Whoosh bang snap.

The desert lightning storm arrived at our campsite just after bedtime, jarring me awake. The air, dead calm just moments before, screamed through the pines.

"Wake up, Rucker - we're out of here!" I called to my grandson in his tent nearby.

Rucker and I were the only occupants of the Forest Service's lightly used Jackson Creek camp-ground in southern Oregon. As we piled into my Nissan pickup to find a little safety, the night sky flickered with a cloud-to-cloud light show that moved horizontally, rather than striking the earth.

We drove to the edge of sprawling Klamath Marsh, where conifers suddenly give way to grasslands, away from any falling trees, and turned on our Forest Service field radio. Ten miles away at the Sugarpine Mountain fire lookout, Pat Wilson was dutifully reporting the "disturbance" as it moved to the northwest.

As Forest Service volunteers, 16-year-old Rucker and I were on a dream assignment. Serving on the Winema National Forest out of Oregon's Klamath Palls, we were spending an intense summer week on the Chemult Ranger District some 60 miles to the north, seeking out the finest old, growth ponderosa pine from a wide-ranging mosaic totaling nearly 10,000 acres.

For now, these lands have been taken out of the logging loop to preserve old growth ponderosa ecosystems. We were there to conduct field site surveys and recommend places where the general public might come eyeball-to-eyeball with prime ponderosa. That hefty chunk of acreage, we learned, was part of an impressive 24,000-plus acres receiving set-aside treatment on the Winema.

Why? The public, Chemult District Ranger Mary Erickson reasoned, might like to see an old-growth forest in something other than a manicured national park or remote Forest Service Wilderness.

Surveying a seldom-seen part of the Winema near Little Yamsay Mountain, Rucker and I noted stand after stand of magnificent ponderosas, their robust, deep green crowns knifing the summer sky. These "yellow belly" or yellow pines, as they're known, were three to four feet in diameter - maybe 150 feet high, rustically "plated" with seemingly endless sequences of jigsaw-like layers of rust-colored bark. They weren't as tall as the two humongous California ponderosas listed 'in this issue's National Register of Big Trees, but they were definitely trees to gawk at, their refreshing, see-through understories "scrubbed" clean by hundreds of years of natural wildfire.

Not many things turn on a 16-year-old like Rucker. But his excitement at seeing these refreshing vistas sent him trotting breathlessly through one stand after another.

Into the cataclysm

Funny thing. During our two days on the Chemult District's east side, we saw red like crazy on the ground, the surrounding mountains, even the roads.

"It's volcanic pumice and the red comes from high iron content," explained Faith Brown of the Forest Service when she dropped by to take a look at our work so far. "There's been a lot of volcanic activity around here."

That simple observation took on powerful new meaning the next morning when Rucker and I drove toward the crest of the Oregon Cascades. At an elevation of around 5,000 feet we found ourselves in the lap of the former Mt. Mazama, the volcanic mountain that blew its top some 7,000 years ago, leaving a 4,000-foot-deep caldera, eventually determined to be the deepest lake in the U.S. Compared to Mazama, Mr. St. Helens' 1980 eruption was akin to a baby's burp.

Our next study area was smack along the seldom seen. eastern edge of Crater Lake National Park. where stalwart ponderosas grow brazenly out of the pumice less than five miles to the northeast and 1,000 feet below the shore of Crater Lake.

A slanted view

I must confess a bias toward ponderosa pines.

On California's Stanislaus National Forest. where my Dad paid a $10 annual use fee to the Forest Service during the Depression, he built a little $600 cabin surrounded by ponderosas and other conifers. Pine shakes split from an old ponderosa up the ridge sheltered my family for decades. Knotty yellow pine boards covered our walls. The pines provided studs, posts. firewood. But that's the utilitarian part.

Down-ridge at Pinecrest. I noted early in my boyhood one particular stalwart ponderosa that grew arrow-straight out of the ground but slanted maybe 15 feet out of plumb at its tip. Over the years I wondered if I, too, could be a tad unconventional while maintaining an upright set of standards. If the ponderosa pine can, I guess I can too.

