It's a pretty innocuous thing, a leopard print sweater. The specimen in particular was the suburban jungle kind, cheap cotton cardigan, size M, $15 at Target. I'm not exactly know for my fashion sense, but below the tomboy exterior (usually clothed in jeans/ sweats/ t-shirt/ tank-top/ gore-tex, or any variation), is the bonafide heart of Liberace, sass of Coco Chanel, and sensibility of David Bowie. I have a pinterest account, and I'm not afraid to use it to post $2500 Louboutins and Vintage Versace gowns. I will never in my life own either of those (I have 4 children to put through college), but my heart secretly lusts for bias-cut silk and the blessed red underside of those sexy, sexy shoes. It's my dirty little secret, and even though I will gripe and moan about dressing up, there's a part of me that loves the thrill of something different.

... And then there's a leopard print cardigan, a kind of strange no-man's land somewhere between hoody and sweats and casual dress with cowboy boots (a favorite of mine, no matter how Portland cliche that may be). A 38-year-old woman wearing a leopard print cardigan can be one of several things. Maybe she is a spunky, fun, tragically hip SE Portland-living graphic designer (bangs are a must), not afraid to rock the leopard print, able to casually laugh at how irreverent and spontaneous she is, how she laughs in the face of fashion rules. The leopard print cardigan is a mere tiny little exclamation point to her ensemble, because she is fierce! feisty! and gloriously independent! She may as well be wearing $400 cashmere, because judgement be damned, she'll define her own fashion, thank you.

She could also be a cast member reject from Jersey Shore. The only things her leopard print will be missing are pleather pants and heels, big hair, and jewelry, lots of jewelry. She's the kind of woman you  smell the perfume on 2 grocery aisles over, contemplating the endless subtle variations of canned spaghetti sauce, and suddenly catch a waft-- dear god, my sweet Aunt Ruth has risen from the dead-- only to find a vision of suburban perfection clickity clack around the corner. I secretly admire these women as much as I fear them, all big hair and floral-scented tacky sparkle, not giving a damn what your organic-carrot and kombucha buying, hoody-wearing ass thinks for a second. I'm pretty sure they all drive Escalades and are going to cut me off during left-turns when I'm on my bicycle, but that doesn't mean I can't celebrate their own special brand of femininity.

Or she's somebody's mom, or several somebody's mom. She will not just buy the Leopard print cardigan at Target, she will also buy the navy blue and black one because they are on sale for cheap, and this will be probably the only time she buys clothes for herself for months, and she's practical, if a little bored with it all. The leopard print cardigan will be almost an after thought after aisles in search of appropriate underwear for a 9-year-old girl, t-shirts that her middle-schooler will actually deem cool enough to wear, and flea treatment for the dog. The leopard print will catch her eye, a small beacon of subtle "wild child" in a sea of modesty and clothes for "the professional woman". (She is always secretly relieved she wears a uniform after seeing those). She will stuff it under the buzz-lightyear replacement sheets and the Halloween decorations, all while scowling and scoffing at the "50 Shades of Grey" paperbacks prominently displayed at the end of the book aisle, thinking "how lame and pedestrian"... because despite the outward aura of subdued and a little too tired, she knows kinky, she knows good sex and erotica, she has a leopard print cardigan that, bonus, she will wear with cowboy boots. She will ignore the side-eye from the 22-year-old checkout girl with the collarbone tat and pink streaks when she rings it up.

She'll be so impressed with herself for such a small act of domesticated subversion that she'll snap off the tag in the parking lot, and slide it over her very plain black tank top, and drive home in it. She may look in the mirror and note yes, how definitely cool it is, paired with her knock-off $10 aviator shades, all the more so with the booster seats also reflecting in that same mirror. The smell of somebody's day-old soccer socks threatens to offend her nostrils, but gives her a sense of peace, of place. She will pull up to the house, 4 sets of soccer cleats on the muddy porch, haphazard fort made out of pruned branches a created obstacle, and forget she is wearing it when she strides in the house.

