Don't Let Me Go: What My Daughter Taught Me About the Journey Every Parent Must Make - Softcover
One day after reading a book about a wilderness adventurer, David Pierce’s fifteen-year-old daughter Chera announced that she wanted to climb a mountain. What David heard behind that wish was a bold declaration: “I’m growing up, Dad–what are you going to do about it?”
A few weeks later they bought matching backpacks.
Over a three-year period they climbed five mountains and ran in two marathons. Together they suffered sore muscles, bitter cold, sprung knees, shin splints, and broken spirits. But they also reveled in blazing sunsets, glissaded on a glacier, and celebrated numerous victories great and small. And in the process, they built an unshakable father-daughter bond that will withstand the tests of time.
As you read this wise, warmhearted, and often hilarious story of a daughter’s (and a father’s) coming of age, you’ll discover ways you too can create strong, loving relationships with the important people in your life, as you make your way through the valleys and over the summits of life together.
A few weeks later they bought matching backpacks.
Over a three-year period they climbed five mountains and ran in two marathons. Together they suffered sore muscles, bitter cold, sprung knees, shin splints, and broken spirits. But they also reveled in blazing sunsets, glissaded on a glacier, and celebrated numerous victories great and small. And in the process, they built an unshakable father-daughter bond that will withstand the tests of time.
As you read this wise, warmhearted, and often hilarious story of a daughter’s (and a father’s) coming of age, you’ll discover ways you too can create strong, loving relationships with the important people in your life, as you make your way through the valleys and over the summits of life together.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
David W. Pierce is the co-author of two children’s books with his wife, popular Christian comedienne Chonda Pierce, and a memoir, Salvage. He has written ten short stories appearing in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. A professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, he also teaches at Taylor University in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. David and Chonda and their family live in Tennessee.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
It was all Chera’s idea. I just went along to keep an eye on her. After all, she was only fifteen and could get hurt out there, barely ninety pounds and so high up on a mountain like that. Since we had no special mountain climbing skills, we chose Pikes Peak in Colorado.We read there was a nice trail to hike and a souvenir shop at the top that served ice cream.
For some reason that sounded safer.
The sign at the base of the mountain where people parked their cars and where the taxi dropped my daughter and me off told us that it was about an eight-hour “brisk” hike to the summit. It took us three days there and back. During that time, we bruised some things and twisted other things. We ate stuff we shouldn’t have and didn’t eat other stuff because it was crunchy and wasn’t supposed to be. Our fingers and faces swelled up so much that we hardly recognized each other.We came off that mountain beaten up, limping, and thirsty. We never expected the climb to be easy, but we had no idea how a mountain can wear you down. No idea. And
that’s how our adventure began.
Yes, began. Because for the next three years we would climb four more mountains. And in between those mountain peaks, we would run a couple of marathons—twenty-six-point-two miles. And we would see God, again and again and again.
We saw him on Blanca Peak, in a sunset that mottled the whole Colorado sky in a blazing orange.We saw him in a mountain lake where trout rose and dimpled the surface. We saw him in the blowing mist of Mount Rainier, in the sanctuary of snow and ice that stretched out beneath a full moon from a point called Cathedral Gap.We saw him in a man who simply gave Chera his sunglasses to keep her from going blind and in a cook who made the best chicken noodle soup I’ve ever tasted in my life. We also learned about hiking back down into the valleys, where blue lights of police cars glare and people die and hearts break and you can see no silver lining in the clouds, not this far down.
So this is a book about what happened on all those mountains and in all those valleys. Peaks and valleys that taughtme about life. I climbed these mountains with my teenage daughter, learning about patience and fortitude and gimpy knees and the love of my daughter who cares about such things. I learned about altitude and what it can do to your sinuses and that even on the grassy tundra of Mount Audubon that teenagers don’t know the words to The Sound of Music. I learned about preparing and training, and the painful consequences you pay when you don’t do those things.
And as Chera and I climbed and ran together, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own climb up a different sort of mountain, one that took place long before she was born. I was about nine when I somehow lost God; just misplaced him, it seems. That was the same time that things around me began to go wrong, breaking in ways I was sure God could fix, if only I could have found him again. And I remembered how I figured he must have gone some place higher up where I couldn’t reach—maybe to a mountaintop or something, since he was God.
