With Love from Red Reef Rock

Dream or nightmare we have to live our experience as it is and we have to live it awake.

Jacob Bronowski

When I was about five years old my family camped at Staircase Campground in Olympic National Park, as we did for many years. It was one of our favorite campgrounds, and I always loved the gentle trail that leads to Staircase Rapids and beyond. One year it rained for several days in a row, and we spent most of our time huddled beneath the tarp my father had set up over the table. When the rain finally stopped he suggested that we go for a short hike up that trail. I was happy to leave the campsite at last, and hiking with my father always felt like an adventure. My mother stayed behind in camp, tending to camp chores that had been left undone during the rain.

The trail was slick with mud, and water still dripped from the tree limbs. We took the short side trail to Red Reef Rock, a popular fishing destination where the entire volume of the river narrows and then swirls around the rock to form a deep green pool on the downriver side. A log lay across the rock, and my father warned me to step carefully, as the log was wet and precarious.

What followed was a beautifully choreographed example of the warning he had just given me. I stepped onto the slick log. I was too small to step over it. My feet immediately slipped out from under me, and I began a rapid descent towards the river. In that second I envisioned my small head bobbing about in the green pool, making a heroic swim to shore in the swift current. In that same second my father grabbed me by one arm lifting me out of harm’s way but not before I had lacerated my knee on a limb sticking out from the log.

I wailed with terror, both from the fall and my father’s anger, which often showed itself when he was upset. Now I watched the blood drip down from my knee and onto the red rock in large splats. My blood and the rain water merged with a strange fascination that briefly distracted me from my father’s wrath. Despite that anger he lifted me into his arms and carried me back to camp, where my mother rapidly brought out the first aid kit and applied a neat gauze dressing to the wound. All was well. The tears stopped.

A few days later at home I carefully removed the gauze bandage and inspected the damage. The scab was gone, and in its place was a red blotch that looked like a rose blooming on my knee. Over the next several days and weeks I watched as the rose gradually faded but never went away. Seventy years later it is still there on my knee though barely visible. It was my first scar. I showed it off to my friends at school, a proud badge of my adventure and the way that I had been rescued from the swift current of the river. “I might have drowned,” I told them. They looked on solemnly, properly impressed.

Over the years I have acquired more of these scars, most of them on the trail and many of them while scrambling over logs on unmaintained routes, for I have always sought out these remote adventures. On my right elbow is a scar in the shape of the branch that dug into my arm while scrambling over a fallen tree in the Pasayten Wilderness. I remember where and how I acquired each one of them. They all tell a story, and just as I felt as a young child, I am glad to have them. I have hiked many miles. I am proud to have these reminders of my adventures in the wilderness.

These days my new scars are not visible. They involve assorted tears and degeneration in my back and hips. The muscle tears are said to be repetitive use injuries. I laughed when I heard that. Of course I have engaged in repetitive use of my legs and hips. I hike, and I have done so for many years.

I am certainly not happy about being in pain most of the time, but so far it has not stopped me from doing what I love most. Yesterday my dog Lulu and I climbed to the summit of Columbia Mountain, not far from my home, where glorious views of the Kettle River Range spread out and one can look southeast down the Columbia River Valley. There were still a few patches of snow. The pain in my hip and back seemed like a reasonable price to pay for such vistas.

I like to think that every single muscle tear represents a leap across a mountain stream, that every millimeter of disk compression was earned with a heavy pack like the one you see in the photo above. Someday, as I get ready to leave this world, I will read my scars, and every one of them will respond to me in the same manner, “Yes.”