Ahhh, adrenaline

For the uninitiated, let me say this: There is nothing that kicks off your sympathetic nervous system response with some high octane adrenaline like seeing three hungry adult coyotes charging down a slope toward you and your not-large dog. Boy howdy. Pro tip: Do. not. run.

If you take off running, you will not gain the experience of seeing how the lead coyote splits off from the other two so that he can head you off while the other two chase from behind. It's amazing, really. They do this without verbal commands or hand signals or walkie talkies. They simply know to hunt prey this way, and it's quite fascinating. And kind of scary.

So I stood still on the trail, Maya close beside me, but I kept my eyes moving back and forth, watching the lead guy, watching the other two. As I did this, I began talking in a voice loud enough and deep enough to make the 'yotes nervous, but I kept the lid on my urge to do some excited shouting because I didn't want to terrify my dog. She knew, though. Maya knew. She'd seen them, too, so when I started making loud growling sounds--something she's never heard me do before--she understood that I was doing this to warn off the very big creatures who had come running toward us.

Also for the uninitiated: Coyotes are damn smart.

So we watch the lead guy peal off and run parallel to us and then ahead of us, crossing the trail and abruptly stopping to hide behind a tall shrub. I know he's there because I've kept my eyes on him, and now I can see the tips of his ears above the foliage. He stands as still as I had moments ago, waiting. Watching.

What to do? We walk straight toward him.

I mean, I'm not going to turn around and go back in the direction of two coyotes, and this is the only trail out, so we're going to--I'm going to--chase him off. Which is what I do, tossing rocks into the shrub, growling, shouting (but not too loud), "Go on, 'yote!"

And he goes.

But we do not stop watching, Maya sniffing the air as we pass that shrub, all senses alert, me ready to reach down and scoop up my thirty-pound dog if I have to. But the coyote disappears into the brush.

Next item on our hiking agenda: Get the hell out of there and back to the truck. Sadly, Maya is now limping badly on her left front paw. When I find a sandy section of trail surrounded only by low foliage, I bend down to check her foot, grateful that finally, after three years, she will let me touch her feet when she picks up a thorn so I can pull it out. There is nothing in her foot pad this time, though, as I suspected. When we stopped on the trail to watch the coyotes, I realized too late we were standing near an ant's nest. I suspect she's been bitten. She licks her paw over and over, then looks up at me. I know exactly what she's thinking. It's this:

Can't you make it better? You always make it better. This hurts. Please make it better.

But I can't. Not out here. So we limp slowly down the trail, me promising to get her home as soon as possible while ever vigilant lest the coyote reappear.

We've gone fifty yards when I realize I left my hiking pole in the trail when I stopped to examine Maya's paw. We have to go back for it, back toward the coyote's hiding place. Maya limps slowly beside me, I finally pick up the pole, and we reverse direction, heading back up the trail toward the truck. It's a long slog. We were nearly to the farthest point out when we saw the coyotes. Now we've got a mile to walk back. And even though it's only 7:30a.m., it's getting hotter by the second.

We stop every time we find shade. Maya immediately crouches, turning her paw up to lick it over and over. My poor girl. We walk on.

Slowly, though, the pain in her paw starts to subside. She limps less and less, and by the time we get to the final steep uphill, she trots ahead of me. She knows the truck is on the other side. Safety assured. We've made it.

Before you ask: No, I don't carry pepper spray. The coyotes would just sneeze it off. I, however, would need to call 9-1-1 for a rescue because my lungs would immediately shut down. No, I would never carry a gun and shoot a coyote. Just no. Coyotes don't attack adult humans. It's only Maya I need to worry about. Because a coyote will hide in the bushes and leap out to steal a small dog off a leash. For this reason, I am hyper-vigilant when out in the hills with her, scanning the sides of the trail ahead for snakes or predators, scanning the ridgelines for coyotes (which is how I saw these three right at the exact moment they saw us). FYI, I often slip a pocket knife into my backpack or hiking pants if I think I may be in a dangerous situation. But we were just out for "a quick walk in the hills before it gets hot." Sigh....