So I set out to look for God, figuring if he was out there, I would find him. I would climb as high and for as long as it might take, having no idea how long and how grueling that journey would become.
What I found was a trail that wended through disappointment and loneliness. I made wrong turns and met a few people who tried to discourage me. But I was driven on by the memory of his being there—back before things broke—and encouraged by those who helped me climb higher. I learned many things about myself, some good, some not so good. But I did find God, in the end—right where I had left him.
And in the end, I believe these memories are worth writing about— what I’ve learned from disappointment and victory, from finding my footing on slippery scree and sliding down glaciers, navigating switchbacks, and
trusting my ice ax.
This is a book about all these things that I learned about me. But, mostly, it’s what I learned about my daughter, up there on the mountain. How I was able to hang on to her. And how I’m able to let go.
Our adventure starts one day not long after eight people die on Mount Everest. We weren’t there, and we didn't know any of the people. We didn’t even know there’d been trouble until my daughter read the book. And, truth be known, I couldn’t even tell you whereMount Everest was.
Chera is fifteen and skinny with long, thin hair the color of weathered straw, withmore energy than you would think possible fromlooking at her tiny frame. She walks into my office with a big paperback book tucked under one arm. Right away I notice there’s no marker stuck in the pages, which means she’s probably finished, and by the look on her face, I figure very recently finished—still floating in that happy-yet-sad state that always
comes with finishing a good book. I tilt my head sideways to read the title: Into Thin Air. I’ve heard of that. People in airports carry it under their arms just like that.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Wow!What a story,” she says, waggling the book in the air.
I smile. Yes, yes, that’s my daughter—the book lover. Then her face takes on a more serious countenance as she asks, “Do you think maybe we could climb a mountain?” She clutches the book to her heart.
Now I remember. This is a story about a group of men who climbed Mount Everest, and something went wrong—people died. I want to tell her that’s why we read books: so we don’t have to do what we just read
about; we live vicariously through the characters on the pages.
“You mean, climb Everest?” I say.
She shakes her head and I’m relieved. “Oh no. That’s too big, too far away. But I read about Pikes Peak on the Internet. It’s a famous mountain in Colorado. It’s over fourteen thousand feet, but not like Everest. So we
wouldn’t need a passport—or oxygen.There’s even a live camera shot of the mountain, twenty-four hours a day, on the Internet.”
“Oh yes, I’ve seen Pikes Peak,” I say, reconsidering the obvious dangers awaiting young people on the Internet.
“Really?” She seems encouraged by that, prodded by that.
“Let me get this straight.” I lean forward in my chair, where I’ve been minding my own business. “In that book you just read about mountain climbing,” I say, pointing to the one under her arm, “doesn’t somebody die?”
“Eight people actually, but that was Everest. I’m talking about Pikes Peak. There’s even a souvenir shop at the top...with ice cream.”
“How’s a souvenir shop going to keep us from dying?”
“Come on, Dad. I read that there’s a trail you can hike all the way to the top, so we won’t need ropes or ice axes or crampons or a Sherpa or anything like that.”
I do a quick search of my memory, trying to recall if I’d ever heard of a CNN crew at Pikes Peak reporting about missing hikers, but I come up with nothing. And what in the world is a Sherpa?
I’m not an outdoor adventurist. That’s what I’m thinking as I’m sitting there in my office chair minding my own business. I don’t run. I don’t lift weights. Sometimes, when I’m going out for an ice-cream cone and the car keys are upstairs, I’ll sit at the bottom of the stairs and think long and hard about how badly I want that ice-cream cone before I climb the sixteen steps to the top. (I almost always go after the keys—that is, if it truly means getting an ice-cream cone.) I’ve camped out in the woods a few times, but I can’t sleep without a pillow or a mattress or if the smallest pebble (or pea) is beneath me. I don’t like walking in the morning dew because it soaks through my shoes and make smy toes wrinkle. And when I brush my teeth, I can’t stand it if the water’s too cold. Oh, and I hate dirty hands.
