Carne Mountain to High Pass (page 13)

Sunday, September 9, 1990
Day 8, Kidney Stone Camp

Heading up to Cloudy Pass

Yesterday, Saturday, we left Lyman Lake in sunshine. The menacing clouds had broken and the brilliant blue sky was establishing firm dominance over the tattered, receding grayness. Life on the trail was looking rosy once more. We reached Cloudy Pass (another of the Cascade 'glory spots') in quick time and took the perfunctory panoramic photos before heading southwest to Suiattle Pass.

The fall colors of red, orange and vibrant yellow were right off Van Gough's palette, but nothing he every painted compared to the splendor of what was in front of our eyes.

Lyman Lakes and Spider Gap from Cloudy Pas

I don't know or care about your religious beliefs or spiritual convictions, but I know that God, the Creator, the Great Spirit, Wakan-Tanka – whatever you want to call him/her/it – made all of this and me, too. I think maybe the single greatest comfort of my fragile, inconsequential little life is the realization that I am a part of this wilderness. It runs in my blood as it runs in the sap of the trees around me. The Earth is my Mother, the Sky is my Father, and the Creator made us all. I am humbled and I am awed, and I am comforted by the knowledge that I belong ... that I am a part of all of this.

Oh, sure – some of you go up to be 'peak-baggers' and big-stud hotshots, but the rest of you go up for the same reason I do; you have to. In our crazy, frantic money-based society, the mountains are one of the few places left where we can recharge our spiritual batteries. Those of you who share this same battery recharger will understand the experience I am about to relate. The rest of you can just skip ahead to the blood and gore section.

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