Different Mountains

5,270 feet of prime, wind-blown mountain.The northern end
of the Appalachian Trail. It starts in Georgia.

My 20 year old daughter Alice mentioned that she was going to climb Mount Katahdin on the Fourth of July this year.  “Are you going with a partner? You shouldn’t hike alone. Have you ever actually hiked a mountain? I mean, not just a big hill. Don’t forget to take extra water and flashlight. Be ready to cancel if the weather starts to turn,” I texted.

I spoke with the condescension of one who had lived in central Maine for eight years. I had skiied the back woods, and heated with a wood stove. I was on a first name basis with countless carnivorous woodland creatures. Ok. Lying. But anyway, the girl goes to college in Florida. She may know alligators, but a mountain? Really? She puts on a sweater when it dips to 75.

I could sense her repressed sigh as she texted back.

No, I'm climbing it on my own. But I am doing it on the 4th so there will be a lot of people around. My supervisor is doing the same thing at a later date. I will have my emergency SPOT with me so I can call for a LifeFlight helicopter if I need it. I'll also have a lot of water, a jacket and water purification tablets, as well as a first aid kit and my GPS.

It's an easier trail than most, only 4 miles round-trip and the least steep of all the trails that reach the top. I am prepared and Evan has my float plan so he knows when to expect me back and when to get worried. I'll do the same for him. It's not that uncommon for people to hike Katahdin alone.

I have no idea what a float plan is. I think that refers to what she uses when she goes on out a rescue call.

Alice is a first mate – well, now a lead officer – on the search and rescue team at her college, which is on the Gulf of Mexico. She’s one of the people who goes out, sometimes with the Coast Guard, to search for boats that are lost, people who have been swept overboard, and that sort of thing. 

She made it. The last hour in the pouring rain.

Back in the late 1970’s, EcSar, for Eckerd College Search and Rescue, was the first rescue crew to show up when the Sky Way Bridge collapsed. I am utterly horrified at the idea of my daughter, who is permanently 12 in my head, searching through the water for bodies is.  But I am also extremely proud that she’s capable of this sort of work.  She’s grown up, and is an incredibly responsible person. 

Right now she’s in northern Maine living in an RV, getting up at 4 AM, slogging through the woods, warding off mosquitoes the size of vultures, using a GPS (no trails for HER), to get to a research point. Then she spends four hours alone in the woods, taking down data on songbirds. By herself. In the woods. Did I mention there are no towns there? No wifi reception, unless the loggers are around? No phone reception?

No Starbucks?

So – how do I adapt to this? In a month or so, my next, and last, daughter, Caroline, will take off for four years in Scotland. She’ll come back now and then for holidays, and for summer, but essentially, that’s that. Four years at the University of Edinburgh for her degree in music. Caroline spent six months at a high school in London a year ago and fell in love with Great Britain. Edinburgh had the kind of music degree she really wanted, so why fight it? She’s one tough cookie and has shown she can handle it. 

Throwing myself at her knees and keening NOOOOOOO would just show a lack of class, I think.

And would not work.

But it’s not just the my kids that are moving on. My mother-in-law is too, and in a good way, really. She has made her peace with moving to an assisted living home, where there will be people to talk to, and folks to eat with. She can go out to visit her farmhouse when she wants to; it’s about 30 minutes away from the assisted living 

home. Her memory is slipping a bit here and there, which is not exactly surprising, as she’s 85. She’s got the old days down fine, but now and then the recent past gets slippery. 

Last week Caroline and I went down to visit and help clean out the garage, evicting all pre-Carter administration Campbell’s soup cans. At one point Caroline borrowed some shoes from the attic to go through the muddy fields.

We got a phone call the following week from Grandma. “Tell Amy she left her leather shoes here,” she told my husband. He passed the word to me, still on the phone.

Puzzled, I said, “I don’t bring leather shoes down there – I’m cleaning the garage. Why would I?”

“She insists they're yours. They’re not hers. She’s mailing them up here,” he said. “I’m not going to argue.”

I shrugged. And that’s how I got her dead husband’s shoes. 

They fit pretty well, actually.