Dave:  What is your favorite trail? Hike? Mountain? Lake?  Hmmmm.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever really been asked this before. If so, it hasn’t ever stood out enough in my mind that I recall what my answer may have been.  But I did realize this summer that a LOT of people were asking me what my favorite hike was. Or trail, lake, mountain, or climb.  After all, it became pretty common knowledge that I was THAT guy who knocked out over 450 miles last summer. I guess that stands out. Also made for a great conversation starter on some of my tours.

On the surface, this sounds like a pretty straightforward question. Until you start remembering that Glacier National Park has over 734 miles of maintained trails, and it’s about 1,000,000 acres plus. 

If you factor in the 250 miles I did this summer, one could almost argue I’ve technically covered about the whole park. So naturally one would assume there has to be a favorite. A favorite SOMETHING. Be it a hike or mountain or water feature.

So naturally, I fall back on my memory of the last 40 years and sort out the Glacier National Park experiences. And there have been quite a few of them. I started thinking about all the marathon hikes. You know the ones where it’s a 25-mile day with lakes mountains and passes all lumped together. Where you start at dawn, and you come rolling back into the trailhead at 10:00 PM in the dark of night.  Oomph.  I get tired just thinking about those long miles.

Then I recall those perfect days. When everything was absolutely right from the weather to the snow to the trail to the fauna and the flora. Like the tumblers of a giant combination locked just all fell into place.

Those once-in-a-lifetime moments when the clouds cleared at just the right second to grant me that forever view. I recall a lot of really really great climbs and mountains of the past. As if they were just yesterday.

But what about the wonderful miles of pure donkey misery? The days were just everything hurt from your feet to your back to your head? Every fiber of your being, every essence of your spirit, just feels like it was beaten with 10,000 hammers. You can’t walk you can’t think. You just want the day to be done so you can lie down somewhere and die in peace. 

So many storms that I just pushed my way through. So many thick brush-covered forest floors that tore at every inch of exposed skin till it felt like I was just a skeleton fighting to get out of a buzz saw.  I have a lot of those hikes forever etched into my memory and my DNA.

Some of the most brutal experiences in life make for some of the most vivid and lasting memories in the mind. And are a constant reminder that the body is the most incredible bio-mechanical machine that has ever existed in the history of the world.

But a lot of great hikes and places have been all about the company I’ve kept, not so much the journey or location. The people I’ve shared those highs and lows with. Places and people are a wonderful and powerful combination. Both for happiness and misery, they make the memory so much stronger.

I recall some of my best hikes and the trails that I shared with some truly incredible people. Most of them are still with me, and some of them are not. I cherish those miles more than a lot of the hours I have spent hiking solo.

So, then what is it? What is my favorite thing in Glacier? At the end of the day, what would I put on my tombstone? This is a rhetorical question because I’m having my ashes scattered. It’s even already paid for :-). 

I really wish this question was that simple to answer. I’m half tempted to just throw out the name of a mountain or lake and call it good. But everyone who knows me understands I can’t be so without a purpose and do that.

So, with a little reflection this summer, I think I have an answer. Because I actually found my favorite trail.  My favorite hike. My favorite journey through this wonderful wilderness known as Glacier National Park.  Of course, you will be disappointed to hear that it has no name. But I can explain its attributes to you.

My favorite trail stands alone and is not labeled on a map. A trail that I created and followed and called my own. It’s a meandering path with unfathomable views.

It is a traverse that cuts deep into the mountains and is the very fabric of what makes Glacier so great. With big endless azure skies and heavily blanketed snowfields beneath every step, it is a trail that’s never the same and changes every year.

A trail that I could never find again. It must be created anew every season. It’s a place that can be shared but must be enjoyed and experienced at the moment.  For it fades away with the heat of the summer only to be renewed by the cold of the winter. 

I’m talking about a transient physical place, that must be accepted and appreciated when the mind is laser-focused. The senses are acutely aware.  I found my all-time favorite hike in Glacier this summer after 37 years.  And I look forward to finding the next one.  And the one after that.  And after that.

As John Muir once said, “The mountains are calling and I must go.” Life is a gift. Why waste it mowing the lawn?