It’s been a while since I’ve had the time or inclination to write, but today, as a wintery mix falls and my car sits idle in the driveway with its check engine light on, again, it feels like a need.
The haste with which Christmas came and went felt cruel. Though it happens every year, it seemed particularly thus this time.
The hopes and fears of all the years: they are a weight I can’t shake, a long list of assaults that sap my faith.
Frequent injuries that linger long. Brain fog. Mice in the walls. A Judas car. Loneliness. The pounds that creep back on.
The very socks I pull on this morning. His socks, the one who left too soon, who loved this season, his family, life itself.
The elastic crackles as I pull, and I realize there are some things that just go, no matter how hard you want to hold them tight.
Maybe I need to look up, not down.
There was another list I started to keep this season, inspired by something I read on the Bible app earlier this month. Apparently, there are more than 700 different names for Christ in the Bible, and author Robert Morgan writes that “each one meets the various needs in our own lives… (and) discloses the many layers of his relationship with us.”
I start to count.
Compassionate One. Fuller’s Soap. Redeemer.
Every morning, as I sit at desk, I journal names.
Promise Keeper. My Delight. Lord of Power.
I circle the number, every day.
My Shepherd, 29. The Lord My Banner, 51. Commander of the Angel Armies, 105.
As I count, two birthdays arrive, my own and the newest little.
Everlasting Father. Bridegroom. Master. King.
In less than a month, when Christmas finally arrives, I’ve hit 383.
Alpha. Omega. Lion. Lamb.
Look up!
Do you not know? Have you not heard?
That hip, those mice, your son.
Why do you complain, O daughter? Why do you say, “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God”?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. (Isaiah 40:27-28)
He is your Strength, your Champion, your Great Reward.
Faithful One. Rock. Abba Daddy.
Always close, always listening, my very breath. Immanuel. God with Us. Never Leaver or Forsaker. Life itself.
I can’t stop counting, and neither will You, Meeter of My Every Need.
About a week ago, I saw a window between duty and the many appointments dealing with my injury.
Impulsively, I packed up the car and set out early one morning to drive to the Gaspe Peninsula, a place I’ve long wanted to explore.
I’m so glad I did. So much beauty packed onto one spit of land, it wasn’t possible to see it all in one short week.
So many trees!
And seals that howled like wolves.
The largest colony of Northern Gannets, squawking and tussling like my middle school students.
Rocks everywhere, grand and common.
Ocean, gulf, river, lake: water in all its diverse forms.
Did I mention trees? The stunning variety of them, their sweet shade, the heady, pine-y scent; spontaneous gratitude would often erupt in my soul for God’s gracious gift of trees.
Every day, I tried to walk a little further on the local trails until, at last, I felt ready to tackle an actual mountain.
Standing proudly on the tip of Gaspe in Forillon National Parc, Mont Saint-Alban, at 285 meters, was a little over a five mile loop, much of it on the International Appalachian Trail.
Seemed like as good a place as any to kick the tires.
Rain pelted my windshield as I parked at the trailhead, waiting for a break. Yes, I wanted to see the views promised in the trail description, but I also longed to see if my damaged soft tissue was healed enough to propel me up the mountain.
Muscle memory took over as I exited the car and practically danced – cautiously – toward the summit and the observation tower at the top.
Perhaps, upon discovering that my legs did, in fact, still work, a view would be nice after all. I willed the misty clouds to part at every outlook.
When I reached the top tier of the tower, they did, in part, recede, affording me some of the most elegant displays of the entire trip.
And that’s when it hit me.
Without the clouds to frame the landscape, the tip of the Gaspe, the cliffs and trees and sea, would have appeared flat, dull. It was the clouds themselves that revealed the beauty.
For the rest of the trip and thereafter, I started paying attention. Cataloguing.
Confident in my restored limbs, I tackled Mont Jacques-Cartier.
Found other paths.
Everywhere I looked.
Veil in sky or vapor over field.
The clouds were the show.
Integral, insistent.
We so often denigrate the clouds in our lives. The times when the sun is shrouded and our lives are marred by frustration, confusion, and pain.
But what if -?
What if those times are necessary, to help us truly see and appreciate and know?
