The Walking Stick

 

                Mark and I went backpacking on Monday night, heading south on the PCT near Diamond Peak. It is a remarkably empty section

of trail, considering it’s location (2hours from Eugene) and the fact that you do not need a permit to hike there.  There are some thru-hikers moving fast but that’s it. We were heading down the road to the trail head when a pretty chatty hiker caught up with us.

                “I love you walking stick,” she said to me.

                “Thanks, I’ve had it…” I paused.  “Forty years. It’s covered a lot of ground.”

 

                Noel made it for me on one of our first backpacks in the White Mountains. It’s just a stick, peeled, with a hole drilled through the top—done in camp one night with his swiss army knife—and a loop of cord drawn through. The cord was bound with dental floss (yes, he had dental floss in the tool bag) but that broke about 20 years in and it’s now just knotted together. The stick has a bit of a curve which means it works excellently with the left hand and a bit less so with the right, but it is the perfect height and weight. It quickly proved it value when I did not fall into a couple of streams during crossings and it helped haul my heavy pack up some pretty steep inclines. hmpshire

                We have covered thousands of miles together. It came north to Mt Katadin and the end of the AT; it clambered  over some huge rock piles in Northern New Hampshire; I brought it to the Grand Canyon with me twice;   it’s done hundreds of day trips to mountain lakes; we circumnavigated Mt Rainer, the Three Sisters, and Three Fingered Jack together.  If I have my backpack, I have my stick. It lives in the Ark, just behind the seats, nestled into the crack between seat and carpet.

  I almost lost it, once. We were on the last day at Mt Rainer and there had been a bad stream flooding incident that blocked the five miles of trail to the park entrance where the Ark was waiting.  We headed down the road—full afternoon sun, lots of tourists in cars—because…what else could we do. After half an hour, an off duty parks ranger pulled over and offered us a ride. We gratefully climbed into the back seat and rode downhill. When he dropped us off, we forgot our walking sticks (Mark’s is a rake handle) .  As soon as we got home, I called. “We’ll see what we can do,” the woman at the desk promised, “But I don’t know…” Six weeks later, a long thin package was on our doorstep. Both sticks, with “Do not throw out” written in black marker.

It’s in all of my backpacking  photos. It is either laying beside my pack, waiting patiently, or I am leaning on it, arching my back  bit to shift the weight and direct the breeze. And, aside from the black marker, it still looks pretty good.