My sister-in-law is training for a triathlon, and as part of her training, she decided she wanted to hike a 14’er. For those of you who live outside a major mountain range, a 14’er is the term for a mountain that peaks above 14,000 feet. Kylie, my sister-in-law, found the easiest 14’er in the area, one that her mother and I could also hike.
“I think we should leave for the hike at 3:15 a.m.,” Kylie told me over the phone on Wednesday.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “No way.”
“I’ve heard parking’s limited. I really think we should leave at 3:15.”
“I’m not doing that. Mitch has a guy in town for business, and I’m supposed to be having dinner with them on Friday night. I’m going to get home late, and I want to get some sleep. Besides, it’s only going to take us an hour to get there. What are we going to do when we get there and have an hour until the sun rises?”
“Unpack our stuff.”
“I don’t know what you are bringing on the hike, but I’m bringing a backpack, and I’m pretty sure it won’t take me an hour to get it out of the car.”
“It’s just that I’ve talked to people. Parking’s limited.”
“Okay, but how many people are going to start hiking before the sun rises? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose?”
“I just think we should get up there early. I’ve talked to people.”
“I just really don’t want to leave that early.”
“I guess 3:30 is fine.”
“I think 4:30 is fine. The sun doesn’t even rise until around 5:30.”
“No, I really think that’s too late.”
“I don’t know. I’ll see if I can find any information on the internet. Right now I just don’t see the point of leaving so early, but I’ll look it up.”
“Okay. I’m just saying. I’ve talked to people.”
Kylie doesn’t accept no for an answer. That is why she always sold the most Girl Scout cookies in the state. That’s why she sold the most apparel when she was a waitress at Joe’s Crab Shack. We told her she should become a salesperson, but she wanted to be in criminal justice. She works in a women’s halfway house, which is another place where not taking no for an answer is a good attribute.
Her persistence has paid off as she has tried to lose the weight she put on when she was pregnant. She’s dropped forty pounds in two months by her sheer persistence. With a full-time job, graduate school, and a daughter, I’m not sure where she’s finding time to train for a triathlon, but as I said, she doesn’t accept no for an answer. Not even from herself.
I told a friend I was going to just tell Kylie I’d be there at 3:30 and then “accidentally” oversleep until 4:30.
“Yeah,” Colleen said. “That’s not passive-aggressive at all.”
“You don’t know Kylie,” I replied, although Colleen did know Kylie, and she was right. I wouldn’t actually do that anyway. I’m too honest. Even if it meant arguing with Kylie on the phone for an hour, I would get my way. After all, it was my car.
We didn’t talk again, but in a conversation with her mother, Annie told me just to show up at 4:30. I don’t know what Kylie’s thinking, she said.
I arrived at 4:40 on Saturday morning, and Kylie, Annie, and Annie’s two golden retrievers were in the driveway waiting for me. I hardly had the car in park before Kylie was lifting the hatch to put in her backpack. Annie picked her stop-sign-red Marlboro backpack from the driveway and set it in the back of my SUV.
“A little ironic to be hiking a 14’er with a Marlboro backpack, isn’t it?” I asked Annie.
She laughed. “I guess. Look how much water I have. Ten bottles.”
“You know you have to carry that on your back, right?”
Annie looked again into her backpack. “Well, I guess that’s true.”
She took out one bottle and handed it to her husband. He took it from her with his free hand. “See you later,” he said.
With dawn breaking behind us, we headed west into our state’s stunning playground: the Rocky Mountains. At sunrise, they are nothing more than jagged blue boulders. Year-round, snow covers the peaks of the most majestic mountains like diamond-encrusted crowns. Pine beetles are killing the trees, and streaks of brown snake through the green landscape. In some places, streaks of green snake through the brown landscape. In several popular ski towns, where the income comes from the beauty, they have removed the dead trees, leaving whole mountainsides bare and cold and empty.
Everything is still in shades of gray when we arrive at the trailhead. The parking lot is already full, as Kylie had warned us, but there was still parking on the side of the road next to the trailhead.
