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When backpacking, I try to avoid crowds. The few people I do meet, however, often turn out to be memorable. This was true on the 1,300-mile hike I took across Oregon in 1985. My goal then was to begin research for my guidebooks. But my journal wound up revolving around the people I met.
After the trip, my journal was published as “Listening for Coyote.” One of the high points of that story was my encounter with Len Ramp and Betty McCaleb on the edge of southwest Oregon’s Kalmiopsis Wilderness, which comprises nearly 180,000 acres west and northwest of Cave Junction.
Here’s how I wrote up that encounter in my journal:
Len Ramp is a lean bantam of a man, with dark eyes and a trim black moustache. A dozen pockets in his red canvas vest bulge mysteriously. A geologist’s pick, the tool of his trade, hangs from a loop on his belt.
He shakes my hand with a firm grip and gives a signal to the driver of the pickup. The pickup growls back up the dusty road. Finally, Len speaks.
“He’ll meet us 10 miles up the road, at the edge of the Kalmiopsis. You didn’t want to toss your pack in the truck, did you?”
I look at the dust cloud left by the truck. How could I have failed to think of it myself? The pack’s straps have worn searing red grooves into my shoulders. But now I just shake my head.
“I didn’t think you would. Anybody backpacking all the way across Oregon’s not likely to cut corners. Well?” Len flashes another smile. “Ready?”
He leads the way up the road at an amazingly brisk pace. I don’t want to criticize — after all, he’s taken a day off from his office work in Grants Pass to hike and talk with me — so I jolt my pack along, trying to keep up.
While I try to pretend this semi-jogging is my normal gait, Len does most of the talking. He says he usually runs 5 miles before breakfast, but he didn’t today, knowing he’d get in some hiking with me. He is 59, and each summer he competes in marathons. In the winter, he climbs the peaks of the Cascade Range and skis down.
“Had a close call climbing a glacier on Shasta,” he says. “Fell through the snow into a deep crevasse. Only survived because I’d strapped my skis crosswise on my backpack. Bridged the crevasse right near the top.”
“You hike a lot in the Kalmiopsis?” I ask.
He smiles again. “I mapped it for the state. Walked every stream, trail, road and ridge for 200 square miles. Learned the land like the palm of my hand.”
After half a dozen miles of fast hiking, we cross a high, swaying footbridge over the turbulent green-pooled Illinois River.
Len says, “We better stop in to see Betty before heading up to the wilderness.”
“Who?”
“Betty McCaleb. She and her husband bought a hardscrabble ranch out here in the ’20s, wound up prospecting for a living. The husband died years ago, but Betty stayed on.”
An ancient, unpainted plank mining cabin sags against the hillside ahead. Len knocks on its sagging screen door. There is a long pause. I look at him questioningly, but he just shakes his head.
Minutes pass before a faint voice croaks from within. “I’m coming!”
Finally, a very old, shrunken woman stares at me through the wavy glass of the porch door. Strands of gray hair descend about her heavily freckled face. Then she sees the geologist, and her face lights up. “Well, Len! Come on in!”
Inside, the house gives me a strong feeling of vertigo. The dining room slopes woozily toward a treadle sewing machine in a corner. The window is cocked at a different angle. The door frames hump or sag to match the rickety doors. Mrs. McCaleb hobbles ahead into the living room, which slants so radically it seems about to launch itself, doilied sofa and all, through a threadbare curtain into the garden.
Len smiles at the elderly woman, and then surprises me with a fearsome shout: “How are you doing?”
When she doesn’t flinch, I realize she is hard of hearing. She also appears to be at least 85 and apparently lives alone, so Len’s question is well-chosen.
“Well now, Len, I’m all right,” she says, “but since you’re here, maybe you could help me cut my toenail.”
“Your toenail?” Len yells.
Mrs. McCaleb lowers herself into a swivel rocker. The coffee table beside her is littered with clippers, scissors and pliers.
“Well, yes. I dropped a wrench on my big toe, but instead of the toenail falling off, it did this.”
She takes off her slipper and reveals a yellow hornlike appendage sprouting straight up out of her toe. From the look of it, the toe is undergoing a metamorphosis into a rhinoceros. “It’s getting hard to do all the ranch chores when it hurts so.”
Len swallows hard. “I’m a geologist, Betty!” he shouts.
“No matter. See what you can do. Just don’t use that hammer of yours on it.”
So Len and Betty set to work, ignoring me for the moment. First, Len tries scissors, and then clippers, and then wire cutters. When all these weapons fail to cut the mighty toenail, Len unfolds the saw attachment of a pocket knife. He puts some weight into his sawing, until she winces and says, “Ooh, Len, that’s hurting.”
Len sits back, glaring at the thing, obviously reluctant to give up now that he’s tackled it. But he finally folds the saw blade away. “Betty, I think you’d better see a foot doctor!”
She sighs. “Yes, I suppose this will be the year I have to go in.”
Len looks at her, astonished. “How long has your toe been like this?!”
“Oh, I dropped the wrench back in ’79 or so, I guess. It’s just so hard to make doctor appointments in Cave Junction, what with the phones gone after the war.”
“I thought you had a radio hookup out here!” Len shouts.
“Well, they changed systems, and the new one didn’t reach anybody from here, so they came and took it out.” She sighs again and puts her slipper back on. Then she brushes back her white hair and smiles at me. “Well, so you are hiking with Len?”
I hesitate, but her intent look assures me the issue of the toenail is closed. I tell her about my hike.
Then Len stands up and looks at his watch. “We’ll have to be going! You make sure you take care of that toe now!”
We say goodbye to the old woman and veer out through the tilting rooms. Outside, the afternoon sun and the 90-degree heat hit us like a wall.
“We’ll have to make some time if you’re going to get into the wilderness today,” Len says. “It’s 8 miles over Chetco Pass to a campsite with water. Don’t worry, though. My nickname (is) Shortcut Ramp. I’ll get you to a spring near the wilderness line in an hour and a half.”
He charges up a trailless slope of tough-limbed madrone trees and manzanita bushes. In the next 4 miles, we gain 2,000 feet. I have no time to look at my map, and can no longer tell any directions except uphill and down. Then, in the midst of the dustiest, brushiest slope of all, Len announces, “Well, here we are.”
I stare at him. This is not a good joke.
“Hey, George!” he shouts ahead.
Incredibly, a voice answers. We climb to the top of the slope and look down at Len’s four-by-four pickup, waiting in a patch of shade on a Jeep track.
I stumble down after him into the miraculous little gulch. The dust on the road is 3 inches thick, and puffs up in big clouds with each step. “But — the spring?” I ask.
“Over here,” Len says. He pushes his way through the dry brush along the bottom of the gulch. Suddenly, we come upon a tiny patch of bright green grass. A clear stream of water, 2 feet wide and a foot deep, is flowing from a hole in one bank, rushing almost silently for 10 feet, and then disappearing into another hole without a trace. The ground in all directions from this hidden oasis is perfectly dry. I look at Len with awe.
He looks at his watch. “Well, I’ve got to get back to the office before 5. Sure enjoyed the hike. Oh, and here’s something my wife sent for you.”
He rummages about in one of the pockets in the back of his vest and withdraws an insulated paper bag. Inside are four lemon cucumbers, a large bunch of table grapes, and a zucchini — all of which he has been concealing in this unbelievable vest for the entire hike. “Just something from the garden,” he says.
I thank him repeatedly. I manage to stay standing as he turns to go and finds his way back out of the brush. But the moment he is out of sight, I collapse face-first into the grass.
