in place! It's bad enough that you people are travelling to buy up all the TP, flour, sugar and other staples from our little rural stores. Can't you just stay the hell out of my woods?