Equality of the trail in Bush encounter.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, Wash. - If prefaced by, "I had the weirdest dream last night," you might find an audience for a story of going on a hike and seeing the first lady of the United States of America putting on lipstick.

But would they buy it if you told them: "No. Really. There I was at the trailhead, and a few feet away stood Laura Bush, fussing with her makeup and looking like she'd just stepped out of the lobby of some lodge in Aspen or Jackson Hole"?

On Saturday morning, when my family pulled up to the Deer Park trailhead in Olympic National Park, all I could see was an idled convoy of four-wheel-drive behemoths - valet-parked and blocking the road. Before I could jump out of my dust-streaked minivan, a fellow in National Park Service attire hustled up to let me know it was a VIP party. Then, as if unable to keep a secret, he informed me that one of them was Laura Bush.

Soon my wife and kids piled out and encountered a scene that looked like an L.L. Bean catalog shoot: five women and maybe 30 men decked out in a smart-looking array of zip-out hiking pants, vests, long-sleeved shirts and earth-tone outback hats.

Not long after that I'd finished parking the car and returned to the trailhead, telling my family, including my brother- and sister-in-law and their kids, that the woman in unscuffed leather boots, long-sleeved sky-blue shirt and pressed khaki trousers was the first lady herself.

The park official told us Mrs. Bush's visit to the Olympics was meant as a strictly-vacation get-together for her and a few lifelong friends from Texas.

That explained why we hadn't seen anything about the trip in the news. Mrs. Bush and her friends descended the path ahead of us. Just behind them trudged a party of bodyguards, vaguely military-looking men who kept pace just far enough behind to create for the first lady and her companions the illusion that they were merely good friends from Texas, on an outdoorsy vacation in the Pacific Northwest.

As a political reporter, I half expected one of the nearby gaggle of Secret Service guys to step in front of me, ask for my press card and tell me that media was being staged in the roped-off area just beyond the crest of the road. Surely, only those who'd plunked down $500 for the fund-raiser lunch of freeze-dried chicken were being allowed onto the trail, right?

It turned out that here in the craggy high country, the usual officiousness of the White House was one of the few things that hadn't been packed along the 16 washboard miles from where the pavement ends.

We'd barely begun our way along the trail when a second wave of bodyguards caught up to us. They were strictly business but friendly enough to let us know we were free to go at whatever pace we wished; if we needed to pass the party ahead, no problem.

With the late-morning sun pressing through the trees, we soon found ourselves catching up to Laura Bush and her chums. They were apparently discovering that wrist-to-ankle skin-protecting clothing might make sense in the deer-tick country of the Appalachian Trail, but not so much when trekking the Olympics in the dry heat of a Pacific Northwest summer.

We passed by, and our parties exchanged the sort of greetings that take place on any given day on any given hiking trail.

"There are some great meadows just ahead," I offered, trying to sound encouraging.

"It's beautiful up here, isn't it?" the first lady answered pleasantly.

We were about to reach the meadow beneath 6,434-foot Maiden Peak, my group's destination for a lunch break and the place where we'd part company with the first lady's expeditionary party, which appeared to be heading on to Obstruction Point. My brother-in-law Tom, who's been back- packing this country for years, pointed out to Mrs. Bush and her friends the names of a few of the ridges and glaciated peaks spread before them. Then they continued up the path.

It occurred to me then what an equalizing force Olympic National Park imposes on its visitors. You won't find the grand lodges of Glacier National Park, built to accommodate well-to-do Easterners. There's nothing like the shopping mall of souvenir boutiques and transit system that has risen up to satisfy the hordes who flock to the Grand Canyon's South Rim. And you can't experience the Olympics as a series of roadside attractions, as you would Yellowstone.

Olympic National Park is essentially a wilderness area. Efforts to crisscross it with roads have either run out of money or run headlong into opposition from hikers and environ- mentalists.

National parks and wilderness areas grant all of us, regardless of wealth or status, a chance to find solitude among alpine meadows or moss-draped rain forests. But they require all of us, regardless of wealth or status, to sweat and strain and stop every once in a while to catch our breath.

David Steves is The Register-Guard's political reporter.