Taking it to the top

“You two won’t be the only ones on the trail, after all,” my husband reassured. Brad had to bow out of the spontaneous hike along Bass Creek in the Bitterroot Mountains due to a prior commitment so my visiting childhood friend Helen and I would have to go it alone—without that 6’2, square-shouldered and bear-spray wielding man in the lead.

Brad and I had undertaken Bass Creek Trail several times with family and friends; it was the day trip of choice when visitors landed at our log home in the woods; such a perfect way to show off Western Montana’s scenery while getting good exercise in the great outdoors. Picnic lunch and a thermos of freshly brewed coffee at the top of a spectacular waterfall was most definitely the prize worth pursuing.

I’m not some faint-of-heart femme fatale, and I am all for equal opportunity in the wild as well as civilized world, but neither am I adverse to the chivalrous gesture. When you’re heading uphill into bear and wolf country, there is that certain something about seeing at a tall man’s broad back on the trail, especially in the autumn when pre-hibernating species are stalking food. Without his leadership, perhaps I shouldn’t select tuna for my backpack?

“Almond butter and jam isn’t much better,” Helen pointed out as she slathered an ample share onto a slice of wheat bread.

We’d be fine; like Brad said, we’d have company on the trail, we’d be hiking at high noon, and Lord knows we’d make enough noise with our chatter (we hadn’t seen each other in years so there was much catching up to do) to dissuade any animal attack.

“I’ll toss the bear my tuna while I’m aiming the bear spray!” Brad rolled his eyes as my announcement did not serve to soothe Helen’s sudden misgivings, but overall, she was as game as I was, so onward and upward we climbed. Alone. All afternoon.

Two hours into our intrepid undertaking when I realized we really were the only ones on the trail, I began to feel a bit edgy about the adventure. The sun had abandoned us behind clouds, the air was chilly, and I wondered about our vulnerability as we prepared to languish on a rock with our backs to the forest, nibbling on our much-needed meal. Not wishing to alarm Helen, once seated I casually turned so that my peripheral vision could detect any encroaching intruder—be he man or beast, and as we talked old times, sure enough we began to shiver with the cold.

“I kinda can’t feel my fingers,” Helen confessed. “They don’t feel cold; they just don’t work!” I knew of what she spoke—my extremities were numb, despite being gloved and shod.

We swallowed the last of the coffee and proceeded down the trail, my bear spray poised, but I have to admit, useless in any pinch since my frozen fingers would obviously fail me. We shook, fisted, rubbed—everything we could imagine might thaw our thumbs to begin with, but to no avail. That’s when I flashed back to the glory days of youth when I’d had a crush on a boy who was part of an outdoorsy group of purely platonic friends. One day when we were hiking and my fingers froze to the extent that they could no longer grip the rocks around us, Ben had come to the rescue by suggesting I nestle my hands in his armpits—an offer so intimate, in my naïve mind it was tantamount to marriage proposal. My recollection was that the maneuver had fairly well warmed my hands, but indubitably warmed my heart.

I stopped dead in my tracks on the trail.

“We have to put our hands in our armpits!” I smiled to think of long lost innocence. Helen looked at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“Do it!” I ordered, and as swiftly said, lifted my fleece jacket and Patagonia shirt, careful to conceal the abominable abdominal area, crossed my arms and pressed each palm under its opposite pit. Helen obeyed, desperate. Nearly 40 years later, it still did the trick.

Heated by hubris, we’d negotiated the trail sans husband and had utilized a survival technique I’d formerly filed away as more flirtatious than necessarily effective. Such prowess under pressure deserved reward, and so I drove us to a bakery in town where we purchased a sourdough boule loaf that had moments before been lifted from the oven. On the drive home we ripped off great hunks of what arguably woman can alone live on and devoured it like the beasts we’d all day been avoiding. Meanwhile, the prorietress of the establishment, after hearing about our afternoon outing, had recommended several other hikes we might enjoy.

