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158 Years Ago

July 8, 2021

It was their second day in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. After packing up from a rainy night at the local campground, Astrid and Snorri drove south on West Confederate Avenue, past dozens of cannons pointed east to where the Union Army had been mustered in the American Civil War, then past South Carolina’s war memorial, to park at Virginia’s war memorial, where a bronze General Lee sat on his bronze horse, overlooking the battlefield. They started down the grassy path mown between fields of soybeans, toward where the map said Pickett’s Charge was attempted.

Astrid watched as Snorri strode on ahead of her, but she slowed down. It was not a common thing to visit a battle field in America, and she wanted, as the Gettysburg National Military Park guide encouraged, “to reflect and try to understand what happened here.”

On that day, 158 years before, she would have found a much different landscape. It would have been strewn with the rotting corpses of Confederate soldiers, who had no one to bury them properly. It would have been pock-marked with cannon craters, strewn with the wooden wreckage of military wagons, and dead horses. The three days of fighting had occurred on July 1,2 and 3, but the carnage and destruction would have been left for months afterward.

The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference. People often go to great lengths to stop a loved one from ruining their soul with evil. And so it was with the United States in the 1860s. Despite many other elements that incited the Civil War, the United States as a whole, which was “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal*” needed to finally fulfill that declaration.

Frederick Douglass in An American Slave, and Booker T. Washington in Up From Slavery both expressed the horrific fact, which they experienced first hand: slavery is a dehumanizing evil, for all who are involved. It demoralizes and oppresses the enslaved, but absolutely hardens and corrupts the slave-holders, too**.

War was the length the United States would go to correct this great evil and save the country from this sin of slavery; war against part of itself, its brothers, its family. It was, undeniably, hell. Astrid did feel gravity and meaning as she walked, but knew she could never understand the hell that was invoked on that ground 158 years before. But she did begin to understand some things. Like why Lincoln wanted to restore the Confederate States to the Union, not crush and isolate them.

Grace, mercy, empathy, infatuation, desire, charity, tolerance, preference–many things can be called “love” and it can be insisted that all those definitions of love “win.” But in that park, walking on the ground consecrated by violence, blood, death and strife, combined the previous day’s experience of visiting all the monuments–Union and Confederate–Astrid was overwhelmed with the feeling that grace, truth and forgiveness win more often and more completely.

To beat a foe because they are wrong, to stop them from evil acts, and then to extend a hand to lift them up and bandage their wounds is mercy and love. It is what Lincoln wanted (as Astrid understood the history). Separation, severe punishment and despair in beaten foes (as the world has seen in WWI & WWII), comes back to haunt the victor, it makes things worse, every time. And we have lived it.

Astrid knew that to write this, in the margins of her map, while walking those fields, was easy, but to live it out in her personal life would prove more challenging.

If one does not have an inkling of understanding of the depth and possibility of human depravity in oneself, of a potential inhumanity lying not-so-deep under our modern niceties and manners, one will not understand why there are hundreds of Confederate memorials in Gettysburg. A person might want them erased, because they lost, they were wrong, they must be punished by obliteration. But we must remember the hurt they caused, the humanity they denied, and the price America paid for it.

Every state that sent soldiers to the battle in Gettysburg has memorial there–from Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas, Texas on the Confederate side, to Maryland (both Union and Confederate soldiers fought), New York, Minnesota and Wisconsin on the Union side, just to name a few. The Confederate soldiers remembered by their memorials were fighting for a wrong cause, for states’ rights to enslave human beings, but they were our countrymen and that makes it all the more important that we remember: America loved its founding principals of freedoms and wanted them for all the inhabitants, to the point of war against itself. It is a tragedy worth trying to understand.

If you have 5 minutes, go read the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln. It takes under two minutes to read, but it is one of the most poignant, powerful speeches in American History.

***

*The Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln, 1863

**I pity from the bottom of my heart any nation or body of people that is so unfortunate as to get entangled in the net of slavery.” -Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery, Kindle Loc 312

“Thus is slavery the enemy of both the slave and the slaveholder. … Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. … Under its influence the tender heart became stone, the lamb-like disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.” An American Slave, by Frederick Douglass, Page 31-34 Yale University Press.

WA: Forests and Oceans and Beaches and Mountaintops

-Forest-

Because the family slept the night at Hoh Campground (or dozed fitfully, in Astrid’s case), they didn’t have to wait in a long car line to get into this part of Olympic National Park, and after packing up camp, they simply walked to the first trailhead of the day.

In her more fashion-conscious past, Astrid would try not to wear too much green. The color dominated her closet and she didn’t want to always look like a domesticated leprechaun. But Mother Nature doesn’t have such insecurities at Olympic National Park. The trails at Hoh Rainforest were enrobed in a million different shades of green, from the dull silver-green of the moss in the trees, to the bright green duck weed floating on a small pond.

Hall of Mosses Trail and Nature Center Trail by the campground were lined with dusty-leafed ferns and oxalis (looks like clover), at the feet of furry trees, punctuated by long-fallen behemoths rotting to burnt-orange dust. These giant trees served a purpose: tree seedlings grew in the rotting wood along the trunk, often in a row. These fallen trees are called “nurse trees.”

While ocular fishing, Astrid spotted a few deer on the trail running off into the forest, and two pileated woodpeckers on a tree.

“What would I do differently?” was a question Astrid asked herself after every adventure. “Take better, more coherent notes,” was invariably one of her critiques, and the other usually had to do with the gear she packed. This was the first trip they had tent-camped at national parks an airplane ride away. Next time, if there was one, she would tent camp more than one night in a row, be better prepared with food, coffee and bedding, and bring a hammer, and two sets of towels.

“I don’t like camping on vacation,” Snorri gave his honest opinion when asked.

“What would make it better?” Astrid asked.

“Showers, beds, wi-fi. Camping on vacation seems too much like work.”

“Fair enough. Yes, yes it does.”

But, then again, there is value in doing challenging things which sometimes feel like work, when one visits beautiful places, to get to more beautiful places.

-Forest-Ocean-

The Cape Flattery Trail is on Makah Tribal Lands, and one must get a recreational permit at Neah Bay before setting out there. The trail takes you, via raised-board walkways and inclines, to the most northwest-ish point of the contiguous US. The trail is a little tricky sometimes, as the boardwalk is not quite wide enough for two strangers to politely pass one another without some maneuvering. But it’s worth the awkwardness. It’s a nice hike through a rainforest to overlook the Pacific Ocean. There, Astrid went ocular-fishing and caught Sea Weed, Starfish and tube-shaped mammals basking in the sun out on a distant island.

