Once a year, I treat myself to a mental, physical, and spiritual retreat at a beloved place in the central Oregon Cascade Mountains. It's an incredibly special place -- totally off the grid, totally self-sufficient. They generate their own power from a river that flows through the property and their own heat for their 60 rustic cabins and several common buildings from the geothermal springs that course through the bedrock below. There's no cell phone service, no commercial enterprises. They offer rustic cabins, three square vegetarian meals a day, a potpourri of optional workshops such as yoga and other transformative work, and access to a protected parcel of old-growth forest. It is, in other words, a little slice of heaven.
It's a pretty simple existence for those of us on retreat. (I realize that those who live and work there have a very different experience, as they perform the many tasks that make the rest of us comfortable, from preparing meals to shoveling snow from pathways to cleaning the tubs into which the waters from the hot springs flow.) Depending upon my mood from hour to hour, I read, I write, I stretch, I soak, I walk. I have visited this place in all four seasons. I have hiked here in shorts with a bandana soaked in sweat tied around my head; I have hiked in full rain gear with water streaming down my neck and soggy peanut butter sandwiches in my knapsack; I have hiked on snowshoes in the exquisite silence of a crystalline winter day.
In recent years, I have cracked a smile at a signpost installed a few years back alongside one of the main trails from the cabins to the dining hall. Indicating an alternate, less-maintained route from the cabins, it is marked "The Inner Path."
Hiking Is My Inner Path All kidding aside, I do have a spiritual "ace-in-the-hole." I figured this out a little over a decade ago, and reaffirmed it five years ago. It's a simple route to my Inner Path. It's hiking. Or, less glamorously, walking. When I was hired to write a hiking book for Wilderness Press in the mid-1990s -- on the strength of my writing, NOT my hiking experience -- I received an incredible gift. Not the royalties from the book, but a newfound love of hiking. Even as I logged the specifics about the hike, tape recorder in hand and camera at the ready, I was being inculcated with a profound love, a connection to a God and the earth and my fellows that I had never before experienced. My work led me to a place of spiritual renewal when I became a hiker. But, as with most or all spiritual disciplines, I drifted. Half a decade later, I was sidelined from running and cycling as I recovered from surgery, but I was given the green light to walk. In the weeks that followed, my convalescence included hikes that stretched to hours in length. I found that the spiritual and emotional balm from these hikes outweighed any perceived loss of cardiovascular intensity. I pretty much decided at that point that, for me, nothing beats a good, long walk.
How True It Is When I visited my favorite Oregon retreat this past January, 2009, the hiking conditions were not good. Snow had fallen hard and deep weeks before, but an unseasonable warming trend followed by another cold snap had left the snow icy and rigid. My usual trails were buried, indistinguishable beneath the snow; yet snowshoes and X/C skis were out of the question due to the icy crusts on the snow. My only choice for a good leg stretch seemed to be a walk on the remote, lightly traveled forest roads. I was slightly disappointed at what I perceived to be a less authentic wilderness experience, but found the walk to be surprisingly peaceful. In three or four miles' trek, I didn't see another soul except the departing flanks of a deer.
Sally O'Neal writes, lives, hikes, and tries not to take herself too seriously in the Pacific Northwest. Her hiking books published by Wilderness Press include "Hot Showers, Soft Beds, and Dayhikes in the North Cascades" and "Hot Showers, Soft Beds, and Dayhikes in the Central Cascades." Both are out of print, but widely available through booksellers handling used books.