“This is the perfect time to do Burnt Fork Pinnacle because of all the fall colors!” Susan urged. “And then there’s Stark Mountain—it really kicks butt!” Our eyes flashed from her gaze and locked. In a glance we wordlessly concurred: Susan is tiny and lovely, very feminine and gentle natured. We could beat her butt!

Over-confidence in the wild is a dangerous thing. So full of ourselves were we back at the cabin, our toes lifted to the fireplace, that we made plans for tomorrow. I unearthed Brad’s Missoula area hiking trail books and between those and the Internet, we gleaned the exact trailhead location. Susan had said it was just three miles to the peak where we would enjoy a view unsurpassed by any other, and in every direction. The maps told us 2.5 miles to victory. Easy peezy.

This time Brad agreed to position of fearless leader. We got a late start—after lunch—so packed high-protein snacks. Relieved of bear spray duty, I carried only a small camera. Ansel Adams I am not, but even a snapshot might be required to prove we’d been there—where as it turned out, no man was going. Helen and I slathered on the sunscreen and were good to go. 70 degrees and sunny. No hurting hands today.

Less than a mile up the marked trail, we paused so that I could take a couple of pictures, whereupon Brad turned on his heel and handed me the bear spray canister.

“Hiking straight uphill is just not pleasant for me; you two go on and I’ll wait for you here on this rock.” Our path was, so far, unrelentingly vertical. There is, after all, that word “pinnacle” in there, so what did we expect?

“Do you know how to use that?” A husband is wise to double check these things, even though there was assumption that yesterday I could have. And he didn’t mean the camera. I inspected the tigger on the canister more closely.

“I pull this off and then push here, right?” We rehearsed an imaginary bear scenario. Then off we went, Helen and I ready to face any foe.

Today we were even deeper into bear habitat: the heart of the Lolo National Forest. And as we climbed and climbed and climbed, stopping every twenty feet to catch our breath, I was hyper-aware of time: What time had we begun? When does it get dark? How long has Brad been waiting? When will he begin to worry? Nagging anxiety not conducive to the outdoor experience.

“Are we kicking butt yet?” Helen inquired of the surroundings, which were—really were—spectacular. I groaned and gasped and swallowed more water.

“This is not the hike that’s supposed to kick butt,” I reminded her. What sort of camouflaged Amazon was Susan anyway? If she can get her butt kicked more than this, what is she doing in the kitchen?

Long story shorter, the switchbacks started. Trudge to the left, circle and zig right, zag back left. We’d long ago passed several summits, the arrival at each one a tease that revealed only another. Here stood two born city girls bred by mothers whose idea of wilderness was an already pilfered sale rack at Macy’s and whose notion of exercise was the Los Angeles Times Crossword Puzzle. I inhaled deeply---ahhh, the unmistakable aroma of non-fiction fodder.

“This must be how Lewis and Clark felt,” I said at one point, literally, when it only permitted us to see yet another within our grasp, “when at the top of each mountain all they could see were more mountains.”

We agreed that it was important to stop periodically, not only to catch our breath and hydrate, but more importantly to look up and around at what really was the most spectacular array of autumn color and sweeping view of valley and mountain range I’d ever witnessed. I knew that each time we paused to take it in, we were both secretly contemplating surrender.

“Isn’t it really all about the view, the colors, and the magnificence of what we are seeing…or is it about getting to the top?” Helen rationalized as the devil toyed with her to call it a day. That look we’d exchanged in the bakery passed between us as we uttered in unison, “Getting to the top.”

We were invested; into it this far, I considered as I maniacally checked the hour on my watch, allowing us 15 minutes more—just another 15 before turning around.

“How do we not keep going?” Helen wheezed behind me while rounding yet another switchback corner. By this time, I’d gone just far enough ahead to earn the honor of “scout,” and several feet to my rear, she would await my whoop and holler of “Eureka!” signaling summit. At 3:00 (we’d been hiking for two hours) all she heard was my exasperation.

