Mondays with Mike: A Valley like This

Welp.

I’m writing as I fly home from Washington State. I’m on my third commercial flight since Covid sort of subsided. We passengers wear masks. No hassles.

I’m tired and sore and exhilarated after doing the best thing I’ve done since I used to … do things. I’m not a real hiker, but I’ve done a few. Two (now), have been with a friend who is an avid hiker. As in, if I was his age, I wouldn’t have a chance of keeping up. I’m not his age.

But between a trip to Alaska a few years ago and this one to the North Cascades of Washington, we figured out how to figure it out. I wear out, take the car home and regroup, and I drive back and pick him up at the trailhead after he’s been to the moon and back. Somehow it works.

The start of a trail

For years I’ve worked for Phius, a non-profit that has established and promotes a design / construction and retrofit standard that’s all about reducing energy consumption, reducing carbon emissions, increasing indoor air quality and comfort, and hanging in there when the power goes out. It’s a thing I’m proud of.

So, when my pal invited me to burn some jet fuel and drive with him in a rental car miles and miles in the evergreen forests of Washington State, I paused. But not for long. Sometimes it’s worth remembering why we should bother.

I love Chicago. I love living in Chicago. I love the architecture, Lake Michigan, Bronzeville, Andersonville. My Printers Row neighborhood.

I also love the humbling grandeur of nature and the wilderness. Experiencing it requires leaving my comfort zone.

My comfort zone, like most others’, shrunk the last year-and-a-half. Just leaving the apartment or the neighborhood has felt iffy. So this was hard. I’m not in good shape. I still have weird balance/equilibrium problems leftover from Covid. The latter may well have to do with the former. But at some level, it didn’t matter.

I’m just glad I went. For the record, the Mt. Baker area and the North Cascades are unsurpassed for making one feel small in the very best ways. Eons of volcanic and glacial activity make clear that the modern news cycle is a pimple on a pimple on history’s ass.

And it lays bare a conundrum: When I’m looking at the blown-out chimneys of volcanoes from  who knows how long ago, and take into account the ice age, I can wonder, well, if that can destroy us, why are we worrying about climate change?

My answer is, as George Carlin proclaimed, “The planet is fine, the people are fucked.” I ain’t bothering with Phius for the planet. I’m doing it for people.

If you want some proof of the beauty of humanity, take a hike in the Mt. Baker area. People from Seattle, Oregon, Florida, Mississippi … Chicago, Washington, D.C … there were no bumper stickers, just reverie for the experience. A common experience. And we talk, and we smile, and we’re glad to have met one another.

It’d be a shame if these good people and their descendants left before they had to.

With that, here’s a poem by William Stafford that was posted at a scenic vantage point in the North Cascades National Park:

Please click and read.