Travelogue: Paradise Park
The Agony and The Ecstasy
Every summer for eight years I’ve gone camping with my friends, Becca and Laura. Actually we didn’t camp last year because we were too wigged out about wildfires. But otherwise we’ve managed some kind of trip every summer and most of them have been backpacking trips.
We’re all working moms with complicated summer schedules and we choose the date for this annual trip EIGHT MONTHS IN ADVANCE in order to find a time that works for the three of us. This year, our trip was planned for Labor Day weekend - the last weekend of the summer - a weekend I associate with total energetic depletion - and when it finally rolled around, I was frankly dreading it. The errands and the careful planning required for a backpacking trip were overwhelming. The long, hard hike with a heavy pack was daunting. I was a bit broken at the end of this summer (feeling better now, thanks) and I melted down when faced with the task of packing my bag. I came *this close* to bailing. But I did not bail! Thanks to the gentle urging of Becca and Laura, I stayed the course.
The hike to our campsite at Paradise Park on Mount Hood was about 7 miles and it traversed Zig Zag Canyon. We camped at around the same elevation we parked our car at but we had to go down down down, cross a river, and then go up up up again to get there.
When we came to the Zig Zag River at the bottom of the canyon, we crossed it by stepping on stones and a slick-looking shard of a log wedged between some rocks. As I was about to step onto the log, a young guy walking alongside me in the river asked if I would like to hold his hand. I’m pretty sure-footed and a younger me might’ve balked at the suggestion that I needed help, but it turns out I don’t mind being a middle aged lady gently helped across a glacial stream by a chivalrous young man. I took his hand. It was sweet.
Finally, after a long uphill climb and some complaining, we reached Paradise Park, a spot on Mt. Hood so beloved and well-known that I don’t run the risk of ruining anyone’s secret spot by mentioning its name. It’s well-named. It’s paradise.
In all my years of hiking, I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many wildflowers as I did on this trip. I saw:
asters
gentian
two kinds of monkey-flowers
spirea
yarrow
lupin
fireweed
all the Indian paintbrushes
I saw tons of adorable mop-headed flowers that had gone to seed.
They were everywhere. I looked them up when I got home and they seem to be an anemone called a pasqueflower. There were so many other flowers I didn’t recognize. There was this thing, also everywhere:
I took a lot of pictures of flowers intending to draw them all when I got home, but there were too many and I lost steam pretty quickly.
At one point, on a walk, one of us asked the other two what we like best about backpacking. I thought about this question for a while. I wanted to know the answer and to say it out loud - to have it on hand for the future. It’s hard to remember why it’s worth all the effort when you’re getting ready for a trip. Yet it’s easy to remember why it’s worth it when you’re there.
My initial response was that it just feels great to be somewhere wild and beautiful with no responsibilities except to stay alive. I feel close to the source and I feel at ease. That’s probably the truest, most simple answer.
Then I turned this over in my head a bit and the answer unfolded into something more complicated. I thought about how bad it feels to live in opposition to the natural world, something almost all of us do by virtue of being human. I thought about how good it feels to be somewhere wild with nothing but the bag on your back. I thought about how little we truly need, but how doggedly we continue to make and acquire all the other stuff, at the expense of this precious, dying world. I don’t know how to reconcile the complicated, wasteful life I live with the sublime peace I feel when I’m away from it all in nature. I’m still working on this one. It’s an old question.
The Timberline Trail is a 40 mile loop that circumnavigates Mount Hood. We did a little piece of it - a part that overlaps the Pacific Crest Trail. There’s been talk in past years of doing the whole thing in one trip. Lots of people do - Colin’s cousin, Cameron, did it in 3 nights a few weeks ago. I don’t think I have it in me, to be honest. But we do have plans to do another section of it next summer. If I am tempted to bail, remind me that it’s always worth it.
Love,
Carson
Beautiful post, beautiful flowers! The “why” of the backpacking trip - I feel your explanation in my bones! Whenever I return , it’s frankly a shock to look around at all “the stuff”. It’s also calming in the same breath, like what else do we really need?
This one really got me. It's so hard here (earth). You have to work so hard to make some space for peace and once you do and you get to be really present, with other women, it's the most healing. We also live in PNW on some land, we have been building stuff with cob (an oven, a little shed, soon a little cottage). It has really helped combat consumerism/climate dread. I think: We make pizza in an oven we build for zero dollars made from earth from this land. I can teach people and I can do more stuff like this. Love to you and thank for you for your work.