Maya is fine. I am fine. The coyotes are fine but probably still very hungry. For a while. The hills are covered with rabbits and voles. They'll get breakfast, don't you worry about them. I'm just glad the menu didn't include Maya.

A Cascade of Nostalgia

 

Forest Falls, named in part for a very tall, very beautiful cascading waterfall (called "Big Falls") at the east end of town, is a small village in the foothills below Mt. San Gorgonio in Southern California. I made my first sojourn there when I was in high school when a group of “Jesus freak” young people like myself car caravanned there from Riverside. I still have photos and many fond memories from that day.

A half dozen years after that first trip, I returned to Forest Falls to attend my very first writers conference at Forest Home, the beautiful conference center there. At the age of 21, I had entered a national writing contest, won third place, and the person who called to make that announcement told me, “I see that you live in Southern California. In addition to everything else you’ve won [publication in a national magazine with a readership of six million, plus books on writing AND the entire Chronicles of Narnia series, just for fun], we’d like to send you to a writers conference.”

Did those lovely folks have any idea how attending that conference would catapult me into my dream of writing and publishing? I don’t know, but it sure did.

When my children were old enough, we returned for a day of hiking, picnicking, blackberry picking—and, at the end of it, a trip to the ER for stitches after my eldest son stepped on a piece of broken glass while wading barefoot in the stream.

I can assure you, when I returned many years later with three young grandkids in tow, I made sure all of us kept our shoes on.

At some point in my adult life, I picked up a friend who was trying to decide whether or not to leave her abusive husband. I took her up to Forest Falls in my beloved VW bug. While we rock-hopped over rough terrain to get to the falls, we also attempted to navigate the equally challenging topics of “commitment” and “self-esteem.” Good talk. Good walk. But when we returned to the car—the only one at the trailhead on a weekday—we discovered it had a flat tire. In the hours previous, I had been trying to convince my friend that she was stronger than she realized. When she saw the flat, she began to wring her hands and cry. (Mind you, this was decades before the convenience of cell phones.) She was not reassured when I told her not to worry, we would, together, fix the flat ourselves. But we did, handily. At some point, a young man with a six-pack of beer pulled into the parking area on a motorcycle. He took a seat under a tree and watched us do the work—and I was grateful that he never offered to help, just sat and downed his beer, one after another. Because when we triumphantly finished and climbed into the car to leave, my friend told me how empowered she felt. Booyah.

In the past, the trip to Forest Falls required some planning, as it was some distance from where I lived. Moving to Calimesa, however, put me much closer, so that now I can get up there in just over half an hour, traffic permitting.

So of course, I had to take Maya. Here’s what happened when I did:

As soon as we left the car and hit the trail, we saw the giant sign erected by the Forest Service: The area around the waterfall was “closed,” for all intents and purposes. Why? Because in order to get to the falls, you have to cross Mill Creek, and (as mentioned in my previous post), the water in the creek is running so high and so fast, it’s treacherous. Plus someone dies every year by trying to climb the falls, and I think USFS is simply tired of calling Search and Rescue to pack out another dead body. Seriously.

However—we could still walk along the creek, which we did. (Click here to see a bit of that.) Until she saw people. Too many people. There may have been a total of five or six at various points along the stream. But for her, one human (besides me) is too many. So she panicked. Where to escape?? Into the water. She headed straight into the stream and would have paddled to the far side had I not reeled her back in. (When we hike, she’s on a fifteen-foot lead, so she really did get pretty far before I wrangled her closer to shore.)

 

When I wouldn’t let her retreat, she did what I have taught her to do when she’s fearful, which is to sit down and take a breath. (Okay, I know you can’t really teach a dog to take a nice deep breath, but she sits, and I do the deep breathing.) Yep, she sat her little bottom right down in that ice-cold water. Silly dog.

 

We didn’t stay much longer; I had things to do at home. But I did stop to take pictures, and realized (shout out to all my Baldy friends!) from a certain point, you can see all the way from Forest Falls to Mt. Baldy. And yes, of course I waved when I realized that. You never know who might be waving back.