“Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. I’m going to go eat worms.”

I felt like stomping my feet and singing it on Tuesday night.

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Just fifteen minutes ago, I nearly slid down the mountain after struggling to gain my footing on the rugged terrain. Then, a few moments later, I lost sight of Bill after becoming distracted by a book on my phone that I had stopped to read. Despite these hurdles, we made it to the top in one piece and there is triumph in that.

Even more triumphant is the fact that we managed not to kill each other on the way up the mountain. During long hikes, which we do often during the summer months, my mind meanders and I bring up tough topics that Bill would rather not discuss.

“Can’t you appreciate the scenery?” He pleads. “Why must you always criticize me when I am trying to enjoy nature with you?”

“There is only so much I can focus on the rippling waters,” I retort. “We have to solve the issue with your dad; we need to figure out how to help your mom.”

The list of tasks goes on.

Bill thinks that these human issues can wait, as he prefers to soak in the sights and sounds. Although my appreciation for the natural world runs deep, I cannot help but feel distracted by the endless preoccupations of human beings and their complex relationships. Furthermore, as someone always fretting about the future, I struggle to stay within the moment.

As I sit on the sturdy rock atop the mountain, I begin to write this story. Bill takes photographs from every angle of the lake, as birds chirp melodically and forceful winds blow. Having stopped to read on the hike up, I now feel a need to compose my story.

Two sentences in, I stop writing and we begin our descent, which starts to feel like a deep dive down the mountain. The climb down seems so much worse than the ascent, as my knees cave in and I struggle to find my footing.

“How would Cheryl Strayed handle a moment like this one?” I ponder about the acclaimed author of Wild who successfully hiked solo the Pacific Crest Trail and then shared her story through a memorable memoir.

Strayed’s story has captivated me from day one, and I often find inspiration from her words of wisdom about survival and perseverance. “I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprisingly of all, that I could carry it.”

Strayed carried a ton of baggage, both physical and emotional, throughout her hike on the Pacific Coast Trail. On this journey, she somehow finds freedom from it all, and she arrives at a profound place of healing through self-discovery.

My four-hour journey through the Idaho Mountains pales in comparison to Strayed’s story, but reflecting on Wild during my downhill climb empowers me to create narrative. I soak in every sight, sound, and smell which allows me to paint a picture with words in my mind; this painting has made its way to the page in the form of the piece you now read.

This story originates on the mountaintop, but it really crystallized on the descent. And I have to give Miley Cyrus credit, as her lyrics echoed in my mind.

“Ain’t about how fast I get there

Ain’t about what’s waiting on the other side

It’s the climb.”

These climbs often reawaken me to the firm foundation of family, motherhood, and my marriage while hikes with Bill deepen my desire to write and secure my footing as a storyteller.

About the Author:

Cara Erdheim Kilgallen is a writer who connected through Prose Playground and a common Idaho bond!

· Color – A ripe huckleberry will be dark purple – almost black. Leave them behind if they still show a red tinge.

· Feel – Plump and slightly soft like a miniature plum. Too hard and it’s underripe. Too soft and you’re too late.

· The best method is to take one off the bush. Did it pop-off with ease? Practically roll into your fingers? It’s gonna be good. If it takes a hard yank to be released, it wasn’t ready.

If you find a good haul of berries, be thoughtful. First, be gentle when removing them; raking and rough handling are bad for the plant. Always leave some behind. Bear, chipmunks, grouse, and songbirds thrive on the fruit.

Don’t forget to thank Mother Nature for her bounty. At my local bakery, a huckleberry pie costs $40. A price that makes sense when you think about the time it takes to pick the five cups of berries required. Last year, I spent a few hours picking near Delyle Ridge in Clark Fork, and still didn’t have enough for a pie. I ended up mixing them with strawberries from my garden - a delicious combination.

Want to know more about huckleberry picking? Check out this article from the Forest Service.

See you on the trail!

When we’d left the house, the GPS directions indicated it would take one hour and fifty-one minutes to get to the trailhead. We were headed for Burton Peak in Boundary County, Idaho, 30 minutes from the Canadian border.

I’d been driving for two hours. The map showed we had another 26 miles and an hour left on our journey toward the hard five-mile hike.

I clenched my fingers more tightly around the steering wheel.

“We could turn around. Check out a hike at the refuge,” Ken said.

We’d passed the entrance to the Kootenai National Wildlife Refuge at the base of the Selkirk Mountains 30 minutes earlier.

My lower back ached thanks to the stiff car seat. My stomach churned from the bumpy drive. “Good idea,” I said, slowing the vehicle and performing a three-point turn on the narrow empty roadway.

We’d been to the refuge once before, prior to moving to Northern Idaho. That day, we’d hoped to spot moose standing in the long grass of the wetlands. Our desire for nature had instead been satiated by the sight of a small black bear walking along a hillside.

Ken searched for trail information on his phone. “Ole Humpback Trail is eight miles.”

“Eeh,” I said. It felt too late in the day to start a hike that distance.

“This one sounds good. Deep Creek Trail, 4.3 miles, moderate,” he said.

“Great.” I smiled.

“Oh, it’s closed,” he said. “Kootenai Refuge Loop, also closed. That leaves Myrtle Falls Trail. Easy. Point eight miles.”

When I started my 50 at 50 hiking project, I had not imagined writing about any trek so short.

I paused. Considered how far we’d driven. “Let’s do it,” I said.

Our travel through the park was slowed by construction workers and long waits at temporary stoplights powered by humming generators, but we finally reached the parking lot for the trail. The cement was torn up.

Ignoring the possibility that this route, too, was closed, I parked on the side of the road.

