Henry's Essay Draft

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the explorer Robert Walton wrote a letter back home to his family describing the innate feeling he had to go out and explore the world. Unable to describe it accurately he wrote, “There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.”

I’m not sure I fully knew what exactly I was getting myself into. Neither did my dad. We never really stopped to ask ourselves if it was worth it or if we should we just find a different weekend to go.

In the summer of 2009 my dad, three of my brothers, and I set out to hike King’s Peak, the tallest peak in the state of Utah sitting at 13,528 feet. I was thirteen and had zero interest giving up a summer weekend filled with swimming, video games, my couch, and friends, to go backpacking for a whole weekend. We piled in the Outback and heading to the trail. Cramped and grumpy, we arrived. Well, not really. Adam realized he was holding the map upside down (yes, a map) and led us to the wrong trailhead. My dad is usually a quite aggressive driver but man, I had never seen him drive like that before. Running hours behind schedule now, we arrived at the real trailhead. Our trailhead.

Five minutes in and we’re already soaked. I was fully convinced that one of us was gonna die from a lightning strike. I’m crying at night saying I want to go home, and the freeze-dried turkey tetrazzini isn’t helping. I sat in the tent while Will and my dad were fixing dinner and getting drinking water for us. Sitting and pouting. The next day wasn’t better. It was worse, actually. Dark clouds are everywhere, including in my own head. I lagged behind and was lost on the summit. No one in sight. I legitimately thought, in my 8^th grade mind, I might never see my family again. After screaming loud enough for my mom at home to hear, my dad found me and we headed back down the mountain, never reaching the summit.

Ten years passed with every August as a not-so-gentle reminder of King’s Peak. The most vivid feelings of the gooey mud, piercing rain, and bitter cold never fled my memory. My dad would occasionally mention how he anticipated the day that we climbed it together, but those memories came back and I stuck to my vows of never attempting that summit ever, ever again. Suddenly, in the Summer of 2019, it clicked. To this day I don’t know what changed or why, but I felt like Robert Walton.

My family isn’t an outdoorsy family who loves spending time in nature. Most of our camping gear is from the 90’s and our “new gear” is from the mid 2000’s. I hadn’t been camping for well over five years. As my dad and I pack up the night before our adventure, I felt sick. My Nike Free Runs and J Crew khakis aren’t convincing me that I am fully prepared for this trip. My dad’s boots are twenty years old and his Levis aren’t much newer than that. The drive up was early and cold. I was alone with my pacing thoughts as my dad took a few business calls. We arrived at the right trailhead on the first try this time and loaded up our packs. The scent of powdered Gatorade placed me right back in 2009 again. Suddenly my surroundings were all familiar. The trail, the trees, the river, my dad. A strange sense of unexpected confidence overcame me.

The first part of the day was quick and easy. Passing fellow hikers, stopping infrequently to catch our breath, and moving a lot faster than we had anticipated. We set up camp in a perfect spot next to a little pond and on a grassy patch that seemed tailor made for us with big boulders to sit on and rest our packs.

Then the rain came. And it came hard. My dad and I lay in our tent, deafened by the beating of the rain on our tent. It felt like thousands of middle schoolers were having on all-out airsoft war on our tent. We remained calm and decided it was time to eat. The turkey tetrazzini was back. Ten years later I was sitting in a tent, in the pouring rain, eating turkey tetrazzini. (I wasn’t crying this time, though.)

Morning came and we set out on the trail to the summit. Dozens of people passing us with the latest hiking gear who seemed much more equipped for what lied ahead of all of us. This day was filled with a lot more breaks than the day prior. Sometimes we wouldn’t take more than 30 steps and we would stop again until my dad couldn’t hear his heart beating anymore. I began to feel a little uneasy every time I heard his huffs and puffs. He stayed calm and I kept my worries in my head, where they belonged.

We arrived at the base of the summit. It looked eerily familiar. We finally got cell phone reception and my dad gave my mom a call to let her know we were still ok. I checked my texts and had to shift plans I had to next weekend. Then we buckled up and headed up the summit. Now we were taking breaks every 10-15 steps. At this point, I didn’t blame thirteen-year-old Henry anymore. The hike had turned into a climb. We thought we saw the peak, only to summit it and look on to see an even higher peak in front of us. A family of three passed us, with the young dad carrying his three-year-old on his back. Honestly, just find a babysitter.

Suddenly as I climbed up a boulder, I saw multiple heads poking out just thirty yards away. With a new burst of adrenaline, we pushed up ahead and arrived at the peak. 13,528 feet. Thirteen Thousand Five Hundred and Twenty-Eight feet. We took a seat, and then some pictures. Ate some snacks without really chatting too much. We just embraced the colorful beauty below us. It wasn’t long before the daunting clouds to the left of us started threatening. We packed up and moved down the mountain. Multiple people passed us asking how much further till the peak. “Not too close” my dad said.

The second we got off the summit and back on to the trail, we were drenched with showers from those clouds who had been threatening for so long. We put our heads down and marched back towards our camp at twice the speed moving down-hill this time. We were on our way home leaving the hardest part further and further behind us. There was never much chatter along the trail the entire hike. But in the middle of this massive rain-turned-to-hail storm, I asked my dad, “what have you been thinking about this whole time?”

“Your mom” he said.