The Master Blog of Matt Moody

There is a popular breakfast joint in San Diego’s Hillcrest neighborhood called Hash House a Go Go. I took some friends of mine out there for the first time a few weeks ago. The women are from Poland, Italy, and Serbia, and it was a fun discussion to be had about portion sizes. In Europe, a portion size is usually no bigger than one’s fist. In America, we call that a snack.

And this is for you, Cole…from last time we went to Hash House.

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A short drive along the Columbia River and over the Bridge of the Gods takes you to Hamilton Mountain in the state of Washington. Along the way you can get a glimpse from the freeway of the famed Multnomah Falls, not far from the infamous “Million Dollar Bathroom” on a promontory over the river.

This particular hike was not very difficult, except that Washington and Oregon were experiencing 97 degree weather with fairly high humidity. It was like hiking in a sauna and we sweat our Gatorade out as soon as we drank it. But, it was still a ton of fun. Let’s start with the view from the very top.

Yes, it was a lot like looking out of an airplane window. In fact, we saw a biplane several hundred feet below us flying along the river valley. My friend Mr. Booth has superhuman hiking skills, and I swear he could have hiked the mountain twice in the time it would have taken the rest of us to hike it once. Here he is half way up the mountain.

Even though the bald spots in the mountain were horrifically hot, the forest was somewhat cooler and easier to hike through. The water was cold and perfectly clear, so much so, that when we went to the bottom of a small waterfall, we simply took our empty Gatorade bottles, filled them with fresh mountain water, and drank it directly. It was my first time drinking river water and it was better than anything I’ve ever had. h/t to Mr. Malebranche for the idea.

Near the top, there were some densely textured rock walls framing the view below. It reminded me of the surface of Mars. Fitting that Mars is the God of War and that we had to cross the Bridge of the Gods to get to the mountain.

If you look at the very tip top of the mountain, that’s where we finished the hike. This is the view from the bottom of the mountain after running the majority of the way down the trails. Running down mountain trails is actually easier than walking, and it feels unerringly like skiing through the woods, sans skis, sans snow.

And I really can’t thank Jack Malebranche enough for taking all of us out on this hike. What a great way to top off an excellent trip to Oregon and Washington.

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Sixty miles south of Portland is the small town of Silverton. It’s a modest town with small buildings lining the main street. It’s the type of place where they slow down the highway to pick up business; mom and pop shops lean against the curb with faded paint and dated signs. Outside the town nestled in a small gorge are pockets of waterfalls poking through holes in the ancient rock and tumbling into lazy creeks below. Under the misty trails of water moss tenaciously grows stark green against the dark rock.

The trail doesn’t cut through the woods, it meanders along the canyon edge and ramps gracefully to the river. In the heat, even the flies grew bolder, as I found out when a horsefly decided to take a big bite out of my left leg. The sting was so shocking it propelled me forward into an unsuspecting photographer, who I came very close to knocking into the stream he was shooting. That, with its accompanying stream of profanity on my part took everyone out of their zen state for a moment. But the light ahead and the way it made the trees glow easily put all hikers and wanderers back into the right frame of mind within minutes.

Nature has a way of teaching lessons without speech, inciting thought without pontificating. As often happens when hiking, I had been looking down at my feet to get my bearings on the trail. At this particular moment, I’d noticed something that evoked a strong sense of longing and gratitude. Below me, a small shriveled dead leaf lie cradled in the center of a living plant. It was as if the younger plant were honoring the lost life of the old, holding it up against its final fall into the soil below. It got me thinking. What do we do to honor the old, and the dead? Do we hold them up even in their vestiges?

There is a simple order in biomes like the forest. The light and water give life, and the dead sustain it. Plants grow in every available crevice and knot. Insects and animals forage and feast and live and die in it. Humans make their trails through it but they’re just visitors without an invitation. Some of the locals chain smoked Parliaments on the trail’s periphery, staying dry while their kids darted along the smooth riverbed rocks and splashed in the mountain water. No doubt they were enjoying the cool air fanned by the stream’s current, but it did little to clear the unwelcome chemicals from their parents’ smoke. Above the crick and away from the smell of civilization, sunlight played behind a small plant.

For me, hiking isn’t just about the sport of it, the photography, or appreciating nature. It’s a chance to genuinely reflect, meditate, and for a moment be outside of the world we humans have created for ourselves. As I’ve matured I’ve felt more and more of a pull toward these types of environments. There is something to be said for the seclusion, balance, order, and virtue intrinsic to nature. I hope to have given you a semblance of that.

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It’s hard for me to articulate how awesome an experience it is to hike in Oregon. The Tillamook National Forest is a quiet place, far enough from Portland where it’s not heavily traveled by tourists and King’s Mountain is an enduring hike. My friend Jack Malebranche introduced me to the location, and here is a taste of what we saw as we hiked up to 3,226 feet in elevation on a consistently vertical hike. It was worth the hard work to get to the top. While at the summit, a hawk flew within feet of us, because we were in her territory. Later we could hear the cries of her offspring revealing the reason for her close scrutiny. On top of the mountain, all else that could be heard was the wind in the pines, a muffled gunshot miles in the distance, and the crackling of beetles. Under the summit in the forest, canopies of ferns and tall pines sheltered squirrels and lots of mossy undergrowth. It grew like coral on the sides of the trees. Walking through it seemed strangely like invading a foreign turf, yet at the same time being a part of it.