-Beach-

Realto Beach in Forks, WA is notable, especially at sunset. This beach had a peculiar inhabitant: pelicans. They weren’t sitting on docks, or posts. They were flying, diving in the wild, cutting an interesting silhouette in the sky. This beach was filled with drift wood, large sun-bleached logs, but also round stones, along with Astrid’s very favorite–sand.

The family’s Air BnB in Forks, WA was full of sensible IKEA furniture and adequate for their night’s stay, except for one very important thing: the futon that would be Snorri’s bed for the night was about two feet too short for his six foot length. He slept on the floor, but had access to wi-fi and a shower, so it was better than camping, for him.

–Early Morning Forest, then Beach–

Astrid woke up in a foul mood, and thankfully, she recognized it. She was tired of moving her home-base, and needed some extra rest, but it wasn’t in the plan. They were out the door by seven again and to a beach … again.

This trip to Washington was more challenging than most, not because of the hikes, or elevation, but because the family stayed at a different place every night, frog-hopping from site to site. But the sites were much the same, in terms of nouns: trees, sand, rocks, sky, and water. But they all had extravagantly different “characters,” starting with the roads and trails that led to them.

Sometimes Astrid’s adventures came with challenges that weren’t steep inclines, or persistence in walking a trail. Sometimes the challenge was to maintain an un-grumpy attitude. Walking in beauty helps. Coffee does, too. To take in the mesmerizing scenery around you, let it feed and nourish your mood and body so you can be–at the very least–nice, that is the challenge. The hike to Second Beach in the Olympic Peninsula filled that prescription.

Astrid got coffee (and Snorrie and Bjorn got breakfast) at a little shack in Forks, then off to the beach. A two mile hike down to a wide, expansive, beautiful Second Beach where she would wait and watch, and take in beauty to displace her dark mood. Large rock formations jutted out of the water. Smoke rose from groups of tents as campers made their breakfast among the copious driftwood. Astrid stepped cautiously over gelatinous corpses of jellyfish washed up on the shore. A woman, down away from everyone, with a tent near the crags, was fishing. The family made it down to the beach as the sun came shining over the tree-topped mountains.

-Short Forest Hike-

A dream-like, but short half-mile hike through Ancient Groves Trail leant a small sampling of what Olympic National Park is made of–gigantic, beautiful trees, making a magical setting accentuated by light sprinkling through the treetops and wonderful aromas of the forest. This trail had it all, moss, oxalis, giant titans of trees with soaring canopies, nurse trees horizontal and nurturing saplings, and sparse visitors.

-Forest-Water Falls-

“This is what National Parks are for.” So that many people can enjoy exquisite natural beauty.

And many people were enjoying the beauty of Sol Duc Falls Trail when Astrid visited with her family. Parked cars lined the road leading to the trail head, a line was constant at the toilets, packs of people milled around the parking lot and clotted the trail. They all came to see a bridge spanning a stream which fell beautifully over a 50 foot, rocky cliff, then passed through a very narrow, deep canyon. The trail continued on after this bridge, but most hikers turned back after seeing the falls.

Bjorn, camera at the ready, expected to photograph beautiful scenery. Because of the many, many hikers littering the stream above the falls (and right up to the edge of the falls!) Bjorn’s expectations were shattered. He expected that no one would be stupid enough to be hanging out-literally- in the stream on the edge of the water fall or if they were , they would move within minutes, but they didn’t.

National parks are, at times, deceptively dangerous. It’s usually gravity that kills in national parks. In the following June, a man walking along the top of these falls, just as dozens were doing the day Astrid visited, fell, was swept over and died. They had to close the trail down while they searched for his body.

Lulled by the beauty and majesty of the gentle-looking wilderness, sometimes we don’t realize the cold, unfeeling nature of … Nature. It’s all on you to keep yourself from dying of gravity in these parks. You are not in Disneyland anymore. The visitors visually polluting the stream and falls trusted themselves too much. Maybe it’s because they assumed it was like the sidewalks of civilization, where you are rarely in danger of dying of gravity or of being swept over the falls.

-Mountain Tops and Views-

Hurricane Ridge Trails in Olympic wind up and around the tops of the ridges of gentle mountains, allowing the hiker wide and wonderful views to surrounding snowy mountaintops. It was the perfect place to go ocular fishing, but Astrid didn’t need binoculars to find wildlife, the wildlife was very close. Deer strolled along the trails, grouse decorated the pines, little rodents and salamanders skittered across the paths.

The family ended the natural-wonders part of their trip in Seattle. The next day they visited the less than impressive Museum of Pop Culture (in Astid’s opinion). She gird her anxiety of crowds to walk through, briefly, the wall-to-wall people in Pike Place Market, then enjoyed the views of Seattle from Columbia Center Skyview Tower.

The whole adventure was more beautiful than she deserved.

Thanks for looking.

WA: Fast Mountains, Furry Trees, and A Wooded Beach

Astrid’s hearing is variably hypersensitive. Bjorn insists it is so pathologically acute that a lady bug sneezing on the lawn would wake her. But it wasn’t a lady bug sneeze that woke her in the night at the AirBnB, it was a crying newborn baby. She wasn’t annoyed at the disruption, but thankful. It was a reminder of how far time had brought them, from years prior when she was waking to the screeching cry of her baby every night, her baby who would be going off to college the week after they returned from the trip. Also, she was impressed the family ran an AirBnB while taking care of a newborn.

Toledo, WA may never make it to the top ten of America’s Most Beautiful Cities, but it is home, it is the America most United States Americans know from day to day and it’s a little bit sad, but hopeful.

It was cool the morning they set out to visit the famous broken mountain/volcano, Mt. St. Helens. The winding roads were intermittently wrapped in fog as they headed higher into the mountains. At Mt. St. Helens Vista Point, the family got out and watched as the mist rallied around the broken peak in the distance.

Mountains, in general, are slow to change before humanity’s eyes. It is said that at one time, the mild Appalachians were as wickedly tall and ferocious in height as the Alps or the Rockies, but it took a gazillion years to whittle them down to the mountain nubs they are today. Mt. St. Helens and the peaks around it are not as ambitious as the singular Mt. Rainier, nor are they as mild as the Appalachian Mountain chain, but they are younger, faster, taller, more volatile; angrier, disillusioned with the world, and wear a more consistent covering. The trees covering the slopes were by human design (90% farmed pines) and sometimes nature’s: conifers, creating an uninterrupted pattern of dark green triangles adorned with a silvery glow in the weak morning sun and dew.

