Here so early the espresso stands aren’t even open yet. Towns with names like Ravensdale, Enumclaw, Greenwater. Got to the ranger station two hours before they opened to be first in line. You can’t outcrazy me. Cracking the sun roof trying to stay awake, playing punk music all the way there: bands like The Nerves, The Zeros, The Pagans, The Slits, Flipper.

I laid out all my things outside the door of the station and sat on my bear can eating leftover pasta. If someone thinks you’re crazy they’ll give you a wide berth. I had everything wrapped in plastic or garbage bags, was totally dialed in. Had my phone in airplane mode, multiple power banks and adapters but not too many, still trying to go light. Had a sat phone redundancy with my iPhone’s emergency setting and a second, actual sat phone I pay a seasonal subscription for. I probably looked like the real deal but still had a ways to go, always would.

The best part of driving down to Mt. Rainier super early is when you first see it with the sun coming up and it’s that special golden pink you only get for a brief window, the alpenglow. Today I didn’t get that because I was actually too early and by the time it got light most of the sky was cloaked in fog, more grayish. They had the radio on inside the ranger station to where I could hear live voices transmitting. It’s probably not good if they need to communicate at this hour.

I had a soft-sided cooler with ice, a canister of cold-brewed coffee for the drive home, hard-boiled eggs, bananas, avocados. Going for high protein and good fat. I even brought the plastic calf stretching device for my plantar fasciitis, the kind professional dancers use. You stand on it and rock back and forth for a super deep heel stretch. Maybe I would do that when the rangers showed up for their shift and saw me waiting there with my pesto pasta and flannel, rocking like that.

I loved turning my phone off and checking out. I don’t know what I was trying to disconnect from but it felt vital I did. We often thought the best part of Lily’s wilderness experience was just getting her off screens for 90 days, what that must have done for her mind.

As I lay on my side in my sleeping bag in the tent my body felt bashed in and crumpled but inside I felt strong, like a glowing filament. I felt good knowing what I’d done, knowing I could do that. I’d even made good time and my joints and blisters weren’t so bad. More than nine miles in just over three hours, couple thousand feet of gain and a full pack.

Coming up I ran into a guy who lives around the corner from us named Joel, which was very “small world.” I didn’t even know he hiked. He and his friend were doing the whole 93-mile trail around the mountain over the next nine days and had just started. They were carrying cigars and 750 milliliters of bourbon. I asked what kind and told him I used to pack in canned wine, liquor, even beer cans. Glad I don’t have that on my back anymore!, I laughed. But then I imagined what it would be like having a cup of whiskey as night set in and how nice that would be. Except it would never just be a cup. And then everything would be a lot harder the next day.

I had just belched really loudly when I came around a corner and saw a ranger with turquoise-dyed pigtails checking two other hikers’ permits. I made small talk with her and then wondered if I was coming off weird. But then later I thought to myself yeah, but I’m not the one wearing turquoise pigtails. She had a blue bag for human waste tied to her hip belt which made her look more rugged somehow.

Sometimes on the trail I just caught myself giggling at how good I felt. The cool mountain air, the exquisite scents, the look of the Indian paintbrush and wild lupine. The peekaboo views of the mountain or accompanying ridges. Then the first sight of a glacier, all mud and rock and dirt-scoured moraine gushing chocolate milk out the sides in creamy silt with the river thundering down. Picturing myself taking a tumble into that and what a messy fall that would be.

It was a Friday and Lily was headed to the Oregon coast with friends, Dawn and Charlotte were still in Germany with my mom, and here I was: each of us in our own exquisite places. Just three weeks since the Fourth and yet it felt like I’d had a whole summer of backpacking and mole trapping and fiddle fucking around the yard, conditioning climbs up Tiger mountain, evading cougars at the state park.

There weren’t even any bugs here really. And I’d played that Black Sabbath record in the car driving up the mountain banging my head to Sweet Leaf and Children of the Grave and that “would you like to see the pope on the end of a rope” kind of thing. The last thing the ranger had said was you won’t have any problem finding water and all the flowers are out.

Now it was just me and my map and the sound of this nearby water source and no one else in any of the camps yet, still slogging their way in with all that bourbon, me fantasizing about where I’d go tomorrow, beat as all get-out but too amped to nap.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, prose, Travelogues

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, pacific northwest