In early Spring 2017, over the course of several weeks, Willow and I did some extensive exploring around Green Peter Reservoir outside of Sweet Home, Oregon. This happens to be all of 30 minutes from my home so it is quick, easy and cheap (with gas prices as they are and a Tacoma that would force me to pay a gas guzzler tax if it was a new vehicle). Using the collection of MVUM that covered the general area we drove dozens of marked Forest Service roads looking for spots that met as many of our criteria (some shade, some sun for solar power, a view, a cellular signal, not near a shooting spot, not covered with garbage, no other people etc.) as possible. When we found such spots we dropped a “Pin” to save it and collected about 12 really nice places for future reference. Since then we have come back numerous times trying for twice a year (once in early spring, once in early fall) but settling for only one if family obligations arise as they take precedence.
Some of the spots are more open and sunny and are better for the cooler months while others are more treed and shaded for those higher temperature visits. The spot this post is about is of the second type and is at a dead end, surrounded by tall trees but large enough to get direct sunlight during a nice portion of the day for solar power generation.
It was among the first spots I took Gia to as we could spend a nice chunk of time with essentially no distractions so I could work on bonding with her and starting her on the path to being a better dog citizen.
The general area in that circle is around 50 acres and I have hiked every road and path in it either with Willow or with Gia. On this trip we spent our first two days setting up camp, getting her reacquainted with the area, hiking around and working on her off leash recall with the help of a bear bell and a remote training collar, the same combo we used when we were dealing with that beautiful dog we rescued back in October of last year (2023).
The weather was about to change to rain for a few days and we were getting in one last walk and doing one of our “regulars” which is from the campsite down to the main Forest Service road and then back again which is about a 1.5 mile round trip. We had made the walk several times since we arrived but on this trip I happened to glance over to the side of the road and noticed a piece of white string draped across several bushes.
My first thought was that I was surprised I had not seen that before then since I had walked past it easily four times since we arrived. My second thought was that maybe a child visiting the area with its parents had been playing and draping string over bushes for some odd reason. Immediately remembering that time I helped a bird with string tied around its foot in Death Valley I started to remove it and noticed it was tied off to a small tree 10 meters or so away.
On closer inspection I decided this was thinner sewing “thread” instead of “string” and started winding it around my fingers as I walked towards the tree it was pulling on. When I got there the other end was not just wrapped around or “stuck” on the tree but actually tied on with a little knot.
My next thought on the subject was that this was kind of weird and then I saw another thread tied to the next little tree over.
Yet again I started wrapping the thread around my fingers and walking toward the other end.
And after that piece, yet another leading to a different tree.
It was starting to get dark and misty so I stopped for the time being but over the next few days, between rain showers and carefully retracing my normal hiking routes I found, removed and collected 15 long but varying lengths of white thread all strung along the Forest service roads in the area.
Most were carefully tied off at the ends of the runs and draped over, threaded under or wrapped around bush and tree limbs in between. A few took 90 degree turns and just headed off into the forest with no discernible trail or reason. While tracing and removing one length I found a golf ball with a screw in it attached to some string and thought that possibly someone was practicing their golf swing and really liked and wanted to save this particular ball.
I then realized that this was “string” and not the same diameter or type of thread as all the others I was collecting and so maybe someone was using it to get a line over a higher branch to hoist some supplies out of the easy access of bears.
I decided to simply and sloppily “map” where I had found the thread “just because” and so I could somewhat measure the total length I eventually collected without having to unravel, string out and measure each and every clump, now wet and harder to manipulate.
From my recollections the red lines are on the correct side of the road and the approximate length of each run. Entering those roads into a mapping app I got a general total length of around 3900 feet and decided to equate that with string length.
Now seeing the big picture of where the thread was found and knowing how it was deliberately placed I next considered for a brief moment that some devout Jewish family happened to be camping during the week-long Jewish holiday of Sukkot. During Sukkot, one tradition observed by some Jewish communities involves using string to mark the boundaries of where it’s permissible to walk during the holiday. That holiday though takes place later in the year (the 2023 date started on 29 September and the 2024 date starts on 16 October) and we were there in late May through early June 2024. From the good condition of the threads I could not imagine that they had survived unseen and untouched for the previous eight months or so and decided that yet another of my guesses as to why the threads were there was incorrect.
While not exactly “spooked,” my not having any credible idea of why the threads were there or who had placed them allowed my active imagination run off into less charitable and most likely less feasible scenarios. Some of those flights of mental fancy included:
A) some mentally ill person deciding this was a task that needed doing to help them with some mania or serious OCD issues.
B) someone doing lots of some particular drug(s) that I have no idea about and, like the person in the “A” scenario, doing this to assuage some deep seated need to undertake this project.
C) someone who considered this area to “be theirs,” had marked the boundaries and now Gia and I were trespassing and would somehow be punished for our transgressions by an inbred movie family of murderous hillbillies.
D) some lower rent “artist” with thoughts along the lines of Christo and Jeanne-Claude had created this piece as some statement about lines and parallels and roads and forests and people alongside nature yadda yadda. As an aside, in my youth my parents took me to see Christo’s Running Fence installation (some pictures) which was impressive to me at the time.
E) some combination of one or more of the above.
Another possibility I considered was that this was some alternative method used by arborists, foresters, botanists or logger/lumberjacks to mark boundaries or lengths or signify that some work had been or should be performed in the area. I frequently find surveyors flagging tape wrapped around branches or trunks, some with hand written notations on them to indicate various types of information. Sometimes we even find relatively small paper, plastic or metal signs nailed into trunks denoting the limits of a timber harvest area.
I later talked to a couple friends in those industries and was told about hip chains, a distance measuring device.
They operate by measuring the length of string that is drawn from a spool that is within the instrument.
Now knowing they can carry upwards of 15000 feet of thread in them that easily accounts for the approximately 3900 feet of threads I collected. While the threads are biodegradable (in time) that is no consolation to the bird or small animal tangled in it that has starved to death or been killed and eaten by a predator that took advantage of the easy meal. When I brought up the possibility of measuring the routes by walking or driving them with a GPS tracking device I was told that, in heavily covered, dense forest those types of devices are not always reliable. When I mentioned laser range finders I was told that, as is common with corporations or government agencies, speed and money are important and a laser rangefinder regularly needs a second person to stand and hold a clipboard or something reflective for the laser to reflect off of consistently and two people cost more than one. That last argument also holds true for a single person using a tripod that holds a reflective target. They would have to walk the route sections multiple times to set up the tripod, walk back to take the measurement and then walk back to retrieve the tripod. An inefficient use of time for one person who may have to measure more than one area in the day. But hey, at least I finally found out what was going on and solved my little mystery.
When all is said and done we saw not one other person during that visit and nothing scary or bad happened to us either before or after removing the threads. While my mental asides were a fun and silly distraction the main reason to take the time and effort to remove the threads and dispose of them properly was because they simply did not belong there. They were aesthetically displeasing and did have the capacity to injure, entrap or kill various species of wildlife and as such they had to go.