Since April 24, I have felt the euphoria, the jet-lag, the curiosity and the fatigue that I'd presume contestants on CBS's Amazing Race feel. Over the last 30 days, I've swam with sea turtles in Maui, avoided kidnappers in Colombia, and toured Victoria, British Columbia with my wife cycling beside me and my two daughters screaming, and sometimes sleeping behind me in the bike trailer.
Victoria wasn't supposed to be the final leg of this Amazing Race. It was supposed to end with a one-day sprint down 110 miles of Idaho's Middle Fork of the Salmon. I had the permit. The waterproof sleeping bags from Sierra Designs and the air-supported bivy from Nemo. I had my old teammates of  exploration—Tao Berman and my brother Josh. And they had both the time and motivation for the 11-hour drive and the $220-shuttle and the 110-mile paddle.
I had drybags, already full with a Coleman stove, camping  food from Trader Joe's. I had the company Subaru Forester; plenty of fleece the Spot satellite tracker and Allen two-way communicators.
What I didn't have was the actual permit. All I had, according to cover sheet of the package sent to me by the Salmon-Challis Ranger District, was a reservation that would transform into an actual permit only if I had paid the $4 per person per day fee three business days in advance. I also had to prove my compliance with the district's list of necessities—something to poop in, a shovel, fire pan, etc.
It said it right there, as my brother demonstrated, in black and white, red print, bold print, large print, normal print.
Somehow, I hadn't seen it.
I can make all the excuses I want—and believe me, I tried. I was too busy with traveling to open the package and when I wasn't busy, I was too tired. I had, in fact, actually opened it once, but my drooping eyes didn't pick up on anything urgent under the living room's gentle incandescent light. I had asked my wife to take a look at the package's contents while I was in Colombia, but she didn't. My good friend, whose put-on date preceded ours by just two days, had earned his permit through the same cancellation program that I did, but he said there was no need to do anything.
"You've got the permit, bud," he assured me.
The last excuse was, I felt, the best: The lady at the ranger district told me everything was taken care of.
Well, it wasn't.
I could use all these excuses and when my brother, who just finished medical school and thus earned this one three-day weekend to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted, was staring at me with an expression that says: "I'm trying to be the bigger person here, but you're making it really, really freakin' hard," my brain was scanning for any possible excuse.
But the truth is the only reason we didn't put on the Middle Fork on May 23 was me. I didn't read the contents of the package. I assumed. I shirked. And I lost.
Fortunately, we were only a minute into our drive when I remembered that I had forgotten the  manilla envelope back at our house. And fortunately, we were able to salvage what turned out to be a beautiful Memorial Day weekend.
But just imagine if the assumption I had made wasn't about a permit. What if it was about the need for a throw rope. Or the knowledge of a basic rescue technique. 
 

Of all the mountainous walls that guard the tiny hamlet of Index from the rest of the civilized world, the wall to the northeast is, perhaps, the least impressive.

It possesses neither the exposed granite, nor the height, nor the 400-foot waterfall of Mount Index and Mount Persius. It doesn't stab the blue sky with its angular granite spires, like the Gunn Peaks to the north.  And it doesn't drop a thousand vertical feet into the North Fork of the Skykomish River as the Index Town Wall does to the west. 

It is merely a hill amongst mountains.

But a little more than two years ago, that northeastern hill, named Heybrook Ridge became the most important hill in the world to the 120 people who inhabit this Cascade town.

In February 2007, W.B. Foresters, the logging company that owns the 129 acres of Heybrook Ridge, announced its intention to scalp it of its cedars, firs and pines.

A group of a dozen local activists, galvanized and somewhat fatigued by the six-year-long fight to win passage of the Wild Sky Wilderness Act, immediately responded.
But they didn't march with protest signs, file lawsuits, or hang effigies of the companies president.

Instead, they asked what they could do to prevent a region blessed with National Park-like beauty to suffer from a disfiguring scar.

The response was equally simple: Buy it. By June 30, 2008. For $1.3 million.
That's a lot of money for even the most passionate 10 local activists in the world to raise. But they had their assignment. And this little group intended to complete it. They formed a non-profit, called the Friends of Heybrook Ridge. Developed a website. Created videos. Led nature hikes. Networked. They met every first and third Tuesday of each month at the fire hall.

But for the first few months of their effort, they raised pennies, when they needed dollars, using weeks, when all they had was days.

In the spring of 2008, however, they received an anonymous offer they couldn't have anticipated: If you can raise $700,000, I'll donate $500,000.

Local media picked up on the story. Local conservation groups adopted the effort into their own missions.  The donations began pouring in. The landowner dropped the price by $100,000 to $1.2 million. It also extended the deadline to July 31, 2008. And all of the sudden, this coniferous hill didn't seem so doomed to the chainsaw.

On August 4, 2008, the Snohomish County Council adopted Heybrook Ridge into its management plan.

The Friends of Heybrook Ridge had $40,000 to spare. And the best way to spend that, Louise Lindgren, its former president figured, was to delicately establish eco-recreation on it.
Eco-tourism is, after all, Index's only remaining resource. Seventy-five years ago, it was a mining town—a little gold, some silver and enough granite to built the state capitol building's staircase.

Now, however, it's world-class climbing, abundance of quality whitewater and trailheads to a dozen Alpine Lakes makes it one of the best outdoor adventure spots in the Northwest.
My family moved to Skykomish just prior to my junior year of high school. And just after I graduated, I spent most of my time driving down to Index to paddle the Skykomish River. I learned how to roll on the Skykomish. I learned how to boof on the Skykomish. My brother and I spent two years exploring its tributaries, ignoring topo maps, just hiking in and dropping down.

Now, I am organizing an event on the Skykomish. It's a task I never figured I'd ever want to assume. But it's one that began with a simple idea to create a simple event. It's a task that is forcing me to consolidate a lot of free radicals into a tiny mountain valley on a single day. My deadline is August 1, 2009.

And I'm using the event to celebrate the success of the Friends of Heybrook Ridge, to show them some appreciation for doing the hard work that saved my most beloved valley from a disfiguring scar. I am hoping everyone who reads this will come as well.