But she seems so much older and bigger standing there in the doorway. Big and grown-up. She looks a lot like her mother, and I wonder where my little girl has gone. We’ve stopped marking her height on the door casing,
but that’s because we moved a few years ago. The new owners have probably painted over all that by now.With every yard sale, more little-girl toys go away for as little as a dime apiece. Last week she had her first manicure. Time is taking her away bit by bit. Time is sneaky that way.
And there are boys. They call. They sit next to her in church and at school. When she has a party, she invites them. And there’s always a boy’s name scrawled on her notebook. Trey. Ronnie. Adam. Ryan. Sometimes I
see where she’s scratched through a name, blackened it out with some permanency, but before long a new one appears. She’ll draw it out in great detail with block letters and shading and depth, probably missing out on valuable lessons in geometry and world history.
When she was younger we’d play The Pierce Family Show, using a big mirror in the living room as our television set. Chera was maybe four or five, so I could hold her on my hip and she could see herself. The show would start with some music: badadadadadadumdumda. Chera would hang on to me as we’d burst onto the screen, waving and smiling.
Me: Hello, everyone. And welcome to The Pierce Family Show. I’m David.
Chera: And I’m Chera.
Me: And together we are—
Both: The Pierce family!
(More waving and smiling.)
Me:We have a great show for you today. Don’t we, Chera?
Chera: That’s right.
Me: Today we’ll be talking with a man...a man who... [I think up something fast] lives at the top of a volcano! Isn’t that right, Chera?
Chera: That’s right.
After we’d introduced our guest, we’d take a commercial break, mainly so I could set Chera down and stretch my back. I’d coif her hair with my fingers and pretend to touch up her button nose. And then I’d hoist her back on my hip and we’d count down from five.
Me: So here we are at the top of the volcano!
Chera: So what’s it like living at the top of a volcano? (Chera would do all the interviewing because she held the wooden-spoon microphone, and I would play the guest.)
Me: Oh, hot. Very hot.
Chera:What do you eat?
Me: Hot beans.
Chera:What do you drink?
Me: Hot chocolate.
And so on and so on.We’d go until the next commercial break.When we’d come back live after this second break, it’d be time to wrap up and put out a teaser for next week’s show. And each week Chera would bring back the man who lives at the top of the volcano.We totally exhausted the poor man; we questioned him to death.Once we did an interview of aman who lives in a hot-air balloon, but Chera asked him if he’d ever seen the man who lives at the top of the volcano.
I stand there thinking about how to answer my grown-up daughter and realize how long it’s been since we’d played that game.
The little man who lives between my ears (no relation to the man who lives at the top of the volcano) suddenly pipes in: It’s just one mountain, David. And there’s a trail all the way to the top—and a souvenir shop! She’s your only daughter, for crying out loud! Your firstborn. She’ll be grown and out of the house one day. She’ll be a missionary in Mauritania and will write home to say how much she wishes she had a bed and some food. She’ll write cryptic notes because the bad guys will be reading all the incoming and outgoing mail, looking for infidels, and she’ll use code to say how much she misses the hills of Tennessee and that she sure wishes she’d climbed that mountain we’d talked about all those years ago, back when she was an innocent child of fifteen. But now she has too much to do in Mauritania before she moves on to Timbuktu. And “the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon...”
The little man can be cruel sometimes.
She stands in the doorway, leaning in, her eyebrows raised in hopeful anticipation. I suddenly think I should mark her height on the door casing; I could forever keep this moment. Instead I do my best to be assertive:
“I...er...well, I...ah...if there is some way to...ah...I guess we could always...you know...You’re sure there's a trail?”
She nods, but her eyebrows stay put.
“If you really feel like this is something...you know...I mean, it must be a pretty good souvenir shop and all—”
“Are you saying yes?” Chera interrupts.
I blow out my response, like a hiss, almost in protest to what I’m consenting to. “Sure, why not. It’ll be fun.” Oh boy. Did I really say fun?
Chera squeals and runs down the hallway. “I’ll make a list of everything we need,” she calls back over her shoulder.
She runs like she always runs, hands tight to her chest and elbows flying out to the side, feet shuffling along the floor in small steps, barely coming off the rug. She used to run like that frommy truck to her kindergarten class.
