The Latest in Kili Training

Well kids, I bought my official Kilimanjaro shoes. The picture (left) was from our first "break-them-in" hike. We went up Dry Creek Canyon near where we live in Alpine, UT to a place we call Elk Camp. To be honest, I'm not sure if that's what it's called or if that's just what Bryan calls it. Either way it's about 2.5 miles up the canyon. The shoes (with my feet in them) are perched on Pride Rock just above Elk Camp. Pride Rock, I am sure, is just what we call it and not really what it's called. It's a pretty fine spot for watching the sun sink and go golden on the horizon. We went up there just for part of an evening to roast some bratwurst over a fire. Lucy (little dog, enamored with Bryan) came along and was great at scouting firewood with us and exploring. She also walked straight up the steep part of pride rock like a mountain goat. It's possible we underestimate her abilities because she's so tiny and enthusiastic.

We're learning the art of being opportunistic as we prepare for this trek. Bryan, for those of you who don't already know, drives semi-trucks. He doesn't have a regular schedule and that's by design, otherwise how could we keep dropping everything and disappearing to foreign places? However, that also means it's pretty hard to make plans more than a few days ahead of time. As such, we have to be ready to drop everything and hike somewhere at a moment's notice. Say he gets home from a trucking run a couple of hours earlier than expected and the weather is nice? We're probably going to find a mountain somewhere to have dinner in. We have to take our chances wherever we can get them. I have a feeling that that will be the key to maintaining an adventurous lifestyle even once we have kids and a little less freedom than we have now. Being ready to jump at any opportunity.

It's a good mental exercise for me. I have one side of my personality that is adventurous and active and ready to go and can't get enough of new experiences, but the other side of me is happy to just sit and binge Netflix and take long, leisurely naps in the afternoon and call it productivity. I'm grateful to have married someone that encourages the one side of me more than the other. It's often hard to get excited about a daunting hike when I'm not in the mood, but I never regret that we did it when we get back to the car. I'm finding it's starting to require less and less inner pep talking to get myself to do physically demanding things these days. Maybe the more active me is finally dominating. Or maybe I'm just in better shape and it's physically not as hard as it used to be, who knows?

By way of explanation about what Kilimanjaro trekking looks like (i.e. what were are preparing for). I'm starting to get the sense that a lot of people envision very technical, ice-climbing-the-north-face-of-the-Matterhorn type of trekking. Kilimanjaro is the highest peak in Africa, but ascending its summit is, in many ways, just a very long walk. You can summit in as little as 4 days, but we're doing it in 8. We're giving ourselves plenty of time to acclimatize, because the hardest and most dangerous part of the mountain is the altitude. 

Except for the day we summit, most days on the mountain won't be more than about 5 miles of hiking in a day. The rest of the time will be spent relaxing, chatting, reading and avoiding the monkeys. 

There are a few high-ish altitude peaks in Utah, but for now Bryan and I are just staying in good day-to-day hiking shape. Monday we hiked a loop from Grove Creek to Battle Creek (two adjacent canyons in Pleasant Grove, UT--see All Trails summary above). It was so beautiful. You're getting incredible valley views within the first 15 minutes of hiking and there are creeks and waterfalls everywhere.

Ms. Lucy came along. It turned out to be kind of scorcher so I'm glad she had tons of opportunities to lap up a cooling drink. You hike through rock canyons, pine forest, aspen forest and big, sprawling meadows. Something I love about Utah Valley is that if you get high enough on practically any mountain, you find yourself in places that look just like the alps. There's Switzerland in them thar hills! It makes it feel like going on a trip without leaving your own community.

The heat of almost-summer was initially a little overwhelming, but it also meant that, in addition to all the greenery coming out, there were suddenly butterflies everywhere. They were so bright and cheerful, I loved having them fluttering around while we walked and talked. Actually, one of the first moments when I started to fall for Bryan (and we weren't even dating yet) was when he called me when he got home from trekking the Annapurna circuit in Nepal and told me he'd seen a butterfly fluttering around the barren, high tundra there and thought, "hey little buddy, what are you going to eat?" It was such surprising, gentle concern for something so small from someone so big. I loved it. And I loved seeing these Grove Creek butterflies. It seems I'm not the only one. Lucy seemed pretty interested in the one that kept landing on our stuff:

 
All in all, the summer's getting off to a grand start and it's only May. (Oh no, is that was someone says just before disaster strikes??) Having Kilimanjaro to work towards is giving me a great excuse to get in shape without my motivation being something tied up in my personal vanity. I want to be healthy and fit, but I don't want to spend all my time thinking about being skinny or eating less. That's such a buzzkill to me.

