"Myth Creek Encounter"
(20.5 x 14.5 in.), $1100.00

I left my truck a half hour before sunrise on a hike/grouse hunting trip and much later found I had arrived at my halfway and turn around point at Superstition Lake around eleven a.m., a bit over ten miles from the truck. By midafternoon I'd be back to the truck after hiking a little over a total of twenty-one miles. Between Superstition Lake and Myth Creek on my way back I was fortunate to get my fourth and fifth ruffed grouse giving me my daily limit of five. My well over one hundred previous trips over the past fifty years on this hiking trail that followed a series of former logging roads reminded me that when I got to Myth Creek I knew I'd have a spot with good water to finish cleaning my grouse. I had a favorite spot I had used many times in the past on the east side of the creek with deep, running water not far from where the creek crossed the trail. Nearly finished cleaning the last bird, I heard a noise on the opposite side of the creek about half a block away. I looked up and there she was, a young cow moose probably no more than a couple of years old, staring at me. She had slipped in quietly from dense tree cover with nary a sound and was neither confrontational nor frightened of me, just looked to be curious as she occasionally dipped her head for another gulp of a Myth Creek cocktail and a mouthful of Myth Creek salad greens. They have poor eyesight but their good hearing more than makes up for that deficit so she stared at me with her big ears moving around like radar screens, one ear forward and one toward the back in an attempt to pick up any noise from me. It was obvious to me she was trying to determine what I was. The area I was in was extremely remote and it was very possible I was the first human she had ever seen. I finished up, packed up and she was still staring as I left. I had a hike of around three and one half hours to get back to my truck so I conceded victory to her in the staring contest.

This part of the trail was very picturesque, one of my favorite spots on the trail and held a chain of interestingly-named small lakes: Campfire, Myth and Superstition Lakes. There is a small, nearly perfectly oval-shaped and unnamed lake to the north of Campfire Lake, long ago I gave it the name of Legend Lake; it remains unnamed today on all maps except the one in my head. So, whenever I get to Campfire Lake I sometimes to think to myself, "Sitting around the campfire at night, stories are told and some become myths, superstitions and legends."