The North Cascades Chronicles: Part Three

Elizabeth and I had seen mountain goats and survived a catastrophic tent flood and hadn’t fallen down yet or been et by bears, so off we went on a new hike, like two pinheads on pistons. Another lake inside a cirque, this one not so popular. Two miles in, we encountered a woman sitting in a comfy lawn chair with, if memory serves, a side table and a bookcase and mini-fridge, her massive backpack at her side. She was waiting for her friends to show up; she was happy; she was probably in her eighties. No one else was around.

The lake was tremendous. It was fringed in green; slender waterfalls dangled off the cliff face. I figured we’d have some lunch and meander back. “We need to find where those waterfalls come in,” Elizabeth announced after a while, like she was Lewis and/or Clark, and, the language of necessity having been invoked, we looked for a circuit path.

Just that morning, I had spotted a small button in the dirt at our campsite. It was a tiny compass! One of the Ten Essentials, we were pretty sure! What can you do with a compass? We’re foggier about that. But still. An Essential! We had food and water also but felt considerably better equipped with the compass than we had been without.

We headed off clockwise and crossed an outlet stream at its intersection with Smiling Ancient Lawn Chair Lady.

It was definitely a path around the lake! The stakes are not super high here. We can see the entire breadth of the lake. We’re not likely to take a wrong turn and meet Dante working his way into hell. Worst case, we might be courting a bruise or a muddy butt. The path was narrow but obvious.

Until it abruptly wasn’t.

“Well, that’s that,” I said, confronting a wall of larches and rhododendrons and spiraeas undercut by a muddy slick with boot-sucking aspirations. It was not clear there was any way forward. It seemed to me that anytime all the paths disappear, it’s the world telling you nobody has found the gold and don’t bother trying. But Elizabeth did not understand the meaning of “that’s that.” On she blundered. “I’ll check it out, and let you know if it’s worth it,” she offered, gallantly, and promptly vanished into a low-hanging thicket. She loves to bushwhack. Well, hell. I’m not about to be Maw left behind on the parched farm while the young’uns scout for fortune. I tried to keep up.

“I can hear where the waterfall’s coming in!” Elizabeth exclaimed, vanishing again into the leafy tangle, only to gopher up a moment later in something hedgey. I unpocketed my tiny essential compass. “That way’s north,” I mentioned to myself irrelevantly.

I wasn’t quite keeping up but got my bearings as her head surfaced periodically above the greenery. Dang. She was going full Shackleton on this thing.

And then the forest popped us out like spitwads onto the edge of the lake and we climbed onto a commodious pillow of granite. We squinted. “There it is,” I said, pointing at an insignificant bloop of water on the shoreline that lined up with a cataract. It was not impressive by most standards. But the point is not to find the thing and plant a flag; the point is to wonder about the thing. The point is to find yourself on a big unexpected rock in a lake on a beautiful day, with someone you love.

That’s your gold, right there.