O.J. and our backpacking trip
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The picture on the homepage was taken by my wife atop a 7,300-foot pass in the Cascade Mountains of Washington, just north of Lake Chelan. It was taken, I believe, on Oct. 7, 1995, several days after the O.J. Simpson acquittal.

I'm quite a news junkie. I wake up to Morning Edition, read my paper every day, and try to read the Sunday Times, although that's difficult to do when you have a toddler.

So I wondered periodically on our eight-day backpacking trip in the Cascades what was happening with the O.J. Simpson trial. We got on the trail as the jury began deliberations. We figured it would take at least a couple of weeks to arrive at a verdict; that we would watch it live once we got back to civilization.

We wandered the wilderness in the mountains above Lake Chelan. We didn't see a soul for five days. As I hiked, jingles and ad slogans and snatches of tunes from the '70s, like "The Night Chicago Died" by Paper Lace, drifted through my consciousness like hot dog wrappers blowing around a deserted stadium. The hike helped clear my head of cultural pollution.

On the sixth day, we climbed to a ridgetop and encountered a National Park Service backcountry ranger with the improbable name of Duke Zimmerman. Actually, I don't think that was his first name; I can't remember it. But it was a cowboyish first name that matched his looks and demeanor: deeply lined face, sinewy hands, laconic. He was on horseback and had a couple of pack horses with him. We talked for 20 minutes about the scenery, bear tracks my wife and I had seen, and campsites ahead. Then we parted.

The next day is the day of the picture on the homepage. After descending that ridge and ascending another one, we met a trio of hunters and talked with them for about five minutes about bears and campsites.

Two days later, we descended into the town of Stehekin, an isolated village that cannot be reached by road. As I paid for a huge bag of potato chips and several Reese's peanut butter cups, I asked the clerk about baseball. He told me that the Mariners had just beaten the Yankees in a seven-game series. Yeah, I asked, but what about the Indians? He told me they would play Seattle for the AL title, and we talked for a while about baseball.

My wife and I ate lunch and dinner and chatted with waitresses and store clerks. That night, we wandered around town and walked into the post office, which is where people living along the lake post flyers and notices, and where travelers along the nearby Pacific Crest Trail write entries in a fat binder. Stuff like: "I'll see you up ahead, Moonshine! Tell Pipsqueak to watch out for those argyle socks!" Everyone listed in the binder had a trail name, and the inside jokes were legion.

That's when I spied a week-old newspaper in the corner. "Babe!" I shouted to my wife, who was sitting beside me. "O.J. was acquitted!"

This was eight days after the verdict. It was our first inkling of the outcome. We had learned about the baseball playoffs, we had heard some town gossip, we had read details about a community sale that was going to be held up the lake in a few days. Only after that did we learn about the O.J. verdict.

I hope we find that kind of isolation again on a future backpacking trip.



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