I was four years old when my Oma, my mother’s grandmother died, and my family considered me too young to go to the funeral. They left me for the day in the care of my grandmother’s next-door neighbors, the Hoskins. Their youngest was two years older than me, but the rest of the kids and the family ranged up to teenagers. A group of us went on a “hike“ up nearby Poke-o-Moonshine Mountain in the Adirondacks. The hike is basically a long gradual ramp that ends in a cliff face drop-off with an impressive view out of the folded land to the east. I have only snippets of memory of the path, sunlight through trees, the tall legs of the giant people in the group, and being carried at times by some of the girls. It is a thing I know I did from family stories, and a few sparks in my neurons. I think I fell asleep on the ride home, if not the hike back to the car. 

My senior year in college saw a return to Poke-o-Moonshine; this time to try the vertical face. Mark Mancao and Tim (I’m so embarrassed that his name is escaping me), and Bill Church and I drove up from Binghamton. Bill and I attempted a supposedly easy route up the sheer cliff, doomed by immediate failure on my part. Bill danced his way up to the first perch 100-plus feet off the ground and set the first anchor with the intention of belaying me to him, but I literally could not get past the first 15 feet of the climb, which was the most complicated section of the cliff.  I struggled and scrambled and kicked and cursed. I tried every way I could imagine, or Bill could yell out, to overcome that challenge, but ultimately let myself down. This led to me literally having to let him down. Unfortunately, he was so high on the wall that we had to tie two ropes together, and he had to leave an expensive piece of climbing equipment jammed in a crack to descend safely.  The phrase “leave someone hanging” takes on an entirely new meaning while watching your partner problem-solve their way down off a rock face while you watch helplessly. We hiked back to find Mark and Tim enjoyed a restful morning in the woods.  

We stopped at my grandparents house, and they fed us the kind of delicious grandma cooked meal you dream about when after months of noodles. On the drive home the guys lovingly teased me at my ability to juggle two completely different conversations with each grandparent at the same time.