14,255ft.
Front Range
17/58

On April 7th 2018, I woke up in the top bunk of a bright yellow metal-framed bunk-bed atop a flimsy plastic mattress, huddled beneath a stained old comforter used to shelter me from the draft coming from the cracks in the walls of a structure that had functioned as a barn years before it had functioned as our home for the night. My throat hurt so terribly that my eyes welled with tears when I swallowed and my bare pinky toes throbbed. I thought of the socks I would soon need to put on, and of the shoes I’d need to put over the socks. And then of the seventeen miles we planned to walk that day. We were the only two left in the hostel, which meant we were already behind schedule.

I hobbled out the door into the dreary day, mentally prepared for low-spirits and physically prepared for breakfast to be miles away. We peered longingly into the locked lobby of the neighboring hotel as we passed by, expecting to see nothing but unfamiliar faces enjoying a warm breakfast. To our pleasant surprise, the faces we saw were those of two American gentlemen who had collectively taken us under their wing, acting as father-figures as we navigated a foreign country by foot. One a doctor, the other a lawyer. They cheerfully unlocked the door and welcomed us inside, shared their breakfast and assisted in medicating me before the four of us set off, together.

We were ten miles in and I had quietly resolved my day would only last two more. I traipsed along beside my three companions, shuffling through gravel, avoiding puddles and listening to, but not participating in, their conversation.

My friend began talking about the house-hunting process her and her fiancé were presently in the midst of (I’m thrilled for her). My lawyer friend began sharing his thoughts about that process. My mind began racing through virtual tours of the hallways he and I had once walked through .. the rooms I’d envisioned our un-purchased furniture in, the where we’d put the Christmas-tree conversations, scoping out the yards our future dog might run around someday. Then I jumped to the hallways of the house we bought .. the perfect kitchen table we spent months picking out, the ledge I stood on to put the gold bow on top of our Christmas tree and the yard the dog we once shared had pounced around. Suddenly my legs stopped moving, my eyes got blurry and I crouched to the ground and sobbed.

Realizing they were three and not four, my friends turned around, their expressions briefly inquisitive, until, “she’s thinking about the home her and her husband shared,” the doctor wisely said. And as my friends walked back towards me, my tears fell harder and faster until they were the gasping for air kind ..

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I grew up in a ranch-style house that my father, a man of more trades than I ever thought one person was capable of, designed and built largely on his own (1983). He originally built the home to mimic the appearance of a log cabin, but unfortunately the wood used on an addition to the house in 1992 hadn’t been cured correctly and gray siding was placed along the exterior of the house a few years later to increase the houses’ longevity. Still, the inside walls remained the same authentic white-pine logs, which made it easy to make believe my bedroom was my family’s log cabin and then I would run out the door to my rollerblade-horse to visit my best friend, Pocahontas.

I digress, our house sat on two acres, with a irrigation ditch running behind it and mountains in the distance. Our neighbors to one side had a fence that spanned their property and the neighbors to the other had a thick wall of trees, which continued into the forest that was their property. These barriers made our property feel like it was our own little world and that world felt safe and uninhibited. Growing up, I felt supported and loved and I never felt alone or questioned that I was where I belonged. It felt like everything a home should be. (I’m also largely aware of how fortunate I was to have grown up in an environment rich with these things).

My dad says the view played a large role in why he chose the particular plot of land the house sits on and he planted each tree with careful consideration so as not to obstruct the mountains in the distance. The kitchen window had the best view of the distant range, the tallest and most majestic of which was Longs Peak. I’m not sure how little me got assigned the westward facing seat at the family dinner table, but she did. I spent my entire upbringing looking towards Long Peak and the surrounding range during meals. Even when I forgot they were there, these mountains watched over my scraped knees and grass stains and birthday party kickball games. In high school borderline-insomniac me would quietly crawl out of the window of her retired-log-cabin bedroom and climb up a tree to get on the roof. I’d spend hours huddled in a blanket, looking at stars and falling in love with silhouettes of mountains from a safe distance. At that point in my life I had no intent of standing on top of the tallest one, or any of them for that matter, I was just thankful they were constant.

I moved away after high school and spent the following years focused on fully embracing opportunities and life in multiple different towns and states. I slept in summer-camp-style rooms, dorm rooms, I spent a summer in a kindergarten classroom on an air mattress and another on a couch in the basement of the most beautiful 18th century church you’ve ever seen. I’m thankful for those places, but they were never more than a roof and a place to store my belongings. It was during those three years that I embraced the truth that people can elicit enough beauty to make a place feel like home. Within three years, I had lived on both coasts of North America and a few other places scattered in between. They were years of immersion, finding myself, making this life my own and falling in love with the world through its’ people. They were magical years and they were important, but with each new town, I would feel a little more spread out and a little more plagued by the fact that I was always meeting people I would soon be leaving, thus adding to the list of people I’d miss along the way. And I feel the absence of people I love strongly and I ache to my core when I miss them.

