COLUMBIA RIVER GORGE, CASCADE LOCKS, OR:
The road felt different than it usually does before a hike. Normally it’s just me, darkness, and the quiet hum of tires before sunrise, but this time the highway carried a migration of seekers escaping south into the weekend. I watched the early evening light hang over the small puget sound towns as I cut through backroads toward Oregon, thinking about how some realizations only show up once life slows down enough to let them catch you. Somewhere between the long miles, a burger and a pint, or three, overlooking the Columbia River, and the silence that settles in after the conversations around you fade into the background, is a space where my mind drifted toward gratitude in a way I wasn’t expecting. Not the obvious kind either. Something quieter. The kind that sneaks up on you years after the moment has already passed and suddenly asks why you never named it when you had the chance.
By the time I reached the trailhead at 5:15 the next morning, the canyon still belonged to the dark. The air carried that cold spring bite that wakes your lungs up fast, and Eagle Creek echoed somewhere below me before I could fully see it. My headlamp caught the edges of burned trees left standing from the 2017 fire, black trunks scattered through the canyon like ghosts that refused to leave. And somehow, surrounded by all that damage, the place smelled alive. Wildflowers, damp stone, moss warming under the first hint of sun. It almost felt unfair how beautiful it was. As the trail narrowed into those cliffside sections with the cables bolted into the rock, my attention sharpened into survival mode the way it always does around heights that challenge existence itself. Every foot placement mattered. Every glance away from the wall carried consequences. But somewhere between the waterfalls, the drop-offs, and the roar of the creek below, I started noticing how exhausting it has become to live like that emotionally too, measuring every internal step so carefully that sometimes I forget to actually look around.
The strange thing is that the canyon answered none of it directly, which honestly felt more useful than if it had. I kept thinking about how much of my life has revolved around intention, reflection, growth, healing, all necessary things that made me question if it was all slowly starting to feel less like curiosity and more like maintenance. Even presence has started to feel like work. Somewhere near Tunnel Falls, soaked in mist with the sound of water wrapping around the cliffs, I caught myself wondering if I missed something. Maybe just the ability to live without constantly managing my inner world. On my descent, sunlight finally reached the canyon floor and changed everything. Moss glowed green against the rock walls, birds gently glided through the canyon overhead, and this little blue butterfly kept fluttering alongside the trail, both delicate and fearless. I watched it for awhile. It didn’t seem worried about meaning, or progress, or whether it was navigating the canyon correctly. It was just moving. Somewhere in that thought, I realized I came back down the mountain carrying a little less weight than I took up with me.
The Journey…
The air was still holding that 49-degree bite when I pulled up to the trailhead at 5:15 AM. It was that deep, pre-dawn quiet where you can feel the weight of the path before you can actually see it. The road in had been one lane and a little sketchy, but that was a negotiation for later. Right then, it was just me, a headlamp cutting through the last of the dark, and the low, constant rumble of Eagle Creek. There were spots where the hillside had clearly taken a beating from the atmospheric rivers earlier this year, leaving the path feeling thin and a little uncertain between the cliffs. A half moon hung low and I started noticing the skeletons of the 2017 fire that had move through here and left its mark. Hundreds of blackened trunks stood like a graveyard against the morning light, stripped and silent. I felt optimistic how much life still manages to prop them up. The smell was the first thing that really hit me. Usually, it is just damp earth and stone, but this morning the canyon smelled like a natural spa. Wildflowers were everywhere, mixing a floral and peppery scent with something almost citrusy that followed me for miles through the canyon.
By the time the sun started peeking over the ridges, I was deep into the cliffside sections. These parts are no joke. The trail narrows down to a couple feet of rock at best, with a cable anchored into the wall and a sheer drop on the other side. I found myself playing a mental game, keeping a scorecard of injury versus existence with section. It creates a certain kind of focus, especially with my nerves and how they respond to heights. You cannot just wander; you have to be there, entirely. I noticed the birds were out early today, too. Watching them catch the drafts and soar through the canyon felt like watching a scene out of a Top Gun movie, just a lot quieter and more graceful. The falls came one after another: Punch Bowl stopped me in my tracks at the overlook, the rock carved so perfectly around it that the water seemed to know exactly where it was going. Loowit came in tiers, a bowl falling into a bowl, a side falls joining from the canyon wall, everything meeting below in water so clear it looked deliberate. I took a minute at a spot near the four-mile bridge to scramble down to the water. Up close, the creek was impossibly clear. You could see every detail on the floor, no matter how deep it got. It was a good spot to just sit and let the sound of the rapids drown out the noise in my head for a quiet, mindful minute.
