Meteors and Moonlight

As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and the avalanche. I’ll acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.

John Muir

My last post (Get Up and Walk, 11/2/25) surprised me with the many comments I received and even condolences over not being able to hike this summer due to a back injury. Two people even told me that it made them cry. As I spent most of my summer sitting, I admit I shed a few tears.

It is good, I believe, to care about something or someone so deeply that its absence creates intense feelings of sadness, but I am only done backpacking, not hiking. As long as I can put one foot in front of the other I believe I can walk the mountain trails and climb to the passes, scramble along a canyon wall, sit by a river and read a book. And I have this to comfort me: lots of memories.

Here is where I begin. . .that night I pitched my tent near a lake in the Bighorns, awoke to flashing lights above me, and pulled myself out onto the ground to see the Perseid meteor shower flashing overhead, dazzling me with a sparkling sky.

. . .the night I pitched my tent at the High Divide in the Olympics and awoke to the sound of hooves walking through camp, surrounding both sides of my tent. A herd of elk was passing by only a few feet from where I lay, cows and calves, a sound that barely rose above stillness, and I wondered how such large animals could walk so softly upon the earth.

. . .the day I walked a log across a portion of the Elwha River, also in the Olympics, to reach an island where I pitched my tent and listened to the river voices on both sides of my campsite while I prepared and consumed my freeze dried dinner. During the night I awoke to a full moon, its light reflecting off the river in all directions from where I lay, surrounding me with light.

. . .the day I climbed along a series of paternoster lakes in the Wind River Mountains, each lake a little smaller than the last. When I reached the highest lake, barely more than a pond, the ground around me was covered with quartz crystals that sparkled in the sunlight.

. . .lowering my pack by rope down a vertical canyon slope in Canyonlands National Park, then following it on a metal ladder, hummingbirds trying to extract nectar from my red pack as I descended.

. . .tumbling in the rapids of the Popo Agie River, then wading back to retrieve my pack which was completely submerged, sitting by the river and shivering uncontrollably.

. . .my first backpacking trip when I was eight years old.

. . .the hundred mile trek around Mt Rainier when I was eighteen.

. . .the five hundred mile trek across Washington from the Oregon border into Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail when I was sixty-five.

. .the trek across northeastern Washington from Idaho to the Cascades on the Pacific Northwest Trail when I was seventy.

Then of course the nights I spent in my tent waiting for the rain to pause, so I could load up my pack and get on the trail, sometimes days at a time sitting and waiting for the storm to pass. I often brought along a Michener novel, so I would have a long book to read that would occupy my attention. Forever these stories of travel and history will remind me of rainy days in my tent while I sipped tea from my favorite teacup.

And the longest trek I ever took, two weeks in the Pasayten Wilderness of the North Cascades without resupplying. I covered close to two hundred miles, often made camp while I explored the barren ridge tops, hiking into Canada, climbing to undiscovered lakes. My pack weighed about sixty-five pounds when I started that trip, the heaviest pack I have ever carried on my small frame. I have wondered if that pack is what led to my back pain many years later. It is okay if it did. I was alone in a wild place for all of that time. It is worth an aching back, all of these memories.

So I awaken sometimes, listening to the herd of elk walking by my tent, wondering at the glistening of quartz crystals, taking in the meteor shower, the moonlight, and celebrating this wild world, this wild life.