Article and photos by Tom Bode. From the December 2020 Mazama Bulletin
I lifted my pack from the car to my back: 41 pounds, with 21/2 liters of water. Ideally enough to keep me out of trouble for the next three days. Another backpack went up onto another pair of shoulders. Then, still shuddering from the weight, we started to hike at a trailhead closest to the car. Walking quickly on the gentle downhill slope, we were a mile in when we realized our mistake: it was the wrong trailhead and the wrong way—the correct path was hidden and uphill. No matter. Hiking is not about arriving anywhere quickly.
My friend Kevin had joined me for a three-day trip to the high Cascades of Washington State, in a basin of lakes between Mt. Adams and Mount St. Helens. Kevin’s ultralight backpacking equipment showed that his employer compensates him well for his aptitude with spreadsheets, and that he spends his money wisely. A few years ago, he embraced a simpler way of living, giving up a sports car and a house in the suburbs for a late-90s Subaru and a studio carriage house heated by a leaky wood stove.
As we backtracked, we discussed our “false” start. It’s hard to know where a trail in the woods will lead and easy to head towards an unwanted destination. But turning around on a trail is easy, whereas Kevin’s decision to sell his car and his house was not. Maybe ideas of right and wrong, lost and found, belong more to a world of cars than trees. Maybe walking among trees means always looking for the right path. Anthropologists tell us that two hundred years ago, this land was enjoyed by people who spoke a language called Sahaptin, and before them by people almost entirely unknown to us, and so on, stretching back 10,000 years. I think people have been lost here the whole time. The current authorities give us GPS, maps, and signs in an attempt to keep us from straying, but that hadn’t stopped Kevin and me from finding welcome uncertainty. In these woods, taking the direct path is overrated and identifying the “right way” requires more philosophy than cartography.
“In fact, I recommend starting your hike with an unexpected detour. It allows time for clearing your mind, an essential first part of any trip into the wilderness.”
In fact, I recommend starting your hike with an unexpected detour. It allows time for clearing your mind, an essential first part of any trip into the wilderness. Matters such as that thing your boss said, whether the fridge can be fixed without calling a repair service, and bank account balances must be tossed out and left on the side of the trail. You can pick them up on your way out if you insist. Itineraries, speed, and timetables are also completely incompatible with your purpose and you must resist their development. If you find a time-based sense of urgency growing in your mind, throw a pinecone at it. The only senses of urgency you need relate to bodily inputs and outputs. Ditch the watch entirely and exist on human time for a few days. It’s the psychological equivalent of a juice cleanse.
At the first ridge we zagged up the switchbacks. I worked hard to keep up with Kevin, who had claimed half of the summer for running and hiking and had the long stride to prove it. My employer, like most, is jealous of absences of more than a day or two; many of us live in that grim empire. One wonders whether Kevin’s unsupervised spreadsheets even noticed that he was gone at all.
Perhaps it was his mental lightness from a summer spent out of doors that kept Kevin’s eyes up while I prattled away. He spotted it first: Martes caurina, the pacific marten, sitting in the fork of a short pine tree. About the size of a large city squirrel, with the triangular ears and pointed face of a fox, the marten is a predator that easily transforms mice into meals. This one had seen enough humans to be curious, and watched us with the sustained attention of a tiny killer. Another marten, a mate or a sibling, climbed into view, and they stared at us together. Unsure of how to respond, I took some blurry photos and we left.
Soon we descended the other side of the ridge and lakes appeared around us. Instinctually, we began the essential human ritual of selecting a place to sleep. Humans (and martens) exist in relation to their homes—either coming or going, building a new one or enjoying a familiar one. Nomadic people carry a home with them, whether a 39-foot RV or a collapsible yurt; at a minimum, the vagabond has his bindle. Today, a clearing in the huckleberry bushes would suit us.
Blue Lake is the largest and deepest lake in the basin and was our destination for the day. Hiking trails ran like rivulets towards its shore. But it was as secluded and peaceful as the state fair on Labor Day. Several horses fouled the shallows of the lake, attending to equine inputs and outputs; the humans seated on top of them cackled. Dogs barked at the horses. Other humans yelled at the dogs. All around, kids nowhere near the water swung sticks attached to strings attached to hooks—fishing, but for what? A scheme of “designated campsites” permitted tents only in certain places. They were all full, fortunately, so we moved on.
Another lake, a few minutes away, became our home for the night. Though only a quarter-mile off the trail, the thick forest hid this lake and modern mapmakers had not named it. Earlier people, people without maps and for whom trails were a convenience, not a directive, undoubtedly knew this lake and called it something, but we did not know that name. Prior campers had built a fire ring and cleared a small area overlooking the lake. Late day sunshine kept away the chill. We tested the site with an aggressive mid-afternoon nap and found it perfect. That evening, we sat around the campfire, making toasts to life with drinks from small bottles. I slept by the fire under the stars. Although the night was warm, I kept my sleeping bag zipped up. Out here, the world was bigger and closer; I needed a boundary between it and my home, now shrunk to the inside of a mummy bag.
