During that long ago summer when I worked at Mount Rainier National Park, tourists wistfully asked if the “Mountain would come out today?” I felt empathy for those who traveled great distances to see this majestic peak, only to have it socked in their entire vacation. A few would express surprise at this happening in the heart of August when their own hometowns were drenched in humidity and blazing sun.

Yet it was me asking the patient Ohanapecosh Visitor Center ranger that identical question this week, as Karen and I set our hiking itinerary for our three days at Mount Rainier. Yes, I knew it was after Labor Day, further heightening the risk of weather. I too embrace my good fortune to have stared dreamily at Rainier in all its glory many times in my life. Prioritizing our time, we ended up missing our window of opportunity to see the mountain for, instead, a journey of solitude, dappled with reminiscences. And, yes, it was well worth it. Many remind us, “You can’t go home again.” Certainly not if we expect it to be exactly as it once was. Yet, when we allow for change, it can sometimes be nearly as delightful. As our hearts age and grow with both loss and gratitude, I suspect it can even mean more.

THE NEXT YEAR, at nineteen, I had my best summer job ever while working at Mt. Rainer National Park. The Student Conservation Association hires college students to work in beautiful parks around the country as part of the team caring for our national treasures. My job was to help maintain trails, be available in the backcountry for visitors, and watch for smoke from a fire tower late in the summer during fire season. The SCA added ranks to rangers by providing housing but paying meagerly. I didn’t care. It was enough to help pay for my next year of college, and allowed me to hike. Hike, write,
and read. I discovered new rivers and creeks, and a love for a new mountain. I discovered people who cared about wild land as much as I did. My duty station, Three Lakes, was smack on the Pacific Crest Trail, nearest Mt. Rainer’s Ohanapecosh Ranger Station…”

….”One weekend, while back at my Ohanapecosh Ranger Station apartment, Dad called.
“I’d like to come up and visit you next week, Deeder.”
He would visit on a day I was scheduled at Three Lakes: I started to get nervous in anticipation. Dad and I hadn’t spent much time alone in the past seven or eight years. I envisioned the possibilities of tough one-on-one full-court press with just us two together. Alone. On the appointed afternoon, I loitered near my cabin as I awaited Dad’s visit into my solitude, hoping his sense of direction would lead him to my camp. Finally, Dad appeared in the distance, walking down the dusty trail as it dropped into the basin of my private hideout. He had hiked six and a half miles, with a sleeping bag under his arm and a small daypack on his back….”

“…I shared little bits with Dad. Our same sense of humor began to pave a new route ahead, and our dramatic differences, for the first time, became okay. Dad called my pad a “five-star.” The next morning, we took a dip in the lake, shallow and warmed by the midsummer sun: our mutual love of water. A full day we’d spent together, just due east of the Nisqually Mission where our Chloe and William joined forces. And then, with a hug and kiss—always that, even in our silent years—I watched Dad, hair slicked back and sleeping bag tucked under his arm, slug back up the trail, away from the Three Lakes basin.
My Music Man, Chapter 18: My Titan

Karen and I met fall of our freshman year at Portland’s Lincoln High. I hadn’t found a true “best friend” before. Although now living gratefully on the West Coast, but nearly 200 miles apart, we tap on each other, especially for adventures we love doing together. We cycled together for over three months following college, with an intensity of togetherness we laugh about today, while also sharing experiences and joy in tandem before cell phones and internet. We too have suffered losses and trauma, and know each other’s lives nearly as well as our own. Months not seeing each other means nothing: we miss each other but pick off where we left off. Grateful to walk through life with a friend like this.

We also shared this part of Mount Rainier, Karen having lived at Ohanapecosh a summer after me while working on projects as a wildlife biologist. In this now half century friendship (yes really) we have shared loves, losses, and the joys and challenges of relationships, world conflicts and parenting. We passed a grove of old growth, two ravaged by a recent storm. Enormous trunks hewn for safe passage instructing us to have been nearly five hundred years old, now to decompose into final particles. I think about my own bones after a long hike like this, still functioning well but far more tired and vulnerable than that special Rainier summer.

As we hiked, Karen retold the story of the conversation she had with Mom, hiking this same trail those 43 years earlier. As Karen confided to Mom about not knowing what she wanted to do with her life, Mom shared that neither did she. And that it was all good. We too remembered our apparent lack of fears in doing so much alone those days and agreed we feel different today. While times have changed, are we wise or too cautious now, or a bit of both we wonder?

It was a dream job, mostly. I was paid lower-than-ranger wages to hike trails, remind people no dogs were allowed in the Park, and report or take care of problem conditions. I had no handheld radio but a large radio that had no reception from Three Lakes, unless I hauled it a bit up the hillside. I spent two weeks in a high fire tower during the height of the driest fire season, and Mom made a second trip into the Park from Portland to visit. We loved the opportunity to hike in the wilds together; this nature lover who first introduced me to its bounty. Together we hiked down from the fire tower, snacking on huckleberries, to a hidden lake where we jumped in for an exhilarating quick naked dip. Like Mom, I was tough and in magnificent shape, one day hiking with a friend nearly twenty-four
miles.
From First Breath to Last, The Power of the Wild

This Oregon Country filled with lifetimes of stories, good and bad, fair and not. Of me and those generations preceding us. My trip with its reminiscences wasn’t yet complete, even after exiting through the park at Nisqually. I knew I would parallel the Cowlitz River before rejoining Interstate-5. While I was a bit north of the original Cowlitz River Landing where my third great grandparents first climbed out of their canoes enroute to the Nisqually Mission, the river still evoked sentimentality. Much to my surprise, as I climbed down the muddy slope to reach the bank outside of Mossy Rock, I spied an old ferry landing. No, it wasn’t the one 21 year old Chloe Clarke pulled herself onto nearly two hundred years ago when those now storm tossed firs spread their branches toward the sky. But close enough.

I was reminded how both she and William, on separate journeys traveled into this part of Puget Sound from Fort Vancouver. They were aided by John McLoughlin who provided them with Native American helpers, canoes and horses when needed. When these missionaries reached Nisqually, McLoughlin’s chief trader welcomed them and continued to support their needs. (Marion County History Volume XV, Marion County Historical Society.) Chloe had joined Dr. Richmond and others, and thanks to his notes we have details of these missionaries voyage, by first canoe via both Columbia and Cowlitz Rivers, before traveling overland to the mission William would build, and where she would for a short time attempt to teach Indigenous children. It was short-lived, although nearby Dupont houses Chloe Clark Elementary School today. (See: Returning to place.)

How do we balance these memories of places we love while honoring the moment of now? Memories that fill us with joy and sadness, of loved ones no longer here. We don’t want to live in the past and we are here today. It’s a mindful balance between the two. This week Karen and I hiked past yet “one more curve” (and another, and another), agreeing that the Three Lakes hike did seem a bit more strenuous than either of us remembered from long ago. When we finally dropped down to the lake and spied the cabin, I was unprepared for the joy and near mania I felt: grateful to relive this space while honoring all that has happened in between.

To be here in this moment remembering and experiencing. And to share it with someone who gets it like me. Grateful for Place and my Lifetime Friend. May we each experience, remember and rejuvenate our special places and dearest friends.

Lifetime buddies: Silver Falls, Mount Rainer – 2024; Horgen, Switzerland – 1983. Read more about our bike trip in Coming of age on two wheels.

See more blogs about Chloe and William and early Oregon.

Learn more about my books, fiction and memoir.