The road that ran closest to the broken peak was closed, so the family went to the Mt. St Helens Learning & Science Center where Astrid learned more of how this mighty mountain was hoisted by its own petards when it literally lost its top. She was in kindergarten when the event took place but it remained as fodder for many science class geology sections in her school career.

After centuries of sedentery threats of smoke and rumblings, Mt. St. Helens moved fast and broke things on May 18, 1980. The forces that exploded it pushed the mountain peak apart and threw it down, burnt and melted, flattening everything for 230 square miles. It erupted at 8:30 am and spewed ash as far as Idaho by noon the same day. People died, towns were buried, the land was changed. It is still an active volcano, part of the Pacific Ring of Fire Tectonic Belt.

There is something odd, numbing, and helpless about learning of very natural disasters like volcanoes. Human endeavors might affect our world-wide climate to varying degrees, but volcanoes are not part of the atmosphere above us, we can in no significant way admit human fault for a volcano or an earthquake. We either heed its warning shots and get out of the way, or let the mountain take us with it as it breaks.

###

The first thing Astrid did when they arrived at the Quinault Rainforest Ranger Station in Olympic National Park was to take off her jacket. It was very warm and humid. If she had been more observant on the long ride there, it wouldn’t have been a surprise: the flora had changed. They left the evergreen covered mountain sides and were plunged into a land of moss-draped deciduous trees, forest floors thick with ferns and cushiony moss.

Olympic National Park is a very big park. When Astrid started visiting national parks, she was surprised at how much driving it entailed. The parks she knew in her youth were all walkable. A visitor parked and enjoyed all the scenery on foot, whether a raucous amusement park, a quiet forested and pathed state park, or a playground at the local elementary school. Visitors needed transportation to see most national parks.

They took a short 1.3 mile hike on the Kestner Homestead Trail, a trail crowded with thick ferns, leading to the remnants of long-ago homestead. Then they drove to Merriman Falls, just a few miles away and a few steps off the road. The road around Olympic was dotted with residents, villages and houses fronted by beautiful blue hydrangeas.

After a light dinner at Creekside Restaurant, where Kalaloch Creek flows into the ocean, they walked along the beach, to visit a very resilient, precariously perched tree. The Kalaloch Tree of Life on the Pacific Coast Beach stands as a living monument of persistence, suspended by its roots across a chasm.

Ruby Beach was the perfect place to watch the day end, where they stretched out the visit, so they didn’t have to spend the time waiting in their car to get into Hoh Campground, one of the most poplar spots in the park, because it was the closest a visitor could drive up to Mount Olympus. After exploring the sand, then raft-like patches of drift wood and admiring the giant rocks, Astrid warmed herself in the car while Bjorn captured the sun’s bedtime ritual.

“It takes so long to get anywhere!” Astrid said after fifty minutes of driving in the murky dark, and still not arriving at camp. The road ran through thick forest and along swamps. But as they approached the entrance kiosk to their campground for the night at 9:30pm, they drove right in, without even slowing down.

Hoh Campground is rife with dense ferns (so cougars can hide behind them), furry trees (to make it super-eerie), and thick tree canopy (to shut out even star light). The family set up tents on hard ground without a rock in sight with which to pound in their tent pegs.

After zipping up the tents and clicking off the lights, Astrid lay awake despite fatigue and the full, busy day. She tried to convince her mind that it was okay to fall asleep, let down her guard and forget. Besides, statistics implied she was safe. She stared into the dark–the very dark, dark–listening to the quiet until the sound of an illicit generator running somewhere in the distance purred through to touch her hearing, as loud as a ladybug sneeze.

If you’ve read this far:

1) You are probably my mom.

2) You were looking at the pictures and maybe read the bold type, then this list caught your eye.

3) You are oddly persistent. In a good way.

Thank you for being you.

-AJ

WA: A Most Cozy Place, and Mist into Rain

Astrid and her family started to understand their mistake, when, on their way out of Mt. Rainier National Park for lunch, they passed car after car after car waiting in the line–at least a mile long–to get into the park. So they weren’t surprised after lunch, as they made their way back, to find the same slow line in which they crawled forth slowly for 1.5 hours. Lesson learned: Never leave a busy national park until you are 100% done there.

When they finally made it into the park, they found their camping spot at Cougar Rock Campground, and set up tents. The spot was right next to the bathrooms, which was not ideal for Astrid because of the smells, all-night lights, and banging doors, but she was camping in an unfamiliar state, at a campground with “cougar” in the name, so it felt right.

***

Have you ever met someone so extraordinary (not for fame, or beauty) who was immediately intimidating? Not off-putting, but intimidating and intriguing in a way such that you wanted to know everything about them? If you were ever a teenager, you also know that you would probably be disappointed if you did know everything about them. It’s the basis for the saying, “Never meet your heroes.”

Mountains are the same … they are intriguing, attractive, and most humans see them and want to climb them, or “know everything about them.” But if you’ve never encountered altitude and inclines, you might not know that mountains are conspiring with gravity to suppress humanity and put it in its place. Mountains keep close company with wicked, temperamental weather patterns, and flora and fauna who don’t care a bit about human rights or welfare. Mountains don’t care about humanity and never will, it doesn’t matter how much we love them or fight for them.

But we just can’t stay away.

“A mountain is a strange and awful thing. In old times, without knowing so much of their strangeness and awfulness as we do, people were yet more afraid of mountains, but then somehow they did not come to see how beautiful they are as well as awful, and they hated them. And what people hate, they must fear. Now that we have learnt to look at them with admiration, perhaps we do not feel quite awe enough of them. To me they are beautiful terrors.”
George MacDonald, The princess and curdie, Chapter 1, first paragraph.

After worrying and debating with Bjorn about the best time to see the mountain in relation to weather and visibility, Astrid suggested, “The mountain is so fickle in its appearances, I don’t think we should plan on seeing Mt. Rainier again–we should just go and do.”

So the family went and did. Back at the Paradise Area, they hiked the Paradise Meadows Nisqually Vista Trails, a paved path through green swaths pocked with millions of wildflowers. At the visitors center, Astrid bought a patch, but because the food court there was closed, they took a short hike across the parking lot to The Paradise Inn food court for a snack. The Paradise Inn was built in 1917, fortified by large logs to hold it up against the snow that buried it every winter. The family munched away in the cavernous log-framed lobby, as a piano man filled the space with pleasant music.

It was the best place to spend their extra time. It was cold out and when the sun went down, they would have nowhere to go except into tents, with only the heat from their bodies to keep them warm. So they sat. It was cozy and comfortable on the bottom floor of the lobby, but with a crowd of impatient and annoyed guests waiting with luggage to check into their rooms, so Astrid explored.

