Up On the Mountain

At 6:30 PM the sun slipped behind the shoulder of Mount Hood, and immediately the air cooled. A reminder that we depend on that star for everything. I put on a second layer of clothes and turn to making dinner, which here on Gnarl Ridge, a rib of volcanic gravel above treeline, means heating water to soak precooked food from town. The next two hours we watch the layers of hills between us and Mount Jefferson to the south, turn from green to orange to gray and finally disappear into twilight haze. A crescent moon emerges briefly and then sets behind the steep canyon carved by the Newton glacier snowmelt.

In the city, I notice the pieces of nature close at hand: whether the garden needs watering, and the crows flapping quietly to the mysterious place they all go in the last light. But here there is the collection of Clark’s nutcrackers saying their last throaty goodnights and then, almost immediately, the whole Milky Way appears. The sky seems both vast and too close over my head. For added punctuation, there are the exclamations of the Perseid meteor shower.

I do not sleep straight through the night as a certain amount of tossing and turning is expected on the ground. It is noisy as gusts of cold air rush down the mountain into the hotter valleys below. But at about five in the morning it starts getting light and I begin to enjoy sleeping in, drowsing from one hour to the next. At six the mountain turns pink. At seven the nutcrackers collect again for morning chatter. At eight o’clock it is starting to get warm and finally at nine Robert coaxes me out of the tent with coffee. I am never so lazy at home.

Because we are camped right off the Timberline trail, which circumnavigates the entire girth of the mountain, I expect to see fellow hikers on this weekend day. But I am surprised to hear quick footsteps outside the tent at 8:00AM. These are the first of several groups of folks running the entire trail. I am in awe of such prowess, but I am not so sure it is the best way to see the mountain.

Mount Hood is a young volcano and its upper reaches maintain snow year round. It is good to live close to a place that is still geologically new. It gives proof that the planet will wax and wane regardless of us and what we might do. There are plenty of people using the trails of Mount Hood, even on this far side from Portland, and I don’t think that can be a bad thing. But can we hold the awe of this geography as we go back to town in our carbon spitting machines? Just being here will not stop the glacier from melting. We will have to do more than keep a good thought.