Looking up and away with my buddy Kurt at the North Cascades, America’s majestic and yet oft-forgotten gem of a national park.

The jolly giant laughs after falling on his ass…

Views from early in the drive up on the Cascade River Road to the trailhead for the hike. Was a bit of a late start and after 2:00 in the afternoon. Down below the Cascade River tears thru a narrow gorge.

North Cascades National Park is a rare gem among national parks in the Lower 48.

Studying those drops below in the Class IV-V whitewater gorge of the Cascade River, one of America’s National Wild & Scenic Rivers.

Once kayaked this whitewater river with old paddling buddy John Kraske and a group of other boaters back in the mid-1990s. The experience was dangerous, fun, exhilarating, and exhausting. It demanded intense focus, relaxed agility, and bursts of speed and power while still admiring the beauty of nature.

The power and beauty of plants.

Peering deep into the North Cascades.

My friend Kurt here in the North Cascades, Sunday the 11th of October 2009. Back in early July of the same year he served as my Best Man in my second (only public, official) wedding to my then-now-ex-wife Kristina. We met Kurt and his wife Karen during the early 2000s in personal growth seminars and trainings up over the border in British Columbia, Canada.

At the trailhead, finally, where this road branches off from the Cascade River Road further down below. Meanwhile, we contemplate spiritual mysteries, the nature of the Divine within Nature itself and the Divine itself as Nature. Then we laugh and laugh and laugh. And cry from the pain we feel in both our marriages as we love our wives so much. And chuckle again as we taken in the magnificent majesty of this small planet carved by not only fire and ice but by life.

Views from around the trailhead parking lot.

Kurt, aka Byron of Cascadia, about to take me on a ramble.

An unknown little lake along the way. Found out many years later it’s Lake La Rush.

We moved slowly along swapping stories and diving deep into philosophy, nature, sexuality, relationship dynamics, and spirituality.

The ground around the lake proved as interesting as the sky.

We spent quite awhile exploring around this lake up in the mountain woods.

Kurtles making a horny Sasquatch face!

This lake ended up being our turnaround spot, so we hung out here a little bit longer to explore and mess around. Two men deep in conversation about depth itself and then stopping to laugh and blurt out goofy stuff followed by more laughs.

Selfie time. Truth is I don’t really know exactly where I am other than along the borderlands between the national park and surrounding national forests up off a web of dirt roads near a national wild and scenic river. At the time not sure Kurt even knows where we are, but he doesn’t care and is utterly confident we’re down here at the bottom of the atmosphere upon a continent in this planet.

Are we on the old, steep Lookout Mountain Trail? Or on the Hidden Lake Trail? Unable to find any pond-in-the-woods like the one we’re at upon any of our maps. Dang! I know my maps! Kurt said he’s been up to the fire lookout tower several times. Once or twice spent the night there. This dayhike was spontaneous. Didn’t plan for a hike upon leaving Seattle, so didn’t have a map. Not to worry, we had a good time anyway & both of us are experienced enough to burrow down and make shelter and build a fire from scratch if we truly needed to do so. Still…yeah, I value the Ten Essentials and carrying them. Years later, in 2024, Kurt tells me it’s Lake La Rush off USFS Road 1550. One can find basic info on this hike on the Washington Trails Association (WTA) website as well as other nearby and more better known hikes that branch off the Cascade River Road.

No worries, tho. Kurt & I are enjoying ourselves as we mess around the lake.

Remnants of a long ago campsite. This is a nice campsite, and it’s inviting us to stay. We, however, aren’t prepared to spend the night here. We’ll head back to Kurt’s cabin soon enough. Eat and sleep there.

Kurt finds treasure, an old wooden block to use as a seat to sit on somewhere sometime around this lake.

Kurt dances a little too fast with that block of wood…

Kurt’s fine. He’s unhurt. And it’s time to turn around here at the lake in the woods & head on back down the trail to the car.

