By Olivia Dugenet
Cover photo courtesy of Olivia Dugenet
I discovered by accident that my hiking shorts had magical powers. It’s hard to explain how it started, except that it was wildfire season and the entire atmosphere had shriveled like a blackened lung. An incoming storm threatened more lightning, and I had failed to get an advance backpacking permit, so I didn’t even know where we were going. I wanted to cancel, but some instinct compelled me to take my friends out there, in the smoke and thunder, just to see what would happen.
We drove east from Spokane. Instead of lightning, the storm brought cold, heavy rain that put out the fires and cleaned the air. We couldn’t believe our luck when we claimed a walk-up permit for one of the best routes in the park. Then, just as we stepped onto the trail, the sun appeared. Everything unfolded perfectly except for one detail, and that was my outfit.
I was wearing shockingly-vibrant, floral, spandex workout shorts that were too snug, a weird length, and made a whistling-swishing sound with every pass of the thighs. For some unfathomable reason, I had chosen them as the only pair of shorts to bring on that trip.
I told myself appearances didn’t matter in the wilderness. Still, my discomfort compounded by the mile until I finally made an announcement to my friends. “Ladies, I’m feeling weird about my shorts.” They said, “Yeah, that’s because you look CRAZY!”
“I don’t understand myself,” I said. “Why do I even own these?” It was a mysterious phenomenon, we agreed, but then so was our uncanny good luck. The epiphany struck us all at the same time: these must be lucky shorts.
The next few times I hiked with members of that group, I brought the shorts just for laughs. I noticed, though, that whenever I wore them—even as a joke—conditions were favorable. We got the best campsites. Everyone stayed safe.
I started wearing the shorts on trips that did not include original group members. They worked every time. So now, in addition to chronic fashion-related embarrassment, I had another problem. My behavior suggested I believed the shorts were magical. As a thinking person, I knew it wasn’t true.
For research purposes, I decided I would never wear the shorts when hiking alone. If I brought normal hiking clothes on solo trips and everything went fine, it would prove my hypothesis that the shorts could not influence backcountry conditions.
The next time I took a solo hike, I left the shorts in a drawer. Then, I got stuck, got lost, had a terrifying wildlife encounter, and discovered that crucial water sources had dried up.
The following year, I took another big solo trip without the shorts. This time, I battled rain and high winds, got injured, and lost important gear.
Again last summer, I refused to pack those ugly, silly fake-magic shorts. But, as I was backing out of my driveway, I felt a tug—like the shorts were inside my mind saying, “Are you sure? Because I wouldn’t. Not where you’re going.” I paused. I debated. I ran into the house and grabbed them. I told myself I would just bring them in the car. Just in case. They rode shotgun across the state and into the mountains.
Early the next morning, I checked the weather one final time while I still had service. The forecast had deteriorated. It now said “Hazardous weather alert. Storm Warning. Flash Floods. Lightning.”
Defeated, I changed in a vault toilet at the trailhead. When other hikers stopped to chat on the trail, I wanted to lean in and whisper, “This isn’t the real me.” But honestly, yes, it was. I had put those shorts on against my better judgment because I thought they had supernatural abilities.
And maybe they did, but to wield them, I was forced to surrender my pride. Hubris causes the bulk of backcountry accidents, especially in today’s digitized, know-everything culture that overloads us with information while starving us of courage and connection. Even when you plan and prepare right down to the molecule, you still have to walk into the unknown and accept that you’re a tiny part of a much bigger reality—one which you are powerless to control. Those shorts might not work for everyone. But for a person like me, simultaneously in love with and resistant to the sublime, it takes an act of floral spandex to put me in my place.
I hiked 14 miles that day before I finally met the storm. The sky grew strange and dark. Thunder crashed and rain started. I jumped up and down to activate the magic. I said, “OK shorts. You think you’re so smart? Let’s see you handle this.”
I walked into the danger. I felt afraid. And then, it happened. The rain stopped. The thunder faded. The night became calm and lovely. I woke the next morning to sunshine in the ancient trees. I bushwhacked into wild, hidden river valleys and climbed unruly mountain passes. I walked in solitude through old growth forests and high-altitude meadows. I bathed in blue lakes and icy creeks. It was one of the best trips I’ve ever taken.
Hiking out four days later, I met a group of men. They wanted to know if I had been out during the big storm and if I’d gotten “destroyed.” They’d been staying in the nearest town, and said it was the scariest, most intense weather they’d seen in a decade. I explained that the storm had just sort of skipped over me.
One guy raised an eyebrow and chuckled. “That storm was massive. How did it hit the whole region, and only skip you?”
I gave my shorts a subtle pat of gratitude, right on my humiliated thigh, and said, “I guess I got lucky.”
Olivia Dugenet is a Spokane-based writer and frequent backcountry traveler. She wrote about the hidden world of the Blue Mountains Trail in the spring issue of Out There.
