Learning to Hike

 I recently took a vacation to visit friends in the Pacific Northwest. It was my first visit to this part of the country, and I don't think I have personally seen a more beautiful place. I was in awe of the rivers, the trees, the ocean, the beach, and most importantly, the mountains. I have seen mountains before. I have been to the Smokies dozens of times, but what you see in Washington is something completely different. 

I was personally blown away by Mt. St. Helen's. Over 40 years ago, this still active volcano blew, sending ash, lava, mud and destruction to the area. I have seen pictures. I have heard stories. I have seen video. But to see it firsthand is something completely different. The evidence of this destructive force of nature is still there. Mountains are littered with dead trees that were laid flat up against them. Spirit Lake is full of dead trees floating on it's now 200 foot higher surface. There is a two story A frame house that is a few miles away that is still buried halfway up. The force of the explosion has caused mountain faces to still be bare of trees, even today. 

My first day there was spent going to all of the easy to get to observatories. You could see the paths left by the mud slides. You could get a good view of the destruction the explosion had made. But you couldn't really get close to Mt. St. Helen's itself. That just wasn't good enough for me. I wanted to be close to this mountain. I was a little obsessed. My friends say I was a lot obsessed. That's fine. I will own that. I watched several documentaries that night about the eruption in 1980. I started looking at trails and asking questions about how close we could get. I would have been fine camping at the foot of the mountain, but that isn't allowed. I knew I just wanted to get closer. 

We eventually came up with a game plan. There was a trail that led to some waterfalls that were formed from the melting glaciers inside the volcano that we could take and get as physically close to the volcano as we could without climbing up to the summit itself. I didn't think I could make the hike up to the top, but I was confident that I could make the trail around the front. After looking at it, we found that the trail was 8 miles in and out. That sounds like a lot, but the app we were looking at said this was a moderate trail. After seeing various trails labeled difficult, I thought moderate was definitely more doable, so we decided that the last day of the visit would be spent hiking Mt. St. Helen's.

That day finally came. I tried to be as prepared as possible. I bought a decent set of boots while I was there. I wore them everywhere to break them in. We took 2 liters of water each on the hike so we could stay hydrated. We took food with us as well. We planned on this being an all day hike, so we tried to do everything we could to be prepared for anything possible. 

The roads there were terrible. The route we took my first day was like a two lane highway. It was scenic and well travelled, and well maintained. The route to the starting point of our hike was scenic, but it was full of hair raising turns, tight spaces, and lot of potholes. Pothole is an understatement. Deep canyons in the road would be a better description. It took us over an hour of weaving, braking, and turning until we finally reached our destination. 

We got to the starting point, and we were already closer to the volcano than I had been. Seeing it from afar really didn't do it justice. This thing is massive, tall and intimidating. Puffs of steam would come from around the lava dome every once in a while. It was like walking into the bedroom of a sleeping giant. You know looking at this thing it is dangerous, and you don't want wake it. But you still want to get a closer look. So, we packed our bags with provisions and up we went. 

The weather was beautiful. The sun was out. It wasn't hot. No humidity at all, and for someone from Memphis, you can really appreciate that in and of itself. Our first mile was a constant uphill slope. Our elevation change was somewhere between 750 and 1000 feet before we started going downhill again. The first two miles of the trail were a gravel service road that wound around a mountain close to the volcano. If it wasn't for the elevation change, it would have been an easy walk, but the constant uphill had my legs burning early. A van drove by us early on in the hike, and the thought crossed all of our minds to hitch a ride with them. We were determined to make the hike though, so we pressed on.

The road eventually ended and turned into a trail. This trail went across the front of the volcano. This would lead us eventually to the waterfalls. When I got to this point of the trail, I was pretty wiped. I was tempted to stop and turn around here. We were really close to Mt. St. Helen's, and had a clear shot of the lava domes. Still, this wasn't good enough. 

We kept hiking. Up and down winding paths, through a small trench then back up again. After another mile, we settled into what I believe is one of the lahars from the volcano. I could be wrong. It could be where a lot of mudslide happened. Regardless, it was a canyon that something ran through after the eruption, and now has a stream of glacier water was running through it. We were still a mile and a half away from our destination, but I was already beat. My friends looked tired, and even though they didn't say it and haven't said it, I had a feeling they were ready to turn around and go back. There was a big flat rock by the stream we decided to sit on and eat lunch. We rested for a while, and then made the decision that this was a good stopping point and decided to make the trek back. 

