A Steep Climb and a Magical Meadow in the Teanaway

When: June 2016
Where: Bean Creek Basin in the Teanaway on the eastern side of the Central Cascades
With: my partner
What: hiking
Accompaniment: We Can’t Ever Die by White Arrows

The Teanaway Community Forest is a special place, just far enough of a drive that we rarely make it out for a hike. It reminds me of the eastern Sierra Mountains, with Ponderosa pines and drier forests than the rain-drenched western slopes.

I dragged my partner out the long drive, excited to show off the beautiful area I’d discovered at a Mountaineers native plant field trip a few years earlier. I’d attempted to take him once before, and we’d showed up to snow. I couldn’t recall exactly where we’d gone, but picked a hike that seemed likely to be nearby.

I don’t have a firm grasp on what numerical elevation gains mean without looking at the contours on a topo map, so the trail turned out to be steeper than I’d expected. We passed a family of older hikers who gave my partner shit for letting me carry the pack. Hello, sexism! (I would like to retroactively tell them to fuck off and mind their own business, since I was much too polite at the time.) (I wish I didn’t remember slights like this five years later, but I do. Curse my excellent memory for mean people!)

We huffed up the steep (for us, anyway) trail, pausing often for me to photograph textures. Weather-bleached logs, white and carved with faint tracings by insects, dotted the slope. When we reached the basin, we found petite lupines in bloom between small boulders, making a magical setting to perch for lunch. Shooting stars and Indian paintbrush decorated the banks of the tumbling creek. After eating, we decided we’d gone far enough, and blitzed down the mountain for the long drive home.