Today is the last day of November. With this post my goal is achieved, and NaBloPoMo is over. Thirty days, thirty posts. This has been quite a month in our lives for a project of this sort: we recovered from our Halloween carnival, Stephanie and Tobias traveled to Chicago for a week for her grandmother’s funeral, Gretchen was diagnosed with cancer that we saw spread rapidly, Jacob spent a week at school with me, I spent a week being a single parent, Stephanie began teaching again, I attended a conference in Anchorage, we celebrated Thanksgiving as a family, we all spent a weekend in town, my mom flew up from Texas, our truck made five round trips on the Steese, and I spent three days straight days in a village school about as comfortable as a gas station bathroom. 

Writing through it all has reminded me of hiking the Pinnell Mountain Trail this summer. I spent a couple of months planning and preparing to hike it this past June, and when the day finally came, a certain excitement and exhilaration at the fact that I was finally underway made the hiking easy and my pack feel light.

Pretty soon, though, the hiking got hard as those long slogs to the top of each rise followed one after another. There were moments of exultation along the way. There were other times when the trail came to the base of a steep rise leading up and over the next dome and I thought to myself, “I just don’t want to walk up that hill.” But there was nothing to do but keep going.

On the third day, the end drew near. I was tired and moving slow but plodding on. I finally reached the end of the trail at the top of Eagle Summit and felt victorious. I set up my tent and tri-pod, opened a couple of beers (kindly refrigerated by a camper camping couple from Wyoming), and just sat and relished the view from the high ground.

With the wind whipping around me making my tent flap rhythmically, I could look back at the trail below me that outlined where I had been. The view was so much sweeter because of the long walk to the top. And when it was over, I wished it had been just a little longer.

Now, at the top of Mount NaBloPoMo, I feel much the same way.