Personal Best: Short Hike
A mother tackles Mount Cutler and discovers more than a great hike.
Cynthia Anderson
It was a summer of missteps, two years after my divorce when things still had not righted themselves. My children were eleven and eight, and the sadness I was feeling intensified when I looked at the world through their lens. Because their parents now inhabited separate universes, so did they: two houses, two beds, two sets of toys. Twice the complexity. Less than half the happiness.And so, when we were apart, I worried and thought about them. Often while they were with their father I would have this experience: I’d be in a restaurant, or at the beach, or just walking in the meadow near our house at dusk, and I’d think, “This is great. I wish Katie and Erik were here.” Yet, if I tried to replicate the experience with them, it was different — the food less tasty, the waves smaller, the dark so sudden we had to hurry home.
In any case, the day we set off to hike Mount Cutler[for the rest of this story, see the January 2008 issue of Down East]
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