Perhaps we don’t value a thing until it is lost, for a season or forever.
I want to look with new eyes.
To not despise those cloaked things.
It is said my King will one day return. It is said He will come with clouds.
Should I be found here, waiting, when this occurs, let it be with a heart full of gratitude for the times with and the times without.
The other day, in a colleague’s English class, we read one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets. Robert Frost – his very name evokes the natural – has a way of hooking my heart with profound confessions wrapped in the simplest of scripts.
Listen.
Desert Places
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast In a field I looked into going past, And the ground almost covered smooth in snow, But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it – it is theirs. All animals are smothered in their lairs. I am too absent-spirited to count; The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely ere it will be less – A blanker whiteness of benighted snow With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars – on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.
Frost was only 59 when he wrote Desert Places. There was a time in my life that I considered that age to be ancient; no more.
Lately, I find myself moving things that previously occupied some cupboard space down low – the cat food under the sink, charging cords, frequently used kitchen utensils – to places up high, more easily accessible, places that require no stooping or bending on my part.
I have begun to forget words, names. Sleep poorly. Find more strands in my hairbrush that I care to admit.
I age and age and age, in one direction only, fast, oh, fast, fighting those lonely places within myself that stick like stubble out of the soil of my soul.
Some days it’s even a struggle to work up the energy to ask for help – for Him to undull my heart, offer peace, or even acceptance. Perhaps it is enough to ask Him to simply sit with me, for I know that there is no place where His love isn’t.
I learned recently that the cells of a child live on in the mother long after the child is born. There is an exchange, and it has a name.
Fetal microchimerism “refers to the transfer of the baby’s genetic material into the mother’s body long after the birth of the child” (cradlewise.org).
Whoa.
I think of my boy, the one I lost. He’d be 31 soon.
I often wondered where life went when it was all lived up. Heaven, yes, eventually, when He returns. But where is he now, my son?
To know that a part of him lives on, in me – an ever-beaming glow that never ages, coming to my rescue even though I could not rescue him – this is a gift.
Because here’s the thing: I also learn that those cells, those tiny baby cells, have the capacity to embed themselves in their mother’s tissue and actually repair harm.
Baby cells, like stem cells, can grow next to liver cells or bone cells, differentiate themselves, heal whatever’s around them.
The brain that remembers so slowly now, that jumps and skips and pauses unbidden; the heart that tears, remembering too well – bid my son’s, bid all my children’s cells, to draw near and help.
Do cells sing?
Mine must, united, now, as they are.
There is no need to scare myself with my own desert places.
I know someday all will be made well – my son’s mangled body, my own mangled heart.
The other day, a manilla envelope appeared in my campus mailbox.
There was nothing particularly disguishing about it. Were you to try to fathom its contents, the only hint of its import was the sender, a name synonymous with hiking in this part of the world: Ed. Keeper of all things Grid.
My scroll had arrived!
It almost felt like, longlong ago, when you were waiting for word from your number one college choice, hoping the letter would come, hoping it would be today, hoping it would be fat.
Though just a piece of paper, this scroll (and related bling) represented to me the years I have been privileged to walk day and night, through sunlight and starlight and every changing season, over the four corners of the wild. (Psalm 74, loosely quoted)
It feels good to be a member of this club, whose current members number less than 200. But although I am happy about this milestone, the real essence of the Grid was the deep repair it worked in my heart over the footfalls, over the peaks, over the years and years of dancing in the sky.
Bondcliff, October 2019
Untethered and soul-starved, I needed something to laser my focus.
Last ascent of Madison, March 2025
Up high, I didn’t mind feeling small; in all that expanse, I never felt alone.
There was simply too much beauty, too much wildness, too much of the forensic hand of the Creator softly shaving the edges of my loneliness until all I wanted was to be up there, with Him.
Franconia Ridge December 2023, negative double digit windchill
I started counting peaks back on June 21, 2018, on Mt. Washington, a stroll up Lion’s Head and back down through the Alpine Garden.
I finished on Washington, as well, on March 11, 2025, though this wasn’t planned. The weather in 2025 held me anxious and stressed, wanting so badly to finish but also wary of what could happen should I decide poorly. Washington waited for last.