Reaching Tunnel Falls, a 172 feet high drop at the 6.5-mile mark, felt like the encore of a great concert. The trail takes you behind it, through a tunnel cut into the rock, water sheeting off the ledge just feet away, mist filling the air, sound wrapping around everything. With over 75 feet of falls both above and below, I came out the other side, looked at the ledge continuing toward Twister Falls, and said no. I’d gotten what I came for, and a voice in my head said “that’ll do, pig” referencing a poignant moment from the movie, Babe, which meant, “You’ve done well enough.” No regrets. I have spent the last couple of years living with intentionality, making sure every move is purposeful and every moment is present. As I worked my way back down the rocky path, I considered how perfect this hike was for today’s trail-thought, and just how exhausting intention and presence can be. There’s a paradox in that. On those narrow ledges, you have to focus on every single footfall just to stay alive, but in doing so, you almost miss the very beauty you came to see. I am starting to wonder if there is a way to just live without every step having to be a calculated decision. I am not sure I have the answer, but watching a small blue butterfly flutter alongside me through that rugged, burnt-out terrain made me think that maybe grace does not require as much effort as I have been giving it. It is a strange feeling to be both exhausted and completely refreshed at the same time.
The trek back was a different experience entirely with the sun finally hitting the canyon floor. The light changed everything, turning the mossy walls into vibrant, furry textures that made me laugh thinking about the movie Get Him to The Greek, where they stroked the furry wall after smoking a Jeffery (yes, my mind is that twisted, even in nature). Every mile felt earned today, but in a different way. Today I earned focus. My boots found their rhythm on the hardscape of rock and dirt, and the fragrance of the spring blooms seemed to intensify as the temperature climbed into the seventies. It is a long way to go for a bit of clarity, thirteen miles of keeping my shoulder against the rock, but the perspective was worth the distance travelled. I watched that blue butterfly for a good hundred feet as it navigated the same wind that I was breathing in. It didn’t seem to be overthinking its flight path or worrying about the sheer drops below its wings. It was just moving. Maybe that is the trick I have been missing. You prepare for the hike, you respect the cliffs, but at some point, you have to trust your feet to know the way back. By the time I reached my car, the narrow road didn’t look so intimidating anymore. It was just the way back to where I started, only I was carrying a little less weight than when I left.
Gratitude…
Heading out of town on a Friday evening, and the roads felt different. Usually it’s just me, morning darkness, and the quiet hum of the engine, but tonight the highway was alive. Everyone with the same idea, same pull toward somewhere else. The sky still held color, that slow late-spring fade that hangs on long enough to feel like a gift. I wound through small Washington towns to get an edge on traffic, eventually finding I-5 near Centralia, and then let the miles do their thing. Three hours to Cascade Locks, across the Bridge of the Gods, where I ended up at a local brewery with a burger and a pint, or three, listening to conversations I wasn’t part of, grateful I’d stopped trying to rush every mile of the trip, now being 15 minutes from the morning’s hike. The Columbia River sat outside the window, the Oregon side already feeling like a different country.
With Mother’s Day approaching, my mind kept drifting back to Kelly and the specific space she held in our house. I wasn’t thinking about the meals she made or the times she drove kids to school or practice. I was thinking about something quieter than that. My mind drifted to the role she played that I never fully named while I had the chance. I’m wired to fix things. Someone brings me a problem and I’m already three steps into solving it before they’ve even had a chance to finish their sentence. I offer feedback and solutions because I want the path cleared. Kelly didn’t work that way. When the kids hurt, she climbed right into it beside them. If they were angry, she got angry with them. If they were excited, she celebrated like the victory belonged to all of us. She jumped into the fire with them instead of standing outside it with a hose. We spent many early years thinking our own way was the “right” way to parent, only realizing much later how those two opposing forces actually kept the structure standing. But I don’t think either of us ever really said it out loud.
