Hurricane Hill: Sunrise Hike on Hurricane Ridge, Olympic NP

Some mornings stay with me for reasons I never see coming. Yesterday’s drive toward the Olympic Peninsula gave me plenty of time to think, and I kept returning to a conversation from the week before that nudged me to consider what truly mattered. Last week’s early morning drive ended at a hospital instead of a trailhead. This morning’s ended at Hurricane Hill. At first, it felt like I had been asked to let go of a hike. Looking back, I can see it was something else entirely, and I found myself even more grateful for honesty that risked my disappointment. By the time I started up the trail, long before sunrise, gratitude had become less about getting what I wanted and more about recognizing the people who help protect the life I love.

Hurricane Hill

Hurricane Ridge, a path I walked in snowshoes last March, met me with silence this time. Just after four in the morning, the trail stretched ahead beneath a sky slowly giving way to first light, and nothing interrupted the sound of my footsteps. No birds, no breeze, no voices. Only the steady climb and the cold morning air. Somewhere between the trailhead and the summit, my breathing settled, my thoughts slowed, and the world outside became small enough for the world inside to be heard. The sunrise was beautiful when it came, and the mountain woke up all at once. But the part I keep thinking about came earlier, in the dark, when the mountain asked nothing of me except to be present.

That stillness became the backdrop for a question I brought with me. I kept thinking about balance. Why is it that whenever one part of my life catches its rhythm, another skips a beat? For years I believed the answer was discipline, more willpower. But somewhere along the trail I realized it was much simpler than that, and by the time I started back down the mountain, I felt perfection giving way to something steadier.

The Journey…

The silence was the first thing I noticed this morning. I stepped onto the Hurricane Hill trail a little after 4 AM, nearly an hour before sunrise, with just enough light gathering on the eastern horizon to leave my headlamp in my pack, so I walked it just the way it was. The air was cold enough to sting the tips of my fingers and carried the clean scent of high meadows and alpine fir, while the dark silhouettes of the Olympic peaks stood against a sky softening from black to deep blue. My boots on the paved trail were the only sound. There wasn’t a bird singing, a breeze moving, or another person nearby. It felt like I had arrived before the rest of the world woke up, wait… I did. That kind of stillness is hard to describe because it isn’t empty. It has a presence of its own, and for the first hour it was the best company I could have asked for.

As the trail climbed higher, my body reminded me that I had skipped last week’s hike. My legs loosened gradually, my breathing found a rhythm, and I could feel the elevation asking a little more of me. Two weeks earlier I’d stood on Crystal Peak, and that felt like a different body than the one breathing hard up this ridge near six thousand feet. Somewhere between the first uphill steps and the summit, the outside world got quieter and my thoughts got easier to hear. By the time I reached the rocky summit, the sky had opened into blue, orange, and gold. The Strait of Juan de Fuca stretched out below, Port Angeles rested in the distance, and snow-covered Olympic peaks stood to the southeast. Then, almost on cue, the mountain found its voice. Birds began singing. A light breeze moved through the alpine trees. The high-meadow grasses and wildflowers released their scent, and the silence that had carried me uphill gave way to life.

Driving home, I realized the sunrise wasn’t what stayed with me most. It was the climb under a dark sky just before it. We spend so much of our lives surrounded by conversation, notifications, opinions, and movement that real quiet almost feels unfamiliar. This morning reminded me that silence isn’t something to fill. Sometimes it’s something to receive. Hurricane Hill offered a clear trail, a climb that asked enough of me to stay present, and a view that needed no commentary. Somewhere along that paved path, I smiled at the thought that it resembled a yellow brick road, except I felt more like the Tin Man than anyone else, a little stiff at the beginning but eventually finding my stride. By the time I reached the summit, I wasn’t looking for anything more than what the mountain had already given me, and the only company I had up there was a few native critters.

Gratitude…

I left the house yesterday to get closer to the trail, following Highway 101 northwest toward the Olympic Peninsula, a route I’ve come to know well. Two hours in, I stopped at the taproom in Quilcene I never pass up, the one with my favorite burger. Another hour, with my playlist filling the last stretch of road, carried me to Port Angeles, where I checked into a modest hotel and turned in early. The 3 AM alarm came fast. From there it was 45 minutes, including 19 winding miles up Hurricane Ridge Road, and I pulled in at 4 AM with enough time to beat the sunrise to the summit.

