Ex-Pilot Grounded by a Love of Hiking

I was born in Dunsmuir, California, near the foot of Mount Shasta. My dad was a railroad engineer. When I was 6, our family moved to the Cascades in Oregon for one year, when Southern Pacific was putting in the railroad across the mountains into the Klamath Valley. We lived in a tent, 14 feet by 20 feet. It had a wooden floor and wood frames partway up.

I missed my first year of school. I was 7 before they caught me and put me in school. But I learned as much during that year as if I had been going to school, how to fish, how to pick huckleberries and that kind of stuff.

I’ve been outdoors-oriented ever since. Wherever I’ve lived, I’ve been a hiker. When I came here, I started hiking on a weekly basis. First in the Sierras and then in the San Gabriels, and then about 25 years ago, I started hiking in the Santa Monicas.

The reason I picked the Santa Monicas is every other day I can get in the car, and 20 minutes later I’m at a trail head. I can do a four-mile walk in two hours, get some good exercise and be home for lunch. And see some interesting things. Yesterday, a number of ravens flying around, one red-tailed hawk. On occasion, you see a coyote, a deer--enough to keep a person interested.

Right now, the flowers are coming out in bloom, and this is a big interest to me.

With the drought, we don’t have anywhere near the flowering season this year that we normally would have, but all the chaparral plants are still alive. Each plant that has existed through all these millions of years in the Santa Monicas has been able to survive droughts much worse than five years. In the past, we must have had some 20- and 30-year droughts. So I think the drought isn’t going to do as much damage to the mountains as we think it would.

We have a group that hikes every Tuesday night, about two hours. We do five or six miles. And I take groups out on four consecutive Saturdays or Sundays. I’ve had the Wilderness Institute the last three Sundays, and the Learning Tree I’ve had on Saturdays. Then I’ll lose that group and maybe never see them again, but I’ll pick up another group of 28 or 30. I’ve been doing this now rather consistently for 11 years.

The idea I have is that we should set aside backcountry, wild lands, not so much for the present but for the future, because several generations down the line, it’s going to be hard to get out and just become relaxed.

It takes a political environment that is conducive to this before we can get ahead. We have had some victories but a lot of losses, too.

I feel relieved when I get out into the open space, and nearly everybody that I take into the mountains comes out of the experience feeling a lot better.

You’re coming from a full week of aggravation in an office, where you have problems with your head, and I can transfer all your problems to your feet in 30 minutes.

When I was 6 years old, everything was new, whatever I saw, a squirrel or a chipmunk. But it’s still as exciting as ever to be out in the mountains.

Recently, I had my eyes wide open, and I was enjoying every step of the way. I was by myself and didn’t see anybody on the trail, except for scrub jays scolding me for coming into their territory. So things haven’t changed very much.