On Walpurgisnacht, the eve of May Day, witches in medieval Germany were said to ascend the Brocken Mountain to commune with the spirits for a night of revelry, spellcasting, and general mayhem. This past Thursday, my partner and I commemorated this annual event by climbing to the highest point in the Willamette Valley—the summit of Spencer’s Butte.
Spencer’s Butte (one of three buttes in Eugene) tops off at 2,065 feet and is a fairly popular hiking spot, with trails starting off from several different locations. It took a bus ride and a mile’s walk to get us to the one we followed, but the official start of our trail was already at an elevation of over 1,000 feet, leaving us with 1,109 feet and a 4.4 mile round trip to go—in theory, at least. The theory would have held true if we had stayed on the “official” trail, which we did not. What happened instead was that after we had followed the gently upward-winding path for about a mile or so, Jo decided we had probably missed the turn-off for the trail leading up to the summit, so we backtracked. The trail we picked up was not quite a deer trail; it was cleared, and people had obviously used it. But before long it also became fairly obvious that it was not the trail some local friends of ours had told us about; it was much too steep, so much so that we found ourselves having to stop and rest every ten feet or so. At one point—the point at which we almost turned back–we were faced with an almost vertical incline of about ten feet of mostly bare earth with very little purchase. I somehow managed to scramble up it, and Jo followed. From that point on we often had to climb on our hands and knees, and we knew one thing for sure: we were either going to live at the top of the butte, or we would be finding another way down. We weren’t going to be able to get back down the way we had come.
By the time we finally cleared the tree-line and reached the rocky summit, we were filthy, with dirt clinging to our clothing and faces. We met fellow travelers at the top (having, tellingly, seen no one else at all during our entire climb up) who told us that of course there was another path down, that the “real” trail was not really that hard (people were climbing it with their dogs and small children), and that the trail we had followed was supposed to have been blocked off—but people occasionally insist on following it anyway and remove the blocks. (We hadn’t sent any blocks.) We have friends visiting in a few weeks who want to see the butte, and we will be taking them up by the “official” trail, which we will also follow ourselves for casual visits in the future. But we were more than a little proud of ourselves for having made it to the top the hard way; inadvertently, it had turned into a kind of ordeal ritual, well-suited to the spirit of the holiday. (Note that I am not against ordeal rituals per se; they do have their place, occasionally, as rites of passage and to mark certain milestones. This was a rite of passage, of sorts, for us, being both the first time we had climbed the butte and our first Walpurgisnacht in Eugene.) We decided that if our trail remains accessible, we will climb it once a year, on Walpurgisnacht, to observe the holiday. (Although next year we plan to do so earlier in the day, when hopefully there will be fewer people at the summit.)
There were unexpected rewards during the climb: raven cries (the deep, gravelly calls were eerie and unmistakable, and once we got to the summit we saw them flying, along with hawks and turkey vultures), and a forest that—with its gigantic trees, festoons of hanging moss, and floor blanketed in ferns—made us feel as though we had wandered into prehistory. The wights in this place are incredibly alive, incredibly vital and wild, yet they welcomed us and—I felt—supported our endeavor. And at the summit was the ultimate reward: a spectacular view of the entire Willamette Valley, ringed by the Cascades (as a follower of the Aesir, I especially love the high places of the world; it gives me such a feeling of exhilaration, being so close to the heavens, up among the clouds with the birds–and at the same time I love living within a valley, protected on all sides by the powerful mountain-wights). There was also a very bold one-eyed squirrel who ate pieces of our apples, tried to climb onto Jo’s back, and absconded with our offerings before we had even finished placing them down.
Yes, really.
The photos do not really do the place—or the experience—justice. Eugene is an amazing city that continually reveals its wonders to us. This little pocket of primeval wilderness that we had previously seen only from a distance is but one of them, among many.
- Valgrind