This will be short lived, as she will be met with a tinny, loud, "WHAT is that you're wearing?" by her 7-year-old, shortly followed up with a "I love your Halloween costume, Mom!" by her 10-year-old. Her well-intentioned but filterless husband will poke his head around the corner and laugh... "you look like some 'Real Housewives' of New Jersey extra!" A small finger gesture from her will elicit a quick placation. "But I, uh, love it! Go leopard print! Yeah baby!" This over-enthusiasm will give her pause about two things: a) that he noticed actual clothing, and more surprisingly, b) that he knows what "Real Housewives of New Jersey" is.

None of this will matter, because she knows rock and roll is sometimes what you make of it. The leopard print cardigan has come home.

Evolution of Adventure

An old friend of mine and his staggeringly talented collective released a new film recently with a tremendous collaboration of athletes, adventurers, and photographers, titled Into the Mind. It's a breathtaking meditation on what it is that drives humans to experience that ultimate edge of adventure, the thin and wavering line between glory and death. Full of achingly beautiful scenery, feats of athleticism and grace that defy description, and set to an incredible score, it's an absolute triumph of a film. I have angst about plopping down $1.29 for a song on itunes, but the day it was released, I gleefully threw down the $9.99 for the film.

It's a strange experience to watch a film like this, but even more so as a mother. Up until the birth of my son in 2003, my life was defined by adventure and exploration. At the height of my climbing ambitions, I was part of a group of women formulating plans to climb Ama Dablam, even though that never came to fruition. I've expeditioned at the roof of the world over 19,000 ft in the Himalaya, climbed numerous high alpine routes in the Western US, been pinned on a glacier in an epic snowstorm in Patagonia... I've been THAT smiling woman, the one with the high-altitude tan and tangled sun-bleached hair in pictures, grinning as wide as the sky, raising a victorious bloody-knuckled fist into the air. There was a point in my twenties when I had reached a level where it was time to take my adventures seriously and run with incredible athletes like my friend Jimmy (one of the "Into the Mind" collaborators), gain further sponsorship, and go the distance... or not.

I ended up taking a very different direction when I fell in love with my son's dad. Where a few of my cohorts turned right, I went left. Nothing will slow your roll towards alpine glory like the realization that if you continue on that path, you won't see your love for 6 weeks at a time, and that feels far more horrible than gasping for breath in thinned air, because that love becomes the oxygen to your 26-year-old self, and even worse... you may not come back. The list of friends and climbing acquaintances that have died in the mountains is a long one, and I shudder every time I hear of another death far afield. I sometimes picture a group of us standing almost 2 decades ago shoulder to shoulder in a circle, and then I see that same picture now, and the sparsity is startling. I will tell you that they died doing what they loved, that their deaths were akin to taking flight, but inside I'm questioning what it all really means, or even what it was for. I spend a large part of my career now walking with death, and while it is many things, I'm not sure it's what my friends ever set out of for, seeking some sort of glory in the finality. No one climbs to die, but there is a potent draw to edge closer in the dance, to taste and touch the very edge of the void that literally and figuratively is with you with every crampon step, every swing of the axe, every steep turn.

After a stint in the Himalayas, I found myself unemployed, in love, and then island bound for the remainder of my twenties. There were the occasional shorter trips, but nothing touching that far edge of exploration and reason, just longing for more. I worked a variety of jobs, and built a life with my then-husband. We dreamed of starting an adventure company in Nepal, of travels, climbs, and odesseys, but the reality was making a living on that small island and figuring out who we were in this new life. Just when I thought I had it figured out, something entirely unexpected happened-- pirate fetus boarded the mothership, and 10 months later, I embarked on what has been the most incredible, terrifying, joyous, grand adventure of my life.

