When I was 19, I hiked about a third of the Pacific Crest Trail, a 2,650-mile footpath that stretches from Mexico to Canada, through some of the most breathtaking landscapes in the western U.S. In 1979 cellphones had not yet been invented, so there was no GPS or calling 911. Cheryl Strayed had not shouldered a backpack and written the bestseller Wild.
Back then, the idea of a long-haul hike in one direction was still pretty unusual. So too was my companion on this epic journey, Steve Kemp, a guy I had met 12 months earlier in Wyoming’s Grand Tetons. We shared an alpine adventure that generated a yearlong exchange of handwritten letters, and at some point we both committed to this marathon trek. He’d supply the tent; I’d bring the camp stove.
After my freshman year at Middlebury College, I found my way to Missoula, where Steve was in a writing program at the University of Montana, and together we bought enough instant oatmeal and trail mix to get us through the summer. In truth, we guessed at the amounts we packed up in boxes and shipped to ourselves at post offices along the route.
Most PCT hikers start walking north from the U.S.-Mexican border in early spring. Because it was already June, we picked a spot near the Oregon-California line. East of Grants Pass, we found the trail still covered in snow. Plenty of mosquitoes, but no humans. We went for days without seeing anyone but each other.
I’m a talker who thinks out loud in a constant stream of half-baked theories and ideas. Steve, a good listener, turned out to be quiet and reflective. When he did speak, often to capture the import of a book or the natural beauty around us, his words were carefully chosen. All of that silence unnerved me. I wrote in my journal: “Steve says he doesn’t like to say things that haven’t been thought out.”
I was too dumb and self-absorbed to appreciate that I was walking through the state of Oregon with a poet. He wrote a poem, “Red Cone Springs,” that I copied into my journal. Forty-six years later, it perfectly memorializes our trip with lines such as “how easy it was to live without things / that wilderness / was quiet and toothless as water.”
At the Washington state line, marked by the mighty Columbia River, we parted ways. I kept on trekking to Mount Rainier, and Steve went to visit friends in Olympia. Over the years, we lost touch.
With the advent of the internet, I googled Steve from time to time but couldn’t find a trace.
Then, in 2019, I got an email from another erstwhile adventure buddy who was still friends with Steve. It turned out that my former PCT partner was a ranger in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. And more specifically, for 30 years Steve had been a writer, editor and publisher for the Great Smoky Mountains Association, now Smokies Life.
Steve had become a professional nature writer.
I found a recent video of Steve’s retirement ceremony, during which he humbly received an award. I sent a congratulatory email, and we had a great exchange, peppered with terms we used on the trail, which we often called “La Strada.” I asked: “Remember when your dad sent us a book with a dollar bill in every page?” That welcome surprise, when we were both flat broke, provided essential petty cash.
Steve did remember. In fact, the unexpected gift was the subject of the last paragraph of the eulogy he’d written for his late father a year and a half earlier. He shared it with me, and I’d forgotten some details: The care package also included two packets of freeze-dried ice cream, and the book, a paperback, was authored by one of Steve’s favorite writers. His final words about his dad were: “In a way, that package symbolizes all the enduring gifts I’ve gratefully received from my father: something fun, something practical and something beautiful.”
His final words to me in that email, six months before the pandemic, were: “Really hope to see you in the not-too-distant future.”
It’s finally happening thanks to Bookstock, a literary festival in Woodstock scheduled for May 16, 17 and 18. In two weeks, my former tentmate is Vermont-bound to read from his new book, An Exaltation of Parks: John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s Crusade to Save America’s Wonderlands. His eloquent, well-documented preface makes a case for wilderness, and nature, at a time when President Donald Trump is laying off rangers and threatening to sell or monetize federally owned conserved land.
“We need more national parks, and many of the parks we now have need to be expanded,” Steve writes.
I know that being a young adult, and an eyewitness to America’s remote beauty along the Pacific Crest Trail, shaped more than my quads.
Steve is also leading a hike as part of the Bookstock festivities, along a carriage trail in Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. Hope I can still keep up with him.
This article appears in May 7-13, 2025.
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