Peak experience, Part 1

One July 4th, Ian and I decided spontaneously at breakfast to join Tim and Bella on a hike up to Lobo Peak. The 4th of July didn't mean much to us, but it was a day off work, and that did. Surrounded by the neighbors' pleasant chatter, everybody sprawled casually around Lil's small living room, I was psyched to not be working.

Lobo Peak sits in a subrange of the Rockies, the Sangre de Cristo mountains, atop a ridge bordered by steep canyons that create a steeply rising trail to the top. The trail gains nearly 4,000 feet in 4.5 miles. Tim and Bella had been hikers all their lives. They were twenty years younger than me. They had the right shoes. Neither of them had drank an entire bottle of wine the previous night. None of this occurred to me that morning.

Ian and I were craving to get away. We'd been working constantly for almost two years on the house. With the construction loan and bank deadlines hanging over our heads, we seldom felt free enough to take time to explore the region. Over those two years, we had created a ritual of two modest escapes. One was to soak in the nearby hot springs, Ojo Caliente. The other was to drive an hour and a half south along the Rio Grande to Santa Fe. We'd bury our noses in magazines and books at Borders' until it was time to return to the mesa.

We got ourselves sufficiently amped on Lil's black coffee, walked across the gravel pit to our house, pulled on our Georgia boots and climbed into the back of Tim's Subaru with Stan, their dog.

I was ready to lay my burden down. I was so content to be doing something other than mudding the walls that even Stan's persistent leaning and his friendly-but-drooly panting on the drive up toward Taos Mountain didn't bug me at all.