Like I said, I’m not an outdoor adventurist. The closest I’ve ever come to thinking about climbing a mountain before is thinking that I would never climb one. But I’m a dad who’s going to walk his daughter down the
aisle one day, and maybe walking her to the top of a mountain will help me with that.
But then I start to wonder again. What sort of things will we pack? Is something like this very dangerous? And does that souvenir shop really have ice cream?
We’ll climb on Labor Day, which makes sense to me. September 6, 1999.
That means we’ve got two months to get ready.
I have a good friend in Colorado Springs, and I’m going to call him so I can ask him a few questions—like, where do we start? And, is it legal to just take off up a mountain in America? But first, Chera wants to take me
shopping because I don’t have a thing to wear. She has a backpack and a sleeping bag and lots of “survival” equipment like waterproof matches and a whistle to call for help. I have nothing. So she takes me straight to the hiking section in the JumboSports store and pulls one backpack after another from the display so we can check the linings and the pockets and the zippers.
“We’re looking for one with an internal frame,” she says, “and not one with big metal bars on the outside. The internal’s a lot better.”
“Says who?” I want to know.
“Says Larry and Lori.” Larry and Lori run the adventure camp called New Frontiers where Chera has been a junior counselor for the last two summers. I know them pretty well. We go to church together. They’re about my age, and from what I’ve heard, they’ve climbed everything (with and without ropes), biked everywhere (always with bikes), and hiked in every sort of element—rain, snow, sunshine. So if Larry and Lori say something about the great outdoors, it’s probably true.
“Okay. An internal frame it is,” I say. “What color?”
“What color do you like?”
I think before I answer, “I’d like a blue one like yours. That way we look like a backpacking expedition—you know, a team.”
Chera seems to like that idea too, so she picks out a nice blue one— big. “It needs to be a lot bigger than mine,” she says, “since you’re a bigger person.” Again, that makes sense.We stuff the big blue backpack into the shopping cart, and it takes up nearly the entire thing, but there’s still room for the smaller stuff, like cookware and an emergency candle and some Band-Aids and some freeze-dried chicken teriyaki. “This doesn’t sound too bad,” I tell her, as I read the label on the gourmet freeze-dried dinner. “We’ll probably eat better than we do at home!”
We pick out a sleeping bag, and I grab a couple of those self-inflating pads to lie on, for both of us. “I can’t sleep on the hard ground,” I tell Chera. She just shrugs, and I can tell she doesn’t understand. I start to say,
“Wait until you’re older,” but decide not to. I figure I’ll have opportunity enough for that line over the next few years.
I meant to call my friend from Colorado Springs sooner, but it’s two days before we leave when I final...
For some reason that sounded safer.
The sign at the base of the mountain where people parked their cars and where the taxi dropped my daughter and me off told us that it was about an eight-hour “brisk” hike to the summit. It took us three days there and back. During that time, we bruised some things and twisted other things. We ate stuff we shouldn’t have and didn’t eat other stuff because it was crunchy and wasn’t supposed to be. Our fingers and faces swelled up so much that we hardly recognized each other.We came off that mountain beaten up, limping, and thirsty. We never expected the climb to be easy, but we had no idea how a mountain can wear you down. No idea. And
that’s how our adventure began.
Yes, began. Because for the next three years we would climb four more mountains. And in between those mountain peaks, we would run a couple of marathons—twenty-six-point-two miles. And we would see God, again and again and again.
We saw him on Blanca Peak, in a sunset that mottled the whole Colorado sky in a blazing orange.We saw him in a mountain lake where trout rose and dimpled the surface. We saw him in the blowing mist of Mount Rainier, in the sanctuary of snow and ice that stretched out beneath a full moon from a point called Cathedral Gap.We saw him in a man who simply gave Chera his sunglasses to keep her from going blind and in a cook who made the best chicken noodle soup I’ve ever tasted in my life. We also learned about hiking back down into the valleys, where blue lights of police cars glare and people die and hearts break and you can see no silver lining in the clouds, not this far down.
