Naturalist's death a 'tragic accident'

Heather Schoeck taught thousands of children about nature in camps with the Multnomah Education Service District, Oregon Zoo and YWCA

By Stuart Tomlinson of The Oregonian staff

GRESHAM -- Heather Schoeck loved the outdoors, and she passed along her passion to the students she taught at Outdoor School. Like many naturalists, she rarely separated her recreation from her vocation.

So it was natural that Schoeck, 24, was one of five hikers in Oxbow Regional Park on Sunday, enjoying a rare sunny day in January, walking through a stand of old firs and stately cottonwoods along the Sandy River.

Schoeck had hurried ahead of her four friends and was walking in a sandy wash when a 150-foot-tall cottonwood tree behind her snapped and crashed to the ground. The rotted tree broke about 8 feet up its trunk and fell across the trail, striking Schoeck on the head and falling across her lower body.

"The group heard the tree breaking, but they couldn't see Heather because she was around a little bend in the trail," said Lt. Brian Martinek of the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office. "They ran to her. . . . She wasn't breathing but had a faint pulse."

While one of her friends ran to the park's office, Schoeck's boyfriend, Shawn Jones, 23, attempted to revive her using CPR. Paramedics who arrived a short time later also tried to revive her. She was declared dead at the scene.

Park manager Jim Lind said winds were gusty and variable at the time of the accident and can be affected by the riverbed and canyon walls.

On Monday, waterlogged remnants of the massive, moss- and fern-covered tree lay scattered in shattered chunks across the seasonal creekbed that flows with water when the river is high.

The tree fell in the southeast corner of the park, a remote area near the Sandy River that is not usually checked for snags and deadheads that could topple in heavy rains or high winds.

Charlie Ciecko, director of the Regional Parks and Greenspaces, said Metro aggressively checks more developed areas of the park for dangerous trees or branches and removes them, but that the area where Schoeck was killed is left in its natural state.

"Our risk management staff is taking a look at the situation," Ciecko said as he led visitors to the sandy wash where the incident occurred.

"Live trees fall, and dead trees fall," Ciecko said. "This is just a tragic, freak accident."

Other large cottonwoods are spread throughout the park, mostly in wet areas near the river. Cottonwoods, which grow quickly, are known for being brittle. They can sprout new growth even if most of the tree is rotten where it stands. The tree that fell Sunday was at least 40 inches in diameter and probably 60 to 75 years old.

Co-workers said Schoeck had a passion for nature and the outdoors. She was a field instructor with the Multnomah Education Service District, which provides services to the eight school districts in the county.

She worked in the popular Outdoor School, which operates out of five campsites including Camp Collins, adjacent to Oxbow, and has taught county sixth-graders and high-schoolers about natural sciences and the environment.

Mark Skolnick, an education district spokesman, said Schoeck specifically worked on lessons involving soil and was a popular instructor at the Outdoor School held at the Eagle Fern Youth Camp in Estacada. Skolnick said Schoeck had worked with 2,000 to 3,000 students from across the county since she joined the staff of 60 instructors in 1994.

She also worked in the winter and spring at the Zoo Camp sponsored by the Oregon Zoo and at the YWCA's Camp Westwind on the Oregon coast.

Suzanne Marten, Outdoor School coordinator, said, "If you were to ask me who my best teacher was, I would reply without hesitation that it was Heather. She impacted so many lives and so many people in a favorable way. She was the kind of girl you'd meet and never forget."

You may be interested to know that the famous American Theologian/Philosopher Jonathan Edwards made a study of these 'Flying Spiders' when he was 11 or 12, and wrote a 1000-word essay on his findings.

H. C.

Two years ago I was on a two week trip through Quetico, in a remote area where I hadn't seen another person except my partner for about four days. I had become quite comfortable with silence. We took a layover day and were quite lazy in camp all day. I had found a quiet secluded nook in some rocks along the shore, overlooking a 200 foot channel separating me from the next island. I had a book open, but had probably read the same paragraph a few times. I bring a book on a two week trip expecting to tear through it and be dying for reading material, like, reading the instructions on my package of emergency flares, or the bottle of benadryl. In fact I often return from those trips finding I've read only 30 pages. I just seem to go into a catatonic state, staring at the water but not really aware, not conscious of space, time, sound. Just being there. Anyway, on this afternoon I was in that state, filled with silence and quite peaceful. I remember I was staring at the opposite shore. There was a huge white pine tree there, maybe 300 - 400 years old. It couldn't have been more perfectly formed than if it had been created by a Japanese Feng Shui artist. As I watched it, it fell over. It made sound. And it waited 300+ years until I got there, all settled in my mossy nook in the rock, to fall down. Of course I was sure a bear had pushed it down, or a beaver had sawed its way through the trunk. So I paddled over. It had just fallen down on its own. No evidence of eco-saboteurs or pine-rot. I will never forget that moment.

Carol

---

I never gave much thought to spider webs, as often as I've broken through them. But, now you've got me thinking. Is the tree to tree web you describe a web? A thread? A strand? A string? It's worth pondering.

Connie

---

Hi Mike. I hope you are doing well; but you really have me worried. I don't want to rant at you; but SPIDERS ? Get real ! You know what the problem is; you just won't admit it. It is called a FACIAL TIC. Everybody gets them. Usually feels exactly as you describe it. Usually always occurs in the same place. You want to brush it away. Look at the circumstances around you when these incidents have occurred. Try tired, fatigued, possibly some eyestrain, not enough sleep, migraine headache --- you get the idea. Have it checked. Take care --- This weekend I will drink a toast to you from a bottle of very old Canadian whiskey I have. It is something called Captain's Table that was 25 years old when I bought it in 1976. So that makes it 48 years old. Great stuff. Keep writing. All for now.

Roger

I've always wondered: If a mime falls in the forest, and there's no one there to hear it, does he make a sound?

Dave D.

---

A couple of years ago I did a job editing and indexing OSHA accident reports. We had to plug in keywords so these reports could in the future be accessible to a database search. There were plenty of logging accidents, not just in the cutting but from snagged trees and limbs falling. A snag is a tree or limb caught in or against another tree -- temporarily caught, that is, after a fire, lightning strike, improper logging techniques, or just tree death. So you never know what's going to come down in the woods.

Rhonda K.

I heard a tree fall last week. It had been raining for three days and the old oak that had loomed dead and rotting over my driveway for more then ten years fell. There was a steady, light rain falling without any wind. This, after a three day storm. I was siting at my dinning room table having a cup of tea, when the tree fell. Because the air was so still I clearly heard the the sound it made; it went "sslunch," like somebody had broke and spilled a giant bag of groceries. No wind had gusted, nothing. The combination of the rotted wood absorbing the rain water, getting heavy, and the soffening of the soil around the rotting roots must have let the tree uproot itself. What a mess. By the way, it missed my car.

Jon S.

---

Why not bookmark Mike's columns for your weekly enjoyment?

FREE SUBSCRIPTION (ENTER E-MAIL ADDRESS AND HIT RETURN)

REPRINT RIGHTS FOR SALE
(Click here for permission.

"Lots of us find it a very helpful, human, sometimes humorous, always interesting, often surprising column that has no peer on the freelance market, And, yes, you can use that as a testimonial if it helps."
-- Bill Dowd, Albany Times Union

"No one talks about the ups and downs of technology like Michael Finley. See his columns online at www.mfinley.com/. -- James S. Derk, Evansville (IN) Courier

"Editors want everything to fall into a neat little box, and your stuff doesn't do that. You don't write merely about technology, you write about what technology means to us and how it has changed us. I like it." -- John Boxmeyer, St. Paul