Many of the friends I hike with these days were colleagues during the 18 years I worked as a photographer at Seattle’s morning newspaper -- reporters and editors for whom journalism was a calling, not merely a job. My friends really know the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest, and, as we drive toward trailheads for treks in wild places, the conversation is often about politics, or land use issues, or the environment.
Last Friday my friend Neil and I decided to hike the Pasayten Wilderness and we piled boots and packs into Neil’s Subaru and he pointed the car toward north central Washington. The roadtrip part of our day took us along the North Cascades Highway, even casual glances out the car windows treating us to some of the most stunning roadtrip scenery in America. Neil was a longtime political reporter, is smart as a whip, and, as he drove, we talked about politicians and governmental policy, both at home and in that far-off place some here refer to as “The Other Washington.”
That’s when we came upon the fellow you see in the photograph above, walking along a fairly secluded stretch of road, carrying a “peace” sign. “What’s up with this?” I wondered, because, though the setting might not quite have been the Middle of Nowhere, it was certainly in that neighborhood. I guess I was in a journalistic frame of mind -- as opposed to the Wilderness Hobo frame of mind I’d get into later in the day -- and I asked Neil to pull over.
I chatted with the fellow for a bit and I learned he was hiking toward a small town where he planned to catch a bus to travel to the county’s courthouse and there he would stand with his sign. I told the fellow that it was ironic that Neil and I should encounter him when we did...that we'd been talking in the car about Syria, and what, if anything, the US and the world community might do. I asked the fellow if I could make a photograph of him and he said yes. We shook hands and parted, the man with the sign going one way down the road while Neil and I headed the other.