So this is a book about what happened on all those mountains and in all those valleys. Peaks and valleys that taughtme about life. I climbed these mountains with my teenage daughter, learning about patience and fortitude and gimpy knees and the love of my daughter who cares about such things. I learned about altitude and what it can do to your sinuses and that even on the grassy tundra of Mount Audubon that teenagers don’t know the words to The Sound of Music. I learned about preparing and training, and the painful consequences you pay when you don’t do those things.
And as Chera and I climbed and ran together, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own climb up a different sort of mountain, one that took place long before she was born. I was about nine when I somehow lost God; just misplaced him, it seems. That was the same time that things around me began to go wrong, breaking in ways I was sure God could fix, if only I could have found him again. And I remembered how I figured he must have gone some place higher up where I couldn’t reach—maybe to a mountaintop or something, since he was God.
So I set out to look for God, figuring if he was out there, I would find him. I would climb as high and for as long as it might take, having no idea how long and how grueling that journey would become.
What I found was a trail that wended through disappointment and loneliness. I made wrong turns and met a few people who tried to discourage me. But I was driven on by the memory of his being there—back before things broke—and encouraged by those who helped me climb higher. I learned many things about myself, some good, some not so good. But I did find God, in the end—right where I had left him.
And in the end, I believe these memories are worth writing about— what I’ve learned from disappointment and victory, from finding my footing on slippery scree and sliding down glaciers, navigating switchbacks, and
trusting my ice ax.
This is a book about all these things that I learned about me. But, mostly, it’s what I learned about my daughter, up there on the mountain. How I was able to hang on to her. And how I’m able to let go.
Our adventure starts one day not long after eight people die on Mount Everest. We weren’t there, and we didn't know any of the people. We didn’t even know there’d been trouble until my daughter read the book. And, truth be known, I couldn’t even tell you whereMount Everest was.
Chera is fifteen and skinny with long, thin hair the color of weathered straw, withmore energy than you would think possible fromlooking at her tiny frame. She walks into my office with a big paperback book tucked under one arm. Right away I notice there’s no marker stuck in the pages, which means she’s probably finished, and by the look on her face, I figure very recently finished—still floating in that happy-yet-sad state that always
comes with finishing a good book. I tilt my head sideways to read the title: Into Thin Air. I’ve heard of that. People in airports carry it under their arms just like that.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
“Wow!What a story,” she says, waggling the book in the air.
I smile. Yes, yes, that’s my daughter—the book lover. Then her face takes on a more serious countenance as she asks, “Do you think maybe we could climb a mountain?” She clutches the book to her heart.
Now I remember. This is a story about a group of men who climbed Mount Everest, and something went wrong—people died. I want to tell her that’s why we read books: so we don’t have to do what we just read
about; we live vicariously through the characters on the pages.
“You mean, climb Everest?” I say.
She shakes her head and I’m relieved. “Oh no. That’s too big, too far away. But I read about Pikes Peak on the Internet. It’s a famous mountain in Colorado. It’s over fourteen thousand feet, but not like Everest. So we
wouldn’t need a passport—or oxygen.There’s even a live camera shot of the mountain, twenty-four hours a day, on the Internet.”
“Oh yes, I’ve seen Pikes Peak,” I say, reconsidering the obvious dangers awaiting young people on the Internet.
“Really?” She seems encouraged by that, prodded by that.
“Let me get this straight.” I lean forward in my chair, where I’ve been minding my own business. “In that book you just read about mountain climbing,” I say, pointing to the one under her arm, “doesn’t somebody die?”
“Eight people actually, but that was Everest. I’m talking about Pikes Peak. There’s even a souvenir shop at the top...with ice cream.”
“How’s a souvenir shop going to keep us from dying?”
“Come on, Dad. I read that there’s a trail you can hike all the way to the top, so we won’t need ropes or ice axes or crampons or a Sherpa or anything like that.”
I do a quick search of my memory, trying to recall if I’d ever heard of a CNN crew at Pikes Peak reporting about missing hikers, but I come up with nothing. And what in the world is a Sherpa?
