Feather Falls, a Touchstone of Life

Feather Falls, a Touchstone of Life
(A Personal Essay)
David Mckinley Lowrey

Some people measure their life in accomplishments, some in their financial worth, others in the happiness of their children and the harmony of their families. They have never worked for me. Whether by accident or design, I have come measure my life in a connection to a place. My life started and will probably end with my connection to a mystic, personal place, Feather Falls.
I have been going to Feather Falls all my life. Feather Falls Recreational Area near Oroville in Northern California is a popular destination especially with those who like the outdoors, as it the contains the third largest waterfall in the continental United States, a cataract 640 feet high brimming with cascading beauty. Less appreciated by the hiking public is the heritage of the area as an anthropological, biological and geological site. The Maidu Indians, also known as the foothill Konkow, made their home there, and these ancient people, self-sufficient on the land, existed for hundreds of years peacefully in the shadow of the Falls. In a land of old-growth forests, magical flora, and majestic rock formations, Californians now ride dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles at high speed, never stopping to ponder the beauty and history of the place. All this makes Feather Falls and interesting stop on a hiking tour of Northern California, and certainly worth a mention in travel magazines, but my personal experience with the area is different. Since the first time I visited there as a child of fourteen, a boy scout green with life, to the present as an old man who sees the realization of the themes of his life in every leaf and drop of water, the Falls has become a mystical touchstone for me, a place where I may measure my progress in life.
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I first went to the Falls as new member of a Boy Scout troop, a teenager seeking to fit in with would-be friends, and a troubled child carrying the emotional paraphernalia of difficult youth. Along with my obvious defects of pride, arrogance, and a need to fit in, all of which alienated me at school, I spoke with a heavy Southern accent, alone enough to make me a freak in progressive California. Our family had just moved from the South Carolina home we had always known to settle in the promised land, free of the scandal of my father’s indiscretion with an aggressively sexual community bombshell (although never confirmed by him). My southern accent, quickly noticed and mocked by my peers, was as out-of-place in California as cotton field in Canada. It led to fights, fears, and insecurity, girls that pretended to like me then laughed behind my back at the Dixie freak, and the beginning of alcoholism, which at the time manifested itself in an acute preoccupation with beer. I had begun to wonder: Did I have any value? Would my life ever be worth living? This question was answered by the Falls.
We reached the Falls in early evening, and I was wholly unprepared for the beauty of the cascading water, Fall Creek bubbling over granite to the Middle Fork of the Feather River below. The lookout perch made of rough wood that smelled of cedar was close enough that a cool mist created by the water splashing against rock caressed my face. Green algae and black moss grew where the moisture from the Falls landed on the rocks. The water roared as it fell and struck rock and became a mist that floated hundreds of feet to the bottoms rocks, where, a sign informed us, thirteen people had fallen to their deaths, stay on the trail and do not climb beyond the rails. I ate a bologna sandwich with mayo and dill pickle and watch the magic water flow from the creek through a winding granite sluice then into air where it ceased existence as water and became mist and fog as it fell to the bottom of the gorge. The constant roar of water made us raise our voices when talking. I thought of the dead smashed far below, the smell of California bay trees filtering through the mist, and massive granite face of the falls, stoic like an old man, and forgot about my petty relationship with my peers, my need to fit it. Here was something to admire, to aspire to, to model my life after. The sound of falling water left my mind quiet, my soul touched.
We camped above the falls that night along Fall Creek and while preparing for wood for a fire; I cut myself with a sharp hand axe on the knuckle of left index finger. The scoutmaster dressed the wound, but s scar formed that I carried subsequently in life, a reminder of my first exposure to grandeur and wonder. I look at the scar sometimes and think of it as one of my most prized possessions, a memento of youth where I finally gained some sense of personal value and purpose.
