The Gem of Taking the Road Less Traveled

Pongo and I left the house at 8 am yesterday and headed for Mt. Peak.  Pongo whined excitedly standing between the front seats and balancing on the emergency brake. It was overcast and 50 degrees, the quintessence of a Pacific Northwest Spring day.  It rained sporadically as I slowly climbed the mountain.  I was quickly soaked by rain and sweat, stopping to rest now and then.  There were not many hikers on this Saturday, but we still ran into some of Pongo’s doggie friends.  We saw Gunner, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever and hunting dog who stands a couple inches taller than Pongo at the shoulder.  They circled and sniffed their hellos.   Next, we ran into Max, an Australian Shepherd Pongo met a few months ago at the Bonney Lake Dog Park. We see Max and his owner climbing Mt. Peak almost every time we go now. They were excited to see each other, did some play bowing, jumps and twirls. 

Instead of going to the top like we always do, I decided to take a right instead of a left three-quarters of the way up.  I had heard that this trail went around the backside of the mountain to a road. Because the trail didn’t circle back to the main path, I had never explored it, always with the excuse of not having enough time.   But I didn’t feel rushed to get back home and decided it was a good day to explore.  This path was wider, straighter and gently sloped downward.  The ground was so wet that when I stopped for a drink, my hiking poles stood upright in the soil by themselves. 

 After climbing the steep incline of the main trail that consists of frequent switchbacks and quick gains in elevation, I was thrilled to be going downhill.  It began to narrow and branch off into other trails that jutted off into the woods.  I quickly realized that there was a lot more exploring that could be done on Mt. Peak than I ever imagined.   Many small trails spread out across the backside of the mountain.    Each time I came across a new path, I had to decide which way to turn.

Now I have never had a good sense of direction and I am famous for getting lost, even with directions.  I can have trouble driving to a location even if I have been there before.  Things look different to me at different times of day.  If I have driven somewhere in daylight, there is no guarantee that I will be able to find it at night. Once, Pongo and I got lost while hiking in the Shenandoah mountains and had to be rescued by a park ranger.  But on this particular day, I remembered the voice of a friend who came to visit me in Namibia when I was a WorldTeach volunteer.

Wendi Haugh was an anthropology student in graduate school who stayed with me for a week.  She wanted to do research on national identity among Oshiwambo-speaking people, and she was looking for a fieldsite (a place to do her work).  Oshiwambo was the Bantu dialect spoken by the Owambo people in Northern Namibia.  I took her to visit the rural homes of women I worked with.  One day we walked into the bush to call on a woman name Atanasia who lived a few miles away.  To me, the landscape all looked the same.  But Wendi, a hiker herself, knew something about survival skills.  She told me that you should periodically turn around to look at the landscape in reverse so you would recognize it on your return.  We took note of our footprints in the sand.  But much of the path Pongo and I took yesterday was full of pebbles.  I didn't see my footprints in the ground.  Instead, I broke off a branch at one juncture and placed the stick in a puddle to mark the trail where I'd have to turn.  At another juncture, I drew an X in the mud with one of my hiking poles.  

 Down the hill we went.  The narrow path opened up into a wide gravel one that looked like a service road. We began to encounter other hikers again, ones coming up from the backside.  Pongo walked along the edge of the road to avoid the thickest chunks of gravel.  Finally, we came to the end where a gate separated the gravel from the main asphalt road that circled the mountain. There was no parking lot, but people had left their vehicles along the road.

Yea!  We'd come out on the other side!  Now I could say I knew where the trails on the other side of the mountain were!  I felt excited.  This opened up many more options for hiking on Mt. Peak.   I now had an alternate more gentle path to follow on days where I didn't feel like climbing the steep one to the summit. 

Here we turned around and started back the way we had come.   This time on the way up, I walked into a clearing for a water break and discovered a memorial.  Pongo and I paid our respects then began our climb again.  I had noticed there were two older men who had stopped to chat nearby.  "Do you know who this memorial is a tribute to?" I asked.  I made the assumption that they were locals.  Mt. Peak always seemed to be a community mountain to me, that only nearby hikers in the surrounding areas knew.   And they were.

They told me a story about three servicemen from Ft. Lewis who died in a Black Hawk helicopter crash during a night training flight two days before Christmas, 2006.  They hit the side of the mountain in the clearing where the homemade memorial marks the spot.  They were members of the 4th Squadron, 6th Air Cavalry Regiment and were scheduled to be deployed to Iraq the next year. The crew consisted of 25-year-old Sergeant Thomas L. Clarkston, 32-year-old Chief Warrant Officer Patrick J. Paige and 33-year-old Chief Warrant Officer James E. Whitehead. 

One of the men who told me the story was a Vietnam Veteran who served two tours of duty himself.  I told him about my cousin, Phillip, a marine who was killed in Afghanistan in 2010.  Our conversation turned to talking about the difficulties of military service today and of the challenges servicemen and women face in getting adequate medical care from the V.A. 

I felt a little like my Dad, who was a newpaper reporter in the early days of his career.  He would stop and talk to anyone anywhere and get them to tell him their stories.  I was so shy as a child that I had difficulty talking to anyone, even people I knew.  If I were a child today, I would likely be diagnosed with social anxiety.  But as an adult, I have conquered the fears that haunted my childhood.  As I said goodbye to the gentlemen and wished them good day, I felt confident in myself, proud of my family heritage, and that I find in some ways that I am following in my father's footsteps.  The stories I hear and the people I meet are the gem I find when I take the road less traveled.

Our return hike went smoothly, as we easily found the markers I had left, retracing our steps with precision.  When Pongo and I reached our car on the other side of Mt. Peak, it had stopped raining.  We had begun our hike at 8:30 and it was now 10:55.  What a glorious morning with my best friend!