If it creeps, crawls or flies around Index, Bob Hubbard's the guy to see

Originally published Saturday, September 6, 1997

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Bob Hubbard could only survive in a town like Index, where the owls and ospreys outnumber the people and civilization is pretty much whatever local folks want it to be.

But even in Index, where the town tavern is as vital a part of the social fabric as the little church, Hubbard is considered a little . . . different.

"He's sort of our very own local mountain goat," said one resident.

But he's not a Billy Goat Gruff. Hubbard is pretty much a pussycat, a gentle Johnny Appleseed-type who spends a good piece of every day and some nights rambling through the woods and river banks of this Cascadian settlement.

And he writes long, rambling pieces about the local flora and fauna in a column, "Off the Beaten Path," in the monthly Index Eagle.

"I guess I know these woods and hills pretty well, at least most of it within a radius of several miles," the 45-year-old Oregon native said modestly over breakfast at the Index Cafe.

He was absorbing the Seattle Sunday paper and a platter of hashbrowns and eggs when we found him alone, in the back room there. Most days you can find him if you just stand still in one spot, because he's almost sure to pass by sooner or later.

"I guess I walk maybe 16 to 18 miles each day," he said. "I live down that way, and I usually walk toward town to find work, digging ditches or landscaping, that sort of thing.

"I don't always walk the road (state Route 2, the Stevens Pass Highway), though. People throw things at me sometimes, like beer cans or eggs or pieces of fruit. It's easier to walk through the woods. Besides, that way I can stop along the way to watch what's happening."

And if you don't think a whole lot of anything might be happening in this tiny off-the-beaten-path community, it might be because you haven't paused on a forest trail and knelt down to watch a bug or consider how dew collects on a trillium leaf.

"It took me longer than most to get a college degree (forestry management) because I kept taking courses about bugs and flowers," Hubbard admitted.

So while his monthly column might be about a bobcat or a family of ospreys, his writing is a tad heavy with the wonders of river-bottom algae or the anatomical and social aspects of the anystidae mites.

("Have you ever been reading a newspaper and noticed a small red dot scurrying around on the newsprint? How about when reading a book . . . ever notice any small scurrying red dots on any of the pages?")

Besides mighty mites, his columns sometimes read like expanded field notes on anything from flying squirrels and spotted owls to ambrosia beetles and dwarf mistletoe.

"I guess it's sorta like you guys writing for your 'Neighbors' section," he told me. "Only you're doing parts of a metropolis, and I'm doing forestopolis. You do a neighborhood and I concentrate on a mud puddle or a log jam. And your column might be on a person and mine might be on a leaf miner or a carrion beetle."

Hubbard has lived at Index almost 10 years, owned property hereabouts twice that long. But he wasn't exactly the settling-down type.

"I was born and raised in Medford, Ore., and went to high school there and then a year at Southern Oregon College.

"I wasn't what you'd call focused, so I spent the next 10 to 12 years skiing in the winters and fighting forest fires for the U.S. Forest Service in the summers. I was in a 'hot shot' crew with the Forest Service in Southern Oregon and learned a lot of practical stuff there."

It was easier than falling off a stump to get out of the field and back into college in the forestry field.

"I sorta got sidetracked, trying to decide if I wanted to go into biology instead, but I got out with a degree in '88," he said.

Because he'd been up this way to fight fires, he'd already fallen in love with the North Cascades and the Stevens Pass area.

"Where else can you be so close to the mountains and the forest and the lakes and rivers?" he asks in a rhetorical no-brainer. "Besides, if it gets too much peopled, like it does sometimes with spring and summer river rafters and kayakers and tourists, you can always go up the valley and the percentage of people drops proportionately."

And the noise of the train pulling through several times each day and night can get to him, sometimes. But he figures if the osprey family or the Canada geese can build a nest and raise a family on the old railroad trestle close by the right-of-way, the noise can be accommodated in paradise.

Whether he's on his hands and knees on a forest trail or high atop the town wall, looking out across the river, Hubbard feels a sort of stewardship about all he surveys.

"I'm not anti-growth. There are people who want to retain all the woods after they get their place built," he said. "I see a definite need for accommodating the river rafters and kayakers and the hikers. Public lands should be utilized, but also preserved. They went and built a superhighway trail up to Lake Serene, and now you see places where people have built campfires up against trees, or have used trees as .22-caliber targets or chopping blocks."

Because he owns land both inside and outside the town boundary, Hubbard legally sits on the Index Planning Board.

"I'm also with the local historical society, and I try to be involved in helping the local school teachers or whatever."

When state officials finally agreed to replace the aging, one-lane metal bridge leading into town, Hubbard was among those who pressed for a covered bridge, he said.

"They finally offered us four choices -- three very sterile metal bridges and one arched concrete thing that I think they threw in to make it look like we had a choice.

"And I think they were surprised when we chose the concrete bridge. We think it will age and look sorta like the town wall in the background as you look over the bridge."

Jon Hahn is a staff columnist who writes three times a week in the P-I.