The moment I held my son for the first time, everything I thought I knew dissolved. What blossomed was a love like I'd never even imagined, a feeling a thousand times more powerful than standing on a high pass between Nepal and Tibet. Other things changed, too, things I never would have expected. My ambition for "adventure achievement", if you will, took a new form. The glory was no longer in being one of the few to climb something new or difficult, it was simply in the act itself. I didn't want to  bloody my knuckles trying to climb 5.12.  I became content-- euphoric even-- to cruise a 5.6, to feel the simple joy of muscle and tendon moving over rock. I would read about a friend's first ascent of some Karakoram peak, all while nursing my baby. I couldn't help but wonder at the staggering duality of the lives we were living.

Life evolved again, but this time, it was survival, not adventure. By all accounts Zane's dad and I had a "good" divorce. There were moments in my high-octance climbing days that I was truly terrified, and none approached the new world, the utter consumption that is a marriage crumbling. Maybe it's an avalanche. You think you can ski the line, run it out, a little worse for the wear, a little frightened, but okay. The surprise is in thinking you're in a steady gentle slough, and then it's a wall of concrete, and you're fighting for breath, for movement, and for hope. You are survivors, skis broken, hopes shattered, disheveled and unsure, but somehow-- you have to start back up the mountain.

The "mountain" has been good to me. Always full of lessons, challenging, achingly beautiful, and never ending. In another unexpected turn, I find myself on an adventure of family and motherhood far vaster than I ever could have imagine. Like an experienced mountaineer, I've learned so much from the tragedy of the past.

There's a tenacity in me that I suspect I share with my friends on the likes of Nanga Parbat, albeit in radically different forms. Mine is the sheer will of choosing joy when the road is tumultuous, of consciously cultivating each day and appreciating the small victories. There's the joyous fierceness of watching my step-daughter figure out multiplication after weeks of tears and frustration, of hearing her brag to her father how smart she is. I get the bloody-knuckled victory of watching my sweet boy skillfully confront a schoolyard bully with kindness and an emotional depth far beyond his years. Instead of a bomber cam into a splitter granite crack, I have the warm tight squeeze of my youngest step-son's hand as he jets into his classroom, an inherent gesture of love and fortitude.  I don't get to watch the sunlight break on a 6000 meter glacier, but the glow that alights over my step-son's face as he ever-so-furtively alludes to his first crush-- that, that is magic. These beautiful little people, watching them kick the steps into their own ascent, helpless at times as they fall, and marveling at the resilience as they stand back up, shake it off, and climb on. At night, there is no tent, no shivering under an icy still moon awaiting the 2AM start, but there is the sweet cadence of my husband's breath as he drifts off to sleep, as hushed and reverent as the rhythmic turn of skis. These are the moments of grace and triumph that I never could have imagined at 19,000ft, that I never saw in those pictures of the wild-haired girl on top of the world.

Funny, I started writing this blog post with every intention of painting the picture of watching "Into the Mind" with my husband and children. Their gasping amazement when I told them that yes, I had climbed mountains just like that, and the looks exchanged between my husband and I of "yes, we once were", the knowing that he, too, could feel the curve of the ice-axe in his hand as we watched the climbers on-screen. Our kids watched the film in awe and astonishment. In a truly chilling moment, they all, to a kid, said "I want to do something like that some day", and I knew on a cellular level the terror and angst my mother and father must have felt in my blooming and growing, in the absolute wild uncertainty of life. Finishing this post, something different has emerged.

Our adventuring days are far from over, but we will never be featured in a big-screen ski flick. We'll be the harried couple on the local hill with the 4 kids alternately bickering, laughing, and hucking themselves off home-made jumps. You may have seen us at Smith Rocks, our monkey children on top rope, shouting wild encouragement, high-fiving each other at how "rad" they all were. We didn't climb a vertical inch that day-- it was about passing the torch of experience, of tasting the sheer joy of feeling your body and mind work together to scale rock-- but we were the parents sneaking a shared "victory" beer behind the minivan while they all climbed into their respective booster seats, everyone intact, smiling, and stoked. Some day, you might see us in retirement, all our dog-eared mountain and ocean toys packed into a 4WD explorer van, planning the next adventure, sending postcards to our children and their children. I might not be hang-dogging a 12b, but I'll for damn sure be climbing, ascending, celebrating.