Instead, I just keep going on a long, beautiful walks with Bryan (and Lucy). I keep putting one foot in front of the other and enjoying his company and enjoying the day and next thing you know, four hours have passed and I've burned 1700 calories without meaning to. It's kind of ideal.

Still ahead for us are trips to Angel's Landing, hiking over the mountain from our place to Tibble Fork Reservoir, a redo on Lone Peak, a trip up Timp and a backpacking trek to King's Peak (Utah's highest mountain).  

Stay tuned (and someday in the future, there will be video...)

Also, if anyone is local and wants to either recommend or join us on a hike, please let me know. You could spend a morning (or even a whole day) enjoying these faces:

A Word About My Mother

[The following is a small excerpt from a writing project I did about the women in my family who have made me what I am. I figure this is an appropriate Mother's Day share]. 

My mother says her soul was largely furnished by her mother. We’d tease Mom for always saying things like “oh, just look at these trees, have you ever seen anything so green?” or “can you believe how gorgeous that sunset is?” She’s filled to the brim with gladness for the simple things. When we give her a hard time for it, she always just says, “I got it from my mother.”

Something else that her mother taught her was that she could do anything that she put her mind to. And the reason her mother knew that? Because her father told her that she could do anything. He literally stopped the wagon they were traveling in and made sure she knew that she was capable and that she could do or be anything that she wanted.

For the early part of her life, my mother interpreted that to mean joining every club, being the president of every organization, getting straight As in all her years of schooling (except one B+ in 8^th grade health class under the mysterious subcategory of ‘citizenship’).

This mentality took her through a series of competitions all the way to the National College Queen pageant held in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1969 during her sophomore year of college. The look of shock on her face (as pictured in the newspaper) when a girl who considered herself a little too tall and a little too smart first got named the Homecoming Queen of the University of Utah, must have carried over as she was later named Miss Utah College Queen. The next step was flying eastward to Florida and even to Washington, D.C. for a day to meet “Mrs. Richard Nixon.”

I know what you’re picturing now, my mother the beauty queen. She is gorgeous, but she is also grounded and intelligent and insightful and one of the least superficial women I’ve ever known.

The winner of the National Pageant would get a car, an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe, and a college scholarship. The first runner-up would get three typewriters. Guess which prize my Mom took home?

The typewriters were a poetic award actually, in light of the way she’s spent her life since then. In raising her children, my mother had great desires that we would each (or at least a few of us) develop musical prowess that she wished she had developed in herself. She took us to years of piano lessons trying to make us what she wasn’t, and instead we each became what she was---a writer.

When I sat in my apartment in New York City in the fall of 2014, I couldn’t help thinking of her in the early years of her marriage living in Chicago; a girl from Midvale, Utah tackling the big city. She graduated from Harvard with a Master’s in English Education and taught one year of high school before deciding that it was not for her. She felt constrained by bells that rang and things she had to do.

She wanted to be a writer. She felt like a child posing as an adult too by just boldly saying, “I am a writer, this is what I do for a living,” but she was determined. She started making calls and knocking doors. Lots of big companies were based in Chicago then, Encyclopedia Britannica, McGraw Hill, not to mention all the newspapers. But she was an unknown, and to add to that challenge, she wasn’t in a position to accept a full-time job. She was already expecting a baby. So, she was in the market for freelance work and had no idea where to find it.

It found her.

After months of looking, she was in the hallway of her Mormon church building one day, cleaning up after an event, when the public phone on the wall started ringing. She picked it up and it was none other than the Chicago Sun Times looking to do an article on Mormon women. Without hesitation, she said, “I’m a writer. I’ll do that article.”

I can’t imagine the gumption it took to live the life she did in Chicago and since then. She said that when each of her babies turned two, she’d just want another one. And she continued to write. She’d write with a newborn in her lap, then a toddler. She says, “I got great rhythm in my writing because I was always bouncing someone on my knee.”

