Are the trails getting steeper? Or am I getting older?

These were my thoughts as Larry and I climbed Shrine Ridge Trail in Summit County in early July. We had been in Colorado for ten days before we attempted the hike, so I believed I had acclimated my body to the altitude. But we started at 11,000 feet and would peak closer to 12,000. As I huffed and puffed up the trail, I never doubted I would finish. The bulldog in me would never give up. But could I do this next year? In five years? Who knows?

Larry and I DID finish our climb on that beautiful summer day. We got up to the top and took in the colorful wildflowers and the amazing vistas, grateful we could still climb mountains at our age. 

In the weeks that followed, we often chose an easier three-mile hike that we accessed with a short walk from our rental. In early August, however, Larry and I met our friends Sandie and Howie for a more challenging hike up the Herman Gulch Trail in the Ranger District of the Arapaho National Forest. During our four-mile hike, we encountered a couple of around our age descending. I posed my “Steeper or older” question aloud. 

“Neither,” the man told me. “We are experiencing geographical uplift, a phenomenon in which the earth shifts to steeper inclines as we age.” 

Okay, maybe Earth is NOT in fact shifting. But our lives have. Before we left for our summer in cooler temperatures, a close friend, a non-smoker, had just been diagnosed with lung cancer. Another friend’s cancer had returned. And a third friend, who had biked 86 miles for his eighty-sixth birthday, died a week later of a heart attack while on a shorter ride. “He was doing what he loved,” people said. But I doubt that it was sufficient comfort to the family he left behind.

Our time in the mountains changed as well. Friends we looked forward to seeing every summer developed health issues and/or “aged out” as they could no longer handle the high altitude. One of Larry’s pickleball buddies had told us last summer that he and his wife were opting out of summers in Summit County and renting a place in a mountainous region of Arizona, reducing their elevation by 4000 feet. Dear friends who had been part of our summer plans for over ten years, whether eating out, hiking, or playing cutthroat games of Mexican Train, also had to give up their beautiful home in Dillion, Colorado, and remain in Charlotte, North Carolina, at a more comfortable 671 feet above sea level. 

And then the “life can change on a dime” phenomenon hit our own family very hard soon after Larry and I returned to Florida. Two days after coming home from an incredible cruise through the British Isles with my brother, sister-in-law, and a friend, my sister Laura was hospitalized in Upstate New York with breathing problems. Doctors were trying to determine the exact cause of her symptoms when she took a turn for the worse. Diagnosis: a rare form of pneumonia. Grim news followed: Laura was on a ventilator in the intensive care unit. We had two days of optimism when she was taken off the ventilator. She was looking forward to her life after hospitalization and rehab: a highly anticipated move to San Diego, California, to be closer to her children and grandchildren. But her 83-year-old body failed. She passed away on Friday, August 29. 

The four Cohen children had been fortunate indeed. Whereas some of our friends have strained or non-existent relationships with their siblings and/or their spouses, we all had remained close—maybe even closer as we had all realized how life can change on a dime. And now one of us is gone, leaving the three of us to grieve with other family members and friends who will miss her so much.

“On Rosh Hashanah, all who enter the world pass before Him,” reads a passage in the Mishnah. One Jewish interpretation is that we march single file like sheep before God to determine whether we will be written in the Book of Life. Another interpretation is that we march like soldiers. But my favorite interpretation, reflecting on my summer in the mountains, comes from Resh Lakish, a third century BCE scholar. The rabbi envisioned this march taking place before God on a mountain, each person walking cautiously, single file, along a narrow, treacherous path. 

As I observe the High Holy Days this year, warm memories of my beloved “big sister” will be forefront in my thoughts. Prayers for those we lost and those who are ill will take on even greater significance. Will I be climbing mountains in 5786? Hopefully, I will tackle Shrine Ridge and Herman Gulch with the same vigor and determination I did this past summer. But thanks to Resh Lakish, when I am in one of those narrow and knowing me, not-TOO treacherous paths, I will hope that God is looking down and giving me the strength to move forward in my life, no matter where the path takes me. 

Sources:

Liben, Rabbi Daniel. “Sheep, Mountain Hikers, and Soldiers.” Temple Israel of Natick, Massachusetts. Rosh Hashannah 5756. https://www.tiofnatick.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/rh_sermon_2015.pdf