In the depths of my health crisis, when I was lying helpless on my hospital bed, I longed to transport myself into nature. Nothing was more soothing than the special channels on my room’s TV, which played quiet scenes of mountain meadows and forest streams. I gazed up at them for long interludes; they eased a deep ache in my soul.
Since diagnosis with ulcerative colitis two-and-a-half years earlier, I hadn’t been able-bodied enough to go camping. It was a great loss—before getting sick, in my thirty-five years as a Healthy Person, I’d camped often and preferred backpacking and canoe camping to car camping, because I liked to get as far as possible from civilization.
But since diagnosis, frequent bouts of pain and diarrhea had often confined me to couches and toilets. When I’d been stable between flare-ups, I had needed to be as productive as possible to make up for lost time and income.
Lying quietly in the hospital, I prayed that someday, I could again visit places like the ones on my little TV screen.
After I emerged and began nursing myself back to health, my life’s priorities changed. I hadn’t fully realized how much I longed for, and needed, nature. As soon as I could walk far enough, I began visiting a forested park near my home. Later, when I was stronger, I went for slow hikes in other natural areas around Portland.
A year after my hospitalization, I took my first camping trip since diagnosis. My husband Ron had been planning to drive up to Mt. Rainier and meet Seattle friends there. It was only a two-night car-camping trip, a quick jaunt. It was the kind of trip I’d done often when healthy, but nowadays we both assumed I wasn’t well enough to go. Even though my meds had kept me in remission since the hospital, I still suffered from exhaustion. It would be another year-and-a-half before I felt like myself again.
As Ron’s camping trip approached, I began feeling depressed. The more I thought about his trip, the more bitter I felt to miss yet another activity I loved, and that I had once done with ease. On the spur of the moment, on the morning he was planning to leave, I tearfully asked if I could tag along after all. Ron, surprised and excited, agreed.
Even car camping for this short length of time was going to be an ordeal for me. Gone were the days of swinging by the grocery store on the way to rivers and mountains, tossing instant food into my pack with little more planning than a hastily-made list. That was how I had done things as a Healthy Person, and it was what Ron had been planning to do today.
But now I relied on a special diet that precluded virtually all processed food, which always contained ingredients I couldn’t safely eat—gluten, dairy, and added sugar. I now cooked most of my meals from scratch. As Ron packed my camping gear for me, I scrambled to precook all my camping meals in advance, arranging them in a large cooler with plenty of ice.
The effort of cooking and prepping, followed by the drive to Rainier, exhausted me even though Ron did the driving. By the time we arrived at the campground, I thought I’d made a mistake by coming here. Our friends were rambunctious. My excitement upon seeing them was followed by dismay. There was a stark difference between my energy and theirs. Would being here make me sicker?
They all stayed up late into the night talking around the campfire. I retreated to Ron’s and my tent at nine, pretending to be cheerful and not uneasy, trying to protect my delicate body from further exhaustion. It was difficult to sleep through their chatter.
I awoke around seven a.m. I had slept poorly and felt bleary, my thighs aching from pressing against the slight incline under our tent. Giving up on sleeping, I emerged to a quiet campsite. It would be hours before the others awoke.
We’d arrived at dusk the night before. Curious despite my fatigue, I wandered around, exploring. The campground map showed a river just downhill, past a series of campsites across the road. I heard the river before I saw it. When I emerged from the forest onto its rocky banks, the sight before me took my breath away.
Wild and white with glacial silt, the river descended through a dramatic valley, dark hillsides rising high on both of its banks to form a steep, forested V. Looking upstream, to my right, the broad riverbed was a boulder-strewn floodplain almost completely devoid of vegetation. The river wound to and fro through the boulders, hastening downstream in one long rapid. The sound of the rushing water was powerful and urgent, and the whole scene was one of deep wilderness, as if nature was showing off its raw force. This was a rare glimpse, I thought, into the state of the world before my people had arrived here.
Standing on the riverbank, all my doubts about coming on this trip were suddenly swept away. I felt astonished, excited, restored, energized. Gratitude surged within me. I knew that despite my fatigue, this moment of sheer wonder had just made the whole trip worthwhile. Being here—the energy I could feel pulsing through me—had to be good for me.
Feeling as though I’d found a secret treasure, I returned to the campsite and quietly made my breakfast. Eventually the others got up, and when they did, my cheerfulness was no longer a pretense. I finally felt ready for a fun day with our friends. They understood about my frailty, and I basked in the chance to spend time with them and share this experience.
At noon we all set off in a carpool towards a nearby trailhead. On the drive, our friends’ car developed a coolant leak, so we spent an extra couple hours waiting for a volunteer park mechanic to meet us in a parking lot. I was grateful for the unexpected rest. My energy had plunged again, and I spent much of the wait sitting in the car, reading a book and resting while the others hung around outside.
At last the car was fixed and we could hike. The dirt trail rose and fell around a high loop, with glorious views that made us exclaim to each other in happiness. Between the vistas, we picked our way across occasional snow patches and hoped we didn’t slip down their steep slopes.
I was the slowest on the trail, lagging behind the others and leaning on my hiking poles. But I didn’t mind—I was happy to be here at all. I felt that, for all my fatigue, my appreciation of being here was probably the greatest of anyone’s today.
After an hour or two, we came to a lookout and stopped for a late lunch, sitting on boulders and gazing at mountaintops across a broad valley. It was here that I had my second powerful moment of the trip.
I had finished eating and was waiting for the others; they were passing around cheese and crackers that I couldn’t eat. For a few moments, no one was engaging with me. As I gazed up at the dramatic, high meadows and snow patches, I remembered where I had been exactly a year ago: in my hospital room.
All month, I’d been reliving the milestones of the previous summer. I felt keenly aware of each one-year anniversary. The pain crisis in June that had sent me to the emergency room for Dilaudid, a strong opioid. My check-in and first night on July 5th. Learning two weeks later that I had a C. diff infection. Losing so much weight, the following week, that I was told my life was in danger.
Right around now, I thought, I would have just been discovering the nature channels. I remembered gazing up at the TV and my deep, aching, yearning prayers: to live, and if I lived, to be in nature again. I had wanted, with all my exhausted heart, to be in places exactly like this.
And a year later, here I was. It was just what I had prayed for. I had lived. I was breathing the fresh mountain air, feeling the sun and breeze on my face, climbing dirt trails, drinking in these colors and these incredible views.
With reverence, I put my hand to my heart. I said a silent thank you to the mountains.
