Remembering Quincy

I met Quincy in July of 1984 at a campground just west of the McKenzie Pass on Highway 242 which runs between the Willamette Valley and the town of Sisters on the east side of the Oregon Cascades.  We would spend the next five days together camping out in the wilderness that lies at the foot of the volcanic peaks known as the Three Sisters.

Quincy and I were about the same height at the shoulder, but his head towered over mine due to his much longer neck, and he outweighed me by a hundred pounds or more.  I changed my clothes a few times during the next few days; he always wore the same shaggy coat.

By the end of our mountain trek it was debatable who was the scruffiest even though both of us had bathed at the end of each day’s hike, me by dousing myself with with a bucket of cold snowmelt, he by rolling around in the dirt.  Both of us, without a doubt, smelled pretty “fragrant” by the time we finished the trip.

 Fast forward to 2010 when I entered these mountains with a different and far less mangy looking companion:  Cindy.  We left the Metolius River Resort about 10:15 a.m. and drove into Sisters to refuel and travel up Highway 242 west toward its intersection with Oregon 126 and then on to our friends’ home just south of Eugene.

The Chevron station in Sisters was jammed with cars being refueled as was the parking lot it shared with McDonald’s whose customers were lined up nearly out the door as they waited to fill up their stomachs with a late breakfast of Egg McMuffins or an early lunch of Big Macs at 11:00 a.m.  But as we left town bound for the McKenzie Pass there were few vehicles ahead or behind us and the Three Sisters quickly passed out of view.

The highway’s two lanes narrowed to Ford Model “A” width and corkscrewed up the mountains.  When reached the first scenic viewpoint we found all of the other westbound traffic:  A few cars and two Harley-Davidson motorcycles.  A guy from east of the mountains who owned a Harley with a burnt-orange paint job discussed the finer points of motorcycling with a biker dude and lady in leathers.  We could see the main peaks that we had spotted earlier in the week --- Washington, Jefferson, and Three Fingered Jack, rising up over the miles-long expanse of basaltic boulders that run north to south in this area.

A short while later we reached the pass and the Dee Wright Observatory, a pile of big, black rocks stacked one a top the other forming a castle-like turret.  We climbed to the top where there is a sweeping view to the North and Middle Sister to the south and the other major Cascade Peaks to the north, including the haze-enshrouded summit of Mount Hood east of Portland.

A Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel with cheeks bulging out like helium balloons on either side of his face was eating out of the hand of a backpacker reclining against the rocks at the base of the observatory structure.  When I learned that he and his hiking companion had just come off the portion of the Pacific Crest Trail that traverses the Three Sisters Wilderness I recalled my journey through the same area with Quincy over a quarter century ago.

Quincy, his pals, and the other members of our contingent, met up at the end of a Sunday summer afternoon and enjoyed a campfire dinner together.  Then I climbed into my sleeping bag, zipped up the “door” to my tent, and fell fast asleep.  Monday morning we ate a quick breakfast, packed up our gear, and set off across the lava fields across the highway.

For the first two days we hiked about four to five miles a day, up and down hill, across the flanks of the still snow-clad Sisters looming above us.  We whetted our appetites each evening before dinner with Mai-Tai cocktails may from clumps of soft, summer snow.  We stuffed our faces with all manner of great food.  The Milky Way wheeled above us in the night sky.

The third day was a day of rest:  We must moseyed around taking photos, or sat around the campsite reading.  Then we resumed hiking toward the peaks on the fourth day.  On the fifth and final day we reversed course and hiked seven miles back to our starting point.

Until the end of the week when we encountered weekend backpackers coming in as we neared the end of the trail and our awaiting cars, we only saw two other people:  Horseback riders who, like us, were camping out in the wilderness.

Quincy and I stuck together through each of the days that we were on the trail.  On our “day off”, though, he just hung out with the pals with whom he had arrived on the previous Sunday.  They were a sociable, closely-bonded band of buddies.  If one of them would make a “pit stop” along the trail, after he was done, he would run like hell to catch up with his friends who had gone on ahead of him.  And they always had dinner together, away from the rest of us hikers, eschewing our protein-laden meals for a totally vegetarian repast.

I haven’t though about Quincy in many years and if our trip hadn’t taken us this far north into Central Oregon he probably wouldn’t have come to mind.  I don’t know where Quincy and his friends are today, but it’s not likely that they are trekking through the Oregon Cascades any longer.  Their lifespan is only about  about fifteen to twenty years, so odds are that they are now high about The Three Sisters looking down upon hikers in the wilderness from Llama Heaven.