I’m not an outdoor adventurist. That’s what I’m thinking as I’m sitting there in my office chair minding my own business. I don’t run. I don’t lift weights. Sometimes, when I’m going out for an ice-cream cone and the car keys are upstairs, I’ll sit at the bottom of the stairs and think long and hard about how badly I want that ice-cream cone before I climb the sixteen steps to the top. (I almost always go after the keys—that is, if it truly means getting an ice-cream cone.) I’ve camped out in the woods a few times, but I can’t sleep without a pillow or a mattress or if the smallest pebble (or pea) is beneath me. I don’t like walking in the morning dew because it soaks through my shoes and make smy toes wrinkle. And when I brush my teeth, I can’t stand it if the water’s too cold. Oh, and I hate dirty hands.
But she seems so much older and bigger standing there in the doorway. Big and grown-up. She looks a lot like her mother, and I wonder where my little girl has gone. We’ve stopped marking her height on the door casing,
but that’s because we moved a few years ago. The new owners have probably painted over all that by now.With every yard sale, more little-girl toys go away for as little as a dime apiece. Last week she had her first manicure. Time is taking her away bit by bit. Time is sneaky that way.
And there are boys. They call. They sit next to her in church and at school. When she has a party, she invites them. And there’s always a boy’s name scrawled on her notebook. Trey. Ronnie. Adam. Ryan. Sometimes I
see where she’s scratched through a name, blackened it out with some permanency, but before long a new one appears. She’ll draw it out in great detail with block letters and shading and depth, probably missing out on valuable lessons in geometry and world history.
When she was younger we’d play The Pierce Family Show, using a big mirror in the living room as our television set. Chera was maybe four or five, so I could hold her on my hip and she could see herself. The show would start with some music: badadadadadadumdumda. Chera would hang on to me as we’d burst onto the screen, waving and smiling.
Me: Hello, everyone. And welcome to The Pierce Family Show. I’m David.
Chera: And I’m Chera.
Me: And together we are—
Both: The Pierce family!
(More waving and smiling.)
Me:We have a great show for you today. Don’t we, Chera?
Chera: That’s right.
Me: Today we’ll be talking with a man...a man who... [I think up something fast] lives at the top of a volcano! Isn’t that right, Chera?
Chera: That’s right.
After we’d introduced our guest, we’d take a commercial break, mainly so I could set Chera down and stretch my back. I’d coif her hair with my fingers and pretend to touch up her button nose. And then I’d hoist her back on my hip and we’d count down from five.
Me: So here we are at the top of the volcano!
Chera: So what’s it like living at the top of a volcano? (Chera would do all the interviewing because she held the wooden-spoon microphone, and I would play the guest.)
Me: Oh, hot. Very hot.
Chera:What do you eat?
Me: Hot beans.
Chera:What do you drink?
Me: Hot chocolate.
And so on and so on.We’d go until the next commercial break.When we’d come back live after this second break, it’d be time to wrap up and put out a teaser for next week’s show. And each week Chera would bring back the man who lives at the top of the volcano.We totally exhausted the poor man; we questioned him to death.Once we did an interview of aman who lives in a hot-air balloon, but Chera asked him if he’d ever seen the man who lives at the top of the volcano.
I stand there thinking about how to answer my grown-up daughter and realize how long it’s been since we’d played that game.
The little man who lives between my ears (no relation to the man who lives at the top of the volcano) suddenly pipes in: It’s just one mountain, David. And there’s a trail all the way to the top—and a souvenir shop! She’s your only daughter, for crying out loud! Your firstborn. She’ll be grown and out of the house one day. She’ll be a missionary in Mauritania and will write home to say how much she wishes she had a bed and some food. She’ll write cryptic notes because the bad guys will be reading all the incoming and outgoing mail, looking for infidels, and she’ll use code to say how much she misses the hills of Tennessee and that she sure wishes she’d climbed that mountain we’d talked about all those years ago, back when she was an innocent child of fifteen. But now she has too much to do in Mauritania before she moves on to Timbuktu. And “the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon...”
The little man can be cruel sometimes.
She stands in the doorway, leaning in, her eyebrows raised in hopeful anticipation. I suddenly think I should mark her height on the door casing; I could forever keep this moment. Instead I do my best to be assertive:
“I...er...well, I...ah...if there is some way to...ah...I guess we could always...you know...You’re sure there's a trail?”
She nods, but her eyebrows stay put.
“If you really feel like this is something...you know...I mean, it must be a pretty good souvenir shop and all—”
“Are you saying yes?” Chera interrupts.
