Peter Shelton

I hadn’t picked up a hitchhiker in a long time. But this guy looked like he might need a ride.

He was walking on the edge of the highway, northbound, against the traffic, bent over a bit, with his hiking sticks held crosswise behind his back. 

Was he an old man? I wondered as I drove past, also going north, heading home from a morning paddle on Lava Lake. Was he exhausted? Had he taken a wrong turn on the trail and decided to walk back, on the pavement, to his car at the Mirror Lakes trailhead? Or Quinn Meadow? Both were miles up the road. Where had he come from?

When I could I pulled a U-turn and eventually stopped in front of him, perched as far over the narrow shoulder as I dared. Passenger window down, I asked him if he wanted a ride.

He said something I didn’t catch but pointed questioningly in the direction he was headed. He was Asian, not old, with a broad, open face under a floppy sun hat. “Soda Creek,” he said, although it was only later that I deciphered those words. 

He put his pack and walking sticks in the back and then asked, again with sign language more intelligible than his words, if he should sit up front, in the passenger seat. 

His English was extremely rudimentary but we were able to communicate some basics. “Soda Creek,” he said again as he pulled up the map on his phone. He was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. There was too much snow up high. “Very dangerous.” He was aiming to hike around the Three Sisters on the east side, via the Soda Creek Trail. That didn’t sound quite right to me – maybe what he really wanted was the Green Lakes Trail; they share a trailhead – but he was fixated on his phone map. “Soda Creek,” he repeated.

His name was Park. “Park,” he pronounced slowly. Oh, are you Korean? I asked. Lots of people in Korea named Park, right?

“Yes,” he laughed, “very popular name in Korea.”

He asked my name and said, “Thank you. Peter.” 

He stared at his phone. South Sister, I pointed as we made the big turn at Devil’s Lake.

“South Sister,” he parroted.  

Mt. Bachelor, I said as we started across the wide meadow at Sparks Lake.

“Mount Bachelor,” Park repeated. 

I pulled in at the turnoff where the Green Lakes and Soda Creek trails begin. “Thank you,” he said, unloading his gear. “Peter.”

I then had to make a three-point turn, and as I did I saw Park, standing at attention next to his pack, bow slowly at the waist. And then a second bow, slowly and deeply to me as I pulled back onto the highway.