Glittering prize

By Bill Pearse on February 25, 2026 • ( 0 )

The Issaquah Alps are a series of mountains in western Washington stretching along Interstate 90 between Lake Washington and the Cascade Range. No peak is higher than 3,500 feet, roughly 1,050 meters. I’ve climbed the Tiger Mountain trails, Cougar Mountain and Squak Mountain, and Rattlesnake Ridge.

Cougar is so close to our house I used to boast I could listen to Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti on the drive there and not get through side one. That testosterone-fueled music was perfect for early morning hikes with our dog Ginger. Though the signs said always keep your dog on a leash, I never did. Ginger enjoyed a good dozen trips with me up Cougar.

The mountains are all part of the same highlands system, volcanic rock layered over older rock, shaped by glacial activity from the last ice age. In fact there’s a massive boulder on Cougar called the Fantastic Erratic, from thousands of years ago. It’s the size of a small car garage, covered in moss.

Cougar is the smallest peak in the system, though you can ramble about the trails all day. I would do so in the early morning, always with a hit of weed and my coffee, and fast lose myself in the woods.

It took a good 35 years for me to break that pattern, the belief that life could always be better high. Nowhere was that more obvious than in the woods. Nature was its own fireworks display of stimulation magnified by the effects of psychoactive drugs. I went deep into the woods of Cougar and deep into myself.

The motivation to break bad habits comes externally or internally; with drinking it was both for me. With weed, it was my motivation alone. I’d taken to getting high in our chicken coop with a joint I hid above the door. The same joint could last a couple weeks, the weed is so strong these days. I’d stand there in the phone booth-sized shed and take my hit, cough my brains out, then stow the joint in its hiding spot and re-emerge. I guess I used weed as a numbing agent to seal myself off from the things I didn’t want to deal with.

I quit as a test one January to see if I’d feel any differently and it was like a fog had been lifted. I could think and speak more clearly, and felt more alive. I knew when I quit that going back to the woods would be triggering, especially for overnight camping trips.

But this past weekend I had one of my best outings ever, 12 miles in the snow around Tiger Mountain, and experienced a real natural high for the first time. A combination of the endorphins and natural beauty, of feeling the mental fireworks I used to feel only when smoking weed.

When I quit I knew it would be better because I’d have more space in my life for others. I could be more open and available, more clear-headed and less removed. I also hoped if I worked hard enough, I might experience life on a higher level clean and sober.

Ginger is now too old to be going up Cougar and we haven’t done that in years. I don’t know when the last time was the two of us went, but I’m sure I didn’t realize then it would be the last time. That is the thing about life, it’s not like a book where you can tell you’re almost at the end, it doesn’t work that way. One time, it’s just the last.

Today I read the Buddha recommends that each day we recollect five things: the inevitability of aging, sickness, death, and change, and our responsibility in the unfolding of our karma. It sounds bleak on one hand to think like that. But life is all these things: beautiful and bleak. Maybe if I could see it more clearly I’d live a fuller life. Mindful vs. mindless, life’s glittering prize.