What I kept circling back to on the drive, though, wasn’t the view ahead. It was a conversation from last week. I had been managing a physical condition that came with some pain, and while I hoped it was temporary, it made the decision about hiking feel a little heavier than usual. One of my kids reminded me that pushing too hard could cost me weeks, and that I might be trading one spectacular morning for a long stretch at home, staring out the window, wishing I were exactly where I was headed. I didn’t want to hear it. My first reaction wasn’t appreciation. I already had another hike in mind, and changing those plans felt like giving something up. A clear morning in the Pacific Northwest doesn’t ask twice, so I weighed every option I had. But as the miles rolled by, those words stayed with me. They came from someone who knew how much these hikes mean to me, and who wanted to make sure I’d still be walking them every week.

Looking back, that conversation felt like a Father’s Day gift that didn’t come in a box. It came wrapped in honesty and concern, offered by someone willing to risk my disappointment because they cared more about my future than my plans for one week. I taught my kids to look out for people. I just didn’t expect the people to be me. I didn’t make it to the mountains last week. Instead, my early morning drive took me to the ER, where I was admitted for an unplanned surgery. Nothing too serious, but I was assured it would have been if I hadn’t arrived when I did. Sometimes gratitude isn’t about getting everything we hoped for. Sometimes it’s recognizing the people who help us protect the life we love, even when we need a little nudge and some time to see they’re right.

Reflections…

My trail-thought started with something that’s been forming for some time and only came into focus in recent weeks: Balance. I pictured a labyrinth marble-run, the game where you tilt a board to guide a marble through a maze without letting it drop. The challenge is described as “overcoming obstacles and reaching the end without falling off the paths,” which isn’t a bad description of life, though I would add, “and enjoy the journey along the way.” As I walked, I kept coming back to the same pattern. Whenever one part of my life was flourishing, another faded into the background. On a clean physical stretch, I’d turn down social invitations because I knew I wasn’t likely to pass on the bites and beverages. Last year the tilt ran the other way. As I gave more attention to my emotional well-being, my workouts slipped, my social life thinned out, and even household chores fell down the list. The details changed, but the shape never did. I wasn’t becoming more balanced. I was just moving the imbalance around.

For years I believed the answer was stronger discipline, more willpower. Looking back, I don’t think discipline was ever the problem. The problem was that I kept setting expectations that couldn’t survive an ordinary day. If I missed a workout or drifted from a routine, I didn’t treat it like a small setback. I treated it like everything had fallen apart. One missed commitment became an excuse to write off the rest of the day and start fresh on Monday or the first of the month, usually with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s filling the gap. To be clear, the problem was not Ben or Jerry, it was the pint, maybe the spoon. I wasn’t failing because I lacked resolve. I was failing because I’d built habits that depended on perfection and left no room for being human. Perhaps I’m humbly qualified to author the book “If life were made up of only Mondays, I would be perfect.” Seeing that the design was the flaw, not my will, brought a wave of relief.

That changed the question. The issue wasn’t a lack of discipline but the height of the bar I’d set, so I started asking: how small does a commitment need to be so that I’ll hold on to it even on my worst day? When a daily commitment keeps becoming a barrier, the answer isn’t to push harder. It’s to make it smaller. My physical routine changed first. The commitment stopped being a long workout and became two small pieces: step out the front door each morning, and walk into the gym sometime that day. Once I was outside, the walk almost always happened on its own, and 8 to 18 minutes on one muscle group was almost too easy to skip. The same principle worked everywhere else. Mental wellness became a few minutes of reading. Emotional wellness became one thought worth carrying through the week until it became my trail-thought. Social wellness became one genuine way to show up for someone. My creative outlet became one strum on my guitar. Shrink the commitment until no honest excuse can reach it.

In that moment of clarity, I understood the value of small commitments as non-negotiables. That was when balance started to feel possible. The smallness wasn’t settling for less. It was what allowed every important part of my life to stay alive at the same time, each one getting a daily touch instead of taking turns going dark. I started thinking of each habit as a pilot light. My physical health, my mind, my emotions, and my relationships all kept a small flame burning every day. At times one area needs more attention than another, but nothing has to go completely dark just because something else is demanding my focus. Instead of taking turns rebuilding neglected parts of my life, I was keeping them all warm enough to return to without starting over.

As the path turned toward the descent, the pieces felt settled. True balance isn’t about hiding one part of life in the shadows to tilt the board toward another; it’s about refusing to let any part of life disappear while another takes center stage. Keeping every pilot light burning gives me something I never had when I chased perfection. It gives me a steady place to stand. From there, I can choose where to invest more energy when it calls for it, not because everything else has been abandoned, but because everything else is still quietly alive. By the end I didn’t feel fixed. I felt like someone who had finally stopped trying to be. The path continues.

-Ken