Bad Medicine Country
In the 1800's, white east-side "explorers" in the Washington Cascades often hired a local Indian as a guide, Yakamas having commonly journeyed across the Cascades to visit West-side Indians. One military group seeking to explore Mt. Rainier found their Indian guide refusing to accompany them onto the eastern slopes of the mountain. Their guide said that that land was dangerous and of evil repute among Indians. He called it "Bad Medicine Country". No Indian would go there.
I spent a lot of time backpacking in the Washington Cascades, between the Goat Rocks and Snoqualmie Pass. I hiked the Cascade Crest trail and many of the east-side trails that approach it, and often bushwhacked up and down the steep hills, across the streams, over the ridge-tops. As a trained mountaineer, I was cautious and careful, aware that help might be a long time coming were I to suffer an injury. A bad idea to travel alone in the mountains, justified for me by necessity and experience.
I learned the beauty of sunlit green, white and blue daytime panoramas of the high alpine areas and the cooler darker feel of the lower woods. In the evening, I drop down lower in the cover of the trees, making camp, making dinner, eating, and watching the woods around me. Wind moans through the far treetops, the fading light and the unknown sounds of the close woods convey the vacant loneliness of the wilderness. You realize that nature is indifferent to you, offers neither solace nor care, offers the sharp edge of primordial fear.
South of Chinook Pass, I'd been near the top of Seymour Peak where the vegetation gives out, able to gaze down the east side of the peak, a 1000 foot vertical drop of naked rock, one of nature's dramatic scars. High up on the west side, I'm picking my way down a steep clearing, knee deep in skunk grass, 20 yards in any direction from the scrub fir that covers most of the peak. It's hot and the sweat rolls down my forehead and into my eyes. I pause to wipe it away, suddenly become aware of the hair rising at the back of my neck. My hand drops to the grip of my revolver, and I turn to surveil the surrounding tree line, ready to draw and fire. There is nothing discernably out of the ordinary, but the warning at my neck continues. Nothing for it but to continue going down, pivoting continually, watching my back. As I exit the clearing at its bottom, the eerie feeling fades, and I work my way back down to camp on Dewey Lake. This is my first experience of my own Bad Medicine Country.
The next one happened on the Crest Trail, south of the White Pass, on the south side of Hogback Mountain a bit below Shoe Lake. The position affords a southeast view of Bear Creek Mountain at the east end of the Goat Rocks, Clear Lake, and an occasional glimpse of the sun glinting off the silvery water of the North Fork of the Tieton River far below. Ahead, a sharp shoulder of the mountain blocks the view to south, making with the mountain proper a pocket to my right that enfolds a dense copse of spar pole Larch, shaded from the sun. A small rillet runs down through the copse and exits left. You can't see into the copse, only the fading ranks of the Larch and darkness in daylight, and the suspicion of a presence. As I approach, once again the hackles on my neck rise in warning, and again my hand drops to the pistol butt. I'm on my toes, looking everywhere all at once, half afraid. Bad Medicine Country. Fifty yards down the trail, on the other side of the shoulder, the feeling fades and I move on down to McCall basin and camp.
A year later, a companion and I hiking the same little area have the same experience. Weird, but repeatable.
It's in the same area, early Spring, cold, many feet of snow covering the ground. This time, I'm working my way up the south end of the Hogback Mountain from the North Fork. There's dense cloud cover and ground mist swirling around. I come onto what might have been a small pond under the snow, and the same eerie feeling grips me. Same program, except that, having no particular destination, I turn around and leave the way I came. I'd had a good climb up as it was, no need to tempt fate.
Ten years later, my Father, driving up the North Fork of the Tieton River road, directly below my location of that Spring, crossed paths with a grizzly bear, the full Monte, dish face, round body and ears, 3 inch claws. Master of everything. Bad Medicine.
My final experience with Bad Medicine Country came in full summer and broad daylight, roughly between Old Snowy and McCall Basin. I'd hiked up from the North Fork, onto the Crest Trail and wound around Elk Pass toward Old Snowy, a well-known peak in the Goat Rocks. The trail is a 3 foot wide boulevard on an arete, to the west a steep drop down to stream level, to the east a similarly steep drop down into the North Fork drainage. Looking east down to McCall Basin, I could see that I might with care and my ice axe negotiate the slope and save a mile or so on my return.
So I stepped off, first edging 200 feet down a steep snowfield to a smooth rock flat that terminated in a steep dropoff to the east. A V-shaped cut through the dropoff about thirty feet wide, fifteen feet deep and 150 feet long gave on to some woods leading down to my camp. All went well until I entered the cut, where I walked into a horrible and unfamiliar stench, accompanied by, guess what, rising hackles. The smell wasn't exactly that of a decaying carcass, but similar, with a bit of a whiff of barnyard. I am alert and fearful. Nothing visible and nothing showed as I passed along the cut, hand on gun butt. Very Bad Medicine.
I don't think my Bad Medicine Country was the same as that of the old Indian guide. His was a semi-vertical environment that offered numerous real objective dangers, an environment ventured into only by fools and mountaineers. Mine was not Bad in the sense of the land being dangerous, but in the sense of a presence, whether of a dangerous animal or an eerie spirit I can't be sure.
My years of cruising the wilderness are behind me. The memory of the sometimes scary traverses of uncharted steep and unstable slopes have faded somewhat. But these "Bad Medicine" experiences remain clear in my mind, and I shudder as I recall them, as I shudder to recall the timber wolves howling their midnight warning over the vast Tieton River drainage. It's nice to be safe at home. Though I still carry a pistol.
I saw him swim under water and come up and grab a moccasin off a log one day. Snake never got angry. If it was anybody else, they would have been bit. But, seriously, all the moccasins I ever ran across never acted aggressive unless you got right on 'em.
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