ALPINE LAKES WILDERNESS, NORTH BEND, WA:
I slipped out of the driveway before 4 AM while the world was still deciding whether to call it night. The summer solstice was close enough that darkness feels more like a formality than anything else, and somewhere on that long, quiet stretch of I-90 with the Cascades beginning to take shape in the pre-dawn glow, I found myself thinking about the quiet forces that keep us moving forward. Not certainty. Not outcomes. Something steadier than that…Hope, with a capital “H.” I’d been leaning on it for some time without fully naming it, and it struck me that some of the most important things in life seem to do their work quietly, long before we recognize their presence.
The forest was already awake when I stepped onto the trail. Songs from birds drifted through the brisk air, Denny Creek rushed over the smooth rock slabs, and the first rays of sunlight slowly worked their way down the higher-elevation ridges. As the miles unfolded, the climb demanded attention, but it also created space for reflection. Somewhere between stream crossings, rocky switchbacks, and the slow rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other, a thought from earlier in the week returned to me. It stayed there in the background, moving alongside the sound of water and the increasing warmth of the morning sun.
By the time the mountains opened to reveal the alpine lakes, my thoughts had settled on music, memory, and the way certain experiences seem to leave impressions deeper than can be fully understood. A quiet reminder that some moments stay with us because of how they make us feel rather than what they might say or accomplish. Maybe that’s why certain songs, certain places, and certain people can still find their way into our memory years later. The view from the Alpine Lakes Wilderness made a convincing case that some things are worth the climb whether or not you arrive with answers, or even the right questions.
The Journey…
I arrived at the trailhead by sunrise with plenty of parking options before others joined in. It was a crisp 34 degrees, cold enough to put a jacket on, and the birds were already filling the forest with songs high in the forest canopy, signaling the arrival of the morning sun. The first mile eased me into the day, passing cabins on the dirt road and crossing Denny Creek before the trail began its steady climb through the old-growth forest and boulder fields. As the highway noise faded away, the rushing water from the creek started to take over, its meditative sound would accompany me most of the day. A slide had erased a section of the trail, forcing me to backtrack and find a couple of fallen logs and stones to cross the creek. As the forest opened up to a large boulder field, there were wildflowers reaching out from the gaps between them, with blue, purple, and cream-colored pedals all tightly closed up against the morning chill, while the higher ridges were finally catching the first golden rays of the morning sun.
I paused near Snowshoe Falls, watching the water cascade down the sheer rock cliffs, which was a good spot for a quick, mindful minute before tackling the heavy, rocky terrain ahead. The miles that followed were slow going with roots, rocks, and narrow switchbacks. After crossing the creek again over a makeshift log bridge, I found myself thinking about music and its ability to have a nonstop path to our emotions. A live version of a Dave Matthews song, Steady as We Go, kept looping in my head, a simple lyric about the road getting rocky which fit the external and internal themes of the day. The sun finally reached me on the second set of switchbacks, where I was pivoting in and out of dense brush and exposed rock before reaching the ridge that would drop down into the alpine wilderness basin. Melakwa Lake opened up before me. It was breathtaking with its beautiful shades of blue and green against the backdrop evergreens and rock. Before pausing for a rest, I pushed past the lake to its smaller counterpart, a crystal-clear bowl cupped tightly by sheer cliffs that spilled its overflow down into the deeper turquoise waters below. Sitting on a boulder to warm in the sun, I realized there is something about the air up there that defies description, something so pure you wish you could bottle it up.
After a bit, I headed back which meant a second ascent just to climb out of the basin before starting the long descent. As I started back down the main trail, the switchbacks felt completely different with the sun painting an entirely new picture on the familiar landscape from earlier in the morning. The warmth felt good against the chill though stubborn patches of winter snow still hid in the deep shadows. I passed a few hikers on their way up, cautiously, as I had to slow my pace after a clumsy jump off a log back at the lake which stressed my leg. By mid-morning, I was back in the jagged boulder field, paying close attention to my footing on the loose stone. Strange to think those same mountains that hold all that rough, broken rock also produce those long smooth slabs down in the creek bed where the water fans out in glassy sheets like it’s in no particular hurry. The mountain holds both things at once. By the time I neared the trailhead, the sounds had reversed. The creek slowly faded while the distant hum of civilization returned. After 11.6 miles and nearly 3,500 feet of climbing, I felt tired but refreshed.
