It’s Thursday so it must be time for another #NatureWritingChallenge! Today’s prompt is “a most memorable entrance to a national park” and this has to be it (with Mount Rushmore somewhere in second behind it).
On my section hike of the Pacific Crest Trail when I started at the Oregon/Washington border and walked north to Canada, reaching the sign that marked the North Cascades National Park boundary has to be one of my most memorable highlights of the entirety of that trek. Not because I hadn’t hiked into the park before, I had done it two years previously with a group of women from my church southbound from Rainy Pass, a mere 18 miles (done in several days).
But when I stood in front of the park boundary sign this time and looked across the bridge over Anges Creek, I did so after 4 and half weeks and 424.83 miles on my first ever solo backpacking trip, not believing how far I had come to get there. No big monument, no statue, no historical marker. Just on ordinary greyed and weathered post to celebrate my monumental accomplishment.
I wish my snapshots were just a little less blurry but after a 20 mile day, sometimes the picture comes second to the thought of tossing up your tent and that lovely red bus that will come in the morning to take you into the heaven of Stehekin. My feet were sore and throbbing and my legs were stiff and aching. I had just come 105 miles and 23,000ft of elevation gain and loss from Stevens Pass 5 days before and I was spent.
The fact I only had 80 miles left to walk until the Canadian border and the completion of my journey, both literally and figuratively, was the only thing keeping me moving forward at this point. Besides the Stehekin Bakery, of course.
I have been back several times, particularly on trail work parties to replace signage on the PCT in the national park and could share some plenty of nicer pictures. I would visit Stehekin and the North Cascades National Park every year if I could! But these pictures mean more to me in emotion and memory than their successors and that is why I’m proud to share them with you today as part of this story.
This post was written in under an hour as part of the #NatureWritingChallenge
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