Depth of snow on Jewell Trail, last ascents of Monroe and Washington
Weighty things take time. Like loss, like grief, or even faith, you don’t need to tackle it all at once. In fact, you can’t.
Cannon Mountain, September 2018
I remember driving up the access road in 2020 to the trailhead for Mt. Carrigain. It was only my second time, and I remember wondering how I was ever going to do this hike in the winter, when the access road was closed, adding almost 6 miles to an already long day. I wasn’t sure I could.
Carrigain, New Years Day 2024
But as I ventured further and further into the woods, as my experience grew and my fear abated, I found that though we might want suddenly, it is gradually that is often wiser, more humane.
Trekking pole showing depth of the snow on last ascent of Owls Head, March 2025
His hand is slow, but it’s never late.
Approach to North Kinsman, April 2021
So many things happened in all those years, the physical ones easier to measure.
In the 7 years and 9 months it took me to Grid, I went through: 8 pairs trail runners, 4 pairs hiking boots, 4 sets trekking/ski poles, 2 pairs rain pants, 3 rain jackets, 2 day packs, 2 winter packs, 2 pairs snowshoes, 1 phone, 1 car, and more water bottles than I could count. (It took me awhile to figure out how not to drop them. Sorry, LNT).
Wildcat Ridge Trail, September 2023
I had a favorite sweater that went through each washing like a champ and never smelled.
This one, above, from Title Nine, on Moriah, September 2023
A buff my daughter gave me, which always made me think of her when I put it on.
Madison, October 2022
It didn’t necessarily help with the hair, but up there, I really didn’t care.
Post an Adams/Jefferson out and back, September 2020
Eisenhower, April 2021
Last trip out to Jefferson, March 2025
There were people, so many people, along the way. My kids, who watched out for me, via text, on every peak. Lori Hall, who first told me about the Grid. Philip Carcia, the wolf of the Whites, whose encouragement and support meant the world. Georg, legend, whose advice was always gold. Brooke and Lad, who let me join them midway through a Bond/Zealand traverse and gave me a ride back to my car. Summerset, who also came through in a similar way. Numerous groups of Holderness students on their Outback program, reminding me of the son who once did the same.
Online friends who heartened. You, reading now. Aggie and Donna and Melissa, always in my corner. Ed Hawkins, of course, for managing all of us Gridiots.
Zealand with Brooke and Lad, March 2024
I did all the peaks solo except for one traverse of the Bonds, with Carolyn, and a Carter/Wildcat traverse with Timothy, my old hockey coaching partner. I’ll probably replace those hikes later this year just to say I did them all alone, but I’m thankful for the fun we had on those hikes. Their company was sweet.
Mishaps occurred, as they often do. Broken bones, bruises, bonks on the head from ice-laden branches, scratches and sticks and blisters galore. Toenails went missing. Once, I burned the top of my ankle with a toe warmer on a bitter cold day on the Bonds.
Ouch
Why it burned one side but not the other I cannot say, but the scar persists.
There were lots of animals, mostly birds, but one moose on Isolation. A mouse, strangely, on Lafayette, the day before that same hike would claim the life of 19 year-old Emily Sotelo in November of 2022.
What are doing up here, little one?
When I started to Grid, there was so much I didn’t know. So much I still don’t.
Last ascent Adams, March 2025
Jackson, May 2021
My gear currently sits in a crate on the porch. I’m a little tired and need a break from constantly checking the weather, my schedule, the snack cabinet, a list.
Clouds over the Gulfside Trail, February 2025
I hope to keep hiking a long, long time.
Up high, there’s a peace I find nowhere else. A closeness to my son, my mom and dad, the ache not absent, but assuaged.
November 2022 on South Twin
No step is ever wasted as we steer toward eternity.
Wild and wonderful is this world you have made. (Psalm 104:24)
Christmas with the littles has come and gone, and the new year now lies latent and watchful with all the things that are meant to be.
We actually had two Christmases this year, as the adult children planned their own plans while the grands relied on their parents’ calendar to observe our dear Savior’s birth.
