The 50 Wilderness Hikes (Personal) Challenge

291 miles.

43,000 feet of elevation gain.

50 Wilderness hikes.

One deeply personal journey.

With this year marking the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, Oregon Wild launched the inaugural 50 Hikes Challenge, inviting supporters to hike in each and every Wilderness – existing and proposed – in the state. We created the Challenge as a fun, interactive way to raise the profile of Wilderness in Oregon while building momentum for our campaigns to permanently protect Crater Lake, the Rogue River, and Devil’s Staircase.

I decided to personally tackle the 50 Hikes Challenge, figuring that it’d be a great way to see many of the special places in Oregon that I hadn't yet crossed off my list. I was craving a new personal challenge and frankly, the checklist mentality seemed to fit my Type A/OCD tendencies. So in early May, it began with one of my close-in, staple hikes in the old-growth forest along the Salmon River in the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness. At that time, I couldn’t have predicted the impact this journey would have on me.

If you’ve followed Oregon Wild’s work, you already know why Wilderness is important. Wilderness provides us with clean water. It preserves unspoiled wildlife habitat. It offers world-class recreation opportunities. But perhaps the most significant reason to protect Wilderness – and I’d wager the reason that most of us do this work - is much more personal.

For me, Wilderness is where life’s peak moments happen. It’s where I go to find answers to my life's most basic and personal questions. It’s where I go to find solitude and to stem loneliness. It’s silent in all the right ways.

Wilderness is my church and hiking is my meditation. It’s where I go to escape and make sense of an increasingly insane and sometimes disheartening world. It’s where everything makes perfect sense and where life’s problems seem more manageable.

Some areas, I hiked with a friend. Many, I did just with myself and my thoughts. Some Wilderness areas required more of me - more blood, sweat, and tears – the first being a lot if I timed my hike with the peak of the mosquito season. But each one made an impression on me and gave me a story for the road.

There was the spotted owl that graciously posed for our Oregon Wild group in the Table Rock Wilderness. There was the jolly suction dredge miner named Albert who affably gave me a heads-up about bears in the area as I set up camp just outside the Kalmiopsis Wilderness – and in the next breath, matter-of-factly warned me about the recent Sasquatch activity in the area. There was the blustery false summit on South Sister which nearly blew a friend and me off our feet atop the Three Sisters Wilderness. And there were the distant midnight wolf howls that provided the soundtrack to a moonlit night in the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness.

According to the uncharacteristically poetic legislative text from 1964, Wilderness is a place “where man himself is a visitor.” But honestly, with each passing Wilderness that was checked off my list, Wilderness felt less like a place where I was a guest and more and more like a place I belonged. Like home. There were times where I hiked every day for a week. And there were times when going a mere three or four days in the city would get me feeling seriously antsy.

In truth, 2014 has been a difficult year for me. This year brought with it some significant personal challenges that have deeply tested my character and have changed me in pretty life-altering ways. The 50 Hikes Challenge helped me to cope. On some hikes, it provided me with a chance to more clearly think through the obstacles I was facing. And on many others, it granted my mind some much-needed quiet and calm.

This whole experience has taught me a lot. It’s given me first-hand knowledge about what each of these Wilderness areas look and feel like. I've learned about their ecology and the wildlife that depend on them. I’ve learned about the tireless work that went into designating them as Wilderness. But mostly, I learned a lot about myself, what’s most important to me, what I need in my life, and how to best bond with those I care about.

It also taught me that how good the beer around the campfire tastes is directly proportional to the difficulty of the hike.

With so many challenges and transitions, this year could be defined by many things for me. But I choose to think of 2014 as the Year of Wilderness. Because after all, once you've completed Oregon Wild’s 50 Hikes Challenge, isn't everything else just a walk in the woods (park)?

Photo Credits
Jonathan Jelen