It was an unpopular path to take. This was the mid-1970s when women in America were taking great pride in striking out into the work force, and she felt their stares as she would come into the newspaper offices with a toddler in tow to pick up her next assignment.

Their eyes said having a baby meant she had sold out. Having two babies nineteen months apart? She must be stupid.

I’m glad she didn’t heed their judgments. And that she kept having babies because it would take quite a few more before she got to me. I’m number ten.

It’s only been since leaving home that I’ve developed any anxieties about how having children ends your life or ends your career. And it’s only now that I’m seeing why it had previously never seemed like an issue to me. I was raised by a mother who refused to let her life end, because she was raised by a mother who refused to let her life end. Within three months of the loss of her beloved husband, my Nana put in to run for the school board and was elected president. She served on that board (and a few others) for 20 years.

My mother didn’t let having babies slow her down because she was investing in a lifelong pursuit, both with us and with her writing. She wasn’t expecting immediate acclaim and assuming that if she didn’t find it, she should probably just quit. She knew she was talented, she knew she had more to learn, and she’s spent her whole life continuing to learn it whenever and however she could. 

She made me believe that I can do that. I don't know if I will become a New York Times Bestselling author by 30, but I can write. And find time between times and set aside time, and keep writing.

[It's a glimpse more than a proper tribute, but I sure love my best friend/mother. I put together an article for Meridian about mother-related videos and the one below was by far my favorite. It got me all teary and though I'm no Olympian, my mother has certainly been one of the major reasons for any success I've found in life so far]

Six Must-Eat Foods in Barcelona

I already wrote a post below about a recent trip my husband and I took to Barcelona. (Check it out if you want). The trip was an ongoing exercise in finding activities to enjoy together since we’re quite different in our travel tastes and we arrived in Spain with essentially no plans.

We may not have identical preferences, but one thing we are both very passionate about in life is FOOD.

No matter where we went in Barcelona and the surrounding coastal towns, there was delicious food to be had and after lots and lots of eating—here are six foods I would highly recommend for anyone’s Spanish vacation.

1. TAPAS 

Tapas have sort of made their way to the United States, so you may have already tried them. More likely, you’ve started hearing them mentioned in movies and TV a bunch and not actually tried them yourself. That was me. Tapas are essentially a delicious array of hot and cold appetizers and snacks. They can be anything from cured meats to olives to croquettes to fish to meatballs to seriously anything. Fried cheeses make the list—I find that if you nibble on the edge of something bite-sized, warm and breaded and a river of cheese pours out, all seems basically right with the world. 

FYI, this is the one stock photo in this post. I was too busy eating the Tapas to photograph them...

Also, if you're not an olive fan, try a few of the different kinds anyway. I'm not the world's biggest green olive person, but we had some tiny, salted green olives that were "Please sir, can I have some more?" good. 

Tapas are available essentially everywhere hot food is sold. There are tapas bars, tapas buffets, tapas to go and tapas with a Flamenco show. The trouble won’t be finding them, it will be deciding which ones to try once you do.

2. PAELLA

Here’s what I have to say about paella. It’s on the list, not because I loved it, but because it’s everywhere and it’s an essential part of the Spanish cuisine experience. You cannot visit Spain and not try it. It’s also on the list though because part of the reason I didn’t like the paella that I had was because I picked what I perceived to be the most authentic kind rather than the kind that appealed the most to me. Trying the real-deal foods of any place you visit is important and a big part of the fun, but it’s ok to choose the variety that sound delicious to you rather than just choosing what seems the most authentic.

Mr. B and I shared a giant pot of the most cultural-looking paella on the menu, which was (almost literally) crawling with sea creatures. We’re both a little obsessed with chorizo and kind of so-so on things that still have their legs, but we skipped the chorizo in favor of what seemed more “authentic” to us. We should’ve chosen what sounded good. Always be ready to branch out and try new things, but you also know what you like—choose the paella that gets you excited.