One the way back we stopped at the remains of a Maidu camp. Long deserted, large holes in granite boulders under the ancient oak trees were all that remained of their once vibrant village. Native to the Feather River basin, the Maidu had placed their village so that approaching strangers could be seen and constructed circular, partially underground huts twenty to forty feet in diameter, a pole and log framework with a heavy layer of earth. For food acorns were harvested in the fall and carried in baskets to the village and dried. When ready, they were cracked and the nutmeats ground to flour in the granite holes we examined with wonder along the trail. The Maidu leached out the tannic acid, which made the acorns bitter, by putting the acorn meal in a scooped-out hollow in clean sand and pouring water on it. The meal was then placed in a tightly woven basket and mixed with water to make a thick soup or pressed into cakes and baked.
The example of the Maidu living in this beautiful land suggested a way of life to me. Their independence, living off the land, taking what God provided impressed me the right way to live. Why was I so concerned with what other kids thought? I could live in peace with what I had—what more did I need? I could be myself, self-sufficient and independent, a modern Maidu, a descendent in spirit of a people who lived as one in this wonderland of nature.
As we loaded our gear into pickup trucks at the trailhead, I realized my lifelong connection with the Falls had been established. I would be back.
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I returned five years later as a young man filled with an independent spirit and a love of nature. In the intervening time my family had moved to the mountain town of Grass Valley, California where I inculcated the qualities of a budding backwoodsman. I saved almost all my money towards backpacking equipment; I daydreamed of being in the mountains and living off the land like Indians, one with nature. My love of the outdoors led me to select the University of Montana when it came time to pick a college with its epic fishing and backpacking opportunities. For me, the outdoor life took precedent over going to a better, more prestigious school.
During a summer trip back from school I went to Feather Falls, this time on my own, to renew my connection with my spiritual birthplace. Excited to be returning, I planned carefully to pack in all the tools necessary to live off of the land. In addition to a down sleeping bag and groundcover tarp, I brought waterproof matches, first aid and snakebite kit, sturdy boots and extra clothes, wool jacket, compass, USGS map, canteen, signal mirror, pocket knife, cooking kit and utensils. Notable omissions were sun block, which was not really available in those days (we still had an ozone layer in the 1970s), and bug repellant, an almost fatal mistake.
For food, I planned, somewhat idealistically, to live off of the land as I had so often done in my high school daydreams. I had studied books on collecting food in the wild, some by none other than Euell Gibbons, the butt of so many Johnny Carson jokes. Gibbons’s books, Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Stalking the Healthful Herbs, would lead me to food I planned to live on during my week at the Falls I reasoned (I took some freeze-dried meals along, just in case). My main sustenance would come from trout that I would catch in the cold waters of Fall Creek above the Falls; I also planned to make acorn soup, man’s ancient food as termed by Gibbons, just as the Maidu had. Blackberries, native to Northern California would be desert.
I hiked the four miles to the Falls in no time and ate a late afternoon sandwich at the lookout. I enjoyed the thunder of the falls again, the mist and the smells of old growth forest. After a few pictures, I headed past the campsites just above the falls where I had stayed as a boy scout and explored the ever-diminishing trail that paralleled fall creek. Towards late afternoon, I noticed the light abating as the sun passed over the heavily forested canyon walls, leaving me in a sort of cool wilderness twilight. I slipped my jacket on and selected a sheltered area by the creek.
My thoughts then turned to food. I pulled a small hook and length of fish line from my pack and headed to a promising stretch of creek, a deep blue circulating pool of smooth water so characteristic of water that held meandering trout. For bait, I turned over a rotting log and promptly found a brown scorpion that was kind enough not to bite me. After brushing it aside, I found several white grubs that I speared onto my hook. With some excitement, I kneeled next to the pool and threw my pole-less line in.
Nothing.
Determined, I continued for an hour with the grubs until I realized that was not going to work. I reached into my pack and retrieved a commercially tied damselfly and floated that over the pool, using a rock that jutted into the ice-cold stream as a perch. Within minutes I got a bite, and after several failures I landed an eleven-inch rainbow trout. I got out my pocketknife and opened the stomach of the fish and observed nothing but flies. Convinced I was on the right track, I returned to the pool and caught another eleven-incher before hunger, cold water, and diminishing light persuaded me to build fire and roast my catch.