In what was perhaps an omen of an imminent injury, the next morning was unexpectedly warm. Hiking is always better the second day: Your pack is lighter, your feet are used to the abuse, your mind is clear. Not far down the trail, we met a forest ranger carrying a six-foot shovel. She spouted rules at us like she’d swallowed a brochure. She admonished us to be sure to bury our toilet paper so she didn’t have to—hence, the shovel. Old joke: Forest rangers love their job, but hate the (toilet) paperwork. She said there was an open campsite on the far shore of Lake Wood. Driven once again to find a place to stay, we beelined for it. Kevin spied another marten on the trail that stared at us briefly before running up the hill. No mustelid ranger appeared and told it to stay on the trail, but I assume even martens have their own rules to follow. The campsite at Wood Lake was excellent: the woodsy equivalent of a beachfront hotel room. Naps to celebrate.
Rested, we were drawn away from the lake and towards Sawtooth Mountain, one of the few high points interrupting the landscape of forest and lakes. As much as lakeside camps comfort campers at night, high peaks tempt them during the day. The official trail to Sawtooth Mountain stayed in the tree line, well below the shield volcano’s namesake spires. We instead took the rough climber’s trail through small trees to the base of the bare rock. There, the trail dissolved, and we each held our fate in our hands. I liked the look of a saddle to the right. Kevin called it too vertical and went left. I was nervous. Moment by moment, a climber tempts tragedy and tests his skill and luck against reality. On the one hand, I had not been to a climbing gym in close to a year and instead of a helmet, I wore a dirty trucker hat. On the other hand, the volcanic rock was rough and the route was easy. Don’t overthink it. I climbed the short wall to the saddle. Terrific views— terrifying exposure. My decisions now could rewrite the next 50 or 100 years for me and mine. Climb again. I made it to the spire. It wasn’t El Cap, but it didn’t matter. A bit of exposure and uncertainty and I felt the reality of my existence. Climbing let me play on fate’s knife edge.
Mountains clean people. For hundreds of years, scree slopes like those beneath Sawtooth Mountain were the sites of sacred rites for indigenous people including the Chinook, Salish, and Modoc. After years of preparation, young people departed the warmth of their homes for steep rocky hillsides where they constructed pits in the large loose rocks. Through fasting and physical exhaustion they sought something essential and immaterial. Perhaps unsheltered for days in rain and wind, some died. Rocky slopes from British Columbia to southern Oregon are dotted with these pits, an enduring testimony to a search for wisdom. Those pits remind me that across centuries, humans look for answers in the mountains. I cannot mimic rituals that I don’t understand, but I know that in this time, for me and many others, a mountain washes away the stink of a city and lets the important things shine brightly.
From the top of Sawtooth Mountain, I saw the patrons of the Pacific Northwest, Mt. Adams, Mount St. Helens, Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier, et al., meeting in their regular forum, conversing through the millennia. This was 36 hours before the Labor Day windstorm that would start a conflagration in the Cascade foothills, bringing weeks of smoke and evacuations. For now, the air was clear and the future bright. What we couldn’t know didn’t bother us. We left Sawtooth Mountain and descended back to camp, spiritually changed.
Away from the apparent danger of the peaks, I was in good spirits on an unremarkable bit of trail. Suddenly I fell, my left arm catching a root and twisting behind my back, causing the head of my humerus to depart its longtime home in the socket of my shoulder and journey a few centimeters laterally. It didn’t go far, but the divorce was traumatic, the two bones having been happily joined for over 30 years. I lay on the ground, unable to breath at this new development. A few seconds later, the ball popped back into the socket. Time resumed; my shoulder was again united. I inhaled.
Later, a slim doctor with short gray hair would say that I fractured my humerus, predicting months of minor pain and weakness. But at Wood Lake, for a short while, I was still free among the trees. In the long afternoon shadows, we swam in the cool water, disturbing only dragonflies. I went to bed clean under a clear sky. With Advil.
The next day was our last. A morning chill off the lake made the sun all the more welcome. We chose to hike out on an abandoned trail, through meadows glowing with late-summer color. In a few weeks, precipitation would turn the vegetation to mush, but now golden grass and red leaves waved in the breeze. Our pace slowed, we ate huckleberries, we watched little birds in short trees. The trail was faint and disappeared altogether in some places. We forced ourselves to stay the course, feeling that getting lost here could be the right thing to do. At the car, the trip ended. The timelessness was gone, a schedule snapped back into place, and the memories of trails, trees, and martens quickly dimmed, but it all seemed so nice that I tried to write it down.
Tom Bode lives in Milwaukie, Oregon. He has been a member of the Mazamas since 2016 when he took BCEP with Bruce Yatvin. The books of Brian Doyle and Edward Abbey inspired him to write this piece.