Finding a day or two when the whole family could be together was tricky, but once we did, it meant that the littlest ones would have to wait days past the 25th to see their uncles (and their uncles’ presents).
In the meantime, I joined them for the bulk of the gifting on Christmas proper and tried to find a day or two to sneak in my final hikes for December.
Waiting continues to challenge me.
December was a rough month for gridding, as weather and schedule conspired at every turn to prevent even the smallest of windows to get out there. I managed to sneak in a Wednesday Washington/Monroe in the waning weeks, though a terrifying slide down the icy slope of Monroe had me spooked.
I can’t explain how I finally came to a stop, yards away from some nasty rocks, but I did. A miracle.
Was I getting careless? I didn’t think so, but where the ever unpredictability of these mountains confronts my desire to finish, there will always be strain.
It seems that the closer I get to the end (only 15/576 left!), the more that anxiety breaks my crust of calm with its insistent nettling. What are the winds? Is the Hillary Step clear of ice? How high is the water? Will my feet survive the cold?
All of these worries came to a head the day after Christmas when I head out for the longest hike of the month, the Bonds, a 22.6 mile round trip. Even toe warmers can’t keep my feet warm, so I shove extra hand warmers down my boots to keep the frostbite away.
I’m zipping along the first three miles of the well-trodden Lincoln death march, optimistic for the day, when I cross the bridge into the Pemigewasset Wilderness and all tracks end: virgin powder as far ahead as I can see. It’s another 8.5 miles to the turnaround on West Bond, and every step will have to be broken out, alone, by me. Sigh.
Hours pass as I blow through podcasts, water crossings, and hidden holes beneath the snow. I lose another water bottle – when will I learn to secure them?! – and gamble that I’ll have enough left in my dwindling supply, or find the dropped one on the way back.
On top of Bondcliff, the drifts hit thigh height in places, each step a quagmire. I seriously consider quitting, waiting another year, saying the heck with it ALL and turning around. I’m too angry to pray, too stubborn to stop. Eight hours after leaving the parking lot, I finally summit West Bond, 1:30 in the afternoon, and snap the only picture of the day, a false smile belying the exhaustion I feel at having to follow my footsteps back to the car.
Back in the woods, more miracles: a woman approaching, tromping down the trail with her snowshoes. We stop to chat and I ask if she’s seen my bottle. No, but she offers me enough of her own water, and I can’t believe her kindness. Later, after crossing one of the streams, I look down and see the top of my errant Nalgene sticking out of the snow. Hurray! I guzzle most of what’s left.
Darkness drops, hours pass. I’m soaked and shivering when I finally reach the car, and not even a hot bath at home can chase away the lingering chill.
I’d love to celebrate, but all day long, I’ve had to force myself to not think of the next day, what looks like the only safe opening left in December, when I’ll need to do Jefferson to Grid out the month.
Nothing I can do but give myself a fighting chance. I drape wet gear over radiators, turn up the heat. Open my computer to submit a trip report. I consider writing: Broke out the Bonds. That’s all I have to say about that.
But I feel a duty to this community. I drink in these reports like my first waking hit of joe, and details are critical to someone trying to make an informed decision. It’s after 11 when I collapse into bed.
This wasn’t how I pictured things going when I started Gridding, years ago. I honestly need something to change my perspective, to look ahead with hope and not dread.
I think of the littles as they waited for their presents. Early opening was not allowed, and they returned again and again to the pile beneath the tree to look and long. When the morning finally comes, there are tears as each one jostles to be the next. Some gifts exceed expectations, others most decidedly do not (in their defense, socks).
Are the mountains like that? This crazy Grid? I look and look at the list left, imagine what each peak will be, and am crushed when it turns into torture instead of glee.
One of my favorite Psalms is 126. Perhaps it’s because its subtitle reads ” A Song of Ascent” – what better name for a girl who climbs?
I love Psalm 126 because it attempts to explain that tension between elation and despair:
Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them (Psalm 126:5-6).
A podcast I listen to about this Psalm posits that it’s actually the tears that water the seeds. No sorrow, no sheaves. And this is exactly what happens, that next day, when I wake up and head out with the soreness and suffering of the Bonds behind me.
