On the Trail: Crater Lake's Old Man

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the entire country. The pristine water in this collapsed volcano is so unbelievably blue it seems magical. It cast such a spell on early visitors they named the cone in the center Wizard Island. I love the name Wizard Island. It kind of evokes a little bit of mystery. Mystery is what brought me to this national park in southern Oregon. Specifically a Mr. Tree. I'd come to pay my respects to the old man of the lake. It's an honor to meet you sir. The old man of the lake was first discovered in 1896 by Joseph Diller who was a geologist and explorer and he described him as a spectacle curious enough to excite the imagination. It may not look like much but this part of a tree has been part of this park since its inception. A 30 foot long log implausibly bobbing upright for 120 years. Never the young man always the old man. He's always been the old man of the lake. He's like the Larry King of stumps. He must have been young at some point we just don't know. Mark McTenica is an aquatic ecologist for the park. As he monitors the water quality of Crater Lake he also ends up monitoring the movements of the old man. That's right this seemingly unsinkable tree gets around. You would think that the forefoot above the water would act as a little sail but sometimes he'll move all the way across the lake against the wind. It's as if he has a mind of his own. The old man can travel miles in a single day. Today he's close to the shore. Tomorrow he could be in the middle of the lake. In the 1930s the government commissioned a study of his movements. In their log of the log rangers observed the old man move over 60 miles in less than three months. The pilot was sealed to the six-foot acrylic bubble for the 1980s. Mark McTenica was part of a submarine exploration of Crater Lake. To avoid running into the old man out in the water they tied him up on the shore. Bad idea. It wasn't long after he was tied up that a storm blew in and the surface of the lake got too rough for us to deploy and recover the submarine. When it started to snow in August superstition got the best of the scientists. Our senior scientists went out quietly one evening and released the old man from his bondage. And wouldn't you know it the weather cleared up right afterwards. As Jennifer Evans explains it's stories like that that have helped the old man take root in the imaginations of visitors. He kind of became a bit of a celebrity I guess of Crater Lake. And inquiring minds want to know why hasn't the old man sunk? Rocks may have once weighed down the roots, waterlogging the bottom while the sun dried out the top. But Mark McTenica isn't as concerned with the why. I think maybe some questions should remain unanswered. That maybe it's part of the human condition to believe in a little bit of mystery and the interconnectedness of all things. So as a scientist you're okay with with maybe not knowing? I'm okay with not knowing. As the old man bobs across the water perhaps that's what he's trying to teach us with his travels. Sometimes it's fun to be stumped.