Pine Tree Bend: re-discovered

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Pine Tree Bend is an old secret bivouac site of mine close to home on the hill above the S.G. gravel pit, and this entire area was my old stomping grounds from the 1960s on through the decades following (on motorcycle, horse, and mostly on foot).  Today I found the site again after so many years in exile.

This little bitty site is off the trails and in a very small obscure streambed’s gorge.  The stream bends around the bank on which the big old pine tree stands.  The little ledge near the tree is big enough for a tent or two, and the stone fire-circle that I built long ago is still there.  It is a hermit site, dear to this hermit.

The entire site is long-neglected and littered with leaves and branches, and it will take some cleaning up.  The old pine tree is still alive, but its dead branches now go up higher than ever toward the fewer live ones at the very top.  I think that one will still be able to hear the wind through the pine when the wind is wild enough, but the pine tree probably has only a decade or two left before it dies out.

Finding the spot was an exercise in lone wandering, to ramble from one possible path to another.  It is great joy to encounter old trails, some abandoned, some still used  but with both old and new variations.  I have always thought that Exploration is the very Soul of Man.  I love such rambling – pure hobo joy!

-Zenwind.
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