Looking Back from Higher Ground

The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop over the thick, sun-struck hills everyday.

Diane Ackerman in A Natural History of the Senses

For a period of about ten years I spent a week or two every summer hiking in the beautiful Pasayten Wilderness in Washington’s north Cascades. It is one of the nation’s largest wilderness areas, covering an expanse of mountain terrain about the size of Rhode Island. Consequently it drew me back year after year, for I never ran out of new trails to explore, and the isolated area meant that I could sometimes hike for days at a time without seeing other hikers.

One of those trips I spent with a friend. We drove to the remote trailhead in separate vehicles and spent a week hiking in the eastern Pasayten. When we had completed our hike together, we left my car at the Billygoat Trailhead, and my friend dropped me off many miles to the west near Ross Lake on scenic Highway 20. I began a long traverse of the Pasayten Wilderness across some of the most rugged and beautiful mountain scenery anywhere in the northwest.

My route involved a steep ascent to the high ridge above the lake, then changing course at Devils’s Pass to descend to an old air field, now just a clearing in the woods, then around the north end of Hidden Lakes. There I spent a night camped by the Pasayten River before continuing my journey east over Dollar Watch Pass.

The trail over Dollar Watch was rarely used and poorly maintained even then. I would imagine by now it has completely disappeared, like many of those trails in the Pasayten that have suffered repeated burns. But that was long before the fires had come, and the area provided isolated access to ridge tops and vistas that spanned the entire Pasayten.

When I reached the pass I sat down to eat some lunch, as I most often do when finally finishing a long climb. From this incredible vantage point I could trace my entire route, all the way west to Jack Mountain, the ridge traverse, the valley of the Pasayten River, and the long ascent to this pass at this moment. All of the peaks that rose above the valleys were familiar to me, for I had walked beneath them.

It was certainly not the first time I had enjoyed spectacular views, but on this occasion I was looking at a vista that showed my entire route, which by that time had covered about sixty miles. l looked at my pack propped next to me on a rock. It was still loaded with sufficient gear and food to get me to my vehicle in a couple of days. That I had carried it across all those mountain trails through that rugged terrain somehow seemed like a great wonder.

Sometimes when I am pondering what to write about each week I recall a particular trip, and then the words typically come easily. But this week I remembered and relived a particular moment on the trail a long time ago. It had come about several years after my divorce from my daughers’ father, several challenging years of figuring out how to raise my daughters as a single mother, and building my career after finishing graduate school. I did not know it at the time, but that moment on Dollar Watch Pass was a turning point for me, the moment I knew that my daughters and I were going to be okay. I had carried a heavy backpack in the wilderness alone for sixty miles. That settled it.

It is interesting to me how often insights such as these occur on the trail and still do. I am not sure why it takes a broad mountain vista to remind me that I am resilient and strong. Perspective is everything. And here I am, still looking back, remembering a life well lived, remembering the trails.