Footsteps: Climbing a Peak That Stirred Kerouac

Written By Unknown on Rabu, 21 November 2012 | 17.35

Ethan Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

View from the trail to Desolation Peak, where Jack Kerouac spent 63 days as a fire lookout in the summer of 1956.

I PASSED through a stand of fir and out onto the bare ridge, and there it was: the squat white structure where Jack Kerouac spent 63 days as a fire lookout in the summer of 1956. I had assumed that the Desolation Peak lookout would be empty, a silent monument to the Voice of the Beat Generation. But the shutters were propped open on all four sides, the door was ajar, and inside a small, seated silhouette was visible against the hazy late-afternoon sky.

I grew giddy as the figure stood and came into the doorway. Surely this was Kerouac's spiritual brother, a man uniquely qualified to speak about the solitary days and nights that inspired major portions of "Desolation Angels," "The Dharma Bums" and "Lonesome Traveler." A compact man with dark hair, he introduced himself as Daniel Otero, a Marine reservist who had served two tours of duty in Iraq. Kerouac, I remembered, was 34 during his time on Desolation Peak and did stints in the Navy and the merchant marine.

Mr. Otero, who had been up there all summer and was leaving in only a few days, invited me into the shack, which felt like the cabin of a ship with its desk, kitchen, bed and astrolabe-like fire-finder tool all squeezed into the single, tiny room. My eyes latched onto the corner bookshelf lined with Kerouac paperbacks. We made small talk for a few minutes before I finally asked about Mr. Otero's famous predecessor. He took a deep breath, obviously having gotten the question before. "I tried, but ... " he said, gesturing toward the books. Those books, I now realized, did not belong to Kerouac's spiritual brother. They looked new, untouched, as if they had just come out of an Amazon box. "Me and that guy just don't see eye-to-eye."

I knew exactly how he felt. For my college graduation, my uncle gave me a copy of "On the Road" with the heartfelt wish that I would find it as life-changing as he had. I was a likely candidate to do so: avid traveler, a student of English and political science in college and, later, a writer. Instead, I found Kerouac's "masterpiece" rambling and frivolous; it took me two years to get through it.

But Kerouac's hold on the public imagination has only seemed to grow in my lifetime. Two new film versions of his books are due soon, including one of "On the Road" with Kristen Stewart on Dec. 21 and another of "Big Sur," with Josh Lucas and Kate Bosworth, which does not currently have a release date.

When I moved to Seattle last year, I starting hearing about Desolation Peak. Ten years older than the last time I read him, I decided to give Kerouac's "spontaneous prose" another shot; I picked up a biography and the relevant novels, organized a few friends for a fall weekend and set out for the North Cascades.

The nice part about the Desolation Peak hike is that it can be as easy or as hard as you please. The trailhead is about three hours from Seattle, and day hikers can pay for a boat ride up Ross Lake to the base of the mountain from Ross Lake Resorts; the lakeside camp at nearby Lightning Creek offers the option to tack on a night in the wilderness. But for those looking to sleep atop Kerouac's mountain, as we planned to do, the price of admission is steep: a 3,500-foot climb carrying all the water you will need for the next day (not to mention camping gear), as Desolation Peak is bone-dry once the snowfields melt in August.

And although Kerouac himself got boat rides both ways, my wife, buddies and I opted to go farther and hike in from the highway, taking the boat only on the return trip. After all, Kerouac had two months in the northwestern woods; even with the extra mileage (almost 30 for the whole trip) we would have only three days.

The first day we hiked 16 miles across slopes of sword ferns and Oregon grape shrubs, stopping occasionally to peer into the clear depths of Ross Lake, whose contours we followed. But pretty views don't make 16 miles any shorter, and we stumbled into Lightning Creek Camp with feet in full rebellion.


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