The lobby of the Paradise Inn has a balcony running the whole way around it. As heat does, Astrid rose with it, discovering a Most Cozy Place. She found it in the corner of this creaking wood balcony, tangibly warmer than the bottom floor, rife with the aroma of old wood and mocha drifting up from the snack shop below. Soft yellow light diffused from shaded lamps, the lobby piano music still audible, but softer, and in the corner, sat just enough Morris chairs for Bjorn, Snorri and her. It was the ultimate nook. All that was missing was a wool blanket. It was the perfect spot to enjoy the inn’s wi-fi, cozy atmosphere, and heat. Astrid scribbled in her notebook, and read a book.

The building smelled old–as if the years and history which passed had soaked into the grain of the wood. There was a weird other-worldliness about where she was and why, in the corner of the coziest lobby, after a day of hiking up hill, which hinted at something so intangible at those times, when all sensations are pleasant and dream-like. Astrid didn’t have words for it yet, and maybe never would.

It was not “awe,” she knew that, the sensation is fueled by memory, of bits and pieces sewn together, and touching the present in a myriad tiny points of recalled senses. The result is an unfinished, cerebral patchwork quilt, without shape, but it covers and warms just the same.

The highlight hike on Skyline Trail that morning still reverberated in Astrid’s memory. She would have loved to go the whole loop–9-ish miles didn’t seem far in retrospect and from her comfy seat. “It was beautiful,” and it was enough. The trail, her small and incomplete adventures in the park gave her the experience of the most wonderful wild flowers Astrid ever saw. And it was more than enough.

Before the light started to fade, the family stepped out of their comfortable spot and left Paradise Inn. At Narada Falls, they took a short hike to a waterfall hiding fascinating pillars of trap rock.

18819 Steps

***

Mist Turns To Rain

A huge advantage of camping at the national parks is that campers avoid the long morning lines going into the park. No timed passes, no long lines to wait in. You may not have slept very well on the wonky air pad, and awoke to weird noises in an unfamiliar strange forest, but you’re already in the the park!

The family splurged on the breakfast buffet at the Paradise Inn, then started on the Skyline Trail again–this time on the right side looking up to the mountain. But there was no mountain, only misty white clouds on a backdrop of grey skies. Everything was covered in mist and fog. The mist gathered on everything and everyone–glasses, coats, bodies, trees, rocks, mud. The mist gathered on itself and turned into rain sometimes.

But Astrid was not miserable. She still saw some interesting, edifying things and wonder-inducing scenes.

At one point, the family hiked behind a pair of women, one wearing a bear-bell which she didn’t really need since the two were talking so excitedly and loud, there was no chance a bear would want to bother them, except maybe to tell them to keep it down.

Astrid congratulated a couple who got engaged on the trail. As in, she had to wait (from a distance) for the bride-to-be to answer, because the groom-to-be was kneeling right in the middle of the trail as it crossed a dry stream bed. Further up the trail, on the steeper parts, she noticed an older hiker sucking down oxygen from a portable can, which was a new concept for Astrid. “You can do that? It’s not cheating? I had no idea!”

She passed a couple ignoring the “Don’t Feed The Wildlife” signs, and tried desperately not to judge them. They were feeding a fat chipmunk some nuts, and petting it. Maybe they didn’t know how they were harming the little creatures. She walked by them as fast as she could.

The family got lost a few times trudging up the slope. Every passing minute, they absorbed more mist, and grew more damp, and cold. So they abandoned the hike, and turned back since there was little chance of seeing the mountain through the heavy mist. On the drive out they stopped at a waterfall by a bridge, then said farewell to Mt. Rainier.

The little town of Toledo, WA, near Mt. St. Helens, is a humble collection of residences, with a few restaurants, a gas station, a convenience store, and the purple AirBnB where Astrid and family would stay for the night after dinner at a Mexican restaurant nearby. With sore bodies and leg muscles angry at the workout of the previous days, sleeping in the tent, and uphill climbs, they rested and planned in the purple house. They would be tent camping again the next night.

WA: Astrid Meets a Mountain

“See that mountain over there? Yeah. One of these days, I’m gonna climb that mountain.” -Mountain Music [song by Alabama]

Astrid stopped and looked around. She was trudging up the eternally steep Skyline Trail in the Paradise Area of Mt Rainier National Park, and had walked right into a fairytale, without knowing it.

As the bleary morning aged and the sun grew strong, a heavy mist emerged from the thick forested parts of the mountainside, from where the darkest green, triangular pines stood in eerie contrast to the flower-pocked spring-green grass. The spectral mist moved elegantly, slowly through the cool air; it was as close to a fictional scene as she may ever live. It would not have been wrong if a dragon or some mythical creature swooped out of the hazy silver curtains. But the only exquisitely perfect creature, dark, silhouetted against the mysterious mist and sitting atop a gigantic boulder, was a chipmunk. A fat, overfed chipmunk, looking for handouts.

Astrid couldn’t fully comprehend what she was seeing. She tried to find meaning in it, like in a movie when ominous music plays as foreshadowing to some significant event. This mysterious, wondrous mist, crawling out of black-green trees … surely it “indicated” something other-wordly? Spiritually? Metaphorically? Other than high-humidity slowly moving from the cool trees out to the sun-warmed air?

Nope, it didn’t.

It was beautiful, but Astrid wasn’t privy to, nor trained in the language it spoke. It was an aesthetically attractive show of how water in the aerosolized state acts on mountainsides. But maybe that–the science constructing the living scene which worked on and prompted her notice, her admiration and fascination–that was the other-worldly miracle.

Despite it’s non-portentous state, she treasured the scene all the same, and let it pique her imagination, then just walked, her thoughts falling onto the trail sides of overflowing meadows, nature’s rock gardens with wildflowers of every kind and color, and a mountain stream lined with decorative rocks running through it. These flowers were the same ones which people like her, pay good money for and put in eastern US gardens.

The family were visiting during one of the park’s most popular seasons. The day had started early, with a 6 am drive to the Paradise Area of Mt. Rainer, where they found the parking lots already overflowing. Because if visitors can’t snag a timed pass online, some of the more persistent get up early, and drive into the park before the gate starts collecting passes at 4 a.m.

At some point on the Skyline Trail, Astrid stopped taking pictures and just hiked (and heaved, and gasped) up the side of the mountain with the many, many other hikers crowding the trail.