We walked past the construction. Followed a paved path toward the trailhead. Crossed a quaint wooden bridge over a rocky stream. Ambled past fallen logs and green ferns, up switchbacks. In almost no time, we reached the outlook for the falls. The water flowed down rock into a sparkling pool.

At our feet, carved into a stone staircase, were the footprint of a bear and the outline of a leafy branch. Modern-day petroglyphs.

When we finished, we walked toward the visitor center, stopping to admire the view – long grass: yellow, then green for miles, and a chain of mountains under a blue sky.

Although we’d been out of the truck for a good hour, my stomach still felt sour. I headed toward the restroom, where I identified the true source of my discomfort. The symptoms should have been obvious, but nearly a year had passed since my last period.

I cleaned up and headed back outside - found Ken reading the exhibits.

“Forty thousand ducks will rest here during fall migration,” he said. “Most Mallards. Huh. We almost never see Mallards out here.”

“Mmm,” I said, but my mind was elsewhere. I thought I’d blasted through menopause with a minimum of the effects I’d been forewarned of. Yes, I’d had hot flashes. Unexpected bouts of sweating. I no longer sleep through the night, waking at 3:00 am, tossing and turning before I re-enter dreamland. But what I’d been most worried about had never happened - the extreme mood swings.

Years ago, I’d read an interview with Penny Lancaster and her husband, Rod Stewart. She described depression and uncontrollable fits of rage while she’d gone through “the change.” She once threw plates across the kitchen. Stewart had said, “She wasn’t the person I married.”

So far, I’d had the opposite. Prone to deep bouts of dark sadness since childhood, I’d found my moods leveling out. I had serenity and thought, perhaps, it was because my hormones had shifted for the better. Now, I was worried. Maybe I still had to brace myself for what would come.

Soon, we were back in our truck. We decided to drive the 4.5-mile-long scenic Auto Tour, but it turned out that it, too, was inaccessible on this day.

We left the park and stopped for lunch on the way home. We shared French fries and watched the leaves on the trees dancing in the wind as cool air blew in. Summer is almost over. Fall on its way.

JUST THE FACTS: Myrtle Falls Trail, Boundary County, Idaho

• Distance: .8 miles (total out and back)

• Estimated Time: ~ 30 minutes

• Elevation Gain: 127 feet

• Key Highlights: Waterfall, sparkling creek, forest of green ferns and conifers.

• Difficulty: Easy (but still some steep spots).

Call for Comments: Have you hiked Myrtle Falls Trail? Share your stories, tips, and local history in the comments, or submit to Readers’ Hike to have your adventure highlighted.

Subscribe for weekly hike guides, practical trail info, and ‘Off the Trail’ personal essays. Let’s build this community together.

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This list is being populated as I finish each hike and will be updated every Friday until all 50 hikes are complete.

Click here for the Complete Index of Northern Idaho: 50 for 50 Hikes

The 4-mile Pulaski Tunnel Trail is a memorial, a pathway to the mining tunnel that shielded those men. It’s a place of moss, butterflies, and thimbleberries. On a sunny, still day, it’s impossible to imagine the weather they endured.

“The wind was so strong that it almost lifted men out of their saddles, and the canyons seemed to act as chimneys, through which the wind and fires swept with the roar of a thousand freight trains,” wrote Ed Pulaski, the Forest Ranger credited with leading the men to safety in the mine, and after whom the trail is named. He forced some to remain hidden within the shaft at gunpoint

It was the wind that transformed a series of small fires into what was then the largest recorded blaze in U.S. history: more than 3 million acres burned across Idaho, Montana, and Washington, leaving scorched earth the size of Connecticut.

Signs posted along the now-scenic route describe what happened: the lack of rain, the crimson sun, and the death toll.

A Pulaski, the firefighting tool the hero developed after the Great Fire ended, is hung next to each display. Half-axe, half-hoe, it serves as a single tool for chopping brush and small trees and for digging firebreaks.

Despite the prominent markings, I almost passed the mine entrance. It lies low on the bank across the stream. The logs at the opening are not the original burned wood but recreated columns, serving (like the Pulaski) a dual purpose. They are a tombstone for those who died:

An unidentified man,
August Berger,
Joe Ferre,
Harry Hansen,
William Learmouth,
Richard Woods,

and a commemoration of the 39 who survived.

The Great Fire smoldered out a few days after the men left the sanctuary of the mine. Temperatures cooled. Rain rolled in.

The two-mile mark is just past the monument. Where the last placard stands, the trail loops and returns to its original path. Although steep in some places, it’s a wide, frequently visited route. Described as moderate because of its slope but verging on easy for regular trekkers.

The Pulaski Tunnel Trail lacked the majestic mountains and the crystalline alpine lakes I’ve become accustomed to since starting my 50 hikes. Its history, however, made it one of the most interesting passages.

As I headed home, driving north on Route 95, white smoke from the 250-acre Silver Fire near the Roman Nose in the Selkirks billowed across the sky. Idaho has been dry this year, with only 11.6 inches of precipitation in the first six months. For much of the summer, the air across the Pacific Northwest has been dense and an eerie shade of orange. I worry and pray for rain.

JUST THE FACTS: Pulaski Tunnel Trail, Wallace, Idaho

• Distance: 4 miles (total out and back)

• Estimated Time: ~ 2.5 hours

• Elevation Gain: 738 feet

• Key Highlights: Incredible history, interpretive signs, creek, mine overlook. Limited parking!

• Difficulty: Moderate.

Call for Comments: Have you hiked Pulaski Tunnel Trail? Share your stories, tips, and local history in the comments, or submit to Readers’ Hike to have your adventure highlighted.

Subscribe for weekly hike guides, practical trail info, and ‘Off the Trail’ personal essays. Let’s build this community together.

