There were two places I wanted my ashes spread. One was our favorite camp spot on the Washington coast, Oil City. No oil, no city. A bad name for a beautiful place. The other, less exotic spot was right here on Cougar Mountain, the Jim Whittaker trail up to Shy Bear Pass. Past the glacial errata and over a muddy patch, curling around the boardwalks to a flat clearing it was especially quiet, something meditative here. A lot of devil’s club with their big, broad leaves. My ash would get caught on that.

I used to alternate between two nearby sets of foothills for my conditioning climbs, Tiger Mountain and Cougar. I got sick of Cougar, overdid it. But like a good record you think you’re burned out on sometimes you realize you’re not.

I always think about Dawn’s older brother Chip on this trail, who we lost too soon at 56, and the time I brought him and his wife up here. There’s a funny tree branch growing out of another tree and snaking along the trail at an odd angle, flexing upwards like an elephant’s trunk. Chip noticed it, I never had, and now every time I pass by it I grasp the bough like I’m shaking his wrist and say his name.

And I used to take our old dog Ginger up here, and remember what she was like when she was young, how we’d stop at this first little stream a half mile in and she’d drink. Or how she’d get in a tussle with a family of squirrels who’d always get in a dither over us at the same switchback where they lived. Or the owl I saw one time and how I watched it watching me, and later wondered if it meant something or was a sign.

There is also the spot where I wrote a note to Lily when she’d first gone off to wilderness therapy and we had no real way to talk to her, just weekly letters. I savored putting my thoughts into those letters and reading hers. With letter writing a thing largely of the past, each one from her was like Christmas morning. I tried to tell her then of this moment I had in the woods with the light coming through and how I felt connected to her, tried to imagine her just then, to hold her in my heart. I will always remember that as I approach Shy Bear Pass.

They had come through and brushed the trail sometime ago and just left the dead branches on the ground, had sheered off some of the fern fronds too. It smelled gritty and sweet like hay, and the air was cool for summertime. I made good time.

I loved primping our yard for Dawn and Charlotte’s return home, getting everything just right. I was always a home maker and I get that from my mom.

Last night Lily was tired and cranky from work so I fixed her dinner from the leftover chicken, a bowl of chips and a glass of lemonade. Then she showered and we went to Dairy Queen (I now have the app and she showed me how to scan to get my points when we pay).

We sat in the parking lot with our treats and the windows rolled down, the same spot mom and I did when she visited and we’d do the same. Perhaps another, though more difficult place to put my ashes. Likely just swept or blown away.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, death, Poetry

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Nostalgia, pacific northwest, prose