Getting Out: Larry is a friend I have come to known through my
volunteer work at Henry Coe State Park. He is a strong and an avid
hiker whose love of the Sierras and backpacking has brought us
together around that shared passion. He is in his early 60s and has
never been married.
Larry is a friend I have come to known through my volunteer work at Henry Coe State Park. He is a strong and an avid hiker whose love of the Sierras and backpacking has brought us together around that shared passion. He is in his early 60s and has never been married.
While we all insist on our uniqueness, most of us fit loosely into some common categories — techie, soccer mom, sports fan. In all the best ways, Larry is a peg with no matching hole. He is one of a kind and defies easy labeling.
A couple years ago, Larry called me with an invitation to join a group backpacking trip to the Wind River Mountains in northwest Wyoming. If you have ever read about the mountain men and fur trappers that followed Lewis and Clark up the Missouri River and into the Rockies, you know about the Winds. For me, this was a special chance to see up close what I had only visited in my imagination. I had to go.
There were nine of us. Everybody knew somebody, but nobody knew everybody. People would be flying in from Denver, Portland, the East Coast, even Europe. Robin, whom Larry had met once at a wedding a few years earlier, planned this trip and would be our host. She was a similar vintage to Larry, and, likewise, had never been married.
We assembled at her house in Laramie, Wyo., then drove toward the opposite corner of the state. Just below Dubois (not doo-BWAH, definitely not doo-BOYCE, but DOO-boyce — puhleeze!), we turned off Highway 287 and toward our trailhead near Trail Lake on the edge of the Fitzpatrick Wilderness Area.
For my money, the Wind River Mountains are the loveliest in Wyoming and perhaps all the Rockies. Like the Sierras, glaciers have carved and gouged this portion of the Continental Divide into magnificently polished arêtes and peaks that reach nearly 14,000 feet.
Two days in, we set up camp along Dinwoody Creek, a furious river beautifully colored with the milky aqua of glacial-melt. The next day, Larry, Robin and I took an amazing 20-mile day hike up Dinwoody Creek to the toe of the glacier just underneath Gannett Peak, at 13,804 feet, the highest mountain in Wyoming. By now, I had noticed a fresh sparkle in Larry’s eye and a careful attentiveness toward Robin.
That attentiveness grew over the remaining days of the trip. Back in Laramie, Larry and I spent a couple days exploring nearby attractions, and Larry acknowledged the force of the spark. During occasional quiet moments, I noticed a distant expression across Larry’s face that I suspect was imagining an unexpected future.
Over the past couple years, when I have bumped into Larry, he has told me about the occasional trip to Laramie, as well as Robin’s visits here. Last month, they were married in Laramie. This past weekend I attended a get-together at Mount Madonna County Park that gave all of us who couldn’t be at the wedding a chance to celebrate it.
Ever since Larry called me with the news, I have felt a joy about this union beyond the normal friendly good wishes. Robin, like Larry, is truly unique and special — not an off-the-shelf model. God, fate, blind chance … I don’t know, but watching these two unique souls at this stage of their lives find each other, warms one’s heart in a special way. Quiet time in the Wyoming wilderness allowed Robin and Larry, relaxed and unpretentious, to find a special and surprising love.
It was awhile until I remembered that 30 years ago. I fell in love with my wife under very similar circumstances — a mixed-group backpack to Havasupai Falls in Arizona. I had only just met Renee, but, by the middle of that week, her charms were taking hold of me.