References:

“Idaho.” Drought.gov, National Integrated Drought Information System, www.drought.gov/states/idaho. Accessed 27 Aug. 2026.

“The 1910 Fires.” Forest History Society, 15 Feb. 2017, foresthistory.org/research-explore/us-forest-service-history/policy-and-law/fire-u-s-forest-service/famous-fires/the-1910-fires/. Accessed 27 Aug. 2026.

I spotted it as Ken and I sat on our back deck, watching the sun begin to lower in the sky as we neared dinnertime.

“What is that?” I asked.

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My brown Timberland-booted feet wiggled five-and-a-half feet in the air.

With every moment, the skin on my face grew a few shades closer to hot pink.

My sixteen-year-old legs teetered. To onlookers, my handstand didn’t look perfect. My knees were bent. One foot was pointed a bit more askew than the other.

Still, I felt triumphant, doing my first-ever handstand on top of a mountain.

I was not a gymnast, nor had I ever done a handstand before. I couldn’t hold the pose for more than a few milliseconds, but that proved long enough for a buddy on Mount Ampersand to snap my picture.

Now, thirty-five years later, I still have the picture of that moment. I kept it, pressed for the first twenty years in a photo album from my trip to Jesus camp at Saranac Lake, New York. For the next fifteen years, the picture lay, jam-packed in a file cabinet filled with every picture I’d ever taken, prior to the moment the digital camera took over.

In 1981, the year I turned ten, I’d asked my mom and step-dad for a camera. On Christmas morning I unwrapped a small black plastic Kodak point-and-shoot. It took fuzzy, grainy photos, but to me they looked great.

I kept that camera in my purse everywhere I went.

Even as a child, I’d had this core-level understanding of the hummingbird-fastness of life.

I wanted to record the high points and the mundane alike. That way, when I was old, I could look back and remember it all. (I might have watched My Life a few times too many. It was a favorite movie of mine, starring Michael Keeton as a terminally ill father who videos himself, so his newborn son would one day be able to know him. )

My Ty Pennington-level attention deficit disorder was still decades away from being formally diagnosed, yet everyone around me knew how forgetful I was, leaving random stuff behind everywhere I went. Perhaps, deep down, I knew, without pictures, I might forget it all. Desperately, I needed a way to remember.

As I entered adulthood, I could not wait to get busy livin.’ Visit the friend, the city, the mountain range. Go on the mad-cap adventure with best friends. See the sights and the views. And of course, record it all.

Life passes lightning-fast.

Now, when I think about Mount Ampersand, New York, and the picture of me, doing a handstand on its igneous rocky top, I can feel as blue-gray inside as the water of Long Lake, off in the distance behind me.

I didn’t hike as much as I planned to.

I couldn’t.

And I don’t hike now because I still can’t.

Hell, at the moment, I can barely get through a grocery store without having to use one of the courtesy scooters plugged in beside the real shopping carts.

I never thought life would end up like this… with me intermittently and partially disabled, due to constant pain and legs that were mauled years ago in a surgery they promised would give me my life back.

Life doesn’t turn out as perfect as we hope.

I still, literally, thank God that I’m mobile enough to get to the potty without my husband’s help. I’m thankful I have a husband who didn’t leave the second our life turned squirrelly… as many spouses do.

Through my teens and twenties, my friends often marveled at how active I was. I walked long distances without pain, snow-skied, cross-country-skied, water-skied, played tennis, hiked, and ran for distance, for fun, and to keep my internal stress from eating me alive. Moving kept me sane and happy.

Then, after my twins and our bonus third child were born, chronic hip pain began to nag.

A toxic set of hip replacement devices I got when I was thirty-nine sealed my fate, leaving me in worse pain than ever, less able to do what I wanted, and destined to have a life punctuated by surgery after surgery for a full decade and a half.

Today I have no clue what life holds. Frankly, most days, I’m concerned.

I’m 53 years old and have numerous surgeons currently telling me one of my hip replacement devices is now infected. They say all my hardware needs to be taken out immediately. That means two more surgeries over the next three to twenty-four months, depending on whether the infection goes away quickly or not.

As one might imagine, I’m desperate to avoid more surgery. Everyone I know who’s had an infected implant never recovers, gets out of pain, or can walk normally after what the surgeons do.

As mysterious lumps on the outside of my right hip and inches below my glutes grow bigger, surgery seems inevitable. I should face it; I may never walk normally again.

Since my medical fiasco started, back in 2010, I always hoped I’d get better. For the first few years, my hope seemed reasonable. Now it seems quaint if not naive.

After my first bilateral joint replacement, I made a little progress, but never did as well as most patients do. I’d do OK for a month or two, and then a new complication would crop up, disabling me for years.

Rinse, wash, repeat.

Everybody has something, I told myself. Pain and disability are just my crosses to bear.

Sometimes I find myself upset about how long it’s been since I could do what everyone around me was doing… climbing mountains, riding bikes, hiking with kids and spouses. Vacationing. Cleaning the house. Doing things that require walking.

Last year my husband hoped to take me on a weekend get-away to celebrate our twenty-sixth anniversary. Without telling me he bought plane tickets to San Diego. He’d overheard me, saying I’d always wanted to see a whale. When he surprised me, telling me we were going whale-watching, all I could think about was the last time I’d had to walk through an airport and how painful it had been.

I’m gonna feel like I’m walking on hot coals.

When I got up the nerve to tell him I was dreading the trip and asked him to cancel, he said, “But airports offer free golf carts! They’ll drive us from gate to gate!”

Riding a golf cart, which I’d done plenty of times, made me feel decrepit, pathetic and sad.

At least at home, I got to pretend I wasn’t disabled.

