A Love Letter to the Mountains 

I grew up surrounded  by deep forest, swamp, and river, and as a child, it was the perfect setting for my imagination to run wild—creating all the worlds that existed in books and fairytales. The swampy area as I entered the woods was home to an underground spring; it made small puddles all over, the perfect place for fairies and toad princes to live. It was also a great place to ice skate in the winter while calling out into the woods for songbirds and fox. This place was known as the fairy ponds and it wasn’t the only magical place in my backyard.  

The woods were also home to berry bushes for summer snacking; moose, bear, turkey, and lichen I loved to sink my feet into with toadstools big enough to have a tea party under. There was also buried treasure all over our property, and I loved showing my dad what I would find out in the woods on my sometimes daily excursions out into an area of the woods I had claimed as my own forest garden. 

I believe our woods was once a dump many hundred years before, which meant digging in the woods almost always had fun discoveries of old bottles, dishware and metal items from people  long since gone. These were the things that made me fall in love with the wild, the forest and the untamed nature that existed all around me. These, and of course, my father—who contained so much knowledge on plants, and animals and wild things. From an early age, he taught me the names of plants and berries; which ones I could eat, make into tea or use as a medicine. We tapped trees for maple syrup and collected acorns one summer for flour, just to see if we could be like the indigenous people that had our land before we did.

We hiked as often as we could, surrounded by the white mountains. There were so many trails to show to two young and spirited young girls and my father and mother loved taking us to some of the best hikes in New Hampshire from our local favorite Eagles Cliff, to Chocorua, Red Hill, Rattlesnake and Morgan & Percival. It was the best setting for young souls with adventurous spirits.

This is my love letter to the mountains, to the wild, to the sounds of nature.

When my father suddenly died of a heart attack, I was 3,000 miles away working on a movie set in Los Angeles. In that moment, hearing my mother’s voice on the phone trying to explain he was no longer with us, my world shattered. The grief was unbearable. My father was my inspiration, my reason when I needed teaching, my educator when I needed inspiration.

He had always been there for every gymnastics meet, every track race and every diving meet even in college. In my childhood he taught me to love the forest, built my endurance to hike mountains, and inspired my love for wildlife and nature. He taught me how to be self-sufficient in a world where most women are not, and to survive in the wild, what berries I could eat and which ones I could not, how to build igloos in the winter or pitch a makeshift tent in the summer. He taught me to love, respect and appreciate the land we share with the wild creatures big and small. Now he was gone. 

At his funeral, I thought about all the things I hadn’t been able to do with him—all the mountains I wished we had hiked together and all the travels and campfires I had planned on having, but had been too busy with work to make happen.

These are regrets I will have forever and these regrets are also my force of motivation for seeing more of our wild beautiful mountains around the world. For it is when I am surrounded by the noises of nature, with the light wind whirring, the chirping of birds, and the rustle of leaves that I feel my father with me. He is there at every high peak that I summit. He is with me watching the sun rise on those early morning hikes as the light dances through the trees. He is with me as I struggle up steep hillsides, across narrow ridelines, through meadows and under tree cover as I push to hike more trails.

I had forgotten about my love for the wild, and he led me right back in. Nature had always been a love of mine, but I had forgotten about its splendor, its power to heal and its force to inspire. My father may have been gone in body but his spirit was alive and well. As the years have gone by since his untimely passing I have hiked more and more. Returning to our hometown to hike some of our favorite family hikes in the White Mountains of NH and venturing to far away places to follow in his mountaineering footsteps. Every mountain, every forest I explore he is there waiting for the next adventure together.

I will forever miss you, but I will see you soon in the mountains. 

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Alice as a baby in a backpack with her older sister and father in Arches National Park