The first thing I noticed when we stepped out of the car near the summit of Mount Blue Sky was that, for once, we had brought enough clothes.
My husband and I laughed as we added layers: jackets over jackets, gloves, and whatever else we had thought to throw into the car before leaving home. It was 38 degrees, and the wind gusted around 30 miles per hour, which made our abundance of outerwear feel less like overpacking and more like evidence we had learned something in thirty years.
Had we made it this far on our first attempt, I am fairly certain we would have been wearing light summer jackets.
We knew better now.
The wind made that clear immediately. I had to lean hard into it just to stay steady. My wind-whipped hair stung my face, and despite lightweight gloves, my fingers went numb. My husband pointed toward the narrow road we had just driven and told me about the times he had biked the fourteen miles from the ranger station to the top. I looked at the drop-offs, then back at him.
There are some marital revelations that arrive years after they would have been useful.
A pothole, he explained. One strong gust. One wrong move on the bike.
I decided I was happier having learned this after his rides were safely part of family history.
We still had a short, rocky climb to reach the actual summit marker. Compared with the eight fourteeners we’d climbed the more traditional way — early starts, seven-plus hours of hiking, tired legs, and the occasional private conversation with oneself about why exactly this had seemed like a good recreational idea — ten minutes barely qualified.
But I didn’t care.
When I found the marker, I jumped into the air for a photo. And then, because apparently standing upright in 30-mile-per-hour winds did not feel sufficiently ambitious, I struck a yoga Tree pose.
It seemed appropriate. Bristlecone pines grow along the road up the mountain. They are one of my favorite trees, twisted and weathered from centuries of surviving conditions that would convince more sensible vegetation to relocate.
And after thirty years and three attempts, we had finally made it to the top.
The first time, we didn’t get farther than the entrance.
My parents had driven their always reliable Toyota the thousand miles from Wisconsin to Colorado. My husband and I went with them to Mount Evans, as it was called then, with plans to drive to the summit. I had never climbed a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain. At that point, I didn’t understand what climbing one meant. I knew Colorado had dozens of mountains over 14,000 feet and that people stood on top of them, which seemed enormously cool and important.
Then the Toyota’s timing belt broke.
Of all the places for a car that had crossed a substantial portion of the country to surrender, it chose the road just before we were about to head up the mountain.
Understandably, my dad was frustrated. My mom was disappointed, but true to her character, responded with, “We’ll try again another time.”
Another time sounded simple enough.
We sat beside the road waiting for the tow truck, then waited for my brother to come retrieve the rest of us. The mountain remained exactly where it had been all morning, close enough to make not reaching it especially irritating. We had arrived. We simply weren’t going up.
A couple of years later, I climbed my first 14er and discovered how much I had not understood that day.
A summit reached on foot demanded more than enthusiasm and a decent pair of shoes. There were hours of climbing, route planning, changing weather, altitude to manage, food and water to carry, and the particular grit required when the top remains visible long before your legs are remotely interested in taking you there. Eventually, my husband and I, accompanied over the years by two different Golden Retrievers, climbed eight of them.
The mountain we hadn’t reached by car became a small piece of family lore rather than an unfinished quest. I wasn’t keeping a tally. I didn’t spend three decades staring westward, brooding about the summit that had escaped me.
Life was busy doing what life does.
Then, in 2022, we tried again.
This time my sister-in-law and 12-year-old nephew were visiting. He wasn’t ready for a full-day hike, but we wanted him to experience being on top of a 14er. Driving up Mount Evans seemed perfect. We built it up as something special, and I was excited to give him an experience I understood very differently by then.
Nothing broke this time, but the rules had changed.
During COVID, timed-entry reservations had been added for the road. We didn’t have one. The available slots were full, and our visitors couldn’t come back another day.
For the second time, we had reached the mountain and weren’t going up.
I felt terrible. We had made such a fuss about how cool it would be for my nephew. There is something uniquely disappointing about discovering that your plan failed not because disaster struck but because you didn’t know the plan required another plan.
Again, we left without the summit.
By the time my husband and I made our reservation this summer, the mountain itself had a different name.
Mount Evans had become Mount Blue Sky.
Same mountain. Different name.
Those words stayed with me as we drove through the ranger station, past the bristlecones, and above the treeline.
Nearly everything else was different, too.
My parents were no longer in the car. My nephew wasn’t twelve anymore. I was no longer the woman in her thirties who thought driving to the top of a 14er sounded as impressive as climbing one. I knew enough now to pack layers and to respect the weather. I also knew what it felt like to earn a summit, one slow step after another.
My husband, though, was still beside me.
He had been there all three times.
I thought about that later, because so much of how we talk about reaching things is singular. My goal. My dream. My accomplishment. Even the word “summit” carries a certain individual grandeur.
But when I looked back at this particular mountain, I didn’t see a solitary pursuit. I saw different versions of my life populated by different people, with one person traveling through all three scenes beside me.
Looking back, arriving felt far less individual than I had imagined.
It got me thinking about the versions of ourselves we carry forward.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve found myself behind a microphone talking about identity — the old roles and beliefs we keep carrying even after they no longer fit.
Much of that conversation has been about what to release: the pushing, the striving, the assumption that effort is worth more when it hurts.
But I’ve also wondered about what deserves to come with us.
Big dreams, for one.
The willingness to want something without knowing exactly how it will happen. The ability to change direction without deciding the original desire was foolish. The part of me that has always been curious about what might be possible next.
Recently, as I heard myself speaking about these ideas, I had the unusual sensation of being completely at home inside my own life. Not because everything had gone according to plan. Almost none of it had.
My corporate career had given way to years at home with my son. Motherhood eventually opened back into writing, and writing led somewhere I hadn’t expected: speaking and coaching. There were routes I couldn’t have predicted because I didn’t yet know they existed, and others I would have sworn were the destination until life redirected me.
For years, I might have looked at that history and concentrated on the detours.
Lately, I’ve noticed something else.
The dream didn’t disappear when the route changed.
Sometimes what changed was me, enough that an old desire could return in a form I wouldn’t have recognized before.
Standing on Mount Blue Sky, I couldn’t convince myself that the previous two failures had been necessary. A broken timing belt is a broken timing belt. A missed reservation is poor planning. Not every disappointment needs to be recruited into a grand theory of destiny.
But I also couldn’t wish those thirty years away.
Had we reached the summit with my parents that first summer, I would have loved it. We would have taken pictures, admired the view and driven back down, probably in clothing inadequate for the conditions.
I just wouldn’t have known what I know now.
I wouldn’t have understood what a mountain asks of someone who climbs it. I wouldn’t have eight other summits in my legs. I wouldn’t know the woman I became in all those years between attempts.
And I wouldn’t have known to laugh when the wind knocked me sideways as I tried to balance in Tree pose.
A destination can stay the same while the meaning of reaching it changes.
The mountain was still there. So was the person who had been beside me on every attempt.
And this time, at least, we’d brought the right jackets.