Obviously, I’m still wrestling. My mind refuses to accept my body’s reality. As crazy as it may sound after fifteen years, I still hope to get better. I’d like to hike again.

“I want to see the hoodoos,” I told my husband one night after reading about Utah’s Bryce Canyon National Park.

“What are hoodoos?” He asked.

“They’re these really cool pillars of rock. They look like spires!” I said. “They’re made by erosion. Water seeps into cracks, and freezes and thaws over and over again, breaking off bits of rock until there are just skinny columns.”

My husband began pecking away on his phone.

“Mmmm,” he said. “This website says you can’t see much by car. You have to hike to see the cool stuff.”

We looked up parks marked ‘handicap-friendly’ and ‘car-accessible,’ phrases that depressed me.

Everyone ends up hoodood in one way or another.

“I don’t wanna travel anymore,” I said.

My husband quietly canceled our whale-watching trip.

He took me instead to a Dave Matthews Band concert coming to our town. I’d been a passionate fan of the band when my husband and I first met.

On the way to our seats the night of the show, my thigh muscles began to cramp. I had to slow down and then stop walking. Then I needed to sit, but there were no chairs in sight.

I slid down the wall next to the bathrooms and plopped my butt onto the tile floor, next to the corridor where everybody walked.

“What are you doing?” My husband asked, frowning.

“Gimmie one sec,” I said.

He didn’t roll his eyes. It only felt as if he did.

My disability both annoys and embarrasses both of us from time to time. Though I’m thankful to still have my legs and a husband, I wish my legs would cooperate more consistently and I wish my husband would be patient when they refuse.

We fought on the way to our seats. I cried as the band sang Crash, a song that hit the charts about the time I realized I’d found the person I hoped to marry someday. I couldn’t believe how our life together had turned out. So many hopes, dashed.

When the concert ended, I went searching for more ice to put in the two canvas bags I wore, stuffed in my pants, trying to numb the pain.

Somewhere near the restrooms, we lost sight of each other.

My cellphone was dead. Assuming he’d gone ahead to get the car out of the parking garage, I sat down to wait at the bus stop where he’d let me out of the car before the show. As I waited there, he spent the next two hours, walking around the venue, asking maintenance people, police and everyone in a shirt with Security printed on the back whether they’d seen a blonde, limping lady, holding two empty ice bags.

Well after midnight, after all the fans, venue employees and police had left, I stopped looking for our car’s headlights.

I stood up from the bench and began limping downtown.

Hoping I’d not be mistaken for a mentally ill lady who lived on the street, what many think you are when your hair’s askew and you walk with a limp, I tapped on the window of a locked bar that still had employees milling around. The people looked at me and then looked away. Finally, a guy cracked the door open. I asked if I could charge my phone, and he agreed.

With my cell working again, I texted my husband, who came and got me. I worried we’d fight on the drive home, but we were both too sad to be annoyed and too tired to argue about who’d lost sight of whom.

After a morning of feeling sorry for myself, I realized I was tired of being sad.

Like love, hope and happiness are more ‘action words’ than feelings. They’re things we have to consciously invite into our lives.

There’s a half-full glass somewhere. It’s our job to find it and focus on it.

Recently I’ve stopped wallowing in grief over my poorly performing body. I no longer allow myself to think, at least never for too long, about the hiking I never got to do.

Instead, I focus on my healthy kids with strong, well-behaved legs and the husband I still have, the guy who stayed with me, paying my bills, loading and unloading our groceries, changing the oil in our kids’ cars, and picking me up beside the spot where the courtesy scooters are charged.

Yes, I’m unlucky to have lost a good deal of my mobility, but I’m still lucky in the ways that matter most.

I do hope my hips will heal miraculously someday.

That’s a hope I’ll never release.

Hope is a choice. Every second, we have to choose what we hold on to.

Life doesn’t have to be perfect to be good.

This Week’s Contributing Author:

Frances Scott

Instagram URL:

https://www.instagram.com/atx_fs?igsh=MThqbjljaXBhcTNm&utm_source=qr

I’d organized a trip to Kauai for Ken and me. I’d carefully researched each hike we would take. Located the best beaches for paddleboarding and snorkeling. Purchased tickets to enter botanical gardens. I’d booked two different Airbnbs so we could explore the whole island.

But, alas, COVID-19 restrictions canceled the trip. It was really karma. I’m a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of gal. This was the first trip I’d ever mapped out with a detailed agenda. Of course, it was cursed.

At any rate, when we realized my dream vacation wouldn’t happen, we rented the houseboat on Lake Pend Oreille. Each morning, I could open a door, step onto my paddle board, and glide across the water. Between that, the huckleberry shakes, and the hikes at nearby Farragut State Park, it was a great time.

I thought about those shakes this week, nearly two miles up the Beehive Lake Trail in Naples, Idaho, when Ken stopped, picked a plump, almost black, ½-inch round huckleberry from a shrub, and placed it in my mouth. Sweet with just a hint of tartness, the yummiest berry I’d had on a hike (sometimes they’re too tart).

Huckleberries are a big deal here. They were designated the state fruit in 2000, thanks to the efforts of fourth-grade students at Southside Elementary School in nearby Cocolalla, a small community 30 miles north of Coeur d’Alene. It’s not surprising that the children could convince legislators; huckleberries have been an important resource in the region since before Idaho was Idaho. Native Americans dried the fruit and made a kind of cake from it, which they ate through the winter months. During the Great Depression in the 1930s, the huckleberry trade brought money to the Pacific Northwest, while other historic resources, like the timber trade, floundered (Richards, Alexander).

Today, although commercial huckleberry propagation is outlawed in the state, every restaurant has a huckleberry item on the menu. Furthermore, every store and gas station has a shelf stocked with purple jams, candies, and syrups.