What is good love? A trail epic. A marriage is a really good epic hike.

Today Matt and I celebrate the second year of making official what we already knew the moment we met back in August of 2010. Today we will also, if we're lucky, see each other for a few waking hours tonight. 4 kids, 2 full-time jobs, 3 different after-school sports, 1 school open house, and some other personal and professional obligations thrown in... we've learned, and continue to learn, a few things. Patience. Kindness. Clarity. Persistence. The ability to put one foot in front of the other and never lose sight of the beauty of your surroundings; the wilderness of a relationship. 

That's where we get to the story of the hike. We're both fairly decent mountaineers and climbers, so in the summer of 2012, when Matt casually suggested that we do a 2-day hike of the Timberline Trail around Mt. Hood, I didn't even bat an eye. True, it's usually done in 4 days, but we're the kind of sickos that think running 50k in the snow is a great way to spend a Sunday morning. Out came Matt's trusty old (this is key here: the word old) map and an old (there's that word again) Sullivan book with a 2-page description of the awe and wonder of the Timberline Trail. Normally-- and this is something I've learned to admit may be a problem at times-- I'm a bit of a control freak and would google the ever-loving shit out of it, research current topos and reports, and maybe read a few forums on current trail conditions, but in the spirit of marital bliss and letting go, I investigated no further. Well... almost. I looked at the Forest Service website, where it clearly stated that a portion of the trail was closed due to a washout, but it didn't give me much pause. Matt and I have in our seperate lives climbed to some of the highest passes in the Himalayas, entire valleys from any discernable trail, so we didn't give it much thought. What's a little washout on the friendly local volcano?

We set out for Lolo pass and our entry point at 3:30 AM, driving from the lights of Portland into a shimmer of stars over head, silent, coffee steaming in our hands. We reached the trailhead just as the sun was starting to break rays over the low hills, and the gentle buzz of forest insects was beginning to pick up, but only to a friendly lull easily managed with DEET; not the noisy desperation of a bona-fide mosquito bloom. The only sound was our breath as we hit the first hill, and the click-click of my trekking poles on the occasional rock. Despite our acquired fondness of what we call the "supine start", we were actually having an almost-alpine start, and we had only about 18 miles to go to our destination. In a move of sheer genius and love of beer, fondue, and a soft bed we had booked a room at Timberline Lodge. Don't judge-- we camp a lot. This was about the close-to-home Euro experience. As we rounded the first crest of views, and morning rays splashed the high glaciers of Wy'East, it seemed as if we had indeed embarked on the perfect adventure.

The first 8 miles flew by. We were giddy with the speed we were making, and the landscape changed every 1/2 mile. From meadows of alpine flowers looking like something out of the Lorax, dotted with elk droppings and dappled in morning dew, to the gnarled and twisted almost-moonscape of last year's devestating wildland fire, it was hiking magic. Our packs were light, our systems well-caffeinated, spirits high. We laughed and joked that at this rate, we'd make it to Timberline well before our intended time of 5PM. There were some fairly suspect snow bridges still on the trail over rivers and streams of glacial melt, but we worked, as we always do, as a team-- careful, deliberate, joyful. Anytime my husband and I are outside, propelled under the power of our strong capable bodies, we are joyful. No matter what is going on in the external world, we both know and recognize that "OUT" is a place of recharge and bliss. This is something we've implicitly understood about each other from day 1. I know in my heart of hearts that should some catastrophe happen and I lose the ability to get out into the wild under my own power, my husband will be there for me no matter what. If he has to carry me miles under his own power, he will do it. What's disturbing is the fact that he'd probably enjoy it. Feats of ridiculous and often ostentation strength and willpower are an embarrassing specialty of his. 

