This little nature-note snippet took place on the second evening of the notorious 2001 Tree of Doom episode. Yeti, Colin, and I rendezvoused in upper Buckeye Canyon at the boss’ orders and camped out for two nights. I rode over from Piute via Kirkwood Pass and packed all the tools. Our task was to remove an enormous lodgepole pine that toppled over in the worst possible place: laying horizontally in a six-foot-wide gap formed by granite bluff and colossal boulder—at the very edge of Buckeye Creek with a drop-off into swift water right next to the trail. It completely blocked off all horse traffic. Hikers had to clamber over the monster through a dense tangle of branches. Hands down, the Tree of Doom (Yeti’s evocative name for it) was the most challenging logging job any of us ever tackled. But it had to go. Due to the narrowness of the gap, there was little room to get at the trunk and its many stout limbs with our doublebit axes and crosscut saw. To make matters worse, the work was quite dangerous, with the potential to be crushed like a bug. In three days time we made significant progress, removing all the limbs and a portion of the forty-inch-wide trunk. But we ended up leaving a big chunk of the thing in place. Our beloved boss, Margaret, later backpacked in with another ranger and the two tried to finish off the job. They succeeded in cutting the log into several pieces that proved too heavy to move. I don’t recall how this whole saga was finally resolved but the trail did get cleared without the use of a chainsaw. Eventually.
28 Jun (Thu) ◦◦◦◦◦ Walked back to camp around quittin’ time, thoroughly whipped. I’d tied the horses to the highline at about ten this morning, right before we started in on the tree. Work over, I led them back down to near the job site. Hobbled Red and Piute (leaving Woody free), and turned everybody loose so they could graze a bit in those lush meadowy spots around there. My back was so stiff after all the sawing there was nothing for it but to keep moving and thereby prevent various body parts from seizing up. Ended up bouldering on some little bluffs up behind camp. Somewhat higher, I found myself on a major ledge system—a level shelf hemmed in by low walls above and below. It was one of those delightful glaciated granite “sidewalk” ledges. The sort of ledge one feels absolutely compelled to cross. Not surprisingly, there was a well-worn game track to follow. The main Buckeye trail was a couple hundred vertical feet below so all along the way there were stupendous views, especially of the massive NW buttress of Hunewill peak that I climbed back in ‘83—right over there! ◦◦◦◦◦ Stumbled on a poorwill “nest”—a first for me. Typical scenario with ground-nesting birds: the adult whatever suddenly pops up just in front of you. So, knowing full well what that meant, I scanned the ground until two speckled eggs materialized. They were almost perfectly camouflaged, having been laid directly on the coarse-sandy gravel, backed by a six-inch-high vertical step. Eggs on sand: that’s it—no nest material whatsoever. Eggs on sand…just laying there on naked gravel. Ground nesters have to rely on pure luck it seems. If a fox or bobcat or coyote or weasel happens to walk by, it’s “start all over or wait ‘til next year and try again.” ◦◦◦◦◦ Then I found a most amazing thing. This flat bench was largely open, with scattered junipers and pines and shrubby aspens. The sand-covered slabs were for the most part overgrown with a low-lying, wiry-leaved grasslike-plant that’s very common hereabouts: elk sedge. Elk sedge is a critical soil-holding plant in the Sierra, forming super-dense turfs in dry, exposed, sandy places—loves ledges!—and is so tenacious and resistant to erosion that you only find the turfs broken up in heavily used campsites or where cut by trails. ◦◦◦◦◦ I spotted a place under a spreading juniper where there were naked bear footprints hollowed into the turf: paw-sized, sandy-bottomed, inch-deep hollows in the dense sedge “lawn.” Not in a straight line but offset somewhat, right and left. Now, bears are known to place their feet in the exact same spots on trails they habituate. In bear country it’s not unusual, especially on steeper terrain where the route is constrained, to find dished-out “steps” marking their passage. I’ve seen this a number of times before. But what was so striking about this scene was how vividly it showed the way bears big and small have placed their feet in those paw-sized hollows for no doubt centuries on end, if not millennia—long enough to finally wear away the sedges and keep them from filling the indentations back in. There was no “trail” to speak of. That is, not like your average deer trail, say—just these hollowed-out footprints alternating, left…right…left…right, with solid sedge turf in between each. I’m not sure why, but it hit me hard: a vignette that captured the essence of an animal (like us humans, rigid in its routines) that has lived here a million times longer than we have. I was moved close to tears. ◦◦◦◦◦ After supper we all went up to visit the ledge and grokked together all these wonderful things as the light slowly left the high peaks, glowing all pink and fine. We were standing there taking in the sunset when Colin heard horses on the move down below, bringing our quiet private reveries to an abrupt end. I had to boogie on down in a hurry and wrangle three knavish horses who were headed back to Piute behind the unshackled Woody. This actually made my job easier, as it turned out: I was waiting for them at the highline when they arrived. Gotcha!
©2026 Tim Forsell 8 Apr 2026
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