Gratitude…
The clock on the dash read 4 AM when I pulled away from home, which at this time of year barely qualifies as morning at all. The summer solstice is close enough that leaving felt like skipping night entirely, just slipping out while the world wasn’t paying attention. The long and dark stretch of HWY 18 was mostly mine before catching I-90, with only a few semi-trucks sharing the empty lanes heading east in the pre-dawn glow, which was just beginning to reveal detail of the surrounding mountains. Driving through the Cascades before dawn always slows my thinking down in a good way, the headlights cutting through the dim roads while a familiar playlist accompanies me quietly in the background. By the time I pulled into the trailhead around 5 AM, the drive felt like a single, unbroken thought. Rolling down my window for the last mile, the air outside was crisp and smelled of pine and cold river stone, just as light started to soften the edges of the horizon.
Somewhere early on, my attention settled on Hope. Not the overused version of hope with a lower-case “h,” as in a wish or a goal without a plan, but Hope with a capital “H,” in the deeper sense, similar to what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described when he spoke about Infinite Hope, maybe with a little less justice in mind. The kind of hope that does not depend on any specific outcome but rather on a belief and trust in meaning, love, and fulfillment, which can outlast any single setback. I thought about how much I had relied on that kind of hope for some time. There were times when the future looked uncertain and the evidence offered little encouragement, yet hope remained. Looking back, I realized it had been less of a destination and more of a companion. It gave me enough courage to keep moving forward when I could not see very far ahead. It inspired action, not certainty. It nudged me toward another hike, another reflection, another page in my journal. Week after week, those small acts kept the conversation alive with myself and reminded me that my story was still being written.
By the time I pulled into the trailhead, dawn was beginning to gather around the mountains. Sitting there for a moment, I felt grateful for the quiet realization that Hope had already done its work long before I arrived. It had shaped my willingness to keep showing up, to keep believing a future was worth investing in, even when no one was watching. That felt like enough.
Reflections…
The path to Melakwa Lake was relentless with its elevation gains, stream crossings, rock hops, and that particular kind of focus where your feet have to think for you. Somewhere in the rhythm of all that, my mind drifted to something that had been with me since earlier this week, when I sat in Benaroya Hall listening to the Seattle Symphony perform Gershwin, thanks to an invitation from good friends. Sitting there, watching the musicians, I thought about what Gladwell would say if he walked into that room, every person on that stage has logged ten thousand hours and then some, a few hours of practice every day for most of their lives. There’s something respectful and humbling about that kind of devotion. Every person holding an instrument had spent years practicing when nobody was watching.
Yet what moved me wasn’t their technical or artistic ability. It was how all that effort became something capable of moving a room full of strangers emotionally. The musicians weren’t simply playing notes. They were creating an experience that everyone present stepped into together. And there’s something about being in a space with other people, all quietly coming undone at the same time, that opens something up. For a few minutes, maybe the entire performance, people were feeling, connecting, experiencing. It’s a quiet, grounding reminder that underneath all of our daily routines and defenses, we are all carrying the same capacity to feel, to remember, and to be moved. That kind of shared vulnerability doesn’t come around often enough. But I remind myself that real gratitude is about appreciating the little moments without longing for more.
That led me to think about live music itself and why it affects me differently than listening does alone, not better, just different. There is something vulnerable about gathering with others and allowing yourself to feel whatever the music offers. Nobody is explaining it. Nobody is debating it. For a little while, everyone simply agrees to be present. In a world where so much of life is filtered, edited, and promoted, live music feels refreshingly unguarded.
For me, the way I choose to sit with specific songs has become a quiet practice of self-understanding, a way to map out where I’ve been, and a signal for infinite hope toward the future. My playlist is a library of emotions. For example, as I was hiking, I thought about the live version of Dave Matthews Band’s Steady As We Go (DMB Live Trax, Vol. 25), a song that instantly pulls me back to the early nineties when Kelly and I would follow the band from venue to venue. It carries the weight of a memory so vivid it feels closer than yesterday. Hearing it takes me back to the front room of our first home, when we’d dance together without a second thought about who might see us through the windows. There was a beautiful, unprotected honesty in that space, a quiet declaration that whatever was right in front of us was the only thing that mattered. The lyrics still carry that same resilience today: “Well, troubles, they may come and go / But good times, they’re the gold / And if the road get rocky, girl / Just steady as we go.”
Music doesn’t file memories away so much as tags them with the feeling they carry, and when the right song surfaces again, it can come back more vividly than the original moment did, because the feeling was the whole thing all along. I realized it’s never really been about the songs themselves. It’s about what we attach to them, and how they preserve the color and textures of how a moment actually felt, rather than simply what happened. Using music as an emotional-recall vehicle is a conscious choice to remember the gold, to acknowledge the challenges, and to keep navigating the rocky sections of the path with a steady foot. The path continues.
-Ken
- Alpine Lakes Wilderness, North Bend, WA
- 47° 24′ 46.368″ -121° 26′ 27.204″
- 11.6 miles | 3,479 ft elevation gain | ~7 hours
- Sunrise: 5:13 AM, 34-54 degrees, mostly clear