“What’s this 3 miles? How long would it take us to go 3 miles? I normally walk a 15-minute mile; have we gone past it?”

Helen insisted that it would be fairly difficult to pass the top. Unless we were now nearing the top of some other range of mountains. Were we now perched atop the Reservation Divide? We scrambled to determine our usual walking pace, how that translated into mileage, figuring in steep hill scaling. I shook off ever-increasing bear fear as we tromped through a densely forested span. When we emerged, there it was—yet another crest to climb, with the trail winding off to the left of it.

“Want to just go straight up and see?” Helen proposed. Half crawling, half crouching, we scaled the last bit hand over fist and bellowed, “Eureka!“
Whatever that tiny rise was on our left would just have to wait. We would access TOPO maps at home to discover where we’d been and where art thou, o summit! Not to mention there would be a reckoning with Susan next time we crossed paths on level ground.

"Aren’t you going to take a picture?“ Helen panted. Perspiration dripping from my forehead, I turned a full circle to absorb the breathtaking sight that spread 360 degrees around me. I knew then and there that the only photos I would have would be ones I’d taken near the bottom—such panorama could never be captured on a Canon Sure Shot.

Downhill is always swifter than up, but harder on the knees and quads—especially in your late 50’s. Suffice to say that by the time we stumbled down to Brad who had napped peacefully on a rock and deftly whittled a stick into a deadly spear lest he require a weapon while we were away with the spray, we didn’t feel like walking for a few days. Nor could we have managed had we tried. It has been three days and I still can’t make my way down our front porch steps without wincing.

“Did you feel a little insecure without your man?” Brad shyly asked. I was indeed relieved to see my husband especially since once again there had been no other living soul on the trail; only after we were toes up by the fire again did I admit to Helen that I’d pictured us in the newspaper headlines, having been mauled by a grizzly or gored by a goat.

And when we garnered the quad strength to once rise to our feet in search of TOPO maps to tell us? Seems we had indeed trekked beyond the top! From the Ninemile Valley floor we’d reached an altitude of approximately 6,900 feet. The dotted line that mraked our path stopped before we had, at the base of that last four-legged sprint we’d crab-walked. Off to the left on the computer screen was another dotted line that rose to a nagging little knob marked 7,000-something. Ignore it; another mountain, another day. High five and Alleluia; at last we could relax, nibble on what’s left of sourdough, and since my pictures were utterly pathetic, talk about the view.

To everything there is a season

“You’re going out in this?” My neighbor’s response was high-pitched when I phoned to see if she wanted to take a walk, as we often do together. Living in the woods of Western Montana, our dirt roads offer the option of a sylvan, serene, and relatively safe two, four, or six-mile circle. On this particular morning, the 26th of October, the first snowflakes of the season were drifting past my window. Just a few. “It’s snowing!” she offered as explanation for her shock.

So? No problem; I’ll go alone. While every one of my friends bemoans the inevitable slip of summer and on its heels the icing-on-the-cake Indian ones like we’ve just had and sometimes enjoy during September and early October, I stand alone as one who welcomes the change of season—every season. Turn, turn, turn. Among other enviable features, it gives me more to write about.

“Is it fall or winter?” Beth raised her arms to the sky in frustration yesterday after eating lunch in Missoula when, no sun in sight we walked to our cars that were parked under dazzling autumn orange foliage, and felt the distinct drop in temperature.

“Is that snow on the mountaintop just west of town?” I asked her, hardly able to contain my joy. I adore this combination of gloom and glamour; it’s a visual feast that any photographer will attest to--such blazing colors offer a stellar performance against a darkening sky.

I couldn’t help Beth in her quandary. Equally futile as defining brunch as either breakfast or lunch, winter is rarely a marked line in the fallen leaves. Generally, she reveals herself a little at a time, today being the first tease of promises that lie ahead—late mornings when I can either head out the backdoor while strapping on my snowshoes or simply stand in the front yard with my face turned skyward and allow the snowflakes to soundlessly assault my skin.

