Exploring the American Wilderness and Other Adventures

Spokane Hobbit House & Hidden Hike

Cancer is never just cancer. It touches every part of your life. You lose the body you once knew. Strength, endurance, and many of your bodily functions are not as they’ve always been or should be. You are now managing the grieving process, but it’s confusing and requires more energy than you can spare for emotions. You have an entire team of people paid to routinely invade your space and who often have no good news following these invasions. The medical bills are insurmountable. Combined with the loss of wages. Intimacy wanes until it disappears completely. Children become parents. Or worse, absent. When you were once a very useful person in your friendships, you are now seen as a liability, or just as bad, unreliable, because your symptoms often rule your availability and abilities. 

I know it’s not just me. I hear similar things in my support group. Cancer, especially for those who are told there is no expectation of recovery, seems to outlive everything. My education. My career. My dreams. It’s outliving friendships I thought were important. Nothing has the endurance that cancer has, even love. 

I thought it was a strength to be open about my experience, but I regret it every day. The rejection I face from most attempts to be seen is nearly as painful as the mutated blood in my body that is destroying my life. But…I keep trying; is that strength? It doesn’t feel like it. 

I’ve done nothing but that one 20-mile hike on the McKenzie River Trail since I returned from my last trip to Canada 6 weeks ago (which I haven’t written about yet). I’ve been fighting fevers, fatigue, nausea, other digestive issues, and continuous coughing that makes all other symptoms far more profound than they’d otherwise be. Every attempt at being a person significantly increases said symptoms. 

I HAD TO GET OUT AND JUST BE MYSELF FOR A MINUTE. 6 weeks is a long time to be mostly idle, and honestly, wondering if this is the beginning of the end.

I created an evening event on one of the Facebook hiking groups I help lead to see the famous Spokane Hobbit House and do the connecting Hidden Hike. Local, simple, and easy.

Looking at GoogleMaps, it looked straightforward. We parked at Whittier Park and planned on taking the trail directly to the Hobbit House and back.

However, the Indian Canyon Golf Course created different trails when they completed their snowshoeing and cross-country skiing trails, and the Hidden Hike was…hidden. 

We walked through the snow, under an incredible nearly-full moon, for about an hour when we recognized that the groomed trails would not help us get to our destination. The fatigue and pain in my body were setting in fast, but that was temporarily outweighed by the pure joy I felt in being in the woods, breathing in the fresh air, and using my body in ways I love. We finally chose to open GoogleMaps and “snow-whack” (like bush-whacking) a path exactly where the Google machine said it was. We had to climb up to and across some railroad tracks, and once we got to the other side, the trail was much more apparent, and we were quick to the Hobbit House. 

The children in the group were disappointed that it was an actual residence and they couldn’t explore indoors. I think the adults in the group were also disappointed, but more for how much effort they put in to see something they could have driven to at any point if they wanted to see it. But… I wasn’t there for them. This was for me. I needed to be outdoors. And I do love the Hobbit House. It is out of place in time and geography, which is perfect. It’s boldly odd and specific and doesn’t try to be anything different. It’s not for everyone. I know that. And it’s not trying to be for everyone. The Hobbit House reminds me that I can be weird, out-of-place, and often unappreciated and still be special on my own and that there are others who will think that’s all beautiful.