So, everytime I came back to that childhood house, I would set aside a night to climb up on the rooftop using my aspen tree ladder. I would sit huddled in the same blanket and I would waste away the hours looking up at the stars and out at that distant peak and I would breath in a little bit deeper each time as I appreciated the familiarity my three years of moving all over the country lacked.

In 2013, after a year of particularly-overwhelmingly-achy-missing-people, I found myself burnt out and I moved back to my hometown. It was supposed to be temporary, but I’m still here.

A lot happened in the years that followed those which I’ve accounted for above. Maybe some of those gaps will start getting filled in with increased detail eventually, but for now the important part is that I was living in my hometown with a permanent address and a life that was beautiful on paper or from a distance, but I found myself stuck in a downward spiral, losing sight and losing grip of many things I once thought would always be strongholds in my life. The more I lost sight of myself, the more unsettled I felt and the more unsettled I felt, the more afraid I became that it was only a matter of time before she went missing for good. I was broken and I was desperate.

I moved out of the house my husband and I bought together one week after our third anniversary. I once felt the need to justify that decision to everyone who knew, but I no longer feel that. For now, while the dust continues settling, I only feel the need to say it was the hardest decision I’ve ever made and that the aftershocks of an earthquake come in waves.

When I first moved out, I went an entire month without sleeping in the same place more than one night in a row. And then I worked night shift and slept during the day. And then I walked across Spain and slept in a different town each night for weeks on end. Then, I came back to my hometown where I began constantly running into familiar faces. Buried in the familiar faces I was thankful to see, were those who approached me with pity in their smiles and disapproval in their eyes. Others would pretend not to see me and walk the other way and then there were the old-friends who cheerfully embraced me, as if it was a coincidence I hadn’t heard anything from them since I had left.

I understand there isn’t a manual out there on how to navigate life’s yucky pieces, but these encounters broke my heart and I began experiencing severe social-anxiety as a result. I avoided grocery stores during the daytime and cried with my counselor on multiple occasions because this fear wasn’t me. I was the girl who still keeps in-touch with Washington-baristas, Michigan-grocery store employees, Pennsylvania-firefighters and the entire family I befriended because they just happened to be sitting on the front porch when I walked by one day, etc. I just couldn’t seem to find her.

I had already resolved to hike one 14er a week this summer, but these encounters were a final-straw and they thrust me into a world of packing up my car and driving to the mountains every single time a long enough window presented itself. The beauty is, what started as an escape quickly turned into rediscovering pieces of myself I didn’t even realize I was missing and what started as running turned into space to process through everything I was trying to get away from. And I met the best people along the way.

Over the past three months, I’ve stood on top of sixteen mountains above 14k ft. I love them all, but I say with upmost confidence: Longs Peak will always, inherently, be the most special.

I think that’s why I’ve unsuccessfully tried and tried to write about Longs Peak ever since I climbed it on June 21st 2018. I’ve written about the majority of hikes I’ve done since Longs. I’ve tucked away sentences in my brain only to put them in print and scrap them. And I’ve deleted draft after draft because all I’ve been trying to do this whole time is voice something I probably needed to be a little further away from to see:

Longs Peak was important because there’s something profound and metaphorical about standing on top of a mountain you’ve stared at you’re entire life, especially when you look out over a hometown that has failed to feel like home with blurry eyes because you realize you feel more at home in that moment than you have in a long, long time.

Lately, I’ve been learning that you carry the most crucial and irreplaceable pieces of home with you. Dots on the map can solicit feelings of comfort and nostalgia and those are pretty while they last, but if you can’t find yourself, you’ll stay lost with or without a down payment. If you can’t find yourself, you’ll never find home.

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A good friend recently asked me about the most important pieces of my life. In that moment I never got around to a list, but it turned into a conversation about the importance of finding and caring for ourselves. It wasn’t lost on me that on that hike, in that moment, I was doing just that. I’ve been doing that this whole time and as I do, the other important parts fall into place ..

Like the people who see what you’re doing and ask to walk alongside of you and they smile at you when they watch you spend the energy you could’ve given to them on someone else who needed it more that day and they say “I’m proud of you,” because just like you, one of their most important things is finding opportunities to pick others up off the ground when they’ve lost sight of who they are. And you smile back, because it’s important to you that you surround yourself with people who understand and value that. And because you’ve been the one that was picked up off the ground before, so you know that maybe if we can afford one more person the building blocks to find and love themselves, they can go out and start this whole thing all over again.

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.. They gathered around me and literally picked me up off the ground, “talk about your dog,” he said and I did until the tears eventually subsided as we walked along, avoiding puddles, together.

“One day, I hope you see the gift it is to ask the ones you love to walk beside you & find the way back home together.” – Brian Andreas