Letter: My 100th Mile

They’re alive, the forests are, the rivers, the mountains, the streams. Something is out there, a connection, an experience like no other.

As a ‘setting’ describes that which will hold a precious stone or gem – like a diamond in a wedding ring – forests are settings which hold precious memories of life, and love.

Fungi festoon trees like ruffles covering a baby’s bottom.

Sunrise over the high forested peaks above awakens the weary hiker that a new day of discovery and adventure awaits.

Forests are mystical, magical settings, not crisscrossed with trails by which to pass the forest through, but trails are where trials are met, and triumphs are achieved.

Forests are where we learn about ourselves.

Forests are where we find us.

What enchanting mystery and beauty met me on my last trail this summer – the trail into Enchanted Valley – as I reached my 100th backpacking mile in memory of my dearest treasure, my wife of 50 years married, lost to cancer.

Here then is that story of that 100th mile.

My first day was a three hour drive followed by a six hour, 10 mile hike, arriving to camp, as planned, at Pyrites Creek, which is three miles from Enchanted Valley.

The next day my progress into Enchanted Valley was extremely slow. It took me three hours to go those three miles. I was not feeling well, and at every rest stop, which were many, I debated turning back.

But I was so close.

Then, one foot in front of the other, I was there.

In a place indeed so enchanting, so inviting.

I sat there the longest time, closed my eyes, and smiled at the nostalgia of joining Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle.

But I had a decision to make, a decision that would mean so much as it turned out to what awaited me, an incredible ending to the story, but that hinged, unbeknownst to me, on what I would decide.

I could have stayed there in the valley, though my permit did not include that as part of my plan but I knew for sure I could not make six miles back to O’Neil Creek Camp, which my permit said I would do.

Unlike many, if not most, hikers, I was to discover, who leave their tent set up at Pyrites Creek and go the three miles in and out of the valley with the lightest of gear, I had packed up everything not planning to stay a second night at Pyrites Creek.

I would pay for it.

Hauling everything in, and out, of the valley and not feeling well, by the time I got back to Pyrites Creek and found a campsite, with every stake I placed in the ground to secure my tent, I had to pause, I was so, so very tired.

I lay flat on the tent floor, exhausted, and almost went to sleep, before finally crawling into my sleeping bag atop my air mattress.

I got up early the next morning, packed up and set out knowing it was going to be tough.

And here is where that decision made back in Enchanted Valley was to be so fortuitous.

At my 99th mile, a young lady, an Olympic National Park Forest Ranger, smiled as she met me on the trail and asked to see my permit. As I handed it to her, I said that I estimated I was one mile away from reaching my 100th mile backpacking this summer in memory of my wife.

She said, “Wait! Have I met you before?”

And then we both remembered, she was the very same Ranger who had asked for my permit back on July 22, what would have been my 52nd Anniversary, when I was well into my hike to Heart Lake just below the High Divide, having inadvertently, inexplicably turned left when I was supposed to, according to my plan, have turned right at the very start of that trail.

When I completed that trail back in July I had accumulated 54 miles in my summer adventure. I was now at 99 miles.

There are 922,651 acres in the Olympic National Park and over 600 miles of trails.

On the map, the trail to High Divide and Heart Lake is by way of Sol Duc at the very top of the Olympic National Park, and the trail to Enchanted Valley, where I was at that moment, is near the very bottom of that map.

And yet, here we were, 38 days later meeting on the trail once again, this time with but one mile for me to go to reach 100.

I said to the young lady Ranger, “You sure get around!”

“Me?” She exclaimed. “You’re the one who gets around!”

I said I had been journaling this adventure, she asked how she could access it, and I gave her that information.

She smiled, handed back my permit, and congratulated me on having reached my goal.

Then, one mile later, this happened.

I reached Pony Bridge, my 100th mile.

I stopped and rested there for a while, soaked with sweat as it was very warm, and finally got up and tacked my 100th mile sign to the bridge rail wondering how I was going to take my picture.

A couple then showed up who, I was to learn, had been into Enchanted Valley like me, who had spent two nights at Pyrites Creek, like me, but not until my 100th mile did we meet for the first time.

They were resting in a shaded area, sitting on a log, as I approached them.

“I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind taking my picture?” I asked.

“I have just reached my 100th mile backpacking this summer in memory of my wife, and I prepared a little sign to commemorate this moment.

“I hope you don’t mind…” but as my voice trailed off as the tears came, the woman stood up, this total stranger, and said “can I give you a hug?”

Embarrassed I said, “Well, I’m all wet.”

“Just fine,” she replied. “Doesn’t matter at all.”

As bear hugs go, that was the longest, strongest embrace I’ve had for some time, though my grown children often greet me anymore with hugs like that.

The woman’s husband asked, “How did you lose your wife and how long ago?”

“To cancer. Seventeen months ago.”

He glanced away at that point to regain his composure (I already having lost mine), and with tears forming he said that he too had lost his wife to cancer, gone in just five months, five years previous.

He then told me about her.

She was Dutch.

My wife also was Dutch.

They had gone to Holland together.

My wife too had visited Holland with her three sisters.

This fellow standing before me said that he and his wife had rented bicycles and rode into the village and stood before the very house where she was born, and they visited the cemetery where her family members were buried.

Then he said, “Can I give you a hug too?”

I had told this couple about meeting the Park Ranger a mile back. They had met her too. I shared with them what I had shared with the Park Ranger about my ‘wrong turn’ that took me to Heart Lake just below the High Divide over a month ago and that it was on that ‘wrong’ section of trail the Ranger and I had met for the first time.

After bear hug number two, I said, “Do you know how much these hugs mean to me? To meet you two here at this very moment? To have met that Park Ranger just a bit ago, the first time over a month ago, and all those many miles ago? All summer long I feel like my steps…” and again my voice trailed off.

But the woman finished my sentence for me.

“Your steps have been directed.”

Though this couple, also heading for the trailhead, started out ahead of me the final 2.5 miles, I would pass them, but then wait for them at the sign welcoming hikers to Enchanted Valley where once again they took my picture.

I stood to the right of the sign, just like I had done with my father 53 years ago, when my dad and I had hiked that same trail and much further beyond Enchanted Valley, up and over the exceedingly difficult, rough, and steep O’Neil Pass.

Then, so long ago, my wife and I were to be married soon and my dad probably thought then that that would be the last time for a father-son trek into the wilderness of Enchanted Valley.

And now, though the sign has changed, here I was, again, over a half-century later.

As I got into my truck and prepared to drive away from the beginning – and ending – of the trail into Enchanted Valley, my summer of 100 miles backpacking in memory of my wife having come to such a memorable conclusion, there was one more blessing in store for me.

There was a car parked near to mine with words scrolled on the back that read “Just Married.”

Just like for my wife and I now over 50 years ago when we went on our anniversary into the wilderness way up in Canada, on that little green Volkswagen bug as we left for what would be a precious half-century of marriage, were the same words: “Just Married.”

A final gift to me as I drove on down the forested road and out of Enchanted Valley, my 100 miles having come to an end.