We Call Them Hills

Day 99: The 3000-3500' peaks surrounding Alder Lake are minor bumps compared to the 6000-8000' summits of the Cascade Range, and mere pimples on the landscape which surrounds 14,410' Mount Rainier. This is hilly country, Washington; divided roughly in two halves by the Cascades, with the balance shifted markedly to the west where the Olympics rise from the seashore. Hills, I tell you. These are not mountains, no matter what folks in the northeast believe (and you know who you are, my two good friends).

Most, if not all of these rolling mounds of earth and rock have borne timber at one time or another. Most have been logged once, twice, even three times since the days when old Paul Bunyan first urged Babe the Blue Ox into their canyons and onto their crests. These are penetrable hills, were the timber company gates thrown wide to public access, not alpine challenges such as Rainier and Adams and Baker, which are covered with permanent glaciers and deep crevasses. The elk and deer roam these fields, summering high and wintering low where forage is easily gotten. Fish are plentiful in the higher lakes where no roads go, and only fishermen with map and compass venture. But hills these are, not mountains, and my eyes lift past them for sight of the peaks of my younger years.