As dark descended I chewed partially roasted fish and swatted mosquitoes while listening to the myriad of sounds produced by the forest at night. I felt fulfilled: years of sitting in classes dreaming about self-sufficiency and the wild life had led me to this moment where I would come back to Feather Falls and exert my independence, my competence in nature. Nothing in everyday life made me feel as competent as a night on my own at the Falls, nothing the rustled in the night could dampen my spirit. I was where I belonged; I felt at home.
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Seven years later I married and briefly visited the Falls with my new bride. She thought the area as beautiful as I, although we did not stay overnight, nor did we visit the area above the Falls. So in love was I that the Falls held little interest for me, my touchstone was left untouched on that trip.
Some years and three children later we came with our kids from our home in Southern California and hiked to the end of trail, three miles above the falls. My life had changed dramatically in the intervening time: married life had been tense with its financial responsibility and the emotional needs of my wife had led to tension in our relationship. I had changed too. No longer the young idealist and back-to-the-lander of my youth, I was more interested in lunch than in hiking. But my excitement on coming once again to the trailhead, smelling the green of the fir trees and hearing the moaning of the forest brought back my youth and my connection to the Falls.
Before we started we stopped at the Lake Oroville Visitor’s center, which had wonderful views of Lake Oroville and was a nice place to get maps and to reassure my wife we wouldn’t get lost in the wilderness. Our children were excited, but strangely noncommittal; the Falls held no mystery for them, they were just along for the ride.
After a mile and a half we reached the view of Bald Rock Dome, called ‘Earth Maker’ by the Maidu, which rises 2000 feet above the Middle Fork of the Feather River in Bald Rock Canyon. One of three major landmarks of the area along with Big Bald Rock and Little Bald Rock, they were important places of meditation for the Maidu. Similar to Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, Bald Rock Dome is part of a rock formation 140 million years old termed a pluton, which includes the granite rock over which the water of Feather Falls plummets. The two mile wide pluton was less resistant to erosion between the Falls and the Dome and eroded away more quickly. As water moved down the fall river year after year, the ‘softer’ rocks eroded, creating the falls.
Once again being in Northern California, I felt the spiritual connection again of my youth. I missed the area far more than I realized. About a mile up from the falls we walked through a grove of madrone trees a hundred feet tall. Hardwoods of the Sierras, they are seldom seen anymore, long ago used for firewood (they quickly dull chain saws). At one juncture of the creek we came upon a 100-year-old madrone whose yellowed leaves littered the ground, which cast an otherworldly to the cove, as if faeries lived there. The bark of the madrones peels dark brown to reveal flesh tan skin. Green moss grows on the trunks of nearby oak trees. Loganberries, seedy, tasting of dirt, line the banks of the creek.
The gentle waterfall pools of Fall Creek gurgled nearby, a constant wave-like sound of the sea, a never-ending rush. Purple salamanders crawl among the shallow pools. Purple-flowered wild peas, pods lined with miniature peas to small to eat, flow down the banks of gold-grassed fields where a cabin once stood. More primitive plants, green ferns and mosses, stood in shady areas and gathered moisture. Closer and in the river itself, cottonwood and birch, relatives of aspen trees, rise straight to snatches of sun only available in the creek bed. Wild grape vines, sans grapes, were sometime seen. The trees: incense cedar, Douglas fir, madrone, black oak, and an occasional ponderosa pine; were all monstrous, many over a hundred feet tall. California bays—I had never seen any larger than 6-7 feet high at the Falls—were as large as trees some twenty-five to thirty feet high and filled the air with their fragrant, bitter, sharp smell like pine sol poured fresh from the bottle.
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I’ve been back to the falls whenever I can. An important source of my serenity and identity as a person, the area has changed little in the thirty years since I went there as a boy scout. Protected from logging and development, I take comfort in knowing its will change little in my lifetime, my spiritual wellspring safe for the foreseeable future. The beauty I’ve found in my life got its start at the falls. My individuality and independence, like the Maidu, sprang from this land. In a way I feel I’ve become an old growth forest myself, full of beautiful trees, preserved as a valuable resource.
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