Mt. Hood- Wy East Face and Ridge

                My Queen of the Hills

       She makes all that I do in my"little boy" adventures worth going on and she is my joy to come home to.........better yet, she has been my climbing and trekking partner for 41 years.  My own adventures are not merely mine after that much time, they belong to both of us.

   I have learned many things through this last 3 weeks; that life turns over in an instant, that there is no such thing as human control over life, that a good wife makes a man strong; that life after 40 years of marriage does not belong to one partner or the other but is a twin experience, i.e. everything I do, even by myself as a boy running out in the woods, has meaning not only from God, but because I get to come home to a wife who has always called me her "hero".  When I am tired after 30 miles of running and I hear her voice echoing through the trees, "go, honey.......you're my hero"...........that laugh of hers, I go the last 2 miles with a whole new strength.  Life, apart from God is empty........but everything I do in life pales in the shadow of her love and care for me, and everyone else that she has loved- all over the world,  everywhere we have gone. 

   The chemo/radiation has begun, and we put our heads down and head into the storm, and fight like we have never fought before.......only God knows the outcome. Go baby, you're my hero.

                                          Coyotes on Mt. Pisgah in the storm