The Beauty

The Beauty
North Cascades to Bellingham
“Here is a place where the clouds are made…where the ice melts into whispering rivulets which form dashing cascades, these flowing into lakes of wondrous beauty, where exquisitely beautiful landscapes of never ending variety meet… the wondering gaze from every direction, where mountains meet the sky”, Martin J. Elrod

Leaving Winthrop, up the grade for views of the mountains on the eastside of the Cascades, Douglas Fir and Lodgepole Pine, the smell of pine in the cool evening air as the sun settles to it’s western home, snowberry, ocean spray, Manzanita, wild roses and bracken ferns all about, moving up the mountain were the forest patches of sub-alpine Larch and White Pine dot wildflower meadows, interspersed with shrubby plant communities, grasses and sedges.

To camp in the night cool air of the piney forest, where fire cools my heels and mind.

The Park Service is comemorating the 50th anniversary of Jack Kerouac’s Sojourn at Desolation, he was on fire look out here from July 5th-Sept. 6th, 1956, Jack Kerouac spent 63 days during the summer as a fire lookout on Desolation Peak, in North Cascades National Park. He wrote about his experiences in the books "The Dharma Bums" and "Desolation Angels". The lookout is a 14' x 14' structure built in 1933 and remains active under the National Park Service.

The trail to the lookout is 7 miles one way from Ross Lake. You can either hike 13 miles to the trail head or arrange for boat transportation from the Ross Lake Resort.

"There she is!" yelled Happy and in the swirled-across top-of-the-world fog I saw a funny little peaked almost Chinese cabin among the little pointy firs and boulders standing on a bald rock top surrounded by snow banks and patches of wet grass with tiny flowers.
I gulped. It was too dark and dismal to like it. "This will be my home and resting place all summer?"
In the afternoon the marshmallow roof of clouds blew away in patches and Ross Lake was open to my sight, a beautiful cerulean pool far below with tiny toy boats of vacationists, the boats themselves too far to see, just the pitiful little tracks they left rilling in the mirror lake.
Hozomeen, Hozomeen, most beautiful mountain I ever seen ... but what a horror when I first saw that void the first night of my staying on Desolation Peak waking up from deep fogs of 20 hours to a starlit night suddenly loomed by Hozomeen with his two sharp points, right in my window black... Over 70 days I had to stare at it.
When I get to the top of Desolation Peak and everybody leaves on mules and I'm alone I will come face to face with God or Tathagata and find once and for all what is the meaning of all this existence and suffering and going to and fro in vain" but instead I'd come face to face with myself....
At night at my desk in the shack I see the reflection of myself in the black window, a rugged faced man in a dirty ragged shirt, need-a-shave, frowny, ...
Those afternoons, those lazy afternoons, when I used to sit, or lie down, on Desolation Peak, sometimes on the alpine grass, hundreds of miles of snowcovered rock all around, looming Mount Hozomeen on my north, vast snowy Jack to the south, the encharmed picture of the lake below to the west and the snowy hump of Mt. Baker beyond, and to the east the rilled and ridged monstrosities humping to the Cascade Ridge, and after that first time suddenly realizing "It's me that's changed and done all this and come and gone and complained and hurt and joyed and yelled, not the Void" ...
...as I was hiking down the mountain with my pack I turned and knelt on the trail and said "Thank you, shack." Then I added "Blah", with a little grin, because I knew that that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world.” Snippets of Jack’s work.

I find the Park Service to be bold at times, confronting our pass and future, at Harper’s Ferry there’s John Brown, at Glacier, Native voices about the Lewis & Clark travels into their lands and the following of the settlers, and now.
Yet I look deeper, my need to understand, the modern world, this time about signage, I ask a young park employee about the bi-lingual signs on bird migration, both English and Spanish, the birds do go there and return, then she says “well there is good Mexican food in Sedro Woolley down the road”, ok, I have seen very few if any Latinos in the Parks in my travels, later there was a film about Cascade Park, from the early Native Americans perspective, or Indians meeting the first White Trappers, not sure if the Japanese tourists in the back understood the movie, it was in English, I have seen signs in the big Western Parks in many languages, and lots of German, Japanese, and other global travelers all about, now back to the movie, they also say Freedom & Freeland brought folks here, first the miners, then the loggers on the Skagit River, really the only folks there were here first in the US and Mexico were the indigenous peoples, Spain created the modern Mexico and its people, so if we all have to be immigrants lets understand we can’t all go back, we could all go to Africa to our true source of origin. This area is still known by its aboriginal name “Stehekin”, meaning the way though.

What do you call Yourself?As a kid I would say I was English, Irish and German, now I am a Pink Man, not White, not Caucasian.
When will we be people that understand the proper labeling is different in different areas, in the South, folks say Black or White, here in the NW its African- American, but what am I?

After my Park Information tour, on to the back roads with my trusty companion Skate, down to Marblemount for breakfast, a neat little tiny church for a moment of thanks, head up Rt.530 pass Buck Creek for a great ride, it’s dirt for about 20 miles with big potholes, Skate & I stayed out of them. It’s well worth the trip, under the glaciers, with the clouds covering and uncovering in moments, with wildflowers blossoms in Alpine meadows, the Cascade mountain crest cools and wrings moisture from the Pacific Ocean air, most of the snow and rainfall on the Westside creating a dry “rain shadow” to the east.
Western Larch, White Pine wooly pussy toes and beargrass also greet you, “greet the sun…pulsing with the energy of life”, and the birds Sharp-shinned Hawks, Western Tanager, Thrush, Bulluck’s Oriole, Warblers, Blk-heaed Grosbeak and Rufous Humming birds find home here.
In the western Hemlock Forest there is also Western Red Cedar, Douglas fir dominating this dense ancient forest, many of these giant trees are over 1000 years old. The lush, dark and moist under story of shrubs, ferns, mosses, fungi help promote the greatest Plant and animal diversity in these Northern Cascade forest.
Heading out of this spectacular park, down Rt. 20W to SR-9 it largely parallels Interstate 5 to the west, crossing the Snohomish, Skagit, Stillaguamish and Nooksack rivers, and coming within about 17 miles of Mount Baker, then Rt. 642E to some of the greatest views around.
Mostly in the clouds with the smell of cold snow in my nose, the brisk air, the clouds playfully dances on mountain peaks, a NW day, I make the most of what the day brings.
Then down the mountain pass the Northfolk Beer-Shine, great IPA, very good pizza, too. Want to get married?
Make a right at Deming on Rt. 542W to Bellingham for more surprises and the feeling of being happy in my home, not to mention Hula-hoop Reggie night at the Boundary Bay Brewery. Most Fun!!!

the North Cascades to Mt. Baker to Bellingham, Washington
60.1mpg/ 251.8 miles traveled

Correction: Renata Chlumska website is AroundAmericaAdventure.com, no s on the end of Adventure, she is almost home to Seattle as well. Another journey near it’s end.
“the universe call outs…change is nature’s constant” unknown author

A calming poem: ee cummings: i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)