figure this year will be our golden season,” my friend Sue commented. We were talking about skiing. Her boys, ages 10 and 12, would be just the right age to match their parents in schussing skills but not quite old enough to reject their company, she thought. I envied her because my well-picked-over pocketbook simply does not allow for the expenses of downhill skiing, though I used to adore the sport, and wish I could involve my own kids in it.
Jake is 12 this year, taller than many adults, slender and endearingly clumsy as only an early adolescent boy can be. He rides his bike all around my diverse, shabby neighborhood, takes care of my community garden when he can, and can generally be talked into a hike.
With the summer almost over, the other day I talked him into climbing a fourteener. We got up at 4 a.m., threw our stuff inside Cleo the Toyota, and started hiking as the sun was rising. We sang to ease the long drive up a bouncy, rocky road, and to ward off the dawn chill, abandoning rhyme to bowdlerize lyrics for the benefit of fellow hikers that were already appearing. Mount Sherman was busy that Sunday morning.
We walked up a dirt road, then a rocky trail, then a cairned path up a narrow ridge, all the way to a summit so broad it’s reputed to suit a football game.
Jake is entertained by stories. Last year, I told him about the Trojan War, from the golden apple to Odysseus’ return to Ithaca, on one hike. This time, I wanted to describe the mountain’s namesake, cribbing heavily from Shelby Foote, because really it was the story of the Civil War. He listened, asked questions, and related history to the present in ways gratifying to his mother’s ear.
The summit of an easy fourteener, on a summer weekend, is invariably a sort of Agora — people from everywhere, from every walk of life, congregate, take pictures, make phone calls, eat their snacks and chat. I spoke with employees of the National Renewable Energy Lab, who wondered aloud whether they’d be coming back to a job.
I lamented that it was my very own representative to the U.S. Congress, Doug Lamborn, who had come out against that lab even before the debt limit crisis, and bemoaned his lockstep adherence to the political far right, even when it hurts his home state.
A teacher from Texas commented, “Yeah, sounds like he really stuck his foot in his mouth, too.”
“All he has to have, in Colorado Springs, is the ‘R’ after his name,” I concluded bitterly.
The Texas teachers chuckled uncomfortably. Jake gently reminded me that we were on a mountain summit, not a political meeting, and I went back to discussing the view.
I didn’t hear until later about Lamborn’s likening his meeting with President Obama to contact with a tar baby. Now, I am no longer just frustrated with Lamborn’s politics. I am seriously, personally embarrassed to be living in his district.
That embarrassment was exacerbated by the four-color campaign flyer from “my” congressman, which arrived in my mailbox despite my explicit complaints. It makes my head spin to think of how many families’ health care costs could be covered by the funds for this document, which is published, printed and mailed at taxpayer’s expense.
Shame on you, Mr. Lamborn.
When we headed back downhill, I thought about how Jake startled me with his climbing ability. He picked his way carefully, kept up a steady pace, laughed when the snow got into his shorts on the downhill glissade. Next summer, I think, will be our golden season for fourteeners. He’ll be 13, tall and strong enough to carry his own supplies, and we’ll see if we can bag 15 or 20 of ’em. It’s time. And maybe, in the effort, we can forget for a little while about Doug Lamborn.
Eva Syrovy (evasyrov@msn.com) of Colorado Springs is a special education teacher at the middle school level.
