By the time I got to the rim trail I was feeling feral. Short with people, not making eye contact, combative. The rim trail comes out of the visitor center at a very touristy part of Mt. Rainier. Let’s just say people not on the same page as me, not dialed in to hiker etiquette, not yielding to the uphill party. I could not turn my head and even look at the mountain anymore, it made me listless. I’d really pushed myself beyond my limits but sometimes you need to do that. I wanted to finish strong and not look like I was suffering. And for that I charged up the trail.

By the time I got to my car I was so wet it looked like I’d peed myself but the stains were rimmed with body salt. Kind of looked like the jagged glacier patterns I’d seen earlier. Somehow it seemed like everyone who was parked by my car decided to leave just then. So there was no amount of privacy to towel myself off and change. And I could not walk the three minutes it would take back to the latrine to change so I just drove the two hours back to Seattle like that sucking down cold brew and listening to loud music, that same Black Sabbath record, shouting the words at the stoplights, gesturing lots for emphasis.

And all these people returning to their cars were wearing cologne and matching track suits, Ray Bans, hair product and so on. They were all showered too. Who dresses up to go to Mt. Rainier? And then I realized why: for their selfies, their channels. What bullshit.

And here I’d felt all zenned-out and connected earlier, sitting on that rock outcropping tripping out to the mountain. To that smell and those sounds, that mashup of elements right there. The snout of the glacier calving and the sound like a jet passing overhead, the same long arc.

You could just sit and listen to the cool sounds the mountain made. They were like sonic fireworks. They sounded like that and were sudden and random like that, the way they erupted and bloomed.

I’d gotten the permit I wanted for two nights with today to just day trip and roam around. The ranger suggested a nearby ridge that was off the beaten path, what they called “social trails,” not maintained, more like game trails in spots. I’d laid there in my tent at 0300 thinking it was way too early to be making noise in my camp with the two women (sisters) next door but then I said fuck it and did anyway. I got to the lake by 0500 and then up to the ridge right around sunrise. I saw an elk and then a large bear but just slapped my poles together and it lumbered off.

The glacier looked like it had chocolate syrup poured over it with the white jagged undersides of the snow and ice poking up like a fierce set of jaws.

I’d tested my rape whistle but thought how silly, what good would that do me up here? There was no one anywhere, just this glacier and ridge, all manner of paw prints in the sand. And how funny I was worried about a cougar back home, at our little state park. There was cougar scat everywhere, this was where the real cougars roamed. Things got really real really fast on the mountain. That rock I was scrambling on was crumbly and loose; it’s good I knew that rock from taking a near fall on it some 20 years ago. You had to know when you stepped on it it would slide. The rock was all a mish-mash of volcanic stuff, basically mountain vomit with black and gray volcanic sand. The colors of the rocks were brown and pink, gray and white, and made me think of Neapolitan ice cream, of the sun burn Charlotte got and the photo she sent me. Out here with no one around you had to be responsible for your own choices, for every step.

I sat on the outcropping waiting for more avalanches and rock fall so I could video it with my phone. The summit was so close it made me think I could climb it again, all the way to the top. That time I did in 1999 I wept in the crater not for joy or relief but more out of terror from the sudden awareness of what I’d done and had to do still: climbing all the way out, past base camp thousands of feet below with all our gear, plastic boots. For days after I found any excuse I could to tell people of my feat. I’d plop myself down at a bar, order a draft, and then oh by the way, I just summited Rainier on Monday.

I turned back from the glacier and calculated how long until I’d be back at camp. Then maybe I would just pack out and head home vs. staying another night. I paused by the lake for a quick swim but just walked halfway into the middle of it in my underwear.

By the time I got back to camp everyone else had taken their food down from the bear wire and it was just me and the birds. I pictured what it would be like staying there all day like that, kind of peaceful and nice, but lonesome too.

So I cooked the last of my hot meals and broke down my tent, feeling that goodbye feeling, the same every time, even that goodbye to summer feeling, though it was way too early for that.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, prose

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, pacific northwest, prose