When: August 2014
Where: Paradise at Mount Rainier / Tacoma (təqʷuʔməʔ)
With: my partner, my parents, Randy, Austin, Mike, Jet, and their kid
What: group camping trip hike
Accompaniment: Eple by Royksopp
I hop up on a log marking the edge of the group campsite. "Ten minute warning!" I call to the other campers.
Normally I wouldn't be one to get the wagon train rolling (especially since I tend to be a slow mover in the mornings myself) — but today we're going to Paradise. I'm not going to miss out because the parking lot fills up before I get there.
We convoy from our group camp at Ohanapecosh, forty-five minutes away in the old growth forest at the base of the mountain. This is the second group camping trip my partner and I have organized. The exposed group campsite I picked online leaves a lot to be desired — so Paradise is our compensation for the lack of privacy, the reward for coming to a popular national park in peak tourist season.
We snag a spot in the overflow parking lot but it's filling fast. I was right to push us out of camp.
Outside the Visitor Center, we get a stranger to take a photo of our whole group beneath the unfathomably massive mountain, then splinter to explore at our own pace. These tourist-packed paved trails are the access for mountaineers to reach Camp Muir for summit attempts, and climbers power past us up the steep slope.
We start up the trail with our friends Mike and Jet and their young kid, looping upwards on one of the less populated trails. The peak dips out of sight as we climb the hill, and reappears first in glimpses, then in gulps. The wildflower meadows are so perfect they seem unreal, like we're walking through a set for The Sound of Music. Meadows of blue lupines mix with pinky-red paintbrush and fluffy white flowers I don't know. Dark conifers dot the landscape artistically, as if Bob Ross manifested them just so to accent the vista.
At the top of the trail, the mountain fills the sky. We reconvene with my parents for lunch, and settle in at a rocky overlook that looks down, down, down to where the Nisqually River cuts a white swath through the forest. As we eat, marmots appear on the rocks nearby. Dumb tourists, feeding the wildlife, I think, but happily they keep their distance. I keep my back to the terrifyingly receded glacier — I can’t think about climate change today, or what it will do to this place. Mother of all waters, a local tribe named this mountain. I want it to stay true.
We take pictures until clouds sweep in, shrouding the summit. Cool mist drifts across pink mounds of heather. Now we're in Brigadoon. Dew forms shining gemstones on the hairy leaves of the low alpine lupine. A marmot runs into the trail and pauses at my feet just long enough to take its picture. This is Disneyland for real life — paved trails and the crowds to match, adorable creatures, perfect landscaping, and a tangible sense of wonder.
Where's the most spectacular place you've visited?