3. PATATAS BRAVAS

So, I’m cheating a little here. Patatas Bravas are technically also tapas, but they need their own category because they’re just too good. We actually only had them once and it was sort of accidentally, a restaurateur gave them to us for free while we waited for the food we ordered to be ready. We wouldn’t have known to order them, but now I’m telling you so that you will know. Order them. Patatas Bravas are essentially potatoes (sometimes cut like fries and sometimes cut like wedges) that are boiled in salt and then deep-fried. They are then served with a spicy red pepper or tomato sauce and a garlic aioli drizzled overtop. As I describe them, they kind of just sound like fries. They are so much more. Must to try for yourself.

4. "WORLD'S FINEST STRAWBERRIES"

On our biking tour of the countryside (three days long), we stayed for a night in a seaside town called Sant Pol de Mar. We were in an AirBnB with a gravel-voiced smiling lady who spoke no English, and her hyper French bulldog named ‘Happy.’ We asked her advice about dinner spots in town in our broken Spanish and she answered with her phone’s Google translate that we could check online. We were there in the off season so nearly nothing was open. We figured instead of choosing a place online and then finding it closed once we got there in person, we would just walk out the front door and follow our hearts.

Now Bryan’s heart map is usually astonishingly accurate. Mine is a little less trustworthy. In this case, we both followed our hearts along the railroad tracks through the purple and pink light of the setting sun, enjoying the peaceful walk and the pleasant sea breeze and then finally found…nothing. We got to the end of town and did not see a single restaurant. We stopped to decide where to go next and happened to spot a sign that said that this town was the “home of the world’s finest strawberries.”

Bold claim, but we ended up buying local strawberries every chance we got the rest of the trip and each batch really was very fine. They’re much sweeter and softer than in the U.S. and certainly worth tasting. While you’re at it, taste the kiwis. They have surprisingly delicious kiwis, also grown right there in the coastal region.

5.  PASTRY 

We finally did find someplace to eat in Sant Pol de Mar. Moments after we saw that sign, we ran into our host out on an evening walk with Happy. She still didn’t have a recommendation, but she had us follow her to the part of town where our heart maps—if they were accurate—would’ve led us for food options. She left us then to take Happy home and we continued to search street after street of mostly closed restaurants for a place to eat dinner. We passed a tiny bakery and, afraid that we might not find anything else, stopped in to buy some “just in case” pastries.

Now, it’s possible that Spain hasn’t much been known for its pastry because it gets overshadowed by its famous pastry neighbors: France, Italy and even Austria (where croissants are actually from—Google it). But whether by borrowed techniques or originality, Spain certainly holds its own in terms of baked goods. That night we bought a giant “just in case” pastry in the shape of, and nearly the size of, a Christmas wreath. It was flaky and crème-filled and topped with roasted almonds. It was so delicious that we went back and bought another before the night was out. We also tried coconut tarts, meringues (which in Spain is pronounced like the latin dance), croissants and a rolled sponge sort of thing we affectionately called a “ Spanish street twinkie" (see lower shelf in the picture). 

The point is, don’t let the flood of olives and meats and the paella make you think Spain doesn’t have desserts worth tasting. 

6. EMPANADAS 

That said, if you can choose only one bready thing to partake of on your Spanish vacation, let it be an empanada. Let it be three empanadas, or ten. We fell so in love with empanadas that we came home and took a cooking class on how to make them. It’s amazing that a little dough pocket could be the canvas for such masterpieces, masterpieces that at one restaurant literally brought me to the edge of tears.

Muns is an Argentinean-style empanada restaurant with three locations in Barcelona. They have rows and rows of them and once you know which flavors you want, they heat them up for you and brand them with a number—so you know which empanada is which flavor.  They come out the absolute perfect temperature, I don’t know how they do it. I tried three flavors: 1) Goat cheese, caramelized onions and walnuts, 2) Spinach and emmental cheese, and 3) Tomato and mozzarella. They have three sauces for your empanadas and somehow the stars aligned and I chose the perfect sauce for each flavor, even though I was basically going off smell/my heart map. My heart map was redeemed! The textures and combinations of flavors combined with that perfect heat made me a customer for life (if I ever go back to Barcelona). The place is more expensive than the empanadas at regular bakeries (which are also good), but they have happy hour discounts in the mid afternoon so have a late lunch, or three.

Anyone reading this who has been to Spain, do we have the same favorites? Did I miss one of yours?

Leave a comment below!