The parts of the forest that were burned over were particularly poignant. The trees looked as if they had been frozen in a horrific agony, prisoners to the searing heat, all claw and curve to the sky. Devoid of green, they were grey and black sculptures, all subject to some primal dance ritual to the bluest of skies. The longer we hiked in it, the more beautiful I began to see it. Each step created a poof of dust at our ankles, a fine coating of ash on our skin. The deeper we hiked, the more we began to appreciate the startling grace of the devastation, and then see beyond to the hints of new life. An occasional tendril of green tentatively poking from volcanic ground, or the tenacity of lichen clinging and renewing to a burned trunk. Here in the midst of death and decay was a monument to natural power and the inherent law of regeneration.

At one point in the mangled forest, I pointed out how a wildfire is like a divorce. All heat and searing tragedy, all seeming inevitability and despair, and as the flames grow and consume, they feed upon themselves. All you're left with is charred landspace. The remains, the sense of agony, the starkness of what was once green and lush dried up and wasted. My husband and I are remarried, our lives, character, and children the survivors of different fires. We are living the forest regeneration now, the tentative green tendril of a new life being celebrated, nurtured, and occasionally unintentionally trampled before we both realized how much more resilient we all are than we think. 

But I digress. We continued on, hiking into the greener and lusher forest, making our way towards the Eliot washout "detour". We ignored the signs saying "trail closed", and pushed in further. I started to think maybe the small scar we had crossed a 1/2 mile back had been the danger zone, and then... we arrived to this:

Technically speaking, this is from the other side of the gaping maw, over an hour and a lifetime later (spolier alert? Ha). Now "gaping maw" is a term that is entirely over used in adventure writing, and I've been guilty of speaking of delicate snow bridges over "gaping maws" on various mountains, but this... THIS was a gaping maw. An entire side of the mountain had washed out, leaving a gash a mile wide, with precariously stacked boulders on steep flanks several hundred feet high. Later we would learn that the "only" way to continue was down, where a shuttle could be met and would transport you 3 miles up trail, clean and intact with no flesh wounds or mental scarring. Intrepid explorers that we are (I believe the phrase "how bad can it be?" may have come up a few times), we pushed up one side of the maw's ridge, looking for a gentler slope to descend or a place to cross up high. Matt, never a man of inaction, decided quickly that the slope was doable, and that he'd head down first and see "how it went". I had serious doubts, but quieted that voice in my head that said "this is a bad idea" (see: not being a control freak!) and said "be careful, love" as he lurched over the edge. Within a few feet he had dislodged a volkswagon sized boulder that missed him by a few feet, and skid/ slid out of view. For 30 long seconds, I couldn't see him, and then, there he was, at the bottom. What we had estimated to be only a few hundred feet was easily 400-500, and all I could see were arms waving. The wind carried our voices, and we had no communication. I edged down the hill in a similar fashion, when the entire thing began to slide. I must have looked like the Wily Coyote from an old Road Runner cartoon, as I desperately scrambled back up the way I had come, cognizant of what was serious injury or death if I had been caught. 

And there we were... Matt at the bottom of the ravine, a slow moving river of mud and boulders, and as I would learn later, riddled with crevasses, moulins, and other banes of the mountaineer, let alone casual hiker. I was at the top, now making my way further up towards the toe of the Eliot glacier on a ridge becoming narrower, steeper, and more jumbled. I trusted the instinct and experience of each of us to carry forward, as communication was entirely cut out. But as I lost sight of my husband moving through what I could now see as incredibly dangerous, I became scared for the first time in our marriage. I would learn later he had the same feeling, watching me move to increasingly precarious territory. We both knew that we had to reach the toe of the glacier to hopefully meet, and it seemed the most solid place to cross. Minutes grew into an hour under a full noon blazing sun as we picked our seperate paths, each of us trying to carefully focus while gripped with the fear that we might actually not see one another again. Our friendly local volcano was teaching us an incredible lesson.