“This is what it’s for,” she reminded herself as she felt a twinge of annoyance at “lots of other people in nature.” These national parks existed so that many, many people, Astrid included, can behold the beauty, without private condos or McMansions marring the mountainside. “Lots of people” is a good thing. But she couldn’t stop her chiding thoughts at the sight of uninformed tourists feeding the already over-fattened chipmunks, despite the signs asking them not to.

Leave No Trace Principle #6 is a good idea.

A sign in Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument

Because Bjorn would stop to take pictures, Astrid and Snorri hiked ahead and waited, which gave Astrid ample time to sit on a rock and look and just “be” on the mountainside. Contemplating the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t peak of Mt. Rainier, she wondered why men and women climb mountains.

Why climb mountains? To see what’s there, out of curiosity, like the “Bear Went Over the Mountain” song*? Sure. To see if they can? Absolutely.

Was it because of humanity’s “Small Dog Syndrome”? When presented with someone or something so much bigger and seemingly more powerful than them, humanity often wants to see if they can “take it” or conquer it, to try their power against, so they know where they stand in the world.

Or maybe it was a search for a material good thing? A spiritual Good Thing?

On Marmots

Marmots, in short, are gigantic ground squirrels, closely related to the sometimes-pernicious groundhog of rural and agricultural notoriety, but bigger. Marmots are one of the world’s best splooters, and can often be seen sunbathing on a pinnacle of rock, looking as if they had not a care in the world. And no, Astrid, those whistles you hear are not obnoxious tourists breaking Leave No Trace Principle #7, those are marmots communicating. But it sounds like uninformed, obnoxious tourists.

At a flattish point along the trail, a marmot was standing on his hind legs, looking out over the ledge, at an astounding view of Mt. Rainier, as if he were just another tourist. A few yards behind, human tourists were admiring him. But there was another mountain mammal–long, thin quick–which ran and skittered between the rocks. Weasels, being carnivores, were more shy, and didn’t look for handouts, as if they already knew humans didn’t carry delicious dead rodents in their backpacks.

The late morning was clear, despite clouds blocking Mt. Rainier at times. As the family turned to go back down the mountain, Bjorn said, “We may never see Rainier again.” The mountain and the thick sheets of fog surrounding it were fickle and sometimes hid the whole behemoth from view for days on end.**

The desire to hike downhill is never so great as when one is hiking uphill. But hiking downhill is not always the rest and relief one might think. Gravity hinders us as we strive uphill, but downhill, it pushes, urges us to chaotic falls, requires significant restraint through the feet and legs to resist.

After the hike, the family drove the circuitous road back out of the park, to Copper Creek Restaurant, known for their blackberry pies, made every Tuesday (Astrid overheard this as they waited at the counter for their very good lunches).

As they made their way back to the park to set up camp, they realized they had made a very big mistake.

_________________________________________________________________

*The bear went over the mountain,

The bear went over the mountain,

To see what he could see

To see what he could see,

To see what he could see

The other side of the mountain,

Was all that he could see

Was all that he could see,

The other side of the mountain,

Was all that he could see!

**The family did not hike to the top of Mt. Rainier-that takes ice axes, crampons, special boots, maybe bottled oxygen, and a lot more time. Nor did they even hike the feet of the mountain. They were on the toe-nail of the mountain.

WA: Into the Ever Green

“That was the longest 4 hours of my life, recently,” Astrid remarked on getting off the plane in Seattle, Washington. It was not a good airplane flying day, she was slightly nauseous the whole time–probably because of her bifocals. It was the price she paid for wanting to see far away and read without changing glasses. They gave her the perception of too much movement in her visual field, triggering motion sickness.

But the family was seated in the emergency exit aisle for their flight, so they had a little more responsibility in the event of an emergency, but a bit more leg room for every other event.

Their first night’s stay was in a lovely hotel in an interesting part of Tacoma, Washington, in the shadow of a large casino. There were high fences around the whole parking lot, blinking blue lights of a mobile security camera tower; it was the “do not leave anything visible in your car” kind of place. Sirens blared in the distance. In the morning they drove by two people in the street looking for cigarette butts amongst the trash on the ground.

Because their plane had been late the evening before, and Bjorn couldn’t get an online connection, they couldn’t reserve an early morning pass into the main part of Mt. Rainier National Park (MRNP) on recreation.gov, which meant, they could sleep in–they had no entrance time window to hit.

On the drive to the park, Astrid experienced why Washington is “The Evergreen State.” Moving away from Tacoma, the land was full of dark green, piney evergreens–farmed and wild. Also, she saw boarded up hotels, un-housed encampments, neat little communities fenced in, small towns and fireweed along the wood-edged conifer forests. They stopped at a Safeway grocery store for jugs of water, snacks and lunch, then followed the road weaving through The Ever Green.

Many national parks have timed passes, limited in number, but if a visitor is unable to get one, there are other, admittedly less popular, places to visit in the parks. Naches Peak Loop Trail was their first destination–maybe in the national park, maybe in the neighboring state park, Astrid and Bjorn weren’t sure, but it was certainly spectacular.

Every trail was crowded with wildflowers of fairytale intensity. Every green spot was dotted with white or pink or yellow flowers, and when the landscape flattened, there was a clear blue mountain lake, surrounded by little dots of color. The skies were a blessing of clear blue, the hills dark green, and snow capped the black mountains on the horizon. It was as if they were walking through the movie “The Sound of Music,” but without the weird songs about favorite things and following rainbows.

Mt. Rainier was always visible as Astrid hiked, hiding just behind the tree line, over her right shoulder, but sometimes it was camouflaged by snow fields and glaciers streaking down its side, behind the whitest clouds. Piney fresh, cold aroma hung in the air, just subtle enough to note. Sparkly dust from footfalls on a powdery dirt trail wafted up as they walked; Astrid could feel the dust on her teeth.

It was Sunday, and beautiful, and a lot of people were out on the trails, but the spectacle of Alpine-like adventure wasn’t marred by crowds. There was plenty of room for all (though, as always, the parking lots were a squeeze).

The road to the next stop went under a tunnel, through more thick woods, into MRNP to Silver Falls Loop Trail . But there was little to no parking, so they headed on down to Packwood, WA, for a smashed penny, then to “lupper” (lunch and supper combined), at Santa Milagro Lodge Restaurant, and checked into their room at the Mountain View Lodge.

They tried the Silver Falls Loop again, found parking and walked to the trail head which is in one of the park campgrounds.

The family hiked the loop a little faster than normal, because they were on a schedule, but stopped briefly to capture or breathe in the scenery–earthy dark green conifers with light green nets of moss hanging from the branches, red-brown of their trunks, burnt orange of the dusty soil, grey-black boulders, deep cedar aromatics of a rotting log–with a blue-green river running through it all. The hike was soul-soaking wonderful. But Astrid observed an awe inspiring sight she did not expect on that hike.