We say farewell to the North Cascades as we reach the car. See ya later, Mountains!

Monday morning comes around with the Sun and I’m back on the road, driving down Route 20, the North Cascades Highway. Here I’m rolling thru the Skagit River Valley east of Rockport, WA and already well past Marblemount.

The Skagit River Valley is beautiful, appears still, even lost in time, yet is dynamic and ever-changing.

Scanning the countryside and feeling a certain homesickness upon seeing the old farm over yonder. I’m at the Sutter Creek Rest Area on the river right banks of the Skagit River just east of Rockport.

My shadow knows!

Monday morning on the side of the road…

The Skagit flows on by the rest area at Sutter’s Creek as I admire the October colors. Monday 12 October 2009.

Beyond the edge of the river rises the Illabot Peaks massif. It’s 5,944 feet tall. For me, the butte-like peak gave off series eerie Close Encounters of the Third Kind vibes as I’ve encountered those mysterious non-human objects before and will again.

The mighty Skagit…

Trees. We see them without seeing them. We know their forests are being cut down and decimated by out-of-control clearcutting in many places. And, trees are magnificent organisms, each one its own ecosystem.

Clearly am enamored with trees, LOL

Trees stay in one three-dimensional space while moving relentlessly thru time.

St. Martin-St. Francis Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Church in the North Cascades. It was found in stages across the 1950s and 60s. The church is small but active, the building of the church has a bell tower and a huge, arch-like altar window with stunning views of the North Cascades. The website for the church states its “doors are always open.”

This small Episcopal Christian church nestled in the Skagit River Valley sits at the bottom of a jumble of big hills and mountain ridges. Monday 12 October 2009.

It’s time to get on the road and head on back to Seattle. It’s still morning, a little after 11:00, and feel the urge to get going. I admire the views one more time and say my see-ya-laters to the area.

Kurt & Karen celebrating together. This from a little over a year earlier on Wednesday 14 May 2008. They’ve been married for a while then. I consider both dear friends, and, sure, we were a lot closer back then. Friendships sometimes ebb and flow with the tides of life, and, we live further apart these days. He was my Best Man in my 2009 public wedding to Kristina, whom I’ve already been with a number of years. Love the guy. Aye, indeed, love ’em both.

Seven years later…I’m back at Kurt’s cabin, this time with Kurt and our buddy Wayne. Here I’m standing on the deck of Kurt & Karen’s cabin looking out across the Cascade River. Wouldn’t wanna be here in a flood! This is on Saturday 23 April 2016.

Look up into North Cascades National Park from Kurt’s cabin on the Cascade River outside Marblemount.

Me on the same day in late April 2016 standing on the deck to Kurt’s cabin. Wayne took this foto. Going to the cabin was a central part of our friendship during the early part of the 21st Century. We drove out from this cabin 7 years earlier on the wonderful ramble to nowhere in particular off the Cascade River Road into the national park.

Kurt had this old newspaper from 2011 laying upon the coffee table in the den. A local outdoorsman took a foto of this bear while hiking in the national park near here. The hiker saw the bear in the western slopes of the mountains in the drainages of the Upper Cascade River not too far from the Cascade River Road. Park Rangers confirmed it was indeed a grizzly bear native to Washington and not a transient down from Canada. It was the first confirmed foto of a grizzly in Washington in nearly half-a-century. The plan is now to reintroduce more grizzlies into Washington, and it’s an issue I have mixed feelings about as it will change everything.

Screenshot cropped from a video Kurt texted me in mid-October 2024. He bought this copy in Katmandu, Nepal years ago while on a journey of loss, healing, and self-reclamation while exploring Himalayan Buddhist culture. He writes of this on his YouTube page, “Byron of Cascadia.” For me, I chuckle at the looping spirals of life coiling thru time and space and the messiness of living our lives to reconnect this and that and the other knowns and the still-unknowns.