I particularly like a nice huckleberry mojito.

It’s funny, all the times and places one can visit while on a trail. The juice of that single berry transported me off a mountain on a 90-degree August day to an indulgent lake vacation, then on to a slow walk-through history. But of course, my mind returned to the quiet hemlock- and pine-shaded path where my face felt sticky with sweat.

We’d walked three miles, past white Pearl Everlasting and the red berries of Mountain Ash, when the trees gave way to a hill of white bedrock. A series of cairns left by previous travelers marked the path with their rock piles. There was little vegetation, no wildlife, not even a marmot in sight, as our hiking sticks clicked across the stone.

At the top, a path led to a clear, shimmering alpine lake. The home of cutthroat trout, some purportedly as large as 12 inches – a testament to the water’s health.

We dawdled at the top. Drank water. Chewed on granola bars. Chatted with two teenagers fly-fishing.

The day took longer than we’d anticipated. When we headed back, we walked cautiously, not wanting to slip on the bedrock. In the woods, we stopped now and again to take photos of the conifers in the Selkirk Mountains. Around 4:00 pm, we returned to where we’d parked our pickup truck, our legs aching. We’d read online that the hike would be 6.7 miles out and back, but my watch showed we’d walked 7.5 miles.

My stomach grumbled with hunger as we drove back down the slow, rough dirt road that had brought us to the trailhead. I felt a sense of joy when it turned to asphalt, and ecstasy when the Blue Heron Café came into view on the horizon. Of course, we stopped. I ordered the BLT. Ken had the coconut shrimp with, guess what, huckleberry marmalade. It was the perfect ending to the day.

JUST THE FACTS: Beehive Lake Trail, Naples, Idaho

• Distance: 7.5 miles (total out and back)

• Estimated Time: ~ 6 hours

• Elevation Gain: 2050 feet

• Key Highlights: Huckleberry, Mountain Ash, and views of the conifer-lined Selkirk Mountains. A rock scramble to an alpine lake filled with Cutthroat Trout.

• Difficulty: Hard.

Call for Comments: Have you hiked Beehive Lake Trail? Share your stories, tips, and local history in the comments, or submit to Reader’s Hike to have your adventure highlighted.

Subscribe for weekly hike guides, practical trail info, and ‘Off the Trail’ personal essays. Let’s build this community together.

References:

Richards, Rebecca T., and Susan J. Alexander. A Social History of Wild Huckleberry Harvesting in the Pacific Northwest. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-657, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Feb. 2006, research.fs.usda.gov/download/treesearch/22152.pdf.

The tips follow publicly available guidance from the National Park Service and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, as I understood it when I published this. Agencies update advice. Conditions change. A moose or a bear does not grade on a curve.

Parks are blunt about this, and so am I: each animal and each encounter is unique. There is no single protocol that works in every situation, and no booklet, coloring page, or hike-the-game session can guarantee that you or a child will not be injured or killed.

If you go into the woods, you go as a grown-up making your own choices — distance, noise, food storage, spray, turning around. If you take children, you are the decision-maker, not the cartoon moose.

Check current guidance before you hike: NPS bear safety, Idaho Fish and Game, and the forest or park you’ll actually be in. If something on this page conflicts with a ranger, the ranger wins.

I am not liable for any injury, death, or damage that occurs on a trail or elsewhere after someone uses these printables.

For kids about 6 and up, with a grown-up. This is a field guide and coloring book, not a wilderness course. Adults are responsible for children in bear and moose country.

Click the links below to access the free field guide and coloring book.

Kids Field Guide

2.13MB ∙ PDF file

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Download

Trail Sense Coloring Book

1.4MB ∙ PDF file

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Download

One afternoon, I snagged a fish. The sun briefly reflected gold and pink off its body as it fought my line. Then it was gone.

I remember my disappointment. I so wanted to bring home a fish to show off to Dad. I also remember the trout’s beauty as it breached the water.

The memory of that moment flooded back as I stood looking out at Antelope Lake, at the top of the trail for which it is named in Clark Fork, Idaho.

The lake is relatively small, at 18 acres. It’s one of the many bowl-shaped cirque lakes in the region, carved by glaciers during the late stages of the Ice Age. A series of springs and seeps on the south and east sides of the lake keeps water flowing into it (Raleigh, 1993). Each year, Idaho Fish and Game restocks it with rainbow trout.

It takes only 1.5 miles to reach the water from the start of the trailhead. The uphill path is wide, muddy at the start, and well-traveled. A few downed trees from windstorms this past winter still litter the way. Ground that is covered in long green grass and yellow buttercups in the spring is brown and orange at the height of August; red-leafed shrubs of Mallow Ninebark line the trail.

There is a fork before you arrive at the lake. Go left, and you’ll arrive at the lake a few minutes sooner. But you should go right. This approach to the lake becomes beachlike. What’s more, walk a few steps off the trail toward the north, and see the best view of the Clark Fork River and surrounding town.

The beauty is postcard-perfect.

I long to bring Dad here to see it: the wide waterway, the mountains, and the farmland barns surrounded by hay bales curing in the sun. I wish he could fish here beside me just once, but his COPD leaves him frequently breathless. It’s unlikely he will ever be able to travel to Northern Idaho.

But maybe he’ll read this. See the photos. Feel a little like he’s here. And although he can’t hike these mountainsides, perhaps you can. But if you do, be good to the land and water. Carry out what you bring into the wilderness. Don’t feed the mountain goats. Kayak, paddleboard, or canoe, but consider leaving the motorboats at the docks. There aren’t too many places like this left; let’s honor it.

