Part 3
Mont Blanc is the grandest hike I’ve ever taken. But it’s the memories of our all being together on it that I most cherish. There is no companionship quite like the companionship of a long hike. Looking out for one another. Having a good talk first with one fellow hiker, then another. Sharing beauty that can’t be captured in words. Prevailing together over blisters and cold and fatigue. Celebrating together the successful finish of a hard day.
From our early family hikes through many sibling expeditions to my kids and now grandkids, our family have followed in my father’s footsteps. Decades ago, my brother brought his family out to join ours at a friend’s cabin in Marble, Colorado, for several fine days of hiking. As a baby, our Paris-born daughter rode in a backpack through Eastern Europe’s Tatra Mountains and Julian Alps, as passersby called out “die kleinste Alpinistin!” Years later, back in Hot Springs, my dad gave her a quartz crystal and led her on a hike on the mountain where he found it. Long after she and I survived that thirsty Grand Canyon descent, we climbed Mt. Washington together. She was married in the Tetons, and David and I hiked all through the mountains of the Northwest on our way from California to her wedding. Their home is in Utah now: Hiker heaven.
By a stroke of good fortune, all of our kids lived in California during our five years in L.A., opening up wondrous hiking opportunities. Our son lived nearby, in Long Beach. We’d drive up to Angeles Crest most weekends, scaling one San Gabriel peak or another. The three of us climbed 10,000-foot Mount Baldy together and hiked in the Eastern Sierra. With our younger daughter, we’ve delighted in Northern California hikes in Point Reyes, Mount Tamalpais, Muir Woods, the Berkeley hills, Mount Diablo.
Our littlest grandkids commandeered our hiking poles last summer on walks in Crested Butte. In a few months, we’ll be back on the trails with all of them in Maine.
Hiking is especially fine for the particular companionship of marriage. From the Sawtooths, the Bitterroots and the Uintas to the Adirondacks, the Green and the White mountains, from Grandfather Mountain to the slopes of Mount Rainier, David and I have hiked untold miles together. We seek out hikes when we travel abroad, even if they’re not the trip’s focus — up Arenal in Costa Rica, down Samaria Gorge in Crete, through hilly tea plantations in Kerala, India, and in the mountains towering above rice paddies in Sapa, Vietnam.
Last month, in New Zealand’s splendid Southern Alps, we hiked on the slopes of Mt. Cook, at Arthur’s Pass and in Mount Aspiring National Park, all in preparation for the big one: the Routeburn. What a hike.
Shortly after we returned home, we each turned 75. That was my father’s age when he took his last hike up North Mountain, across from his house on Ramble Street in Hot Springs National Park.
For his birthday, I got David a book about Patagonia.