Now that the house is quieter and the years have stretched things out enough to look back, I can see how important that kind of validation really was. What’s different is that my understanding is now felt, not just understood. Somewhere along the highway that truth settled into me harder than it usually does. Maybe because long drives have a way of stripping distractions down to the essentials. Maybe because certain realizations only arrive once life gives you enough distance to stop defending yourself from them. Hindsight is good for nothing but clarity. And in hindsight I understand that the world runs on both roles: the fixers and the listeners. The problem-solvers and the people who just sit with you in the hard part. My gratitude tonight wasn’t only Kelly, or even mothers for that matter. It was for anybody who knows how to sit beside someone without trying to solve. Parents, grandparents, friends, even strangers who understand that sometimes people don’t need answers nearly as much as they need somebody to give a nod and say, yeah, you’re not crazy. Someone who doesn’t try to solve a single thing. If you’re a fixer and have someone like that in your life, name it, honor it, and let them know how vital they are.
Reflections…
I started the trail early this morning with that familiar feeling I usually get before a long hike, where my body settles into the rhythm before my mind does. The waterfalls, the canyon ledges, the constant attention to footing all stayed mostly in the background today. Beautiful, yes, but my focus drifted somewhere else early on. Somewhere quieter. I kept thinking about how much of my life has been built around intentionality. It’s in my nature to examine things closely, to learn from them, to grow through them. For most of my life, that felt energizing. Purposeful. But somewhere in the last couple years, especially inside grief, that instinct slowly changed shape without me fully noticing. What once felt like curiosity started feeling more like maintenance. Necessary maintenance, maybe, but still work all the same.
As I walked, I realized how long it had been since I simply lived without trying to guide myself somewhere emotionally. Not distract myself. Not numb out. I mean genuinely live without effort. The kind of living I used to take for granted before grief turned every quiet moment into something I needed to manage carefully. Even my attempts at healing became structured. Thoughtful. Intentional. I journaled to understand myself. Reflected to recalibrate. Practiced presence because I read presence mattered. But presence, if I’m honest, still requires work. It still asks something of me. Attention. Discipline. Awareness. What I missed was different than that. I missed the effortless kind of living where joy slipped in through the side door unnoticed. Days where I wasn’t monitoring my emotional state or measuring whether I was moving forward. Days where life simply unfolded and I unfolded with it.
That realization sat with me longer than I expected. I started thinking about how exhausting it is to live every moment as part of some larger process of growth. Every engagement analyzed afterward. Every setback turned into reflection. Every experience squeezed for meaning. There’s value in that, and I know that it probably kept me afloat when things were at their worst. But I can feel the hidden cost now. Living eventually starts to feel like a full-time job when every moment needs to contribute toward healing or self-improvement. I’ve spent so much time trying to regain control internally that I forgot what it felt like to exist without gripping the handle so tightly. The ironic part is that from the outside, it probably looks healthy. Intentional. Disciplined. But internally it can become a treadmill disguised as growth. Constant movement with no real arrival.
Somewhere along the trail, I thought about the difference between living with purpose and living for purpose. That distinction felt sharper today than it ever had before. Living with purpose feels expansive. There’s room inside it for spontaneity, rest, laughter, even wasted afternoons that somehow aren’t wasted at all. Living for purpose feels narrower. Every moment becomes accountable to something larger. Every choice has to justify itself. I think grief quietly pushed me from one into the other without me realizing it. Survival has a way of doing that (that’s survival with a little “s”). I started treating life like something that needed careful management because most of the time it actually did. But I’ve been questioning if the survival strategy outlives the emergency, then what once protected me may start draining me instead. I think that’s part of the exhaustion I’ve been carrying lately. Not just grief itself, but the endless labor of trying to navigate it correctly.
By the time I finished my hike today, I didn’t feel like I had found a clean answer, and honestly I wasn’t looking for one. I just knew that I missed the version of life that didn’t require so much emotional effort to participate in. The version where living happened naturally instead of intentionally. Where moments didn’t need to teach me something in order to matter. I don’t want to abandon growth because growth matters to me deeply. It always will. But I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life treating every day like a renovation project. Maybe there’s a balance somewhere between drifting aimlessly and over-engineering every breath. Maybe simply living is less about achieving some enlightened state and more about loosening my grip enough to let life meet me again without immediately turning it into work. The path continues.
-Ken
- Columbia River Gorge, Cascade Locks, OR
- 45° 38′ 14.388″ -121° 55′ 11.064″
- 12.7 miles | 2,200 ft elevation gain | ~7.5 hours
- Sunrise: 5:42 AM, Start: 5:15 AM, 49-73 degrees, clear
Musings 