The trek back was rough. We spent a lot of time taking pics and stopping on the way down. Now, we just wanted to get back. I was tired. I was hot. I was sun burned. But we pressed on, pausing every now and again to catch my breath and rest my knee, which by this time was telling me I needed to redefine my idea of moderate trail walking. My feet hurt. I started cramping in my legs toward the end. We finally made it back to the car, gladly took our packs off, and eased into our seats for our treacherous ride back home. Honestly, the turns and potholes didn't seem too bad now that I treasured the seat so much.

We hiked over 6 miles. My tracker said we walked over 18,000 steps and climbed 84 flights of stairs. Made sense why my knee and legs were responding like they were. 

The next couple of days I felt terrible. I was severely dehydrated, and I started downing Gatorade like I owned stock in it. A friend of mine hooked me up with some electrolyte packs and that helped tremendously. I drank 2 gallons of water a day and started to feel somewhat normal by Friday. But I will never forget the experience. I will never forget seeing the power and the beauty of this volcano, and the guys that were with me, the best friends I have, willing to go with, even though they both probably thought I was insane suggesting it. 

I do have one regret though. I didn't get to the destination. I really wanted to see those waterfalls. 

So, what is the point of this long drawn out story about this old fat guy deciding to hike up a volcano? Well, partly, it is to brag a little. I ate lunch at the mouth of a volcano, and not many people can say that they have done that. But there is a lesson to be learned here, and I was in my quiet time this morning thinking about it, I wanted to share it.

So, looking back, I may have been overly ambitious taking this hike on. I don't hike. I hardly exercise. So to think that I had the nerve to lace up some hiking boots and go on my merry way is pretty audacious. I really didn't count the cost. I didn't prepare. I didn't hydrate properly. I didn't stretch and prepare myself physically. I woke up deciding to walk up the volcano and nobody was going to stop me. Brave? Maybe. Stupid? Definitely. 

But, in all honestly, and that is usually what I am all about, I do this everyday. No, I don't hike mountains everyday. But I go through this life everyday somewhat unprepared. I think we all do to some extent. Let's face it, on any given day, we are bound to find eruptions somewhere. It could be big ones, like a car wreck, a loss of a job, or a death to someone close to us. It could be we just have a rough road to walk, where we are constantly going uphill with no end in sight. We might have a plan, and then something happens and we don't reach the goal. This is life. Many Christians think that because we are saved, that this road, this trail of life, is going to be a moderate walk with beautiful scenery. We really need to realize what moderate means. It is tough. It is difficult. There are uphill battles. There are winding roads. There are potholes. There are trenches. When we are not prepared, this hike of life is treacherous. 

On our way back to the car, we were passed by this couple that were definitely more prepared than we were. They had no packs. They had no provisions. They didn't need them honestly, because I think they probably did this whole hike in a quarter of the time we did. They sped walk past us on an incline and weren't even breathing hard. They were dressed in long sleeves and pants, with what appeared to be regular sneakers, but if I had to guess, they were an expensive brand of hiking shoe I had never scene before. They were easily going double our pace, and we eventually lost sight of them.

I guarantee you this hike for them was easy. They were prepared physically. They knew what to wear and it made their journey easy. They made it to their destination. They saw things I didn't get to see. They will probably see more things that I won't get to see. I am super jealous of them.

I have to learn from this. There are people who hike this trail of life and are super prepared for it. They stay in God's Word. They pray. They keep their hearts pure and spiritual fit. They get to experience things with the Lord that I don't, and I can't get mad at them for that. They are doing the work. I am the one that isn't. And when I finally settle in and decide that I want to experience big things with God, I have to do the work to make sure I can get there. 

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is Psalms 15. It reads: "O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent? Who shall dwell on your holy hill? He who walks blamelessly and does what is right and speaks truth in his heart; who does not slander with his tongue and does no evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend; in whose eyes a vile person is despised, but who honors those who fear the Lord; who swears to his own hurt and does not change; who does not put out his own money at interest and does not take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be moved."

I want to hike on holy hills. But man, I have a lot of work to do to be that kind of person.