Sign Sign, Everywhere a Sign. . .

Breakin’ out the scenery

Breakin’ my mind

Do this, don’t do that

Can’t you read the sign?

Five Man Electric Band

If you are a Baby Boomer like myself you may remember that song by an obscure Canadian band that had one hit, but it was a good one, and memorable. While having lunch in a Chinese restaurant in Spokane yesterday it played while I was eating my almond chicken, and I was suddenly flooded with memories of a backpacking trip I took with my friend Patty in the early seventies.

We had planned to hike the Washington section of the Pacific Crest Trail that summer. It was the last summer before my graduation from college, and I somehow thought that my carefree hiking days would be over, so I wanted to make this trip a memorable one.

Unfortunately there had been a record high snowfall in the Cascades that winter, and we were turned back by deep snow by the time we got to the south slope of Mt. Adams. We returned home, disappointed but not defeated. We had a month of food packed and ready to go, and so were we. Patty and I spent two weeks in the Olympics, hitchhiking from one trailhead to another, returning home for a few days. It was mid-August by then and the Crest Trail was finally clear of snow, so we had a friend drop us off at a trailhead near Glacier Peak and hiked south on the trail to Stevens Pass.

It was on that trail that we started spontaneously breaking into song whenever we saw a trail sign. “Sign sign, everywhere a sign,” we would bellow for all the world to hear, causing the marmots to disappear into their holes. I do not know why or how this fondness for singing to signs developed, but it is the kind of thing two young women on the cusp of life changing adulthood simply must do, and we did it well. Over fifty years later I remember those moments and smile.

My fiancé came and picked us up at Stevens Pass, and the trip was over, and the summer was over, and singing to signs was over. In a few days I would return to college to complete the last year of my nursing education. In a few months I would marry my high school boyfriend, and the following summer would start my first job as a Registered Nurse. I did not like that first job and was quickly learning that handsome prince does not always equate with happily ever after.

It was a difficult time in my life. I had obeyed the signs telling me what to do and what not to do. It had not made me happy. I quit my much hated job the following summer and made the decision to spend the summer hiking and then look for another job in the fall. My husband had a new job as a corporate pilot and was typically gone from Monday through Friday.

Thus began my solo treks in the mountains, mostly in the Olympics but also in an area in the Cascades that would soon become the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area not far from Seattle. In the fall I started a new job at a drug and alcohol treatment center. I loved the job and the people I worked with and actually looked forward to going to work in the morning. I was just beginning the task of figuring out who I was. I was surprised to find that it was not what I expected. The job is never complete, but it gets easier as we age, unburdened by the responsibilities of career and family.

These days I find those old weathered signs to be quite beautiful. Some of them have been standing for decades, blown over against the wind and the elements like the one in the photo above. Perhaps that is why I find them to be beautiful…blown over and weathered like the elderly woman I have become.

The “carefree hiking days” that I thought I would have to give up are still a part of my life. I do not know why I thought that marriage and a career would force me to give that up, that I would have to “put away childish things.” I am still out there on the trail, enjoying all of those childish things as often as I can and singing to signs.