FOUR JEWS HUNTING GROUSE IN THE CASCADES…

Now THAT'S something you don't see every day!

Growing up in Southern California, family vacations every summer usually included a camping element in points north. June Lake near Mammoth, Sequoia National Park, Olympic National Park, Banff & Lake Louise, the Grand Canyon and multiple stays in Yosemite were just some of the places my parents and sisters pitched tents or unlocked cabin doors and unrolled sleeping bags. I was somewhere around 10 or 11 years old when my father and I spent a full week tenting at Steelhead Lake in the Sierra Nevada, taking pack mules in led by a guide who returned one week later to guide us out. In between we caught and ate trout every night, and didn’t see another human being the entire time.

So it shouldn’t have been so tough for me to rough it at the age of 25 when my host David Fishman took me and a few other friends on a camping trip for a few days during a weeklong visit to him and his wife Donna in Seattle, Washington.

Aside from the most popular attractions Seattle and Western Washington have to offer, there was one activity which prompted me to write the most unlikely headline for a Substack column ever…

Four Jews hunting grouse in the Cascades. Now THAT is a something you don’t see every day!

From my Journal, August 30, 1982:

Seattle and points east…

Up early after a comfortable night in Dave & Donna Fishman’s guest room, feeling both the excitement and apprehension about today’s trip into the Washington wilderness. Took off in Davey’s Dodge Dart along with Arnie and Donna’s brother Lee for the three-day quest that supposedly will find us hunting grouse in a few days.

It was cloudy and overcast, so the drive to Mt. Ranier was somewhat of a bust, being that we couldn’t see Mt. Ranier.

We found a visitor’s center, took a nature hike; the forest is quite lush here and we ate berries we picked from the side of the road.

When it became apparent we weren’t going to see Mr. Ranier today and possibly tomorrow either, we decided to continue on. We drove around the mountain, east into Central Washington, where the climate, flora and fauna are as different from the coast as night and day. We were in the desert! Came back a bit into the mountains as it got dark and we made a few inquiries into the whereabouts of the area’s blue grouse. We were pointed toward the hills high above a little town called Cashmere. Slowly we crept into the dark hills on a little dirt road. Ten…fifteen…twenty miles into the wilderness.

Finally, in the pitch black of the night, we found a meadow of some sort where we stopped, asked more about the grouse on Lee’s CB radio (people were very helpful on the other end), and decided to call it a night.

My three friends unrolled their sleeping bags on the cold ground outside. I preferred to sleep in the warmer car (where I couldn’t fully stretch out but wouldn’t get eaten by bears), on some kind of knoll in the middle of the high mountains in the Cascade Range of Central Washington, on my vacation, sleeping in all my clothes in a 1968 Dodge Dart. The adventure continues tomorrow…

August 31, 1982:

Woke at the crack of dawn to find out that we really had parked high in the mountains. We’re in a large clearing near the crest dividing two sides of a mountain, and right now…at 7am…it is damn cold. The wind was howling in the trees all night. I woke up before the rest and explored a bit around the ridge. Tom Bopp would be proud of me (and I know would love to be here).

Sleeping in the car was a bit cramped, but I know it was warmer. After a big breakfast, Lee and Davey showed Arnie and me how to use the rifle, pistol and shotguns. The .22 rifle was the most fun for me. From 80 yards away I broke the nick of a bottle on a stump on my first shot! And shattered the rest of the bottle on the second! We shot at a number of targets; it was a great deal of fun and I did surprisingly well at it.

We drove for about an hour until we came to the very top of a mountain that overlooked the desert on one side and the Cascades on the other. The Cascades Range was far in the distance --- we stood on a pinnacle higher than EVERYTHING except for that.

Spotting a number of blue grouse on a hike through the nearby forest, we decided to stay here for the rest of the day, make our camp here and start on our blue grouse hunt from this place tomorrow. With much too long a drive back to Cashmere over rocky dirt roads winding their way into Y-intersections and forks that would probably get us lost (Davey & Lee wouldn’t think so), we were better off staying put. So in order to kill the entire afternoon, we took other little hikes, sat around in the car and told jokes. Parked where we are, right atop the ridge looking both ways, it is extremely windy so the car provides the only shelter.

Heated a can of beef stew for dinner and sat in the car listening to the CB. Had a few conversations with people miles away, and it makes for interesting listening when you pick up other people’s conversations too. As the sun went down we readied everything for tomorrow --- Dave, Lee & Arnie sacked out once more by the car and I made up my bed inside, cramped but warm.

September 1, 1982:

The big grouse hunt! Woke at 5:45am at the top of Chumstick Mountain, the 360-degree view providing a panoramic view of a dynamite sunrise. Dave, Lee, Arnie and I grabbed a fast bite, and at 6am grouse hunting season was officially open. Arnie and I took turns using the third shotgun --- between the two of us we only got one shot each at a real grouse. We flushed a number of them from the woods but weren’t fast enough on the trigger. Lee bagged two, Dave one. The toughest part of the whole thing was the hiking. We climbed and walked miles over rough terrain in our hunting efforts. But it was a good experience. Efforts later in the day to find grouse were fruitless, so we left our mountain and started the long trek back to Seattle. Went through the Northern Cascades as the sun set, so we missed a lot of good scenery. Had dinner in a local tavern and enjoyed a wild few hours in the car on the way home, clowning around on the CB and becoming the topic of many other people’s conversations.

Home to Dave’s after midnight, grubby as hell, to take a long-awaited and much enjoyed shower. It’s been a wild three days --- we saw a lot of Washington, and it’s not all forest! Central Washington is desert --- the Columbia River is big but the land around it is parched. The further west we got, the lusher the scenery. It’s been a great three days, with another three to go!

Looking east atop Chumstick Mountain (that’s me above). Looking west, Dave Fishman and his brother-in-law Lee with their grouse (below)

The rest of my vacation was without hiking shoes and guns, as we went fishing on the Puget Sound, toured Victoria and Butchart Gardens on Vancouver Island, viewed the city and beyond from the top of the Space Needle, went river rafting on the Skykomish River and watched the Seattle Sounders Soccer team in a playoff game at the Kingdome.

I’ve returned many times to Seattle since then but have never had an experience like my three days roughing it in the nearby mountains. Nor have I ever again ridden in a Dodge Dart.

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