“See! I’m A Leopard.”

The gravel road to the trailhead was filled with potholes that rocked the car. We knew we were close to our destina­tion. We pulled up to where the old logging road is cut off to motorized traffic by a high mound of dirt and a deep trench. The four of us got out of the car. Niko and I emerged from the back seat. My friend and his oldest son got out of the front.

My friend's youngest son, a good friend of Niko, wasn't with us. But he was foremost on our minds. His father made a point of call­ing him on his cell phone several times during our hike. A few weeks ago, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. My friend and his wife take turns being with him at Children's Hospital in Seattle, then hang out with their oldest boy, a 10th grader who feels a bit lost in all the commotion around his brother's all-consuming treatment.

My friend opened the hatch. We stuffed our packs and laced up our boots. Looking at the logging road, we weren't so sure where this hike would take us.

We had no map for it ex­cept a Xeroxed copy of the area to the north that showed two small lakes surrounded by tightly bunched elevation lines.

We headed up the road. Dizzy, my half -year-old puppy, ran circles around us, easily covering five times our distance on his first mountain trip.

Aside from his antics, I was thinking to myself how this trail wasn't too inspir­ing. It still had that bareness of a logging project that hap­pened around the time Niko and his friend were born. Brush and trees were grow­ing

back on the hills, but it was hardly a pristine forest.

My friend's son just start­ed his chemotherapy two weeks ago. His Ewing's Sarcoma is curable, but it's a long, arduous journey for him and his family. For the next eight months, they will be going through an intense and draining cycle of chemo, radiation and surgery that will take every ounce of strength - his and theirs. Niko dashed ahead on the trail with Dizzy. He found a big stick to swing at the weeds along the road. I told him not to slam Dizzy in the face by accident.

My friend and his oldest son walked steadily, vaguely joking about inventing a board game mimicking the cancer treatment experience. Roll the dice to get as far as you can as fast as you can, knowing those "chance" cards will inevitably include some setbacks but may spell some good news too: remis­sion, recovery. About an hour into the hike, my friend's wife called. They talked for a while. She put their youngest son on. Father and son spoke for a few minutes before the young patient tired and signed off. We were all connected with him through the phone call and through the pictures my friend took of us with his cell phone and sent to him at the hospital. A little higher up the road we ran into some mushroom pickers with Ukranian ac­cents. We talked for a while about the trail and the lake. The Ukranians wanted to know if the lakes might be stocked with fish. Brown trout at most, my friend speculated.

The trail wasn't getting any cheerier with stumps and logs left rotting in piles. But the sun warmed the cool fall mountain air, and we were all picking up our pace at the thought of setting eyes on a quiet alpine lake or two. My friend's youngest son is a fighter. He's already lived his short life with urticaria, an uncommon abundance of histamines that blotches his skin. He has already had a few close calls with bee stings that can be deadly to him. He carries an epi pen wherever he goes. But he's hardly embarrassed about it. Whenever the sub­ject came up at a younger age, he would lift his shirt to show his spotted belly and proclaim proudly: "See! I'm a leopard!" We finally reached an old timber-staging area on the edge of the national forest and spotted some old growth stands in the distance. The lakes were getting close.

We found the narrowing trail to the marshy funnel that signals the larger body of water. The lake was small, but its surroundings were infi­nitely more majestic. The feeling among the towering pines was primordial.

The afternoon sun angled in through the branches. The light played silently on the tall grass rising from the chilly water. My friend's oldest son wanted to go back, but Niko found a trail he insisted we should explore, and he re­fused to let us dismiss it as an elks' route going nowhere. Lo and behold, it took us to an even bigger and nicer lake basking in a fall glow of reds and yellows. The water was cool, clear and bracing to Dizzy, whom we decided to throw in to clean off the marsh mud he rolled in. He came out quickly and shook off in the sun. It was a joyous moment we wanted to replay for the camera, so we threw him in again and he did the same thing, just as camera worthy. It was time to head back - our friends to the hospital, us to Bainbridge Island for an­other friend's birthday party. My friend and his oldest son hiked closely together.

He had an arm on his fa­ther's shoulder. They linked shoulders completely when we were back on the logging road heading to the car.

The younger son is off for 11 days now to suck it up for his next round. It will be colder in the mountains the next time we see our friends. We may need to bring our snow shoes.