“Our winter is so long,” groans Sally, another of my acquaintances who, it’s true, has lived here longer than I. “I’m just not ready.”

How do I explain it to her? Having come from a climate where four seasons are virtually the same, I still find the variety rather thrilling. Getting out in it challenges and invigorates, then necessarily invites recouperation: the lazy afternoon by a fire, writing, reading, knitting, taking a long hot bath—pleasures that need not feel guilty. Of course, I should mention that it helps to be retired.

And there are those subtle sub-seasonal shifts within winter. The blizzardy depth of December, for example, is the perfect time to clean my closet and scour the wooden floors; why resort to such chores while summer sun beckons and fall feet rush inside saturated by the river? Likewise, in March’s mud month I enjoy ready rationale for not bothering—both wood and wardrobe will only get dirty again. There is the proper season for everything. Turn.

Outdoors and shod accordingly, I can walk in wonder of any weather. And so, outward I go this morning, no neighbors biting my bait. I unearth from bottom dresser drawer quintessential Patagonia pants and protective shirt, pull on fleece jacket and zip it to the chin, grab gloves, and wool hat. I open this log cocoon to the blast of arctic air. Glorious.

Hunting season opened a few days ago, and so the deer do not lift their white tails, hiss, and flee from my purposeful path. No shooting is allowed in our neck of the woods, and my guess is that they have perceived that here, they are not prey, but protected. They’ve congregated in safe haven and this morning they stand still, dozens of them, in easy proximity where they gaze upon me, unafraid, as I pass, puffs of my warm breath apparent on the cold air. And when I glint Beth’s house that is tucked back in the woods and around a corner, I wave and call out to no one as a buck lifts its head to wonder of my words, “You don’t know what you’re missing!”

My cheeks freeze, my nose runs, my eyes water, and I pump my arms even harder than usual in order to ward off the chill. Autumn still burns brightly in the larch trees until at one vista, the view I’ve nicknamed “my favorite valley,” I stop cold at the spectacle before me: the fire of fall and the pallor of winter, all in one October hour.

Breathless, I turn from such inexplicable splendor and speed up to hurry home. Now that I’ve felt the flurries, I’ll keep my afternoon date with the keyboard. And a time to every purpose under heaven.

Lovely Rita

My father could make a margarita out of anything. At 88 years old, on the punishing day before his dreaded colonoscopy procedure, he added tequila and a twist of lime to the insipid prep drink. Despite his coaxing, I couldn’t bring myself to sample that colo-cocktail, but nonetheless I acknowledge its validity. Adding Herradura certainly would aid in the ability to palate the drugstore jug of nasty sea salt the patient nearly drowns in. And when I challenged the wisdom of such blatant disregard and pre-surgical disobedience, he only grinned and raised his glass.

“Bottoms up!” No comment.

Some would say Daddy was feckless to meddle with medicine. Now that I can tell the survival story of such foolhardiness, I boast that mi padre earned an A+ for creative genius under challenging circumstances and for making the best siesta out of an otherwise typical, boring anesthesia. He also scored high marks for level-headedness while under Rita’s influence, and on an empty stomach. Not to mention resistance under pressure: although the Saddleback Hospital physician’s explicit instructions called for clear liquid only, Daddy deftly rationalized and responded, “This, Doctor Sarella, is clearly liquid.”

“After agape, the fourth kind of love is agave,” his brother-in-law, my uncle, used to say. Orange County citizens are constantly reinventing the margarita, and to each his own; the rendering of ingredients has become a more hotly debated topic than gubernatorial candidacy (What election?), especially during the countdown days leading up to Cinco de Mayo.