JUST THE FACTS: Antelope Lake Trail, Clark Fork, ID

• Distance: 3 miles (total out and back)

• Estimated Time: ~ 2 hours

• Elevation Gain: 682 feet

• Key Highlights: Rainbow trout-filled lake, views of Clark Fork River valley.

• Difficulty: Moderate

Call for Comments: Have you hiked Antelope Lake Trail? Share your stories, tips, and local history in the comments, or submit to Readers’ Hike to have your adventure highlighted.

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References:

Raleigh, Robert F. Aquatic Inventories of Three Mountain Lakes in Northern Idaho. Technical Bulletin no. 93-3, Bureau of Land Management, Idaho State Office, Oct. 1993. Internet Archive, archive.org/details/aquaticinventori31rale.

Resistible, I thought. I’ll just learn about the adoption process, I told myself.

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But she’s here now, standing, sleeping, snacking, laughing with me for six whole days.

I feel pressure to make memories and default to my in-living-color tourist traps. I drag her to Waikiki to take in the curve of bright lights, island city development along an iconic postcard stretch of sand. I ignore the historical fact that Waikiki was originally swamp land until mankind and money found ways to dredge sand from California to create a white sandy beach.

Chloe waves dismissively at the view. “Ma! I live all this every day in New York. I just want suburban!” She motions to the dense cluster of high-rises, crowds of tourists, and traffic backed up along Kalakaua Avenue. She wants suburbia.

We head to the mall. The Mall!

“How will you remember me when I’m gone some day? Just holding up a 70%-off blouse at Nordstrom Rack?” I huff. We can do better, I think.

Later, I suggest an “easy hike” for our little family of three on the Manoa Falls Trail. “It’s only .8 miles to the waterfall! And it starts in a local neighborhood. Can’t be that hard.”

My husband, the kind of man who cleans his sneakers every day with 409 spray, eyes me suspiciously.

Chloe, snipping the tags off her discounted fashion haul, gives me a guilty look and nods, which translates to “Ugh. If it makes you happy, Mom.”

I had Chloe at 42. Now that she’s 23, the math feels more consequential. How much time do I have to solidify her mental picture of me? How many experiences will it take to ease her memories of me raising her as a single, widowed mom, then remarrying and bringing us into a new family, and the hectic childhood of her moving nine times before she turned ten? The hike to Manoa Falls is part of a rebranding of another new “us.” Cool mom. Hiking mom. Mom who values nature more than Nordstrom.

It turns out, the trail to Manoa Falls is not an “easy hike.” Wet, muddy, it is a rain-soaked trail filled with rocks and boulders that our city sneakers and untrained ankles must navigate with care. The dirt that soaks our shoes is the color of melted dime-store chocolate ice cream. I can see my husband, Mike, wincing.

The slow pace of keeping ourselves from breaking a bone makes the .8 mile to the waterfall feel more like a Sebastian Junger lesson in resilience. We settle into a quiet rhythm to focus on our footfalls. The sign at the trailhead cautions hikers to turn off audio devices. No podcasts or pop music on this trail, no sir.

“Enjoy the sounds of nature. Silence Please.” it reads.

And then we realize silence is not silent. The flutter of wings through trees hints at the surrounding lush forest teeming with hidden life. Birds sing. The squish of muddy slush under our shoes draws our attention to the trickling stream below the path. I look up, and Chloe is standing under a single giant frond of a prehistoric-looking fern. In comparison, she looks as tiny as when I first held her in my arms at the maternity ward.

Click. Photo.

Mike trails further behind to stop and point his phone at the different plants
and use Google’s Lens feature to identify the different species. Technology in this setting serves to connect us more closely to nature.

By the time we reach the waterfall summit and take a family selfie, we realize the trail itself is the reward. The waterfall simply marked the literal turning point to head back and experience all the trail has to offer, only in reverse. The unknowns, a little more known: where to sidestep the biggest boulders, where the trail narrows, where to best grip to keep from slipping- an earned wisdom. We have a new family memory, pictures that add to our family iCloud, and in this, small life lessons that last beyond the trail about navigating slippery roads and the ever-present unexpected.

This Week’s Contributing Author:

Carol Lin, Author of When News Breaks, A Memoir of Love and War (2026)

The problem at most breakfast places I’ve been to out here in Northern Idaho is that they pollute its simple goodness. The correct recipe is fresh avocado, a little olive oil, and a touch of salt, spread on toasted sourdough bread. Mmm. Mmm. Good.

Head to Sandpoint, the closest “city” to me (population about 11,000), order this delicacy, and you’ll often find the savory green fruit buried under a pile of shaved vegetables—radish, carrots, cherry tomatoes, cucumber—and those grassy sprouts that inevitably get stuck in your teeth. I’m a fan of those toppings in general, just not piled on my avocado toast. The worst part is, I’m 100% certain they only add the salad to justify charging $16. Add the requisite cappuccino plus tip, and you’re out nearly $30.

I might as well go for a full brunch instead.

Thank goodness Hartman Coffee opened in my hometown of Clark Fork this past May. They do avocado toast the right way, and it costs a mere $5.

The café owners describe their spot as “Small town coffee, big mountain views. Serving handcrafted coffee, good conversation, and a little peace.”

When Ken and I stopped in this past week, we settled into a big, cushy couch, sipped lattes, and talked over our planned hike of Scotchman’s Peak while the cool mountain vibes of Buffalo Traffic Jam played in the background. It’s the perfect pit stop—back-country cool—before or after any of the gorgeous trails nearby: Alpine Lake, Delyle Ridge, or Scotchman’s itself.

Aside from the best avocado toast around, they offer scones, muffins, cakes, cookies, and even breakfast burritos, plus all the fancy hot and cold coffee and tea drinks you’d expect. They even have shaved ice for a hot afternoon.