Because of its proximity to the city and its ease, the peak was a popular one to summit, and we started out the hike much the same way we would have started a parade route. People blazed ahead of us while others followed us. And as the terrain got a bit tougher, there were spectators on either side of the trail, cheering on those who still had enough oxygen in them to keep going. There may have been a dearth of the silence that normally accompanies a hike through a blooming mountain meadow, but there was no dearth of enthusiasm.
Annie and I lost Kylie in no time. Kylie just wanted to get to the top. Annie wanted to stop for pictures and energy bars and water. She wanted to notice the columbines and beardtongues. She wanted to pet approaching dogs. She wanted to meet other hikers. I hadn’t realized until this hike where my husband had gotten his passive approach to getting anywhere.
We stopped repeatedly to catch our breath, and often Kylie would come heavy-footed back down the mountain to tell us to hurry up. Do you have to stop, she would ask, pursuing the peak with as much fervor as she pursued just about everything. Since she wasn’t hiking with us, she hiked alongside different groups of young men she found attractive, telling them about her triathlon and her job and her slow mother and sister-in-law behind her.
We knew we had reached the peak when forceful, icy wind shoved us, informing us that we were 14,000 feet high with no barriers between ourselves and the wind’s invisible, inescapable might. Surrounding us on all four sides were smaller mountains, skinny trails of snow like spider’s legs lining their crevices. It was like looking out into an ocean, still-life blue waves erect in every direction, the snow like a wave’s foamy crest. We were on top of the world.
Kylie, who had reached the peak long before us, had started to greet other hikers (mostly male) with high-fives and hellos and where-are-you-froms. I pulled out my iPhone to take a video. I had five bars of 3G, which seemed unusual since I struggle to keep a signal in the foothills in which I live. I circled to capture the landscape, eventually resting the camera on my mother-in-law and sister-in-law.
“Say something!” I instructed.
The smiled at the camera, holding themselves perfectly still.
“It’s a video. Say something.”
They continued to smile at the camera, as if caught up with stage fright. Kylie finally turned to Annie and laughed nervously.
“We did it,” Annie said into the camera.
I shut the camera off and slipped the phone back into my backpack.
The path down the mountain was the same as the path up, but it didn’t feel or look similar. Our lungs were worn from the narrow passages of oxygen in the thin air, and we were tired from not packing enough food, neither Kylie nor I anticipating how long it would take us to get up and down the mountain. Pebbles, such sure footholds as we ascended, slipped out from under our feet like loose roller skating wheels.
“Don’t try to get a foothold with every step,” I told Annie and Kylie, who didn’t hike often. “Just hurry down. It feels scarier, but it’s a lot easier.”
As if on cue, Annie slipped, falling hard and splaying her walking poles across the uneven terrain. I hurried to gather them for her. She and Kylie, still ignoring my instruction to hurry down the steep slopes for better traction, discussed how much easier going up a mountain was than going down.
As we descended and the ground flattened, Kylie hurried ahead, and I stayed behind Annie, monitoring her small, careful steps. She wasn’t the fastest hiker, but she was the most determined. We were passed countless times by younger, more eager hikers, but Annie barely looked up from the rocky path she was navigating. It took her all day, but she did it. Despite her pained knees and lack of hiking experience, she made it up and down the peak.
Kylie was waiting for us at the bottom, pacing back and forth next to my car. I pulled my keys from my backpack and pressed the control to unlock the trunk. She pulled open the back and began to remove her shoes in order to put on her flip-flops.
“Great job, Annie.” I congratulated my mother-in-law on completing the hike.
“Yeah, Mom, good job,” Kylie said. “There were all sorts of people who came down asking me if I was with the old lady. They kept saying, man, is she ever having the worst time getting down the mountain. And you did it. You got down the mountain.”
“A lot of people were saying that to you?” Annie asked.
“Yeah. Just about everybody. Are you with that old lady? That old lady who’s with the tall, blonde girl? Man, is that old lady having a hard time getting down the mountain! Everybody was saying that to me.”
“Stop,” I said, waving my hand at Kylie, who is known for being kind, caring, and tactless. I laughed.
