I met Quincy in July of 1984 at the McKenzie Pass campground on Highway 242, which connects the Willamette Valley, west of the Oregon Cascades, and the town of Sisters, east of that mountain range.  We would spend the next five days tramping through the wilderness at the foot of the volcanic peaks known as the Three Sisters.

 

Quincy and I were about the same height at the shoulder, but due to his much longer neck, his head towered over mine. Thanks to hour upon hour slaving away at a desk job, I was no longer as slim as I had been in my youth.  But despite the fact that Quincy spent nearly all of his days in the great outdoors, he outweighed me by a hundred pounds or more.

 

We bathed at the end of each day's hike, me by dousing myself with a bucket of cold water scooped out of a snowmelt fed stream, he by rolling around in the dirt. I changed my clothes a few times during the trip; he always wore the same shaggy coat.  By the end of our journey through the mountains it was debatable who was the scruffiest, but we both smelled quite "fragrant."

 

Fast-forward to 2010 when I entered these mountains with a different and far less mangy looking companion, my wife.  After a few leisurely days hanging out at the Metolius River Resort near Sisters, we turned in the key to our cabin, and began a day's journey westward over the mountains to the home of friends living just south of Eugene. 

 

Before starting out, we stopped to top off our gas tank.  The Chevron station and the parking lot it shared with McDonald's was jammed with cars and people being refueled. McDonald's customers lined up nearly out the door, waiting to fill up on a late breakfast of Egg McMuffins or an early lunch of Big Macs. 

 

But as we left town heading to the McKenzie Pass, there were few vehicles ahead or behind us. The Three Sisters quickly passed out of view as the highway's two lanes narrowed to Model "A" Ford width and corkscrewed up the mountains.  

At the first scenic viewpoint along the road, we met up with a few cars and two Harley-Davidson motorcycles.  The owner of the Harley with a burnt-orange paint job discussed the finer points of motorcycling with a fellow biker-dude and his lady, both outfitted in leather vests and chaps. 

From that viewpoint, we could see the main peaks that we had spotted earlier in the week—Washington, Jefferson, and Three Fingered Jack, rising up over the miles-long expanse of basaltic boulders running north to south in this area.

 

A short while later we reached the pass and the Dee Wright Observatory, a castle-like turret sitting atop a huge, jumbled pile of black lava rocks.  We climbed to the top to take in the sweeping view south to the North and Middle Sister, and north toward the other major Cascade peaks, including the haze-enshrouded summit of Mount Hood, east of Portland. 

 

A Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel with the cheeks on both sides of his face bulging out like helium balloons was eating out of the hand of a backpacker reclining against rocks along the pathway fronting the parking area below the observatory.  When I learned that he and his hiking companion had just come off the portion of the trail that traverses the Three Sisters Wilderness, I recalled my journey through the same area with Quincy over a quarter century before.

 

That summer of 1984, Quincy, his pals, me and the other members of our contingent, met up at the end of a Sunday afternoon and enjoyed a campfire dinner together.  Then I climbed into my sleeping bag, zipped up the "door" to my tent, and fell fast asleep. 

Monday morning, we ate a quick breakfast, packed up our gear, and set off up the trail through the ancient lava flow on the other side of the highway.

 

For the first two days we hiked four to five miles a day, up and over ridges, crossing the flanks of the still snow-clad mountains looming above us.  We whetted our appetites each evening before dinner with Mai-Tai cocktails made from clumps of soft, summer snow.  We stuffed our faces with all manner of great food.  The Milky Way wheeled above us in the sky as we slept the night away.

 

The third day we stayed put, moseying about taking photos, or sitting around the campsite reading.  The next day we broke camp and headed east toward the Three Sisters.  

 

On the fifth and final day we turned north, and walked seven miles back to where we had started out on Monday morning.

 

Until encountering weekend backpackers coming in as we neared the end of the trail and our waiting cars, we had seen only two other people:  Horseback riders who, like us, were camping in the wilderness.

 

Quincy and I stuck close together throughout each day that we hiked.  But on our only "day off," he hung out with the pals with whom he had arrived on the previous Sunday.  

 

 

They were a sociable, closely bonded band of buddies.  If one of them would make a "pit stop" along the trail, he would run like hell to catch up with the friends who had walked on ahead of him.  And they always had dinner together, away from the rest of us hikers, eschewing our protein-laden meals for a totally vegetarian repast.

 

I hadn't thought about Quincy in many years. He probably wouldn't have come to mind in the summer of 2010, either, if we not decided to vacation in Central Oregon.

 

I don't know where Quincy and his friends are today, but it's not likely that they are trekking through the Oregon Cascades any longer.  Their life span is only about fifteen to twenty years, so odds are that they are now residing high above The Three Sisters, looking down from Llama Heaven upon the wilderness where they spent so many happy times in summers long since passed.