Before she saw them, she heard them, “It’s soooooo beautiful! O my gosh! Wow!” Two young boys came hurrying toward the high bank as she stood on the bridge over the river. What impressed Astrid, was that they weren’t looking bored or angry their parents had wrenched them away from their screens. They could see the beauty, they could appreciate where. they. were. and what was all around them, and it made them exclaim–made them sing it out. They were so ecstatic about seeing the water fall in all its glory, so much, that it came out in unabashed verbal praise and wonder. Astrid loved to hear them, it was a beautiful thing.

They finished the hike, made it back to their Mt. View Lodge, where the internet connection was best, with time to spare to get early morning passes for the next day into the main part of MRNP, to get a little closer to the mountain.

Back in Packwood, WA, the closest little town, a restaurant near the Airstream Ice Cream shop was hosting live music outside for its patrons. A man on the guitar was singing Chance Peña’s “The Mountain is You.” It was so very loud, that Astrid and Snorri had to walk a distance away for comfort as they enjoyed their ice cream.

It would be an early morning the next day, when they faced the mountain.

22147 steps.

________________________________

Chlorophyll Addict

The Green

Every year, in early Spring, Astrid panics, just a little, about The Green.

Unreasonably. Consistently.

For a little over half a century, The Green had always come back.

Every year. After winter.

But she can’t help think, and worry, for a fleeting, horrific moment, that it might not.

And, then, when it spreads across her world, above and below tree trunks everywhere,

she basks and revels in love and admiration and the glorious awe of

The Green.

Writing From the Side of a Mountain

Prelude to WA: Climbing Mountains

“You may be a little cold some nights on mountain tops above the timber line, but you will see the stars and by and by you can sleep enough in your town bed, or at least in your grave. – John Muir, “Yellowstone, North Dakota” an essay in Wilderness Essays

The blurred motion of the trees framed by the passenger seat window of a car driving on mountain roads was one of the most vivid memories of Astrid’s childhood. That, and the motion sickness that usually ensued. Looking out the window of a moving vehicle, whether it was a school bus on the 20 minute ride to or from school, or in a car, all she saw was the blurred green and brown of trees, maybe rocks, all a blend of forest color, covering the sides of mountains that were sometimes just a few feet from the car.

Locals call the road “The Gap.” It’s a place where PA Route 44 follows a stream through the hollow (very narrow valley between mountains). It was one of the five roads that led into the valley where she grew up, but this one didn’t go over the mountains, it squeezed between them.

Sometimes as she rode through this shaded and close road, she would move closer to her window and look up toward the top of the mountains. The mountain sides were shaded, green, and dark with damp, and at places, had rivulets of water dripping down the rocks. “I wonder what it’s like to climb up that mountain,” she would wonder. Slippery, steep, difficult, uncomfortable, exhausting. There wouldn’t be trails. She would have to push past breathlessness, sweaty and cold at the same time. The leaf litter would be deep, musty, maybe slimy. But it didn’t stop her from wanting to climb. And she wondered why.

The memory flitted back to her, when, in Mt. Rainier National Park, she pushed herself up a partially paved, inclined trail winding around the feet of the great mountain, along with hundreds of other hikers on a foggy morning.

The trips Astrid recounts in Not I don’t usually reveal their themes until she is sifting through the notes and photos, recalling the emotions, struggles and joys. It evolves through watchfulness, gratitude and thoughtfulness, of recording people and places in ink and in pictures. But her August 2024 trip’s theme had one unifying element, large and looming, beautiful and daunting, present before she even stepped on the plane.

California was burning. Specifically, the area to where Bjorn had planned Snorri’s graduation trip–where he had made various reservations. Wild fires were very close, and closing in. Hotels and AirBnBs were cancelling. National Parks were closing.

So he changed plans fast. “I trust you,” Astrid said when he asked what she wanted to do. Washington state wasn’t burning. The mountains there weren’t burning.

Later that year, and going into 2025, Astrid’s family was challenged with a move. They had lived in their Southwest Michigan home for 19 years and 5 months, raising sons, cats, fish; battling garden rodents of all kinds, shoveling snow (no room for a snow blower), home-maintenance-ing, and accumulating treasures (and not-really-treasures, but “waste-not, want-not”, so don’t throw that out).

There were so, so, many different tasks and stages to move through until they were settled and living in their new home. So much letting go, looking forward, looking back, being sad, being happy, some dread, some excitement, and a whole lot of work, physical and mental and social and business-y. A lot of very strong, conflicting feelings. It was a veritable mountain. So having just visited Mt. Rainier, seen its splendor and experienced a little of its power, and understanding the huge endevour climbing it would entail, Bjorn and Astrid named their move, “Mt. Relocation.”

It was a code name they would refer to often, collecting documents in files named “Mt. Relocation.” Because uprooting your home is challenging, and takes planning, comes with difficulties unexpected and unforeseen, setbacks, tasks big and small, hard and easy. Like climbing a mountain.

In Washington, when presented with the steep incline on a trail around Mt. Rainier, with thigh muscles burning, back aching under her fog-soaked jacket and energy dwindling, Astrid would inch forward, sometimes with one slow step after the other. The “slow and steady” attitude worked on steep mountain trails, it worked when life seemed like a hurricane of worries, it would be invaluable when navigating up and over Mt. Relocation.

Can a person write while climbing up the side of a mountain, clinging to whatever they can, disoriented, lacking a base-camp, with the details of the far-away destination shrouded in mist? Yes, but the result may be a little rough and worn, spattered with mud and water-soaked.

Right now, Astrid is writing in fits and starts, squeezing it in while working day in and day out to get to the other side of Mt. Relocation. There may be more typos, awkward sentences and just plain weird transitions in her posts for a while. Please excuse the awkwardness. She’s fighting gravity on a steep trail, writing from the side of a mountain.

Beautiful Nothing

This blog entry was published on July 28, 2011, on AJ Tanek’s Blogspot Blog.

On the morning of our second day in Nevada, my husband, son and I left the glittering replicas and showy sin of Las Vegas and drove to Hoover Dam. There we spent a few hours paying homage to that extraordinary feat of engineering that tamed the Colorado River. We marveled at the tons of cement and huge machinery that help provide electricity for parts of the Southwest. We stood in two states at once as we straddled the Nevada-Arizona border on top of the dam. When we had our fill of sightseeing, we drove over the dam to Arizona and continued on Highway 93 through Lake Mead National Recreation Area. I had never given thought to what lie on the other side of the river, so I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

Everything disappeared. There were no more buildings, no more trees, the road was the only proof that man had ever been there. We were in the desert–the stony, parched, not-a-green-plant-in-sight desert.