Annie laughed too. “I think I should be insulted. But I’m too excited that I finished to be insulted. Maybe I’ll be insulted later. But right now I’m just happy.”
“I think we should leave for the hike at 3:15 a.m.,” Kylie told me over the phone on Wednesday.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “No way.”
“I’ve heard parking’s limited. I really think we should leave at 3:15.”
“I’m not doing that. Mitch has a guy in town for business, and I’m supposed to be having dinner with them on Friday night. I’m going to get home late, and I want to get some sleep. Besides, it’s only going to take us an hour to get there. What are we going to do when we get there and have an hour until the sun rises?”
“Unpack our stuff.”
“I don’t know what you are bringing on the hike, but I’m bringing a backpack, and I’m pretty sure it won’t take me an hour to get it out of the car.”
“It’s just that I’ve talked to people. Parking’s limited.”
“Okay, but how many people are going to start hiking before the sun rises? Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose?”
“I just think we should get up there early. I’ve talked to people.”
“I just really don’t want to leave that early.”
“I guess 3:30 is fine.”
“I think 4:30 is fine. The sun doesn’t even rise until around 5:30.”
“No, I really think that’s too late.”
“I don’t know. I’ll see if I can find any information on the internet. Right now I just don’t see the point of leaving so early, but I’ll look it up.”
“Okay. I’m just saying. I’ve talked to people.”
Kylie doesn’t accept no for an answer. That is why she always sold the most Girl Scout cookies in the state. That’s why she sold the most apparel when she was a waitress at Joe’s Crab Shack. We told her she should become a salesperson, but she wanted to be in criminal justice. She works in a women’s halfway house, which is another place where not taking no for an answer is a good attribute.
Her persistence has paid off as she has tried to lose the weight she put on when she was pregnant. She’s dropped forty pounds in two months by her sheer persistence. With a full-time job, graduate school, and a daughter, I’m not sure where she’s finding time to train for a triathlon, but as I said, she doesn’t accept no for an answer. Not even from herself.
I told a friend I was going to just tell Kylie I’d be there at 3:30 and then “accidentally” oversleep until 4:30.
“Yeah,” Colleen said. “That’s not passive-aggressive at all.”
“You don’t know Kylie,” I replied, although Colleen did know Kylie, and she was right. I wouldn’t actually do that anyway. I’m too honest. Even if it meant arguing with Kylie on the phone for an hour, I would get my way. After all, it was my car.
We didn’t talk again, but in a conversation with her mother, Annie told me just to show up at 4:30. I don’t know what Kylie’s thinking, she said.
I arrived at 4:40 on Saturday morning, and Kylie, Annie, and Annie’s two golden retrievers were in the driveway waiting for me. I hardly had the car in park before Kylie was lifting the hatch to put in her backpack. Annie picked her stop-sign-red Marlboro backpack from the driveway and set it in the back of my SUV.
“A little ironic to be hiking a 14’er with a Marlboro backpack, isn’t it?” I asked Annie.
She laughed. “I guess. Look how much water I have. Ten bottles.”
“You know you have to carry that on your back, right?”
Annie looked again into her backpack. “Well, I guess that’s true.”
She took out one bottle and handed it to her husband. He took it from her with his free hand. “See you later,” he said.
With dawn breaking behind us, we headed west into our state’s stunning playground: the Rocky Mountains. At sunrise, they are nothing more than jagged blue boulders. Year-round, snow covers the peaks of the most majestic mountains like diamond-encrusted crowns. Pine beetles are killing the trees, and streaks of brown snake through the green landscape. In some places, streaks of green snake through the brown landscape. In several popular ski towns, where the income comes from the beauty, they have removed the dead trees, leaving whole mountainsides bare and cold and empty.
Everything is still in shades of gray when we arrive at the trailhead. The parking lot is already full, as Kylie had warned us, but there was still parking on the side of the road next to the trailhead.