As I climbed higher on the ridge towards the toe of the glacier, it became apparent that I just needed to commit to getting down. I tested maybe 10 different places, each as wobbly and loose as the last one; the volcanic blocks bigger. I found what I felt to be a fairly solid stack (solid being an entirely relative term), and made my way down the unstable slope. The last block rolled as I stepped on it, and pitched me headfirst onto the edge of a glacier. The impact of my body gave a soft "whomp" to the snow, revealing a crevasse not 2 feet to my right. I couldn't stay under the loose rocks, and here I was, unroped, on a glacier full of finely bridged open crevasses in the mid-day sun. Lovely. In all my years of climbing, I've read stories like this, and wondered how someone could be so stupid as to end up in such a situation... and there I was. I yelled into the blue sky for Matt, feeling terribly alone as the words hung listlessly in the now very still air. The only motion was the buzzing of flies. Slowly, tentatively, I picked my way across towards the other side. 

Then, just as suddenly as he had disappeared down the initial slop, there was Matt, standing atop a small headwall directly above me, that beautiful, wide, welcoming grin. "Hey!" he yelped. ""Wait right there!" I yelled back to him that it was a minefield of barely-bridged crevasses, which he had already found out. A few minutes later, we were spread out, working together with our one remaining ski pole (the other had bent and broken while I was descending the jumbled blocks). We were elated, sunburned, relieved, and massively humbled. Finally reaching the other side of the maw, we clambered up a goat trail to the top of the ridge. In the picture below, you can see the point of our crossing. I came below the ice fall, down through the crevasse field, and met up with Matt on the other side of the short blocky headwall. 

"oops". 

By this time, it was almost 2PM, and we still had 8 miles to go... or so we thought. We continued on through spectacular terrain, slightly worse for the wear, but elated and almost tasting the beer waiting on the end of this section tonight. It seemed like things were taking a little longer than we expected, and my hip dysplasia was acting up a bit, but a couple packs of Gu and some Vitamin i(buprofen) propelled us forward. Sometime around 4 or so we stopped at a river to refill our water and eat some real food. A warm apple has never tasted so good.

From this point, Matt's map showed us winding into the Hood Meadows area after crossing another drainage, and from there, a short few miles to Timberline. The meadows were in full bloom, and as the sun sank and started to bathe everything in that gold alpine light where time stands still, that's when I noticed that something wasn't right. We had been walking at a good clip for hours. Back at the river, the phrase was "it's just 5 more miles". Roughly 5 miles later, we had barely scratched the North entry of the ski boundary, and it seemed endless. Matt looked at his map, and confidently stated, "just after we cross the 3rd lift we'll be headed into the final drainage". About the time we cross the path of the 5th life-- several miles in-- I grabbed the map and plopped on the ground. 

I'd like to state 100% that the words "What. The. Fuck!" were not uttered in anger, or even at all, but I'd be lying. The tattered map did indeed show 3 lifts, which was indeed the case when it was published-- 15 years ago. What ensued was what I like to call a "marital discussion". My husband is a gloriously frugal man, but as I pointed out, frugality does not a good map make. Actually, I think the words I used were "this is total bullshit", but it's kind of the same, right? Getting mad wasn't going to get us where we needed to go, and we did something that I cherish as a couple-- we each said our pieces, vented if we needed, apologized, and moved on. My husband has an incredible ability to do this, and has taught me a lot. Even more, he knows when he's wrong, and when to apologize. He doesn't always grasp the importance of timing when using humor around said vent, but hey, we can't all be perfect. With that big, gorgeous grin, he gleefully announced, "Hey! It's just 5 more miles!"