Flourishing under my mother’s love, I was all but weaned on the cocktail that accompanies a basket of chips and salsa.. My father and uncle managed orange and avocado groves back when Fashion Island blossomed with nothing but the heady aroma of citrus. Caretaker Javier undertook to perfect their idea of a margarita that accompanied an abundant bowlful of guacamole, the one essential ingredient being his own orange “liqueur” from the crop.

Now, seated at Z Tejas in South Coast Plaza and nursing the Millionaire Martini Margarita, I can mimic his miracle and still imagine the citrus groves they owned not too far from this very spot.

First timers to the drink (Don’t worry; I once was one too) often sip what I call “the virgin,” which is mostly pulverized ice and a limeade-like margarita mix; very little tequila detected. My stepson in Mission Viejo likes his mixture of tequila, margarita mix, and anything “lime-y”; he’ll even take something from a machine (crying shame). My girlfriend in Laguna Niguel likes hers “naked”—Grand Marnier and Cuervo, room temperature, in any old drinking glass, but her mother, bless her heart—her 60-year old mother takes the shortcut and just does shots. Atta girl.

Skinny margaritas (tequila, Cointreau, and lime juice) have swept the scene—at last someone else finally sees that less is more—my father would be proud.

Tequila options are varied: there’s the rough, young Blanco, the peppery Reposado, the woody Anejo. And to East Coast connoisseurs of James Bond’s martini who point to the Orange Curtain with whispers about diminished culture and sand-washed imagination, I say no matter how you mix it, the drink of which Jimmy Buffet croons is as colorful as the lime flash on the Laguna Beach horizon at sunset and embodies more romance on a stem than any Fifth Avenue olive on a toothpick.

True aficionados like my father and my uncle never blend; only stir. I subscribe to this formula: long on tequila, short on Grand Marnier, and even shorter on lime. No mix. Three cubes. Never dilute to slush. If a blender renders, I’m tee totaling. Don’t sully this glass with salt, and pull up the bay front lounge chair so I need travel no further for the subsequent siesta.

Which brings to mind Thanksgiving at Balboa when Uncle Pedro mixed his magic while I ran an errand over to the Island’s Market Spot for a key ingredient to the pumpkin pie. Upon return, famished and ready for turkey, instead I found the buffet table untouched, and in the middle of the afternoon everyone splayed on chairs or sofas—except Pierre, my aunt’s reserved childhood school-chum who was mysteriously missing and subsequently discovered snoring on the back seat of the station wagon in the driveway while my parents pushed and shoved each other to see who could first get down the hall to the bed—at 3 PM. My mother, only slightly more nimble on her feet at that moment, won.

I touted this recipe as uncontested until I experienced Irvine’s El Cholo Restaurant, where they do all that, and with two tequilas, and then some: float a third, lethal Pulque on top. Enough liquid refreshment to submerge a rattlesnake, let alone a worm, this concoction hangs on but never over; it slithers down as smooth as suggestion and strikes as surprisingly as hypnosis. My husband ordered a second glass there one night while out to dinner with office colleagues and called me to slur that his “shurt” was certifiably “in the durt.” As I write this, I’m licking my lips.

When my five-year colonoscopy consultation rolled around last month I sat across from the specialist as he politely wondered if I had any questions. Glancing at the lengthy printed page of instructions, my eyes locked on the phrase “Clear liquids only.”

“Define ‘clear’,” I challenged.

“Water, broth, tea, or jello that is not red. Once you begin the preparation drink, add nothing but water,” he dryly spoke.

I might spend prep day at Z Tejas and take that directive with a grain of salt.

Throw me the dog bone!

“Look what I bought Abby!” my daughter Katharine exuded enthusiasm while on Skype with me last Saturday. She had just come home from her errands, one of which was Bonnie’s Bakery, an intimate Scottsdale, Arizona bon-bon boutique—for dogs.

I am not a stranger to such news. As she held up the elegantly decorated confection that resembled a gourmet cupcake, I averred that I’d seen such Bowser bites in my favorite pet store here in Missoula, Montana, Go Fetch!