Hours are 6 a.m.–4 p.m. Monday–Friday and 8 a.m.–4 p.m. on Saturdays. Closed Sundays.

Easy to find at: 117 W 4th Ave, Clark Fork, ID, United States, 83811

Check it out.

We chose Bryce Canyon for our first national park experience. That’s how we found ourselves awakening at 5 am on Thanksgiving morning to watch the sunrise over Bryce Canyon.

It was a bitterly cold day, with wind chills below zero, but we were both determined to make the most of the experience. We dressed in several layers, then slipped on our North Face parkas and headed outside to the car. A blast of icy frigid air greeted us in the parking lot, but undaunted, we braved the bitter cold.

We drove the winding road to the canyon’s apex in utter darkness, marveling at the breathtaking display of stars and planets in the moonless sky. When we arrived at the trailhead parking lot, we put on gloves, scarves, and wool caps, said a quick prayer, and headed out for our adventure.

When I walked around and opened Connie’s car door, a gust of wind nearly yanked the door off its hinges.

“It’s freezing,” Connie said. “Do we really want to do this?”

“I know it’s cold, babe. But once we start walking, we will warm up. You’re gonna love this! I promise.”

“Okay, Mark. If you say so.”

The trailhead led into a beautiful forest of Bristlecone pines. The bristlecone is one of the oldest and most resilient trees, and the ones in Bryce Canyon were over 1,800 years old. This remarkable tree can fully regenerate itself even on the brink of death. It can survive under the harshest of conditions.

As we descended into the forest, a carpet of frosted needles and frozen pinecones crackled beneath our feet. The tree’s needles glistened as the thick canopy buffeted the wind and protected us from the fierce elements. As the trail widened, I took Connie’s gloved hand in mine, and we walked in complete silence for about fifteen minutes.

We exited the evergreen forest and walked gingerly to the canyon’s edge. Before us was a spectacular array of multicolored hoodoos—the tall, thin rock formations that are the signature of Bryce. They filled the canyon in all directions, as far as the eye could see. The sun was peeking over the horizon, and the sky was awakening with the colors of autumn: burnt orange, sienna yellow, glowing amber, and fiery red. We stood in awe, oblivious to the biting winds that ripped through the multiple layers of clothing.

“I can’t feel my face,” my wife said, breaking into a smile. “And I don’t care because this is magnificent. It is absolutely worth it!”

I smiled proudly, glad I had persuaded her to do it. “Yes, it definitely is worth it, babe.” I wrapped my arms around her from behind and whispered, “I love you, Connie.”

“I love you, too, Mark.”

We stood in silence, feeling the connection only God’s incomparable Creation could bring.

“Oh look,” Connie said, breaking our reverie. She pointed to a small log structure about fifty feet away.

“Cool. That’s the gazebo I read about. Let’s check it out,” I replied.

We walked inside and found a brief respite from the bitter cold and howling winds. By this point, I was numb to the cold, but Connie sat, shivering, in my arms.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to a plaque on the log wall of the gazebo.

I stood and read the inscription out loud. “Silence alone is worth being heard.” - Henry David Thoreau.

“Beautiful,” said Connie.

We sat. I thought of the Bristlecone Pine. I thought of how resilient Connie and I have been, surviving decades of dysfunction. In our late fifties now, we were spending Thanksgiving alone, just the two of us, for the first time ever. It felt to me like the early days of our courtship when it was just me and Connie against the world. We had always found a way to survive.

Connie broke the silence. “Thanks for taking me here, Mark. This is really spectacular. I’ll never forget it.”

I nodded in agreement.

“Now let’s go back. I’m freezing,” she announced.

We both laughed.

Contributing Writer:

Mark Smith , hiker of 13 National Parks, and planning to hike many more.

So this week’s challenge: What’s an unusual place you like to eat before or after a hike? A must-stop, whether it’s in Northern Idaho or somewhere else entirely.

Drop it in the comments below—or submit a longer piece through the Readers’ Hike form if you’d like a chance to be featured.

I can’t wait to see (and maybe feature!) what you share.

Happy Hiking & Eating!

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Thanks to our cats, I’ve previously found baby squirrels, birds, and mice running around our living room in the wee hours of the night. I’ve always handled it on my own and told my husband, Ken, the next day. But a bat? It felt like too much for me.

But Ken has a sleep disorder. Waking him when he manages to rest is cruel. Plus, we planned to rise at 6:00 am to complete the 8.3-mile trek up Scotchman’s Peak in Clark Fork, Idaho. A celebration of our wedding anniversary. It’s where we married four years ago. A herd of white mountain goats served as our guests.

So, as the panicked bat struggled, I debated. To wake or not to wake, that was the question.

Finally, I returned to the bedroom, shook Ken’s shoulder, rousing him. Explained why.

“Can it wait two hours?” he asked.

I hesitated. “No.”

He slowly rose. Pulled on a pair of pants.

After some light arguing (“This could take hours!”) we caught the bat. I used a soup ladle to pull it out of the vent. Ken held a butterfly net over it.

“What were you so worried about?” He asked as I opened the back door.

“That it would die in the vent,” I said. “That it would die.”

When the bat flew off, I cheered.

“It could have waited,” he said.

I tossed out the ladle. We crawled back into bed, but neither of us slept.

We canceled our climb, planned to try the next day, but wildfire-polluted air from Spokane had blown in, thick, dense, and unmoving. The air quality index read “unhealthy.” Two more days passed.

Some might see this as an inauspicious start to a fourth wedding anniversary. But on Tuesday, we arose early again. Much of the smoke had dissipated. We filled our packs with water. Tossed our hiking poles into the back of our pickup. It jolted and bounced along the dusty, rutted road as we approached the trailhead.