From my seat in the air-conditioned rental car, all I could see was dry earth covered in red-brown rocks. Dead plants were scattered everywhere. I didn’t even see cactus. The blue sky bowed low to touch the horizon in spots; a few barren hills stood in the far distance. It was vast, empty, and dead.

I became anxious as the minutes turned into hours with no sight of a building or rest stop. Visions of calamity flew through my mind as we sped down the smooth road into no-man’s land. I imagined what I would do if the car were to break down or if I were to be left out there alone. They were unpleasant thoughts. There was nothing for miles. I sat on the edge of my seat, wringing my hands and sighing with worry.

I was scared. I had grown up in the Appalachian Mountains of Central Pennsylvania. If not for the farms and small towns, the area serves as a fine example of what Eden might’ve looked like. I had lived in a valley of fertile farmland. My sky was framed by green mountaintops. They surrounded me on all sides, they protected me from what lie beyond. They were always there. I had relied on the mountains to put my life in perspective; they towered over me, overshadowing any problem, if for only a minute.

In the desert, there were no babbling brooks or thick leafy forests, no rivers that I could see. There were no mountains to shield me from the emptiness. There was nowhere to hide. There was nothing there to keep me from falling off the face of the earth, nothing to hold onto, nothing to look to for safety and sustenance. It hurt my eyes to look at it. If the word “God-forsaken” was a fitting name for any place, this was it. It was as if the desert had put itself in God’s hands and He turned His back on it.

I didn’t begin to appreciate the desert until late the next day. After ooh-ing and ahh-ing around the rim of the huge eroded crack in the earth that is the Grand Canyon, we drove through another desert. It was flatter, dryer and lonelier than the first. At dusk the sky filled with a show of colors on a low stage of brown earth. Pink, purple, orange and dark blue danced across the full expanse. The colors weren’t hemmed in by mountains or trees. Night fell. The darkness was blacker than I had ever known. The glow of the dash and the headlights shone before us, but everywhere else was pitch black to infinity. There were no streetlights, no small towns glimmered in the distance.

I still sighed and wrung my hands. I sat wide-eyed and ready to react to crisis. Except this time I embraced the experience as thrilling, like being frightened while riding a roller coaster or watching a scary movie.

Since my experience in the desert, I’ve come to understand that by it’s stark nothingness He made it truly His. Man finds no worth in it. We have to bring so much into it and tame it, strong-arm it with tons of cement and machinery so we can live there. There are no safety nets, no natural abundance for a person to cling to or believe in.

Like the Canyon, the desert is a vast behemoth of nothing–an environment so much more empty than I’d ever experienced. It didn’t shelter me like the mountains’ gentle immensity, it wasn’t a nurturing splendor. I didn’t understand it at first. I saw its simplicity as death, want, thirst, and a lacking of the highest degree. I had to feel its power through fear before I could see. The beauty was breathtaking.

CO: Mountains and Tomatoes, and Return to the Flatlands

“Are there sand dunes? What’s the weather like, is it going to rain? “ Astrid asked the next day as they drove north toward Denver. The skies were clear, it was sunny and warm. The plan was to do one last hike before catching their flight back to Michigan.

“No sand dunes, but it might be crowded. It’s a popular trail, “ Bjorn assured her. “We’ll stop by and check it out. It’s along the way. We don’t have to hike, we have plenty of other stuff we can do.”

They had left the plains surrounding The Great Sand Dunes National Park behind and were plunged into Colorado’s beautiful mountains again. On a topographical map, there is a line running north and south through the state, delineated by Interstate 25, which marks the very mountainous regions of CO on the west from the flatter side on the east. Astrid preferred the mountains, but saw value in spending time in flat arid wilderness, too.

Winding highways thread through mountains to lead them to the Mayflower Gulch Trailhead (10,986’ elev.). The parking lot was full of cars, but not all the way full. Astrid and Bjorn squeezed their Jeep Liberty rental into one of the last spaces, and started up the trail. It was once a mining road that led to a valley sheltered by a crescent of tall black, snow-topped mountains. The trail was steep, of course, but was smooth and graveled, a road for sturdy mining equipment to travel in the past.

Astrid pushed on, up the inclines, determined to start boldly on her path to better reactions. The trail led them through an evergreen forest, which opened to a stream-lined prairie valley on one side. They were surrounded by green as they walked, with verdant nature crowding the trail on two sides. The air was cool and damp from the storm the night before. There were patches of snow in places.

***

In conversation, when Astrid would refer to the geologically ancient Appalachian valley where she grew up as “the mountains,” Bjorn, a stickler for details at times, would try to correct her. “They’re not mountains. Mountains are 2,000 feet or higher.” He grew up on a flat-ish, hilly part of PA. Astrid thinks he has mountain envy.

But he is technically correct. Like a person is correct, in a sense, when they say a tomato is not a vegetable. Yes, botanically, a tomato is not classified as a vegetable. Botanically, a tomato is a fruit. Most people are not botanists, but they do eat, and possibly cook, and as tomatoes are culinarily used as a vegetable, most people will call tomatoes “vegetables.” And that is generally acceptable.

Geologically, many of the “mountains” immediately surrounding the small valley where she grew up did not measure over 2,000’, but a few did. And they were no joke to hike up. Astrid was not a geologist. They were mountains to her.

Astrid was nurtured and sheltered by these ancient behemoths all her young life. They made her feel secure. They sparked her curiosity and imagination, because they were secretive and hid so much she could never see. She didn’t know how beautiful they were until she left them for the lazy rolling hills of Central Kentucky, then the wide open, honest skies of Michigan. It’s why the plains of the western US, dry, dusty and brown, scared her a little, enough to make visiting them a bit thrilling.

***

There were a lot of dogs on the Mayflower trail that day, sniffing and walking and just loving where they were. Astrid loved to see dogs enjoying themselves. Eventually the trail opened up to a small mountain plain, where the deserted remnants of the mining camp lay, persisting through the years. It was a piece of Alpine beauty, and Astrid treasured the opportunity to just stand and look at the towering mountains before them.

The trip ended with lunch in Frisco, a ski/mountain town. The return flight was uneventful. They landed back in the flatlands, greeted by dense, humid air tinged with the smoke from Canadian wildfires.

June 2023

More Mountains to Come!