I blow out my response, like a hiss, almost in protest to what I’m consenting to. “Sure, why not. It’ll be fun.” Oh boy. Did I really say fun?
Chera squeals and runs down the hallway. “I’ll make a list of everything we need,” she calls back over her shoulder.
She runs like she always runs, hands tight to her chest and elbows flying out to the side, feet shuffling along the floor in small steps, barely coming off the rug. She used to run like that frommy truck to her kindergarten class.
Like I said, I’m not an outdoor adventurist. The closest I’ve ever come to thinking about climbing a mountain before is thinking that I would never climb one. But I’m a dad who’s going to walk his daughter down the
aisle one day, and maybe walking her to the top of a mountain will help me with that.
But then I start to wonder again. What sort of things will we pack? Is something like this very dangerous? And does that souvenir shop really have ice cream?
We’ll climb on Labor Day, which makes sense to me. September 6, 1999.
That means we’ve got two months to get ready.
I have a good friend in Colorado Springs, and I’m going to call him so I can ask him a few questions—like, where do we start? And, is it legal to just take off up a mountain in America? But first, Chera wants to take me
shopping because I don’t have a thing to wear. She has a backpack and a sleeping bag and lots of “survival” equipment like waterproof matches and a whistle to call for help. I have nothing. So she takes me straight to the hiking section in the JumboSports store and pulls one backpack after another from the display so we can check the linings and the pockets and the zippers.
“We’re looking for one with an internal frame,” she says, “and not one with big metal bars on the outside. The internal’s a lot better.”
“Says who?” I want to know.
“Says Larry and Lori.” Larry and Lori run the adventure camp called New Frontiers where Chera has been a junior counselor for the last two summers. I know them pretty well. We go to church together. They’re about my age, and from what I’ve heard, they’ve climbed everything (with and without ropes), biked everywhere (always with bikes), and hiked in every sort of element—rain, snow, sunshine. So if Larry and Lori say something about the great outdoors, it’s probably true.
“Okay. An internal frame it is,” I say. “What color?”
“What color do you like?”
I think before I answer, “I’d like a blue one like yours. That way we look like a backpacking expedition—you know, a team.”
Chera seems to like that idea too, so she picks out a nice blue one— big. “It needs to be a lot bigger than mine,” she says, “since you’re a bigger person.” Again, that makes sense.We stuff the big blue backpack into the shopping cart, and it takes up nearly the entire thing, but there’s still room for the smaller stuff, like cookware and an emergency candle and some Band-Aids and some freeze-dried chicken teriyaki. “This doesn’t sound too bad,” I tell her, as I read the label on the gourmet freeze-dried dinner. “We’ll probably eat better than we do at home!”
We pick out a sleeping bag, and I grab a couple of those self-inflating pads to lie on, for both of us. “I can’t sleep on the hard ground,” I tell Chera. She just shrugs, and I can tell she doesn’t understand. I start to say,
“Wait until you’re older,” but decide not to. I figure I’ll have opportunity enough for that line over the next few years.
I meant to call my friend from Colorado Springs sooner, but it’s two days before we leave when I final...
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- PublisherWaterBrook
- Publication date2009
- ISBN 10 0307444686
- ISBN 13 9780307444684
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages224
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Book Description Softcover. Condition: New. First Edition. One day after reading a book about a wilderness adventurer, David Pierces fifteen-year-old daughter Chera announced that she wanted to climb a mountain. What David heard behind that wish was a bold declaration: Im growing up, Dad-what are you going to do about it?A few weeks later they bought matching backpacks.Over a three-year period they climbed five mountains and ran in two marathons. Together they suffered sore muscles, bitter cold, sprung knees, shin splints, and broken spirits. But they also reveled in blazing sunsets, glissaded on a glacier, and celebrated numerous victories great and small. And in the process, they built an unshakable father-daughter bond that will withstand the tests of time.As you read this wise, warmhearted, and often hilarious story of a daughters (and a fathers) coming of age, youll discover ways you too can create strong, loving relationships with the important people in your life, as you make your way through the valleys and over the summits of life together. Seller Inventory # DADAX0307444686
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