In early February, I found myself solo hiking in a chilly Bend, Oregon, snowstorm. I had all of the right gear (see below) and mounds of confidence due to decades of hiking in Santa Barbara’s exotic hinterlands, but icy conditions challenged every bit of my experience.

In the distant past, I’ve undertaken a couple of eastern Sierra snow backpacking treks at the Margaret Lakes with guru Franko, and we also enjoyed snow camping in our local San Rafael Wilderness at 5,200-foot Bear Camp. (See 4.1.1. Heath and Bear.)

Sometimes On the Trail can even mean a one-10th-mile urban trek in 5 inches of snow and abundant ice.  

I learned how to do this safely in Bend when my life partner and I unexpectedly flew there for a family emergency. Mid-February might be the worst period to visit this otherwise beautiful town in Eastern Oregon. (OK, winter sports freaks love this time since nearby 9,000-foot Mount Bachelor offers excellent skiing and snowboarding.) 

Hiking in novel circumstances presents opportunities to enjoy nature in her gleaming white guise and simply to have fun as well. I would not have planned a jaunt like this in normal conditions, but upon receiving tragic news we immediately flew to Bend via San Francisco.

Knowing full well that a snowstorm had been passing through the Bend-Sisters region of Eastern Oregon, I quickly checked out my meagre snow equipment and grabbed what I could on the run. I would have to beg, borrow or buy hiking poles somehow once we were on the ground at the airport in Redmond (25-minute drive from Bend).  

We accepted the rather pricey Airbnb we rented online. Since we had no automobile, I would need to walk snowbound city streets to the home where the emergency had occurred — and this condo was geographically closest to our final destination.  

I was not comfortable driving in or after heavy snow without steering my own 4-wheel-drive Tacoma truck. More honestly, I didn’t want to drive in snow at all.   

Riding an Uber from Redmond to the tiny Airbnb condo revealed how much snow had fallen, and I detected plenty of ice as well. It was clear that neither of us was up to driving safely in these conditions. Long ago, during the heavy German winter of 1973, I drove onto mirror ice and crashed head-on into an oncoming car. Somehow all four of us survived although the Volkswagen Bug had been totaled — thus, legitimate fear of driving on ice … and now I’m a bit older (eh?).

I learned from internet maps that the home we needed to get to, our ultimate destination, was only three long blocks away from the Airbnb condo — say about 400 yards (800 yards with the return slog).

While snowplows had cleared two blocks and Newport Avenue, they also created 8- to 12-inch high ridges (or berms) of snow and ice. I would have to clamber across several of these. Since temperatures varied significantly, the likelihood of very slippery mirror ice was high (what Germans term Glatteis), and these were the conditions where I’d wrecked that VW Bug. Thus, I developed a little concern whilst yet being quite excited by the outdoor challenge.   

NO anxiety or worries about the hiking part itself since I am fit for that, and strenuous locomotion has been the core of my wellness practice across six decades, but certainly I felt rather anxious about falling in the ice at age 77 in a town where I don’t know a single native. (I’ve never owned a cellphone.)

The gear I managed to snatch as we headed to the Santa Barbara Airport included: heavy hiking boots with good tread, wool socks, long johns top and bottom, gloves, a neck wrap, a down jacket, a knee brace for my balky right knee, sunglasses, and a light daypack with medical kit and water. I became concerned enough that we quick-stopped at REI and purchased a $25 pair of light crampons, commercially termed “Yak-Traks,” which fit tightly on each boot’s sole.  

On Monday, Feb. 10, I stepped out from the Airbnb at 9 a.m. determined to slowly hike up to the destination house on Northwest Portland Avenue. The Fahrenheit temperature had sunk well below 25, and two days later when repeating this short trek the recorded temperature fell to 0 degrees! That equates to minus-17 degrees Celsius.

I have never hiked in temperatures this radically low — low at least in my limited experience — and the outlandish splendor of snow-covered conifers paradoxically lifted my grieving spirits at the same time. The tricky slogging increased the oxygen level in this brain and confronted sorrow. 

Of course, I was not alone, and a few 4-wheel-drive trucks cruised by as well as occasional yellow school buses chugging along — but I was the only (foolish) human outside walking the streets. Apparently, Bend locals know how to hunker down in these glistening white periods as folks simply stay home for a few days.

However, like Paul Bunyan, I was out there moving with great attention and a complete focus on each step, staring ahead trying to detect ice patches amid the snow. One street had sidewalks, but they were uncleared, and I gingerly walked right on the snow-covered asphalt, often moving down the center of the frozen empty street.  

I encountered some patches of slick mirror ice (some say black ice), but I skirted them carefully and proceeded very slowly ahead and uphill to Northwest Portland Avenue (not too far from Bend’s Central Oregon Community College). Inspiring nature vistas expanded all around me like radiating ecstasy with snow-covered parked cars appearing as civilization’s monuments. I bitterly regretted not having my beloved hiking poles, but after the second day (of 10 in Bend), I borrowed some Leki poles equipped with “snow baskets” on the ends, and those made it much easier and safer.

I made this trek every day, and sometimes longer ones to obtain food at the excellent Newport Avenue Market (think Gelson’s or Lazy Acres, and at least as expensive). I had my trusty waterproof daypack and could fill it with milk, vegetables, bread, coffee and other supplies. We felt like we were camping in the city.

It struck me how a lifetime of walking in our dusty backcountry can limit one’s deepening awareness of beauty in other eco-zones, e.g. arctic conditions during a Bend freeze or tropical highlands in Malaysia. While food shopping at Newport Avenue Market, I attracted a few stares with the clattering Yak-Traks, twin poles and Tilley hat. I was the only shopper stuffing his acquisitions into a daypack, and one checker asked me about this getup. I chuckled in imagining that she thought I was homeless. (Bend has a lot of homeless.)  

Maybe I overdid things with such an array of equipment and overthought apparel, but when in new territory a genuine hiker should over-prepare. Even when the skies loomed grim and gray, the sunglasses were also vital. Whenever occasional rays of sun glanced off the dazzling snow like white laser beams, I felt blinded even with the sunglasses, and fellow migraineurs will comprehend the deeper dangers.  

Since my life partner is not a strong walker, I figured out the urban trail and the treacherous conditions in advance. Moving across this Earth, our shining Eden, in novel physical conditions, new to me, provided an opportunity to grow, to take some minor chances, and to savor life in the full.  

The short period of solitude outside and in raw natural conditions while yet in a (new) town exhilarated me and stimulated creative thinking. While I had only a single major slip in more than a dozen such jaunts, that one was real, as they say, but I do know how to fall and in soft snow there was no harm and no foul. Since my partner is also up there in years like me, she depended on me to get some of this action going at the destination house. She also has a cell without which one cannot urban survive given our postmodern world. 

The 400 yards there — and 400 back (slipperier downhill) — did constitute an actual trekking event for me due to the wonderfully challenging winter conditions. Every step demanded complete concentration so the whole experience became an exercise in ekagrata. Single-pointed focus enhances living and can be hard to summon and even more difficult to sustain. Each foray required about 20 minutes — for just 400 yards of movement.

We need challenges and at least an occasional modest risk to spice up postmodern ennui.  

4.1.1.

“Heath and Bear” (snow camping) in my “Autobiography in the Anthropocene” ” (2018), pp. 69-90.