CO: The Best Worst Hike Ever

As humans, we have a penchant for making comparisons, sorting things and putting them into hierarchies or categories. It’s a reflex that helps us bring order to the chaos of our physical and mental lives. If there is a “best day ever,” somewhere among the thousands of days of our lives, there must be ranked a “worst day ever.” The superlative things, thoughts, people and experiences stand out in our memories, marked usually by emotion and impact.

Astrid wrote about her highest ranked hike in The Gift of Snow . This hike involved cool, damp swirling snow, glacial water falls, mud, a black sheep and a white sheep, ponies in the snow, and at the end, a soak in thermal pools.

By the end of the day at Great Sand Dune NP, she would have another ranking hike–the best of her worst hikes.

Before starting the day, they stopped at a local store and bought a very precious can of bug spray for the mosquitoes. The first hike led them through the Pinon Flats Campground to the Dunes Overlook Trail, along a dry, pebbly trail lined with yellow-flowered cactus, rocks and deer. It was warm, the sun was strong, the air, dry and dusty.

The pinnacle rewarded them with a view to the great sand dune, on a backdrop of the black Sangre de Cristo Mountains. There, Astrid broke out her binoculars to do a little ocular fishing, scanning the view, near and far for anything interesting. She didn’t catch anything.

Next was a more verdant, water-based hike. And where there is water, there are more people. Humans tend to congregate around water, whether to live or to visit. Zapata Falls Trail, southeast of the Great Sand Dune National Park is managed by The US Bureau of Land Management (not a park). The trail is wide, rocky in places and passes through sparse dry scrub, but it leads to a trail flanked by a crowd of green trees, and intersects South Zapata Creek. Astrid and Bjorn walked up the creek, through a narrow rocky canyon, trying to keep their feet dry. The falls at the end fell into a cavern sprayed with water.

After lunch, they rested while their socks dried in the breeze. Then the real challenge of the day began.

“Where are we going?” Astrid asked.

“Somewhere on the dunes for sunset pictures.”

Who wouldn’t want to take a moon-lit stroll through beautiful dunes, a gentle breeze at your back, stars twinkling and bright? The prospect sounded so much better than the eventual reality of that night.

Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them. –G. K. Chesterton

After carefully walking across the trickling, sandy stream bed so as not to get their feet wet again, they started up the foot of the giant dune. Astrid tried to note the surroundings in case she had to find her way back. Except for the varying density of little shrubs, there were no real distinguishing characteristics. It was all sand. But not beach sand. It was very big piles, dunes of sand, narrow and blown into sharp peaks, with drop-offs to bare ground.

Bjorn had not shared details of the itinerary with Astrid because there were none. She just had to trust him. And that exposed a crack in her character. Surprises, imprecise plans at a certain level, and unknowns, all put Astrid on edge. She couldn’t prepare for what she didn’t know.

They had been trudging up dune and down, in a random pattern for the better part of an hour, when her patience eroded a little.

“Where do you want to be?” she asked. They were sitting at the very narrow top edge of a sand dune. She was trying to read her Kindle and regretting not packing a camp stool

“I’ll know when I see it,” Bjorn replied, and started off for another spot. Clouds blocked out the gold glow of the sunset, dimming the moon and stars.

The dull light was dwindling, the narrow peaked ridges of the tall dunes were becoming hard to discern. Astrid had to warn Bjorn of a sharp drop-off right in front of him. And then the wind came to play. It was the same wind that formed and re-formed the dunes they were on. It was gentle at first, then it started to whip the sand around in gusts.

Bjorn was looking at the sky, trying to find some good angle for a photograph. The sky said, “No.”

Weather does what it wants. It doesn’t care where you are, how prepared you are, whether you are on vacation, or need to get a job done outside. It also doesn’t care if you want a good sunset picture through the dunes. Sometimes, “weather” is part of the excitement and challenge of going outdoors.

“I think we’re done here. I’m afraid the sand will damage the camera,” Bjorn said, finally giving up the quest.

The hike back was much more challenging than the hike in. They walked into the wind, which was strong enough to push back on them, whipping sand everywhere. Astrid held a light handkerchief (she always carried one) to her mouth and face for protection. They slogged on and on, through the inefficient, sometimes ankle-deep sand.

There was no path, only dune after dune after dune in the growing, wind-whipped darkness. It took all her effort to keep moving. Astrid wheezed with the effort, but she wouldn’t stop. Fear threatened.

If not for the hazy glow of the moon at their backs, and the sometimes-dense shrubs marking the shallow sand near the stream bed, they might have gotten very lost. Finally, but still being stung by the dune-forming winds, they saw little, artificial lights of people camping in tents near the stream bed and parking lot in the distance.

There were few physical markers, so they walked past where they had parked, and had to retrace. In the parking lot, fighting to keep the car doors open against the wind, they dumped little mounds of sand out of their shoes. As she tried desperately to get sand out of her hair, Astrid was internally fuming.

“That was the worst hike ever. I hated every minute of that. I hate sand. I hate sand forever.”

After venting her frustrations (audibly and not), she grew calmer by degrees. Eventually she realized that time would heal and help the memory of that hike, and in the end she would remember it as an edifying challenge, which she won bodily, but failed mentally. She had to find a way to respond better and curate a calm attitude about unexpected challenges.

It didn’t rain hard. There was that.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. – G. K. Chesterton

She had failed. Failed to see the inconvenience for the adventure it was, for the chance to strengthen and grow her character through the challenge of sand, wind, dark and physical struggle. But failures, if we recognize that we have fallen short, teach us what we lack, what we need to be better at. The fact that she could describe the hike as one of the most memorable, best, worst hikes ever, and that she was glad to have done it (and survived without getting lost in the dunes*) was a sign of growth.

I never lose. I either win or learn. –Nelson Mandela

It would not be the last time Astrid failed to live up to her standards. But she wouldn’t stop trying to cultivate a calm, collected and grateful attitude in the face of unexpected inconveniences. She added an 8th rule to Astrid’s Rules for Hiking:

Rule 8. Choose Your Attitude … especially when/if things get challenging, urgent, unpleasant and /or unexpected. With proper planning, a hiker/outdoor adventurer should know generally what lies before them on the trail. Sometimes unexpected circumstances of all kinds, or weather happens for which a hiker is not prepared. Instead of letting your brain choose panic, anger, and frustration, you choose to maintain a presence of mind, calmness, gratitude, patience and a problem-solving demeanor. It may turn your inconvenience into a exquisite adventure.

*In reality, there was no real danger of them getting lost. Bjorn had downloaded the “trail” map from AllTrails.com, and the GPS worked. It was the sandstorm, the significant physical struggle against weather and the darkness that added a sense of severity to the whole experience.