I’ve been hiking and climbing in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest for 30 years. Though there is no such thing as a bad day in the mountains, some of the trips I’ve done have been so over-the-top amazing that I’ve gotten into a routine of making them into yearly pilgrimages.
There is a waterfall in Mt. Rainier National Park. I hike there late in the spring to see the cascading snowmelt plunge 300 feet down a rockface. I stand in the warm sunshine looking up at the falls and the spray of the water washes over me, a kind of seasonal baptism.
In the heat of summer when the lowlands feel like an outdoor oven, I sweat and trudge uphill all day to get to a high mountain pass, seven thousand feet up. The air is cool in that alpine country and there’s a rock, a granite chaise lounge, where I lay back and watch the sun set. In the dark and by the light of a flashlight, I hike back down the trail to my car.
I know a lake in the backcountry of the Mt. Stuart area. The lake is surrounded by larch trees, a conifer whose needles turn yellow-gold in the fall. Come October 15th, that lake and those trees call to me. I have usually answered the call. I admit to being a shameless junkie in need of a fix of serenity and beauty.
As much as I have loved these travels, I’m sadly learning--as we all are--that the planet can’t sustain the kind of driving I’ve done to make my pilgrimages into nature. My trips will be fewer now. I’ll be more selective about where I travel, and when.
Inconvenient, this truth about climate change.
Still, I’m choosing to hope that our planet will teach us good lessons, if only we’ll listen. Leah and I stayed close to home this past weekend, and by not driving to the mountains we got to know one of our neighbors a little better. Our neighbor has big eyes and he’s kind of green, but we like him. Maybe I can learn some stuff from this green fella.