Jefferson is brilliant. There are people everywhere, a well trod trail, sunshine. It is the best gift of the season, to have conditions as perfect and energy left to spare, to summit with a smile sincere.
Another miracle.
It’s one to keep going, despite those I have left.
Does He not see all my ways, count all my steps? (Job 31:4)
You never know what miracle might lay behind the next turn. A heap of presents, maybe socks. Either way, it’s much too early to quit.
What does 2025 hold? I’m not sure, but it’s likely I haven’t seen the last of tears.
But I’m grateful, confident, that the One who knows will, if I let Him, turn all of them to grain.
While visiting my daughter’s family “farm” in Vermont recently, I noticed they had isolated one of their hens in a chicken tractor in the middle of the yard. The poor girl jumped and paced to try to get out of her little prison, obviously highly agitated and unable to calm.
It was heartbreaking.
However, this girl was caged because she was “broody.” Instead of laying an egg and heading off to do other chicken-y things, a broody hen is fiercely devoted to hatching chicks and no good to a family who simply wants eggs to eat. She obviously didn’t understand that she needed to be separated from her other friends, to wait until her maternal instinct passed, before she could rejoin the brood.
In many ways, I’ve recently felt a bit caged myself, waiting, unable to move freely, either forward or back.
Having spent the last five or six years chasing an audacious hiking list called The Grid – New Hampshire’s 48 peaks over 4,000 feet, in every calendar month – I’m finally within reach of the finish.
The problem is, although I only have 22 more mountains to climb, they are all in the winter months. I must wait for December to come before I can begin to end what I began.
This is also the first summer in decades that I am alone in my tiny house, the youngest having moved out last August to pursue his own audacious dreams.
At times, I find myself pacing the vacant rooms, trying to escape the feelings that come with having raised my own brood to adulthood, where they need me less, and for vastly different reasons than when they were littles.
I’m trying to be content with where I am and who I am, in this season. To wait well, even though all I can think of is I want to be somewhere, to be doing something.
The other day, the youngest grand had an epic tantrum when it was time to leave the beach where we had been playing that afternoon.
She cried and kicked, not knowing that there was something equally awesome that Dada had planned next. A fire. S’mores.
She wasn’t willing to exchange a known good for the unknown ahead.
I admired her ferocity, even as I lamented her limited perspective. I suppose, however, that in many ways, I am like her.
I prayerfully protest, going boneless, when I cannot get my way, questioning God’s goodness and wondering why, O, why, is it taking so long?
Taking so long, when all I have done is to ask for His help, for friends and family, for myself, waiting for the unknown to become known.
I know my perspective is limited. That I cannot see what He sees.
Like little John John, sitting under the Resolute Desk, I must remember that Father knows far more than I do. My only job is to trust.
In the meantime, I will try to wait well. To stop the pacing.
I will sit in the known, content that whatever unknowable is ahead will be unfurled whenever and however He thinks is best.
Today, on my son’s would-be 30th birthday, I pull out the photo albums and invite in the grief.
It doesn’t sting as it once did, nearly eight years after he’s been gone, though the ache is still sharp.
Not kitchen-shears sharp, capable of precise severing, leaving edges crisp and clean; no, perhaps more like a pair of training scissors in the hand of a toddler, tearing and catching indiscriminately as it kidnaps the day.
I gaze at the years gone by and lament all the photos we will never take.
There is a limited number of pictures to sit with, and the inventory will never change.
Of course, our lives go on, as they must. Baby showers, new employment, holidays, and mountains climbed.
All the while, he’s still stuck, smiling out from the old gloss and reminding us of the power of a heart given over to love.
There’s housekeeping to be done here, stewarding those things he’s left behind.
I was reminded earlier this week, walking back from study hall under a misty moon, of the power of home. The air held little bite, but it was dark as I approached my empty house. I had been gone all day, busy with my fleet of middle school boys, and had not left on any lights. Body and mind were tired, ready to shift from duty to ease.
Home. I just wanted to get home.
And then, I remembered, again, for the thousandth time.
That’s where he is.
Privileged to live every moment in his Father’s house.
Awe-filled, beholding beauty more marvelous than here(Psalm 27: 4).
walkwithme413 