It was after midnight on the icy slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. A frigid wind sliced throughout my cheeks as I tightened the drawstrings of my parka. A sliver of moon hung above a sweep of cloud to this point beneath us that it felt as if we have been trying down from house. My dad trudged a few paces forward, his breath seen within the chilly. We have been on the ultimate stretch to the summit and feeling each little bit of the greater than 19,000 ft we would climbed. At 16, I wasn’t but positive of a lot, however I knew I needed to be there climbing that mountain with him, regardless of the blisters on my ft and the altitude headache.
Ascending Kilimanjaro is like climbing by a complete continent’s price of ecosystems. We began within the cultivation zone, winding previous villages the place crops thrived in wealthy volcanic soil, then entered lush, humid rainforest alive with birdsong. Higher up, the panorama shifted to moorland, with large heather shrubs rising like sculptures towards an countless sky. In camp, my dad and I’d sit shoulder to shoulder as our steadfast porters ladled out steaming bowls of hearty soup. Afterward, I’d pull out my Walkman and its single worn tape and share one headphone with a porter, buying and selling music from residence for his or her tales of life on the mountain. At night time, bone-tired and tucked into our tiny tent, my father and I drifted off whereas listening to the wind race throughout the slope.
The journey was born out of a easy thought of my dad’s: When every of his children turned 16, we might select anyplace across the globe to go, simply the 2 of us. It was his approach of giving us the world, or at the least opening the door to it. He’d spent his personal childhood in a humble lakeside port city in Michigan, the place summer time meant swimming in Lake Huron and enjoying tennis on cracked public courts. Family holidays have been street journeys to go to family in Florida, and through my early childhood, our travels have been equally modest. But as he constructed his enterprise and commenced to dream larger for my brother and me, he created this new custom.
At the time, I had lately completed studying Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and like so many teenage athletes, I used to be enamored with the thought of testing myself. Kilimanjaro, probably the most accessible of the Seven Summits, felt epic however achievable. We skilled by loading weights into backpacks and strolling miles by our suburban Michigan neighborhood, the 2 of us an absurd sight to passing minivans.