Mount Hood feels like home. My parents met on its ski slopes in the 1950s. I climbed the mountain in 1973, weeks before enrolling in a community college named after it. Hood dominates the eastern skyline of Portland, Ore., my boyhood home. In 1975 I bonded with my younger brother Brian during a backpacking trip on Hood’s southern slope. We camped in an alpine meadow at Paradise Park, surrounded by late-summer wildflowers. Two unexpected guests made the trip all the more memorable: two dogs from Timberline Lodge followed us for five miles and camped with us overnight. When we returned to the lodge the next day employees were surprised to see their K-9 mascots hanging with two strangers. I’m grateful for our time together. My brother died six years later in an auto accident.

After graduating from Oregon State University I moved to neighboring Washington state to pursue a journalism career. I married and started a family. With young children, wilderness adventure was reduced to the petting zoo. Last weekend, with our children almost grown, I kidnapped my wife for a long-overdue road trip. Our destination was Mt. Hood, a five-hour drive from Seattle. My heart raced as we climbed the winding road from Highway 26 to Timberline Lodge in our Honda Civic. I couldn’t wait to see the mountain up close after a 25-year absence.  Hood played hide and seek through the dense timber until a bend in the road yielded a sweeping view of its southern slope. We could see little dots – skiers and snowboarders – moving on Palmer Glacier, a groomed ice field open year round. Within minutes we joined the dots, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail to a spectacular overlook at Zigzag Canyon. The same spot my brother and I stopped to marvel at God’s creation 33 years earlier.