There, we found a yellow piece of paper posted. The words “Bear on trail 8/01” were written on it in blue ink: two days earlier.

“Doesn’t say what kind of bear,” Ken said.

“Nope.” I touched the can of spray at my hip. Looked over to confirm he’d remembered his.

We entered the shady cedar forest. Traversed switchbacks. The soil was sandy and loose from lack of rain. With each step, dust swirled around my feet like smoke from tiny fires. The woods gave way to huckleberry shrubbed slopes. Ken picked off a small blue berry.

“Dry,” he said and spat.

The landscape soon changed again. We passed meadow grass that harbored grouse and green hillsides of lodgepole pine, stopping occasionally to admire the views of the Clark Fork River valley. The surrounding mountains seemed a vast ocean of green swells, endlessly rising and falling.

Just before the well-cut route transformed into a scramble of brown rocks and gray shale, about a mile from the peak, my calves began to burn. The type of hurt that comes with hard work and is followed by a just reward: a stronger body and, in this case, a moment to stand atop the world, an arm stretch away from the clouds.

When we reached our destination, we sat on ancient belt rock; the world around us dropping away off vertical cliffs. My eyes traced the ravines carved into the Cabinet Range to the east and the sharp stone edges of the Selkirks to the North. We chatted with other hikers. A group of college kids from Portland. A man from Houston and his friend from Florida. All astounded by the piece of heaven they’d found in Northern Idaho.

“You just missed a mountain goat. He went that way,” a smiling woman told us, pointing toward a narrow ledge.

We sipped water. The Texan offered to share his peanuts.

Soon, we began our descent.

“I love you,” Ken said.

“Happy Anniversary.” I smiled.

We saw goats on the way down. No bear, but the yellow warning note at the trailhead had changed. “Bear 8/4” it now declared. We were lucky we missed it.

Some might have called them bad omens - the bat, the smoke, the bear note. I see something else.

A woman who wakes her husband when she needs help.

A man who gets up, although he’d rather sleep.

Two people who wait out the smoke, then climb.

A bat flying free.

The world dropping away off cliffs.

Goats on the descent. No bear.

I see a love story with a happy ending.

JUST THE FACTS: Scotchman’s Peak Trail

• Distance: 8.3 miles (total out and back)

• Estimated Time: ~ 7 hours

• Elevation Gain: 3,681 feet

• Key Highlights: Mountain goats! Plus views of the Clark Fork River valley and the Cabinet and Selkirk Mountain ranges. Shady cedar forest, huckleberry-covered slopes, open meadows, and an ancient belt-rock summit.

• Difficulty: Hard

Call for Comments: Have you hiked Scotchman’s Peak Trail? Share your stories, tips, and local history in the comments, or submit to Readers’ Hike to have your adventure highlighted.

Subscribe for weekly hike guides, practical trail info, and ‘Off the Trail’ personal essays. Let’s build this community together.

I was reminded of this at the trailhead for Mickinnick, a 7-mile out-and-back hike in Bonner County where a sign summarizes its history. In 1997, Nicky Pleass donated 160 acres to the U.S. Forest Service in memory of her late husband, Mick. Both of them had envisioned a scenic trail directly above Sandpoint. They wanted the land preserved for future generations.

It is impossible to come to this area and not want to protect it. Nicky was originally from England. I came from the East Coast, and still catch myself wishing no one else would move here every time I see another tree felled for a new house.

That desire to safeguard this area has been demonstrated on other trails I’ve taken, such as at Pine Street Woods, where the Kaniksu Land Trust, with help from community donations, conserved 180 acres of land for a community forest. These are precious gifts. They matter.

Even on a hotter-than-forecast day, 84 degrees instead of the mid-70s, Ken and I were not alone as we climbed the steep switchbacks up the southeastern flank of Bald Mountain. Smiling couples and solitary walkers passed us, some with panting dogs.

Mickinnick earns its popularity: easy parking, a well-maintained path, and the chance of spotting moose among the thimbleberry and huckleberry. Benches appear before the first mile is done and at several points along the way, so there’s no need to hike all the way to the summit for the amazing views.

Smoke from Canadian wildfires partially obscured the Cabinet Mountains in the distance, but the city of Sandpoint below looked like a perfect miniature. The Long Bridge stretched across Lake Pend Oreille like Mr. Rogers’ trolley heading into the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.

Don’t, however, let the enchantment distract too much. This is a steep, tiring trail. Ken tripped over a tree root protruding from the dirt on the way down. Took a scary tumble, stopping just short of a fallen log on the hillside. Luckily, he walked away with just a scraped-up arm. Another thing to be grateful for.

I’m loving this adventure of hiking 50 trails, even with occasional stumbles. It’s a chance not only to appreciate the land but also the people who protect it and make it accessible. Maybe I can become one of those people, too.

JUST THE FACTS: Mickinnick Trail

• Distance: 7 miles (total out and back)

• Estimated Time: ~ 5 hours

• Elevation Gain: 2,152 feet

• Key Highlights: Views of Sandpoint and Lake Pend Oreille, early benches, wildlife potential (moose), meaningful local conservation history

• Difficulty: Hard

Call for Comments: Have you hiked Mickinnick Trail? Share your stories, tips, and local history in the comments, or submit to Reader’s Hike to have your adventure highlighted.

Subscribe for weekly hike guides, practical trail info, and ‘Off the Trail’ personal essays. Let’s build this community together.

I try to show up for others. I’ve acted as a beta reader for folks I barely know. I helped a friend create a Substack site based on what I’ve learned. I donate time and money to local wildlife and conservation-related activities. I take Pilates every Friday, whether or not I’m in the mood, because I want to support the instructor. But the truth is, most of the time, I don’t make a very good friend.

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