Because of its proximity to the city and its ease, the peak was a popular one to summit, and we started out the hike much the same way we would have started a parade route. People blazed ahead of us while others followed us. And as the terrain got a bit tougher, there were spectators on either side of the trail, cheering on those who still had enough oxygen in them to keep going. There may have been a dearth of the silence that normally accompanies a hike through a blooming mountain meadow, but there was no dearth of enthusiasm.
Annie and I lost Kylie in no time. Kylie just wanted to get to the top. Annie wanted to stop for pictures and energy bars and water. She wanted to notice the columbines and beardtongues. She wanted to pet approaching dogs. She wanted to meet other hikers. I hadn’t realized until this hike where my husband had gotten his passive approach to getting anywhere.
We stopped repeatedly to catch our breath, and often Kylie would come heavy-footed back down the mountain to tell us to hurry up. Do you have to stop, she would ask, pursuing the peak with as much fervor as she pursued just about everything. Since she wasn’t hiking with us, she hiked alongside different groups of young men she found attractive, telling them about her triathlon and her job and her slow mother and sister-in-law behind her.
We knew we had reached the peak when forceful, icy wind shoved us, informing us that we were 14,000 feet high with no barriers between ourselves and the wind’s invisible, inescapable might. Surrounding us on all four sides were smaller mountains, skinny trails of snow like spider’s legs lining their crevices. It was like looking out into an ocean, still-life blue waves erect in every direction, the snow like a wave’s foamy crest. We were on top of the world.
Kylie, who had reached the peak long before us, had started to greet other hikers (mostly male) with high-fives and hellos and where-are-you-froms. I pulled out my iPhone to take a video. I had five bars of 3G, which seemed unusual since I struggle to keep a signal in the foothills in which I live. I circled to capture the landscape, eventually resting the camera on my mother-in-law and sister-in-law.
“Say something!” I instructed.
The smiled at the camera, holding themselves perfectly still.
“It’s a video. Say something.”
They continued to smile at the camera, as if caught up with stage fright. Kylie finally turned to Annie and laughed nervously.
“We did it,” Annie said into the camera.
I shut the camera off and slipped the phone back into my backpack.
The path down the mountain was the same as the path up, but it didn’t feel or look similar. Our lungs were worn from the narrow passages of oxygen in the thin air, and we were tired from not packing enough food, neither Kylie nor I anticipating how long it would take us to get up and down the mountain. Pebbles, such sure footholds as we ascended, slipped out from under our feet like loose roller skating wheels.
“Don’t try to get a foothold with every step,” I told Annie and Kylie, who didn’t hike often. “Just hurry down. It feels scarier, but it’s a lot easier.”
As if on cue, Annie slipped, falling hard and splaying her walking poles across the uneven terrain. I hurried to gather them for her. She and Kylie, still ignoring my instruction to hurry down the steep slopes for better traction, discussed how much easier going up a mountain was than going down.
As we descended and the ground flattened, Kylie hurried ahead, and I stayed behind Annie, monitoring her small, careful steps. She wasn’t the fastest hiker, but she was the most determined. We were passed countless times by younger, more eager hikers, but Annie barely looked up from the rocky path she was navigating. It took her all day, but she did it. Despite her pained knees and lack of hiking experience, she made it up and down the peak.
Kylie was waiting for us at the bottom, pacing back and forth next to my car. I pulled my keys from my backpack and pressed the control to unlock the trunk. She pulled open the back and began to remove her shoes in order to put on her flip-flops.
“Great job, Annie.” I congratulated my mother-in-law on completing the hike.
“Yeah, Mom, good job,” Kylie said. “There were all sorts of people who came down asking me if I was with the old lady. They kept saying, man, is she ever having the worst time getting down the mountain. And you did it. You got down the mountain.”
“A lot of people were saying that to you?” Annie asked.
“Yeah. Just about everybody. Are you with that old lady? That old lady who’s with the tall, blonde girl? Man, is that old lady having a hard time getting down the mountain! Everybody was saying that to me.”
“Stop,” I said, waving my hand at Kylie, who is known for being kind, caring, and tactless. I laughed.
Annie laughed too. “I think I should be insulted. But I’m too excited that I finished to be insulted. Maybe I’ll be insulted later. But right now I’m just happy.”