5 miles later, we reached the last draining, albeit a big one. The White Salmon can be a serious challenge to cross, but it was blissfully calm and manageable. Twilight was falling, the lengthening shadows blending into the ash as the sun completely faded from view. This time, when Matt announced in a more subdued gleeful voice "5 more miles," he did it out of striking range, although I may have been too tired to make the effort. It wasn't a full 5 miles, but the last several were a 1500ft push straight up. The fields were cast of lupine in lavender hues, and the moon started a slow rising crawl on the horizon. One foot in front of the other, slowly, surely, feeling the weary strength and magical pull of beer! fondue! soft pillow! coursing through my veins, we proceeded through the meadows, our only company the occasional startled mule deer bounding away. 

At 9:00 at night, we finally stumbled through the massive front doors of Timberline Lodge. We had just enough time to grab eats off the bar menu. There is possibly nothing more sublime than being dusty-filthy-sweaty, the cool bitter-smooth taste of an NW IPA sliding down your throat on a summer night, and that night was no exception. Sitting in that mammoth log chamber, my incredible, optimistic, incorrigible husband across from me, the 28 miles we had ended up hiking became insignificant. We barely stayed awake through the effort of scarfing down 2 giant loaded baked potatoes, and the showers we finally took were challenging to remain vertical in. It's surreal to spend 28 miles out on the trail, and then fall into bliss in cool white sheets. In the 30 seconds to unconsciousness, I couldn't help but reflect on how lucky and blessed we are. 

The next morning, we started off in true glamping fashion-- with a Timberline buffet breakfast. By the time we had finished gorging ourselves, it was getting close to noon, and we were going to have to start at more of a waddle than a trot. Today would only be 12-14 miles (I confirmed on an updated map at the lodge). Other than my hips feeling like they were made of sandpaper, it was a perfect day. I managed the pain with a steady stream 200mg of ibuprofen every hour. We laughed, cajoled, and talked about the endless variety of beauty and challenge that life offers us as a blended family and a second marriage. We hiked for miles at a time in near silence, just feeling the bliss of mountain and sky, together in our solitude, respectful of each other's space and zen. That's another thing I adore about my husband-- he's good company in conversation, but more importantly, in silence. 

With no particular fanfare, we were back at the trailhead-- a full circumnavigation of Mt. Hood in 36 hours, a little worse for the wear, but elated and jubilant. The celebratory beer (warm from the truck, but who cares?) cracked open, we laughed, rubbed our feet, and absorbed the late afternoon light on slightly sun-burned skin, tasting the salt on each other's lips as we kissed, and almost immediately started talking about "next time".

Which brings us to now. I started this post weeks ago, on our anniversary. We spent our actual anniversary shuttling 4 different kids to 3 different activities at 3 different times, managed to throw down some late dinner at 7:30, get everyone showered and homework caught up, and tucked in at a reasonable hour. After the dog was fed, the dishes done, a few bills paid, the endless tidal wave of laundry shifted, and the dust cloud of a typical week-day at our house had cleared, we managed to share a drink on the couch before I had to get to bed-- I get up for work at 5:15. Twice a week, if I'm not on shift, in the little sliver of time while the boys are sailing, I frantically sip a cup of chai in a local coffee house and try to write... or at least, that's the plan. Today I sit here, frustrated and frankly pissed off with the effort of the back and forth, the ups and downs, the sheer hectic pace that is our September and October. My husband and I see each other like 2 ships in the night for weeks at a time. We deal with the emotions of a blended and growing family, the hustle of giving the kids the experiences we never had but want for them, and the sheer enormity of logistics. My friends and family ask me how we handle this, how we can make it?

Because of this: one foot in front of the other, the ash kicking up at your feet and trailing down your socks. Learning to appreciate the beauty of perfect blue sky mid-day sun over a glacier, and the exquisite pain of the devastation and regrowth of a ravaged forest. Trusting in the other person as whole, complete, and competent, and yet allowing for the mistakes and the humanity that define us. Loving the adventure, carrying the heart of what binds us, and intimately knowing the fear of loss. We've come a long way to get here, and we're not going back. Part grace, part tenacity, and part ridiculous optimism, we hold all of it as sacred and profound-- the chaos, the space, the silence. 

It's never a bad move to update the maps, either.