Author Archives: Colleen Drake

Life gets mighty precious when there’s less of it to waste. Bonnie Raitt A couple of days ago I grabbed my pack and set out on a trail I hiked many years ago. My pack weighed twenty-eight pounds. I was not intending to do an overnight but instead was doing a test run. My hikingContinue reading “A Tale of Two Journeys”

There is always a way to look at the world that can make you happy. Orville There was never a time in my life when I made a conscious decision to make hiking a central focus, though there were many scattered moments, beginning in childhood, when I knew that a mountain trail held something specialContinue reading “Safe from the Storm”

Every rock I could see was under the influence of water. I stood almost blinded by the animation, knowing that even when the place went dry I would be able to see it, the rocks and canyons as scrolled and driven as floodwater itself. I could only bow my head to this. This is theContinue reading “Cool Clear Water”

Remember the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you. Rumi No one would have accused my parents of being neglectful, nor of failing to enforce the rules that kept a child safe from the evils that lurk in dark corners. My world was a circumscribed section of the neighborhood that included the vacant lotContinue reading “Spirit Lake 1959”

Of all the paths you take in life, make sure some of them are dirt. John Muir I am late with my post today because I wanted to hike instead of writing about hiking. It was what I needed to do today. I will tell you why. Yesterday I learned that a dear friend ofContinue reading “Remembering Ronnie”

A lake is earth’s eye looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own soul. Henry David Thoroeau On a Saturday afternoon in late June my husband, Stan, and I left our home on the Olympic Peninsula and drove south along Hood Canal, turning inland when we reached the Hamma Hamma River. NotContinue reading “What Are the Odds?”

Any time is a good time to look up from the creek bed at your feet to the mountains on the horizon. David Boyles By the time I was ten years old, our camping trips were mostly spent at Spirit Lake near Mt. St. Helens, that iconic mountain that would erupt in a cataclysmic eventContinue reading “Looking Up”

Go into the gaps. If you can find them, they shift and vanish too. Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock—more than a maple—a universe. Annie Dillard My mother often praised the virtues and skills of her two children, and since I was one of them I did notContinue reading “On a Stroll”