Everyone always asks me what my very favorite hike or backpacking trip was. This is it. Hands down, truly number one. Best night of my life. So it was Fall of 2021 and I was wrapping up a summer of lots of mountains! I had been pulling multiple overnighters and many, many miles with lots of elevation gain and loss for many weeks in a row. My body was feeling it. I hurt pretty much everywhere. My bad knee was real bad. My left shoulder was on fire. My broken right toe was incredibly painful. I just wanted an easy day hike without a lot of climbing. I needed an easy day hike without a lot of climbing. But God seemed to have other plans for me.
He kept telling me he wanted me to do THIS particular hike and it HAD to be that week. I argued for the full week leading up to this. "No Way!" I'd tell Him. That is too hard and too high of elevation for this time of year and for my current body condition. I needed some time to heal. He had told me that we were spending the night. There were storms coming and the last thing I wanted was to climb up to 6000ft and be caught in one all night. But He kept telling me about the lookout tower that is still there. You can spend the night in it, He told me. "No, No", I said...."With my luck someone else will be there first and then I'll be sleeping outside on the ground in the storm with no tent." Oh, how we argued about this hike! Every single day for a week we argued about this hike. I suggested like 6 other hikes that we could do instead. Finally God told me....Okay, go look those hikes up on the computer. I did. One by one, I learned that the trailhead access roads had washouts and you couldn't get to the hike. One had a wildfire and the entire area was closed. Each one was inaccessible for one reason or another. I told God that this was just NOT funny! But I could feel him laughing and coaxing me.....come on, he would say. It will be fun. Bring candles and your big thermos of cocoa. I am telling you, this is the one I want us to do. He was patient, but persistent with me.
Finally, I relented. But not in a nice way. "Fine" I said angrily....."but when this fails, you are carrying my heavy pack back down 6000ft in the dark and in the storm, because my shoulders can't take it!!" I felt him laugh and tell me that was fine. So off we went. My faith that this was going to go well was truly the size of the minuscule mustard seed in that moment! Of course, everything then seemed like failure. First we couldn't find the right road in. Then we couldn't find the trailhead. We circled and circled lost as could be. It was getting later and later. "See!!!" I yelled at God, "was this really your plan?? It is not going to work. I told you so!" He made me keep trying and keep trying. I was becoming very discouraged. But eventually, I found a place to ditch my old beloved truck and start hiking. Up and up we went as the dark clouds started to earnestly roll in and the wind picked up and everything was becoming darker and darker. I could literally feel the temperatures dropping as we climbed. This is going to be so great I thought. Plus I had all the extra weight of not just my overnight gear, but also a full large thermos that I don't normally carry. In fact I have never carried that thermos on any hike before or since. It is my truck after hike thermos only. When I left my truck to hit this trail in fact, I had left it in the truck as always. But as I walked away, I heard God tell me I needed to go back for it. I dutifully did as I was told. I wasn't up to arguing anymore.
Shortly after reaching the lookout tower, this one built in 1934, I found it empty. Okay....okay, maybe we have something here I exclaimed! It was the first time I was excited all day! The clouds were thick and there was no view at all. It was like living in a cloud. But I had that tower all to myself and I was smiling from ear to ear. I made myself at home, setting up my sleeping pad and bag and lighting up a couple candles. Just then the rain started to pelt the entire tower and the wind howled through the open windows that were broken out. Soon the wind was whipping so fiercely, that rain started to blow right into the open window and then BAM, the door flew open and banked against the wall. Okay, not a problem I thought. I moved a chair in front of the door to hold it closed and moved things that were getting wet near the open window. "Its not perfect, " I said to God, "but it will do. It will do indeed!"
The night got wilder and wilder as that storm battered the tower. I was so thankful for the shelter. Although it use to have a wood-stove inside, and still has the chimney, sadly the stove was long gone. It would have been better with the stove, I thought, but then finding wood on the rocky outcropping we were on, would not have been easy and it would have all been wet anyway. Someone had left a pair of grey sweatpants inside and they were just my size. What a souvenir, I thought!! Every time I wear those pants, I remember this night! I will say, we did not get much sleep that night. But when I did doze off, I only dreamt of freight-trains. Freight-rains moving through my campsite. I would wake over and over again and look up trying to see the train. The dreams were so real!! But then I would realize, it was just the storm sounding like a train! What a storm it was. I don't recall ever living through such a night. I feared the entire tower would blow away like Dorothy's house. But I reminded myself it had been there for almost 100 years and seen many storms. Luckily I had 2 pocket warmers with me and I set both off inside my sleeping bag. Nova and I spooned tightly and were never truly freezing. We have woken up on some backpacking trips due to my teeth chattering....but that was not to be this night. When Nova had to go potty around 9pm though that night, we found the rain blowing sideways and we were soaked through within minutes of being outside. It was funny standing on that peak in the storm, I had absolutely no sense of direction at all. I was disappointed that I couldn't see any view from our tower and hoped that would change by morning. Change it did.
This was my view when I first opened my eyes in the morning. I was still in my sleeping bag when I took this photo through the windows. Who knew I was so close to Mt. Rainer, I thought!! "Oh thank you God!" was all I could say for the next few hours. If I had not said Yes to Him, this incredible experience would never have been. We proceeded to watch the most incredible sunrise. Surely the favorite of my life. All around us was an inversion layer of clouds as if the ones choking us out last night dropped down just to allow us to see in all directions. I could see every major volcanic peak from my little room with a view. The fall colors were brilliant in the just born sunlight. The sky was intensely blue and dare I say, it even felt warm!
After hours of taking photos and enjoying the sunrise, Nova and I went back to bed and drank more of our still hot cocoa and read for hours and hours. I could not leave this place. I never wanted to leave this place. In fact, as I started to think that I should pack up and hike out, I instantly felt that a team of wild horses couldn't drag me away from this tower. I wanted my ashes to be left here when I died. I am not leaving was all I could think. If I leave, I will leave a piece of my soul behind. So I just kept reading and going outside to walk around our tower on our peak and even napped outside in the sun getting a late fall tan. I could not believe that the storm from the night before had even existed. The calm beauty of the day was almost startling to me. I knew that if I tried to recreate this hike on any other day, it would never happen the same way again. (In fact I tried to recreate this hike one year later and couldn't even get near the tower due to deep, unplowed and closed roads all around it). God knew exactly what He was doing and His timing is always best. My mustard seed faith soared and surely moved mountains that day!
Eventually, I knew my time was up and I had to leave. I had already disappeared from the world for two days and my work was waiting for me in the morning. If I disappeared for more than 2 days, search and rescue would surely be called in to find me. Realistically I also knew it would take any rescue group some time to find me since no one knew where I was and this would allow me to stay a bit longer until they did. It was such a temptation, I cannot even explain, but it wouldn't be fair to waste their time. So I slowly packed up my kit. I always joke that I don't have tear ducts because I don't cry. But leaving that tower late that afternoon almost made my eyes spring a leak. I turned and looked back at her as we left and told God, "You were so very right. I will never doubt what you tell me again. You tell me where to go and like the wind I will go there!"
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