Remembering Church Mountain

The older I get it seems that the memories of the past become reminders of good times and fodder for personal reflection.  Such are my memories of Church Mountain, a relatively small and insignificant mountain tucked in among the thousands of peaks in the Cascade Range of northwestern Washington state.   

 

The summer of 1961, following my freshman year of college, I got a summer job with the U.S. Forest Service in the Mount Baker National Forest, based at the District Ranger Station in Glacier, Washington.  The first couple of weeks, the Chief Ranger assigned the three "college boys" to working at odd jobs around the shop, campgrounds and ranger station. Seasonal employees shared a bunkhouse for leisure and sleeping, but we took our meals at the nearby Church Mountain lodge. The third week, all the seasonal employees and a half dozen year-round workers spent the week in a neighboring district training at the annual “Fire School.” There we learned the skills needed to put out fires, use fire fighting tools, read maps, and plot coordinates on an Osborne Fire Finder.  Upon our return to the Glacier District, I was assigned to man a “Fire Lookout Station” for the rest of the summer; my lookout was perched atop 6,315 ft. Church Mountain.

 

Here is a view of Church Mountain from valley floor near Glacier, Washington

The only way to reach the Church Mountain Lookout was by a 5-mile trail that began at the end of a gravel logging road.  The first three miles of the trail passed through mature Douglas Fir forest with trees towering over 150 feet high.  The last two miles of trail rose above the tree line; cutting across a high meadow forming the base of a huge bowl that ran almost vertically to the ridge line of Church Mountain. 

July 5, 1961 was the day I moved to the lookout.  It is a day I will always remember.  Our small moving crew consisted of myself, another seasonal employee, Tennessee buddy, Bob Neal, three year-round district crewmen, and three pack horses.  The pack horses carried a summer's supply of kerosene for my cooking stove, some tools, batteries for the short-wave radio, my initial food supplies, a sleeping bag, and other personal gear.

The climb through the forested areas followed the switchback trail up the ridge and after about three miles the trail entered an open meadow. In early July, the meadow floor was bursting with new grass and thick blueberry bushes; but the creeks flowing full with melt water still had snow bridges covering the trail . We had to use our shovels to break down the snow bridges so the horses could cross on the rocky stream bed.




A portion of the meadow in late July... snow still hangs on the ridge line.



 As we entered the meadow, little furry "lookouts" from the colony of marmots populating the meadow constantly emitted shrill "whistles" to alert their cousins as we wound our way through the meadow. About half way across the meadow,  a snow squall hit us with wind and blowing snow.  As we ascended the final quarter mile of the trail it became so steep that we had to unload the horses and pack the supplies on our backs the last hundred yards to the lookout This required several round trips, but we finally got all the gear and equipment to the lookout.




The final ridge leading to the lookout summit. 

Look closely and you can see the outline of the lookout perched on the edge of Church Mountain's lower summit.

 About the time we reached the summit, the sun emerged and revealed the panorama of the Cascade Range to the north and east and spectacular Mt. Baker to our south.   At 10,781 feet, Mt. Baker is covered with a glacial cap and looms above every other peak in the area.

 

Mt. Baker as seen from the summit of Church Mountain

 

This was my first trip up Church Mountain Trail, but over the course of that summer I hiked the trail many times.  The trail became so familiar that I knew every turn, rock, and bump.  I hiked it in the fog and rain, as well as on beautiful clear days.  I learned where to look for ripe berries, flowers, the occasional bear or mule deer, grouse, and the ever present marmots.

The memories of that summer were indelibly imprinted in my mind.  They are as fresh today as they ever were, but it was not until some 21 years after that summer that I was able to return to Mt. Baker with my wife Becky and our two sons, Robert & Mike.  Over the intervening years I had often thought of the Church Mountain Trail with its spectaculat vistas and wanted to share that same hiking experience with my family.


During the summer of 1982 our family took a six week western tour, mostly camping in state and national parks.  We touched our northwestern most stop when we arrived in Glacier late one afternoon and set up camp in the North Nooksack River valley.  We could hardly wait until the next day.  Bright and early we headed up the old logging road leading to the beginning point for Church Mountain Trail.  As we neared the trail head I saw that the logging road extended further than I remembered and the once magnificent Douglas fir trees were all gone, harvested for timber years before our return.  It was so disappointing to see that the trail now traveled through young Douglas fir trees that stood only five to seven feet tall.  After hiking a couple of miles through these small trees, we reached the meadow and things began to look somewhat familiar, but on this particular year even the meadow was dramatically different.

The winter of 1981-82 in the Cascade Mountains had seen above normal snowfall and as we broke above the tree line and entered the meadow we found snow pack still four to five feet deep covering the meadows.  The snow obscured the creeks, the grass and blueberry bushes that grew in the meadows.  Hiking through the snow was tiring and as we reached the final quarter mile up the steepest part of the ridge, Becky and ten year old Mike decided to stop.  Robert and I continued on to the summit only to find another disappointment, the Church Mountain Lookout no longer existed.  It had been removed several years earlier. We learned later that the Forest Service had transitioned to spotting fires from light aircraft rather than using fixed base lookouts on mountain peaks. 

This is a view taken just a few years ago showing some hikers standing on the flat area where the old lookout was located back in my summer of 1961.  The view is looking west toward Bellingham, WA.

 

 

 

Despite my disappointment with the changes I'd found along Church Mountain Trail, the spectacular views from the top of Church Mountain had remained virtually unchanged.

 

View of Mt. Baker from another nearby peak.

 

Today, some 30+ years later, as I reflect on my disappointment on that return trip to the Church Mountain Trail I believe that experience has application to life’s spiritual journey. 

The things of life constantly change, not only the environment, but friends, the old home place, an old church, and on and on we could go.  A wise man said, “The only constant in life is change and you can count on that”.  The changes in the Church Mountain Trail were disappointing to me because I had wanted my family to experience the same trail I had enjoyed some 20 years earlier.  But guess what, my family was not disappointed because for them it was a “new trail” on that June day in 1982.  They had no basis for comparison, so they enjoyed the beauty and challenge of the trail as they experienced it on that day.  That day, my family was "looking forward" while I was "looking back."

 

The apostle Paul reminds us in his writings to the Philippian church that looking back and remembering the past is not as important in our faith walk as looking forward.   “No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it,^[a] but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.” – (NLT) Philippians 4:13-14

Although the Church Mountain Trail had changed for me, the place it led us had not changed.  The trail took us to our mountain top goal and we were rewarded with spectacular views of Mt. Baker and the Cascade Range.

As I reflect on these memories from over fifty years ago I am again reminded that although  my life’s trail has constantly changed, God is constant; the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

I do believe it's okay to remember the past; we just don't need to focus our life on those things that are behind us.  It is a much better thing to look forward to what's ahead, especially God’s call to salvation and our "heavenly prize" through Jesus Christ.

 

Now, let's look toward tomorrow and ramble!

 

In case you are wondering, this is what the U.S. Forest Service lookouts in the Mt. Baker National Forest looked like 50+ years ago.  This is actually the lookout on Winchester Mountain, a few miles east of Church Mountain.   My lookout appeared exactly the same, but this one had more flat ground to walk around on than my location on Church Mountain. My Tennessee buddy, Bob Neal, manned this lookout that summer.  He also had a good view of Mt. Baker in the background.