This is an in-depth 10-part soundwalk series on the 30-mile Wildwood Trail in Portland’s Forest Park. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 span Washington Park trailhead north to Hardesty Trail. Feel free to press play for the environmental sound as we head further north!
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The Hardesty Trail descends east from this junction toward Leif Erikson Drive, named for William Preston Hardesty, a city engineer turned Mazamas president who organized the club’s walks department for decades before his death in August 1944. The Mazamas cut the trail that same year, in the burned interior. Nearby they planted 5000 Douglas-fir and 50 western redcedar trees in the late 40’s.
Hardesty left a trust fund to the organization, paid out 21 years after his death. The money arrived around 1965, just as a new generation of teenagers was cutting trails a few miles to the south.
Most people who hike this trail have no idea how much labor goes into making it feel effortless. The work is meant to be invisible. Leif Hoven, a veteran trail volunteer who now chairs the Mount Hood chapter of the Pacific Crest Trail Association, described it this way: “You don’t want to have it look like it’s just been completely mowed and shaven and barren. All of a sudden you come to a spot that’s been touched up and cleaned up, you do tend to notice it.” The goal is to make it appear as natural as possible.
After an unusually challenging hike on one of my favorite loops in the park, I was coming back up to the trailhead when I noticed a gentleman, maybe in his late sixties, wearing a sturdy backpack with a hand saw lashed to it. This was the day after a storm system moved through, and he asked me what I saw.
“There’s several smaller blowdowns, and one big one,” I said, looking at his gear, “I think you’ll need more than what you’ve got there.”
He was unfazed. He’d probably heard that before. “We’ll see. I’ve got my saw,” he said, with a game expression.
I don’t know why, but I had assumed that people just stopped using hand saws when it came to downed trees, even if they had to pack a chainsaw in over a mile from a trailhead. I checked in on the fallen tree the next time I made the loop. That 30-inch diameter tree was cut clean through. Two strips of bark had been removed from the circumference with axe work, revealing fine-grained log cuts on each side of the trail. I thought about what a tough job that must have been, but imagined it also came with its own sense of triumph and altruism. I haven’t looked at a cut log on the side of the trail the same way since.
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