“They always look so good!” I announced, “and they smell so good when I walk in and they are freshly baked.”

We chuckled over the trend, and then Katharine told me the woman who owns the shop she frequents likes to nibble on them herself for a mid-morning healthy snack. Go figure.

“Read me the ingredients,” I ordered, after pointing out that the ones for sale in establishments I’ve seen advertise only the purest peanut butter, sweet potato, and icings made with organic non-fat yogurt. What about that is not to be consumed by humans?

“Gingerbread, cinnamon, nutmeg, flax seed, and whole grain wheat are the only things in this one.” She lifted to the camera a lovely square petit four my mother would have purchased at Jurgensen’s Bakery and served at the Pasadena Junior League Luncheon. The other selection Katharine had made was a small sack of Savory Sweet Potato and Chicken Biscuits. Fit for a king—Shepherd, that is.

Dog food has made the leap from nasty to natural; I myself feed my boys natural and organic Canidae, and even reward good behavior with natural treats as opposed to the “junk food” for which they might more readily do back flips and fetch me a beer from the refrigerator—probably even pop the top. But dessert? Is that really deserved and more importantly, can I leave it these to them and resist such temptation?

“So she really eats it?” I wanted to get back to the woman in the Arizona shop who nabs a nibble now and then from the gingerbread. “I wonder if it tastes like spice cake? With ingredients like that, how could it be bad?”
Remember when your brother double dared you to eat a Dog Bone dog biscuit? We eyed each other on camera, mischief in our musing.

“Do you dare me?” Katharine taunted. And with my nod, came her tentative nibble.

“Yummmmm!” She turned to face Abby, there in the background, tail wagging in anticipation, and took another, larger bite. “Want a bite, Abby, before Mommy eats it all?” Then she turned again to me to note that, “this would be healthier than the power bars I eat for a snack before working out!”

These days it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish man’s health care from that of man’s best friend—and not just when it comes to medical care. At most pet stores they’ve covered the preventative disease bases: There are dog memory puzzles, brain games, and even pet medication websites that compete in the same pricing war and advertising hiatus that human prescriptions do. Who will outlive whom? When I was informed that one of my dogs medical requirements would involve a lifetime of treatments, 3 times a day, entailing eye flush, eye ointments and eye drops, and the vet said, “for the rest of his life,” I couldn’t help but add, “or mine—whichever ends first.”

Still, I perform the daily ritual as I toss Glucosamine/Chondroitin Sulfate and Flax Oil capsules into his organic kibble. Remember opening those cans that reeked to high heaven? Well, the dog to whom I served those along with whatever scrap of fat was left on my father’s plate lived to be 17 years old—and on Dog Bone Biscuits.
In lieu of the bone in your Christmas roast, the latest, healthy chew that is superior salve for gums and teeth is the elk antler. During a visit Katharine’s mother-in-law nabbed one for her Lab back at home but was told she could not carry it onto the airplane as it would be considered “a weapon.” Arguably, preventative health measures are.

I begged Katharine to sample the sweet potato biscuits, that root vegetable being a healthy alternative to the white russet, and one that we actually both prefer. When she readily took a bite, turns out she couldn’t masticate. Guess that one’s intended for canine canines only.

“Chris is going to leave me,” she chuckled at the thought of her husband’s reaction to her confession.

“Or want one of those gingerbread cakes for himself,” I proposed, right before I headed to the car to check out what Go Fetch! was offering at today’s bakery counter.

When I walked in the door, the scent of cheese and garlic was intoxicating. Wheat-free cheese heart crackers touted rice flour, garlic, parsley, cream cheese, cheddar, and eggs. Dipped Puppy Paws were made of carob and then dipped in white chocolate, Garlic Bagels were literally just that, and for the sweet tooth? Pure and simply ginger cookies.

My mouth watered as I texted Katharine with news of my local health food finds. She wrote back—jealous. But they were going out to dinner that night I reminded her—how about stopping off at Bonnie’s for dessert?