Now here I was again, literally engulfed by both upright and somewhat out-of-plumb ponderosas plus a varied assortment of up-and-coming ponderosas and lodgepole pines of varying ages. As we made our way over iron-red logging roads, the openness of this area made it clear why an early pioneer survey had noted, "...the forest floor is often as clean as if it had been cleared, and one may ride...without hindrance."

Later that evening, as coyotes howled, we hunkered down among the tilting pines. Miles to the south a natural, fuel-scrubbing wildfire threw its lights on a massive cloud deck.

I felt we had arrived home.

Questions, questions

After I'd gotten over the high of seeing all this old-growth grandeur, I began probing a most curious matrix of mysteries.

Desert forest? "Yep," answered Forest Service eco-guru Bill Hopkins. With 30 to 60 feet of nearly sterile pumice below those pines, "daytime ground temperatures a few inches above the soil might rise to 150 degrees F, and that same night you might have frost. Precipitation, which might bring 600 inches of snow up at Crater Lake, diminishes to a mere 25 inches here on the desert floor, and nearly all of it immediately drains through the pumice." Curiously, summer days at this elevation are surprisingly comfortable.

Still, you have to wonder how anything can grow here.

Hopkins didn't mention that drainages here, which have names like Bear, Desert, and Silent creeks, aren't really creeks at all. Usually they're nothing more than slight dips in the pumice landscape. That's how fast moisture disappears around here.

And as you wander the luminous, airy understory, you're sure to see char: fire-blackened stumps, branches, logs - wherever you go.

"Fire [in the understory] kept wiping the slate clean," Hopkins explained, pointing to the survivors of hundreds of years of lightning-caused fire."Most of these old-growth trees are 300 to 450 years old, up to 120 feet high. Ponderosa bark acts as a natural fire insulator, protecting the rest of the tree from low-intensity wildfire."

Today, under the direction of the Forest Service's Tom Jones, the Chemult District intentionally burns some 1,000 acres annually, replicating that once-common natural fire.

Chipmunks, ground squirrels, root wads, yellow-jackets, junco, nitrogen-releasing bitterbrush, badgers, fire - even the windstorm Rucker and I experienced - figure into Hopkins' scheme of things, right along with the ponderosas themselves.

Interestingly, some of the healthiest, most visual stands of old-growth ponderosas grew in areas most intensively logged early this century. Back then, trees that now are pushing 150 feet were so small they weren't even considered logging material.

So goes the delightful process of discovery, of questioning, of insights gained, here in the pines of Chemult, with one addition: Four new interpretive trails (see Getting There, page 7) open this area for the first time to those who want to learn more about the desert-forest ecosystem.

RELATED ARTICLE: GETTING THERE

An exciting new interpretive window into the pines of Chemult. called Desert Forest Journeys, highlights forest ecology, rail logging history, prescribed burning, and photography. This interpretive trail complex is located about 20 miles southwest of Chemult, site of the ranger station. A special Desert Forest Day celebration will be hem late in June.

The best pines are located immediately east of Oregon's Crater Lake National Park, easily reached from the park's northern boundary (closed in winter) in about 20 minutes via State Highway 138 and Forest Road 70. Coming horn Klamath Falls or Bend, Oregon, you can use State Highway 97, turning east at Diamond Lake Junction south of the town of Chemult, proceeding eastward for about six miles, then driving four miles south on Forest Road 70 (watch for the sign) to the Desert Forest Journeys InfoStop. Bring your own food and water: the amenities are up the hill at Crater Lake.

If you're planning to be in Bend (full visitor services). be sure to visit the High Desert Museum: its earning center is affiliated with Desert Forest Journeys.

For more information, contact. Chemult Ranger District at 541/365-7001, go to the ranger station in the town of Chemult on State Highway 97, or visit their web site at www.fs.fed.us/r6/winema.

- Herb McLean

As a Forest Service volunteer, prize-winning author Herb McLean helped conceive and design the Desert Forest Journeys experience.