We've Had the Time of Our Lives

Kelly and the OG reprise the mountain trip, for the 24th time.

Near Wild Heaven

*

Climbing Lookout Mountain in Montreat, NC, is like staring at the sand in an hourglass. Lookout tells me where I’ve been and where I’m going. It reminds me that the past and future can be twin sons and total strangers, often at the same time.

I’ve been here before. A hundred times, maybe more. Surely more. Sixty years of climbing Lookout’s flanks and pawing its ribs, seeking purchase on a trail that rises at a 45-degree angle. I tested Lookout as a young boy. It’s testing me now. I am 65. How much longer will the mountain tolerate me?

For Lookout, I go to the gym. In tribute to Lookout, I embrace the loathsome StairMaster, I try a hiatus from cigars. (It’s only modestly successful.) When Crazy Chester the dog takes me on my daily walk at our hilly park, I note my heart rate. Better? Worse? Same?

Gotta be ready for Lookout.

Competing with a mountain is folly. So I compete with myself.

I’m not alone. History hikes along. Memory’s in the backpack. Yearning is my map. When a wish for immortality collides with a reality as cold and hard as a mountain’s crags, Lookout happens.

Perfection is fleeting. That’s why it’s perfection.

*

Kelly and I take it one step at a time. We really do. Roughly, Lookout is a 20-minute hike that starts at 3,000 feet and climbs 50-some floors. The only hike I’ve done that’s comparable is Camelback in Scottsdale. But the Camelback trail doesn’t start at 3,000 feet.

I hike Lookout for Kelly. Rather, for us. We’ve made this trip 24 years in a row. Each trip is better than its predecessor. That truth soothes me when my son and I part ways after four days. This one’s over, next year will be better.

I wonder about the next years, though. I do. It sharpens my focus, it deepens my gratitude. Twenty-four years of perfection. Man.

I’m grateful to have had the means and the time to make the trek. I’m grateful that my son loves the reality of the trip and, more importantly, the idea of it, as much as I do. Sixty years ago, my maternal grandfather gifted me Lookout and Montreat and the Blue Ridge that abides. There has been no better heirloom.

This year. Initials circa 2000

I’m beyond grateful to be alive and 65 and armed, still, not only with the physical ability to make the trek, but with the mental acuity and awareness to appreciate it fully. In the mountains I fall in love again, for the first time.

This trip started when Kelly was 14 and neither of us liked the other much. It was a try at an armistice after a couple years of teenage war. I love this kid, was the thinking. If I try harder to know him better, I might actually like him, too.

In the years since, I’ve watched Kelly grow into the young man I envisioned and now, the man in full I knew he could be. We’ve gone from wary associates to budding friends to steadfast peers. The trip has aged well. I will never do anything better with my life.

Looking Glass Rock. Seven miles and 90 floors, round trip

*

On this trip, Kelly and I are creatures of habit. We know what we know. We like what we like. We rarely deviate. Memories need diligence and faith. There are other hikes, beyond Lookout: Looking Glass, Craggy, Crabtree, Graveyard. The wandering spine of the Blue Ridge serves a buffet of magnificent walks.

Each is wonderful on its own. Lookout, though. . .

“Ten or 20 years from now, when you have a kid,’’ I say to Kelly, “he or she will climb this mountain with you.’’ Saying no is not an option, I say. “Their grandfather would have to disown them.’’

I make Kelly promise. "Of course,’’ he says.

We’re atop Lookout. The work has been done for another year. The promise met, the flame kept, the gratitude pure. The stupid StairMaster obeyed.

Lookout is the keeper of all my best intentions. The mountain will tell me when I’ve done all I can.

It is a perfect day, sunny and 80. Kelly and I linger atop the mountain. Ten minutes, maybe 15. Minutes earlier, my heart had been a rattlesnake hurtling around my chest. Now, it’s purring like a cat in winter, beside a fireplace. They tell me this great life can always end. But not yet.

We rise to leave, pausing as we always do, for one more look across Lookout’s shoulders and into the cove below. So many years, so much said and unsaid. So much life, built.

We agree that it never gets old. We both know that’s not true.

As Kelly and I make our way down Lookout, a child appears, ascending the hill. She is maybe 3, possibly 4. She assaults the mountain on all fours, like Spiderman climbing a wall. A short time earlier, I’d been doing the exact same thing. On all fours, nearing the summit. Only my work was born of shaky balance and a 65-year-old’s wariness. Hers was pure exuberance.

“Enjoy yourself,’’ I said to her.

Photo Kelly Daugherty