Redemption Through Backpacking: A TLM Alumni’s Journey From Scars to New Growth

After decades behind bars, I found that backpacking Oregon’s wilderness mirrored my own journey – redemption comes not from erasing scars, but growing beyond them.

Backpacking the Mount Jefferson Wilderness

As I walked among the charred tree stumps, the landscape was as foreign as a new planet. My time in prison had been a long, challenging climb – a relentless march up a seemingly endless slope. The stories of our lives are often etched in the landscapes we traverse.

For me, arriving at the Mount Jefferson Wilderness in Oregon was not only a physical journey but also one of profound personal significance.  Little did I know that I would find my own redemption while backpacking the mountain wilderness.

This journey began at the trailhead, where the air was crisp and clean, a stark contrast to the stale, recycled air of a housing unit. The path began deep inside the burn zone – a vast, skeletal forest of charred trees stretching for miles. It was a haunting and powerful sight.

The blackened, broken trees stood like ghosts of a former life, their trunks narrating a story of fire, a catastrophic event that had left a permanent scar on the landscape. Looking at the wounded forest, I was flooded with the raw, chaotic memories of my youth.

The forest of my childhood was filled with chaos, anger, and the kind of unexpected violence that leaves you scorched and hollowed out. I, too, had once been a burnt-out shell—a ghost of the person I might have been if the fire had never occurred.

Finding My Way Through the Burn Zone

As I hiked deeper into the burn zone, the ground beneath me was a mixture of old ash and new growth. The fine, powdery remnants of the fire whispered and crunched softly under my boots with each step. A cool mountain breeze carried the earthy scent of decomposing wood, mixed with the fresh, green smell of moss that had begun to reclaim the forest floor.

Walking through the forest, I first saw only death. A judgmental eye could label it as nothing more than an irredeemable landscape of charred trunks reaching toward the sky. However, a closer look revealed tender shoots of green emerging from the base of blackened stumps, delicate ferns unfurling in the shadow of scorched giants, and tiny purple lupines dotting the forest floor like scattered jewels. Patches of vibrant green moss and tiny, resilient wildflowers pushed their way up through the blackened earth, their colors startling against the muted grays and blacks.

The new growth was a testament to the tenacity of life, a physical manifestation of a truth I had fought for years to understand: even after the worst destruction, new life finds a way. I thought of the man I used to be – lost, angry, and consumed by drugs. The years of self-mutilation and addiction were a fire that had nearly destroyed me.

Somewhere between studying those resilient tufts of new growth and watching a young Douglas fir sapling stretch toward filtered sunlight, I recognized my own journey as a justice-impacted citizen.

The scars of the past were undeniable, just like the burnt trees, but they were no longer the whole story. I, like this forest, was healing. The new growth – my newfound purpose, my education, my faith, and the connections I had rebuilt – was proof that life could return. I could still see the damage, but I was also moving forward, surrounded by the vibrant green of hope.

Redemption Through Backpacking

The ascent continued, and the air grew thinner and sharper with each step upward. Each breath of the crystalline mountain air cut clean through my lungs, a stark contrast to the stale, recycled air I had known for so many years. I was leaving the burn zone behind and entering a world of jagged rock and permanent snowfields – an unforgiving landscape where only the most determined could survive.

The terrain was challenging, demanding precise foot placement on loose scree and weathered granite, but the focus it required was a welcome distraction. There was a peace in the rhythm of my measured breath and the deliberate crunch of my boots against stone. My mind, which in my younger days had been a whirlwind of madness and noise, found a quiet stillness it had never known before.

As I approached the base of Mount Jefferson, its massive, snow-covered peak rose majestically against the sky. The mountain’s white flanks caught the late afternoon light, glowing pale gold against a sky that shifted from deep blue to soft lavender as clouds drifted past. Ancient glaciers clung to the upper reaches, while below them, dark volcanic rock jutted through the snow like the backbone of the earth itself.

I thought of my life now, of the man I am today, and the future that awaits me. The mountain felt like a symbol of the immense challenges I still face – making amends, earning forgiveness, and building a new life. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t paralyzed by the enormity of it all. Standing there beneath that towering presence, watching the ever-changing sky above something so ancient and enduring, I felt a sense of calm determination. I found redemption through backpacking the mountain wilderness.

High Elevation and Hope

I made camp that night on a ridge at high elevation, the cold seeping into my bones. The snow crunched under my tent, and the wind whispered through the peaks around me. In my mind, those sounds echoed with memories of isolation and loneliness from another life.

The stillness and solitude of the mountain reminded me of a different kind of quiet – the one I found in my prison cell after lockdown. But while a profound silence marked both, they were worlds apart. In prison, the quiet was a forced condition, a hollow stillness that followed the rage and noise of the day, leaving me confined and alone. Here, the silence was an offering.

I was still alone, but my solitude wasn’t rooted in despair. It was a chosen freedom, a vast and quiet space for reflection. As I settled into my sleeping bag and listened again, the same wind that had stirred up old ghosts now seemed to carry something different – not the echoes of confinement, but whispers of what lay ahead on the trail tomorrow.

I set up camp to lie under a sky so dense with stars it looked like someone had scattered diamond dust across black velvet, the Milky Way stretching overhead in a luminous river of light. The vastness above made me feel both infinitely small and somehow connected to something immeasurably larger than myself. In that moment of profound stillness, I was able to find a deep sense of peace.

I was a son, a brother, a friend – a human being who had made a terrible mistake. I had survived the fire, I had walked through the scars, and now I was here, at the foot of a new mountain, ready to face whatever came next. When I finally fell asleep, it was with a heart full of gratitude, not just for the journey, but for the hard-won hope that illuminated the path ahead.

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By Brett Buskirk, Platform Systems Engineer at The Last Mile.

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