Unscathed

(entry for 11/13/2024)

Sixty-nine years ago yesterday I escaped 'unscathed,' as they say, from a situation where everyone around me fell victim to a scourge of sorts.

It happened in the beautiful Mount Baldy area of Washington County, Oregon, less than a mile above where I was attending boarding school at Laurelwood Academy, my first (and Junior) year there.  A photo of a nearby feature (at an earlier time of year) appears at the head of this post.

It had been a warm fall, and winter still seemed a long ways away.  The leaves had started turning but were still on the trees. The underbrush was turning dry but hadn't died yet.  The number one song in the US was 'Autumn Leaves' by Roger Williams.  The number one recreational activity in Oregon was hiking, and would be for another few weeks.

I guess that's why some idiot decided that our Saturday evening 'entertainment' that week would be to go for a hike in the woods.  At night.  In the woods.  No flashlights allowed.  

Most Saturday nights we held 'marches' in the gymnasium. (Marches were the Adventist substitute for dancing. A 'March' consisted of forming couples, and walking briskly around the gym in 4/4 time, to a Sousa or some similar sound. We were even allowed to hold hands, if we wanted to.  We formed intricate patterns on the floor and somehow managed not to stumble over each other in the process.)

This Saturday night, November 12, 1955, we did form couples, but there was no music and we definitely were not in the gym.  Boys and girls who were 'going together' formed one type of couple.  Boys and girls who were not going with anyone made up a different sort of couple, and the hand-holding generally was absent in this case, with boys being assigned at random to girls, and vice versa, whether they knew each other or not.  The girl and I who were assigned to each other had never met before, and in fact, I never saw her again after that night.  Not sure what happened to her.  It's possible she had a parent or guardian who objected to the ridiculous 'entertainment' she was forced to participate in that night, and took her mercifully out of school.  Don't know.

She was one of the oddest-looking girls I had ever seen. Not quite albino, but close, she had the lightest color hair I have ever seen on a person. The color of sun-bleached straw dusted with pastry flour. Her eyes were such a pale shade of blue that there were almost white.  Her skin was seemingly dusted with the same color of flour, but it was also scaly, like a lizard. She was also as skinny as a lizard.  A really skinny one.  She wanted to hold hands, so we did.  Her hand felt like extremely dry cardboard.

I of course immediately fell in love.

It was like being attached to a being from another planet. Perhaps some sort of angel. Probably a fallen one. (I have of course long since forgotten her name, but I recall it being strange and sonorous.  What else could it possibly have been!)

We were told that we would hike up the paved highway to a dirt road that turned right and skirted the top of Mount Baldy.  There would be a vehicle with bright lights leading the way.  There would be another vehicle with even brighter lights following behind.  When we reached a certain point directly above the school, the vehicles were turn their motors off, and their lights off, and we would find our way down the mountain-side to the school.  In the dark.  Through the woods.  With no path to follow.  If anybody failed to show up back at the gym by ten p.m., search parties with flashlights and lanterns would fan out through the woods to make sure there was no hanky-panky going on.

Some entertainment!

No one seemed frightened as all this was explained.  Bewildered, yes, in some cases.  But no worries or fears.  God would look after us, or if He didn't, the teachers with the flashlights and lanterns would.  Maybe.

It was a warm evening.  Nobody wore a jacket or a sweater.  We began to hike up the road, eastward, toward the peak.  It was a crooked road (and still is).  Sometimes the lights from the following vehicle shone directly on us.  Sometimes we were mere silhouettes. Sometimes when the curves were really tight, we were almost in pitch darkness.  Onward we climbed.

We finally reached the turning off point, and duly turned off. The group became scraggled out (if there is such a word).  The dirt road was narrow and twisty.  The vehicle lights no longer shone directly on us, but we could still see each other as silhouettes.  My partner was the only silhouette that wasn't black.  She was still as white as could be, and looked like a beacon.  Other couples gathered around, to bask in her glow.

Then the glow went out, because we had reached the critical point, directly above the school. The trees were too thick to see the school, but we were assured that the school's lights were on, and that as got close to the goal we would be able to see where we were going.  More or less.  But the vehicles had turned off their lights, and so the glow off my partner went out.  There was a waning crescent moon at the time, but it had gone down before the sun had. It was so dark we could almost taste it.

We all just stood there, paralyzed not with fear but with the knowledge that the whole experience was going to get a lot worse before it got any better.

One of the teacher's announced through a bull horn that it was now nine o'clock and that we had an hour to descend the mountainside to safety.  And light.

Like a herd of wildebeest we crashed into the forest and began our descent. We soon discovered that there was more than just trees in the forest.  There was underbrush.  It was thick and it was tough and had heavy leaves and what felt to be something like tiny berries.

Here's a picture of what it was, though this picture was taken in spring, when the plants were still green and pretty.

If you recognize the plants in the picture, then you know by now where this story is going.  If you don't, well, it's going there anyway.

By the ten o'clock deadline, about two thirds of us had made it back.  My 'friend' and I got there about five minutes prior to the limit.

The flashlights and lanterns duly got turned on and lit and by 10:30 everybody was back.  Everybody was fine.  No broken bones.  No twisted ankles.  Not even any torn clothes.  Everybody was FINE.  Right then, that is.

By the next morning everybody was NOT fine!

Everybody in the school had the most gorgeous red rash you ever did see.  Hands,  arms, legs, necks, everywhere you could see.  Everybody but me.  I am not allergic to Poison Oak, and everybody else was. Some of the kids actually got sick from it, with fevers and everything.  It turns out that late fall is the absolute worst time to be exposed to the stuff.  The irritant liquid has turned to sticky jelly and is concentrated to seriously caustic levels.  The berries, now dried, are worse than the leaves.  Whoever designed this event could not have picked a worse time to do it.  Classes were canceled for a week.  It was Christmas Vacation a bit early.  Maybe that was the whole idea?

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