The Oxbow Loop Biscuit Incident (A Completely Normal Hiking Story)

Oxbow Loop Trail (North Bend, WA)

Distance: 1.8 mi (Round Trip)

Elevation Gain: 56 ft.

Highest Elevation: 920 ft.

Dogs: Allowed

Difficulty: Easy

Oxbow Loop Trail is one of those rare hikes that gives you an unreasonable amount of beauty for very little effort. It is an easy, roughly 1.8-mile loop with only about 56 feet of elevation gain, but it still manages to serve up lake views, river views, mountain views, and that lush Snoqualmie rainforest feeling that makes parts of the Pacific Northwest seem slightly overqualified.

The first time we went, on New Year’s Eve 2025, that easy payoff was exactly what we needed. We were in the thick of the most emotionally inconvenient week possible, waiting through the last miserable stretch before my scheduled cancer surgery, and the goal was simple: get out, move around, breathe some cold air, and let the trail do what trails are supposed to do. I went with Allison, Archer, Ember, and Shadow, and for a little while it really did feel like the day was working. The hike was gentle, the scenery kept changing just enough to keep everyone interested, and it had that rare combination of being short enough to feel manageable while still looking like a real adventure. The trail passes through the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River valley, where you get calm water, mountain views, and the kind of forest canopy that makes everything feel a little more settled than it did five minutes earlier.

Then came the biscuits.

We stopped at South Fork after the hike, and I had a few bites of one of those magical biscuits we had had before, the kind that makes you feel briefly, foolishly sure that the world is a generous place. It was not a dramatic eating experience. I did not inhale it. I did not destroy an entire basket in a single act. I had several bites, enjoyed them properly, and filed the experience away under satisfaction. That is important, because the biscuit did not feel like a mistake at the time…

A couple of hours later I felt bloated, which was annoying but not alarming, and then over the next couple of days that annoyance turned into much worse pain and fever. Then urgent care. CT scan. Ruptured appendix. Emergency surgery immediately. And this was happening four days before the scheduled melanoma and lymph node surgery I was already bracing for. The timing was so awful it almost felt scripted. The biscuit, in hindsight, had not been magical at all. It had been the opening scene of a medical disaster.

By April 22, 2026, the second time I went to hike Oxbow, I had been back through enough recovery

and enough life to be able to laugh at the absurdity of it, which is probably the only reason this whole story is now a blog post instead of just a long, deeply rude memory. That second hike was me, Archer, Grandma Tanya who was visiting from Arkansas, and Shadow. This time we did not stop at South Fork. This decision was later discussed, acknowledged, and treated with the proper level of respect. The joke was simple and very satisfying: I did not get biscuits that time, and I also did not get appendicitis. A historic improvement.

The trail itself was just as good the second time, maybe even better because I was not carrying a fresh stack of medical dread into it. Grandma Tanya was blown away by how much different scenery Oxbow packs into such a short, easy loop. That is the thing about this trail. It is not hard, it is not long, and it does not pretend to be something it is not. It just keeps handing you one beautiful view after another, like it cannot help itself. There are river views, lake views, mountain views, and enough forest to make you feel like you have traveled farther than you have.

Archer, meanwhile, spent part of the hike doing what he apparently does best, which is throwing rocks into the river with the confidence of someone who has spent years perfecting the art. He has a very serious approach to rock throwing, and I mean that in the highest possible way. Shadow kept up as usual, Grandma Tanya kept taking in the scenery, and I kept having that quiet, slightly stunned surreal feeling that comes after surviving something awful and then returning to the same place to find it still beautiful, still ordinary, still there.

That was the real payoff this time. Not just the trail, and not just the joke about the biscuits, but the fact that the second visit to Oxbow was not haunted by the first one. The same place that once sat beside fear and bad timing and surgery became, in April, just a place. A remarkable little trail full of mountains, river water, and forest, shared with some of my most important people. Which is probably the best kind of redemption a hike can offer.

And for the record, I still think the biscuits are suspicious.