I savor high, wide open spaces like a Portlander savors dark roasts and pale ales. There are just as many flavors and nuances in topography, believe me, and you can savor them a thousand times longer when you are out there alone: just you, your pack, and the wind.
Stacker Butte is a natural area preserve vaulted high above the western shores of the Columbia across from The Dalles.
http://www.mountainzone.com/mountains/d ... id=3785156 I take that fact on faith because in all the times I've been there, I have never actually seen the view. The weather has flaunted its variety of masks--rain, fog, snow--and I have so far only enjoyed intimacy with the road in front of me. Doesn't matter. I go there for something else: sanctuary.
There is a supreme bliss in silence. I don't mean the absolute silence of a sound proof room or noise canceling headphones, although I certainly wouldn't turn those down if I won them in a raffle, I mean the delicate grace of Nature's white noise.
Rhythmic footfalls muffled by new snow, the massage of a steady wind, the gentle tinkling of birdsong playing in unpredictable spurts like a windchime--it all combines in the human soul to promote instantaneous relief.
Instead of consciously activating a meditation, I feel as if a meditation is soaking into me. Somehow, my heart relaxes even as it speeds up. I often feel weightless and not quite connected to the ground, and my legs are walking themselves. They feel like separate, hungry animals and the only way to sate them is with more and farther and higher and faster. The exertion of a replenishing hike like this one is illusory; I am filled with far more energy than I give away through my effort.
With all common necessity of thought removed, my focus broadens as it sharpens. Sensory input becomes clean, clear, and laser accurate. I smell different moisture densities of snow as the barometer jumps around, I see a thousand shades of white and grey in the land around me, water is sweeter than wine, apple slices are indescribable.
I'm so happy and keyed up that a herd of deer feels like the discovery of some new species and an explosion of grouse from the hill beside me nearly stops my heart.
The only discomfort that ever really affects me deeply on a hike is the realization that it is time to head back. I rarely come to this decision consciously as I carry no watch. Rather, there is an inner pull that warns. It is more than the distance traveled, more than the angle of the light.
And the way the land and weather were laid out that day, my whimpering only grew worse. Up in the rolling elevation, the diaphanous clouds of snow permitted sunlight to fill them, creating a skylight effect that lit up the hills. Below me at my goal, the parking lot seemed weighted down by mud and darkness.
Leaving that expansive feeling behind was like leaving one's warm bed on a cold morning. I descended out of necessity alone. The snow thinned under my boots and I could hear the gravel again. Fog banks flowed up the draws in backwards avalanches. Those grouse scared the crap out of me one more time, the nefarious little feather balls.
Oaks flirted with me in their snow shadow petticoats.
Sob! I'd rather be
up there than
down here!
Like the heaven that it was, the "storm" hovered high and just out of reach.
Us mere mortals had to make due with rain soaked roads and air so heavy with moisture, you could stir it with a spoon.
I knew the sunset would dim that vast, white room eventually, anyway, but I was not interested in being rational about it. I only wanted that light around me all the way back to Portland. My favorite 80's hair bands barely consoled me as I drove.
anna in boots
PS: Stay tuned for the same hike a week later...in the
sun! And here it is:
http://www.portlandhikers.org/forum/vie ... f=8&t=4207
