Phil Garfoot took his last long hike on this earth on Tuesday, March 30th.

People who knew Phil never forgot him. People near and far kept in touch with him, and told him - told anyone who would listen - how much he meant to them: friends from grade school on up through high school in Fresno or the army or the merchant marines, from Yosemite or the Tetons; His brothers and their families, cousins from California, Wisconsin, even Norway; Stehekin friends, who came and went for over forty years; trail workers who spent a decade or a day brushing with him; even visitors who stopped in the orchard just once. Everyone who knew Phil held him in high esteem, and for good reason.

Phil was strong. He loved all sports, baseball especially, as we all know, and he was once an outstanding second baseman at Fresno High. He liked to talk about how he might have gone on with his career if he hadn't injured his rotator cuff one summer playing marathon tennis matches with his friend Freddy Garcia before baseball practice every hot Fresno afternoon. Phil also loved to ski, a sport he learned the hard way the season he and Wendy spent at Winter Park, Colorado where he groomed trails by dragging a "Bradley Packer" - a huge wooden contraption that connected to the groomer's belt. Decades later Phil and Wendy returned to Winter Park, and reconnected with friends who remembered them from that winter. And for over thirty years in Stehekin, Phil's annual trips to shovel snow off the North Fork Bridge were almost as legendary as his museum-like collection of cross country skis.

And Phil loved hard work, especially in the hot sun. The hotter the better. The hotter the weather got, the harder Phil swung his machete or pick mattock, the more horses he shod, the more cans he crushed with his "Norwegian can crusher," the more garden soil he turned over. And the more big things he moved. The bigger the better. Whether a rock in the trail or a driftwood log on the lakeshore or pallets of slate for his roof, nothing was too big to move by hand. He'd set up some rollers or cut a long pole as a lever then encourage whoever was with him to lie down on their backs and "push with their legs. Phil often said he thought he was meant to be a "coolie" one of the Chinese laborers working on the railroad in the 1800's. He was happy working hard, without a machine, then walking five or twelve miles back home on top of it. Generations of trail workers have idolized Phil, thinking: if only I could keep up with him. Few could. And they didn't just mean on the trail. They meant in life. Phil managed to avoid a desk job for his entire career with the National Park Service sticking with physical labor until he retired in 2007 at age 69. He got out before he ever had to open an email account.

Phil liked to work with his hands. He studied art in college in Montana, and he admired artists and illustrators and cartoonists, alike, especially Gary Larson. Phil's artistic talent and keen eye for beauty inspired every corner of his life. He painted and drew and built trail bridges with purposeful curves. And, of course, he made signs. Those signs of his, on slabs of wood, chainsaw-ripped, elegantly and rustically routed, in the familiar block print or his flowing cursive were never stenciled, never sloppy, always unique. They are a trademark of Stehekin and a large part of what makes the place seem intimate and authentic, the kind of place where someone will take the time to take a half-burned chunk of cedar and turn an outhouse sign into a work of art. Phil worked for hours to make signs that pointed out landmarks and trailheads, that marked homes and businesses, and his Park Service arrowheads were the finest of going away gifts.

Phil was always generous. He gave away more signs than he was ever paid for. He gave people help when they needed it. He climbed and limbed trees; he moved rocks and stumps and clawfoot bathtubs. Phil and Wendy hosted countless community potlucks and annual Leo Parties at the orchard, providing coffee and beer, horseshoes and music and volleyball and at least once, rescue service, when Quin fell in the outhouse. Most of all, Phil gave people his time - from reading Brun and Liv nightly bedtime stories to greeting visitors along the trail or at the Buckner Orchard. And he took real interest in their stories. He liked to know where people were from, both the places they came from and their heritage. He liked to know which sports teams they favored, and tried not to hold it against them when it wasn't the Mariners or Duke. Almost always he left them laughing.

Phil was funny. He often envisioned life in cartoons. His sense of humor mirrored Gary Larson's. He liked to think of the world from an animal's point of view, or caveman's or a dinosaur's … maybe because he thought of himself as a caveman or dinosaur. Everyone has a funny Phil story. One year in Stehekin, where everyone waves each time a car passes, Phil made his own personal sign to hold up each time a car passed. The sign said: "hi." And late one fall when Laurie got into trouble falling a cottonwood, she saw from across the orchard Phil racing in a Viking mask, peevee in hand, to her rescue. Phil was quick-witted, but never cutting. He could leave a whole crowd in tears telling a story, but couldn't remember a joke to save his life. His humor was full of understatement and humility and silliness. And love.

Phil was a collector. He especially loved to browse in a used book store, spending hours in them and never leaving empty handed. He was a voracious reader, leaning particularly toward military history, biographies, art history and sports. It was rare indeed that Phil wasn't closing a book before turning out the last light in the house. And there were the sweaters, especially Norwegian sweaters. There were hats and socks, knives and carving tools… and those skis. And we can't forget driftwood! Phil would eye a treasure in the lake and with the tenacity that he had in abundance would find a way to rope it in and haul it to the property, often with a little help from his friends.

Phil loved many things. He loved wildlife: the deer and the geese in the orchard, and one particular rattlesnake on the Boulder Creek trail. He loved horses. He packed them for the trail crew and kept them in the orchard pasture when Liv and Brun were growing up. He loved his dogs: Webster, Haskins, Bill & Bob, Yoda and Vanna. And he loved his friends. In recent months, he wrote hundreds of letters to friends old and new, sharing sports stories, cherished memories, philosophies, and day to day news, reminding them that he loved them. He loved his children Brun and Liv. Some of Brun's fondest memories are rattlesnake encounters while hiking with his dad, taking horses to the barge while still dark, and their yearly tradition of Mariner baseball games in Seattle. Some of Liv's fondest memories are helping her Dad shoe horses by attempting to wear an old shoeing apron and practicing on their dog Bob and more recently, when she visited Stehekin this past Fall. They took a drive together to the end of the road, talking the entire way about life in general and Stehekin, how it used to be and how it is now, the direction life takes you and the importance of the steps along the way. Phil loved his parents, his brothers and their families, Liv's husband Johnny, Brun's wife Mindy, and his grandchildren: Leanna, Josie, Ian, Makala. And he loved his wife Wendy most of all. Since his retirement, Phil and Wendy were able to spend some special time. They took a long-anticipated trip to Norway in 2008 to trace his family heritage, and late in February they spent two weeks at the Oregon Coast where he was able to walk with her by the ocean every day.

Phil said often that he wished he could find a little shack by ocean, nothing fancy, but a place where he could hear the waves and walk in the sand. A few days before he died, he asked Wendy if she thought this might be what heaven would be like. She said, for him, it definitely would be.

Maybe the biggest reason that people admired Phil so much was just that Phil was so reliably Phil. He knew what he believed and he lived it. He liked to joke that his catchphrase should be "I'm against it" since he so often fought change. He fought to keep the orchard as it is; he fought to keep his family in Stehekin; he fought for one lone dogwood tree outside the Golden West. And he won. But Phil just as often fought for things. He fought for the ideas he believed in, the people he loved, and the life he chose to live, which was a lot like the things he built: simple and elegant, functional and beautiful. Phil's good friend Bob Cunningham once joked that years from now archaeologists will come back to Stehekin to dig and find massive picnic tables and big pile of slate. Phil's spirit is like that too: huge, meant to stay put, and to last forever.