Green Mountain Lookout

I’m writing this entry a year after-the-face, which is unforunate, as I love to capture the moment of an event, and certainly, Green Mountain Lookout deserves a bit more attention to the moment. This was a BEAUTIFUL hike. This was the first on which I took my lifted Pacifica. (Ok, I imagine laughter from a few… first off : I’M a DAD! The lift gives me a sense of dignity, but moreso, make something utilitarian (minivan) even MORE utilitarian!). With that lift, I was able to bang through potholes that I otherwise would have gingerly skirted around and added 30 minutes or more to the drive.

The kids were not all on-board with this hike. We had been camping up at Colonial Creek, and maybe some of it was fatigue… but probably most was this unfortunate and contagious illness going about in the tweenage that hiking isn’t cool, that it’s a waste of time, etc. I flatly ignored, as best I could, the protests… and, yes, the tears from one of my children, and instead repeated this mantra in my brain that they would thank me for this one day… or if not thank, because I was gone… well… then they would WISH they had thanked me!

I am being only semi-serious… I did almost turn back at one point when one of my kids really dug in their heals… but I perservered… and so did they. Eventually, all my kids passed me on the final uphill, and while my hamstrings were screaming, they were already standing at the lookout, waving to me… Regardless of the insult (ow!) that my kids burned me at the end, the payoff was already mine before I go to the top! They were rejoicing and drinking in a few that encompassed 360 degrees of the cascades, with Glacier Peak at one end and Mount Baker at another.
When I joined them, that view was the silence, the calm… the wonder and awe that I seek, and frankly, desire to pursue every day… While my boys were quick to get running back down, my daughter held back and we had that moment, though it was interrupted by her slapping mosquitoes, mostly from me.

This, i overlooked… but my memory still paints vividly the cloud over green lake below. Usually, mosquitoes ignore me. I am, seemingly, not a tasty addition to their diet. Whether by a change in my chemestry or in their disposition, the mosquitoes came at me that day with a terrible passion that had heretofore been unknown to me. Hours later, at home, one of my sons stopped counting at 125 as he tallied the bite marks on my shoulders (and they were there only… is that where the blood is sweetest?)

Regardless of the insect interlude, which I am certain was a fluke of nature, the return hike was wonderful. The kids sang (I have video to prove it!). Maybe it was relief seeing Green Mountain at their backs… but I suspect it was more so the accomplishment… I am often sad to think, but quick time remind them that most kids do not get this experience… I remember my dad, back in PA, struggling to get me out in explorations of our own woods up back and here I am taking my kids on hikes of a dozen miles with serious elevation gain… of course it is a challenge of parenting stamina, and a challenge to minds that are so seeking the gratifications of our day-to-day “civilized” world. There, though, among the sky, the trees, and distance… always distance… there they get a chance to see something real. Not the artificial of cities, screens, the glass and stone walls of our domiciles… but the world as Nature made it and continues to craft over timescales that dwarf our simple, brief lives.

(try to explain that to your kids…)