I balanced on the side of Mt. Yale, quietly crying into my knees. Rory hopped from stone to stone ahead of me, following my husband, Julio. Between only weighing thirteen pounds (mostly fluff) and having the start of cataracts—and being a dog—Rory did not notice the four thousand-foot drop on the other side of the rocks. Once she realized I was no longer a step behind her, she came plopping back to where I froze and wiggled her way onto my lap. Panting and licking my face, in her obliviousness, Rory pulled me out of my panic and helped me make it the rest of the way to Mt. Yale’s fourteen thousand two hundred-foot summit. I had stopped just a short scramble from the top because the trail was more exposed than I expected, and I was sure I would slip and plummet to my death. Predictably, I did not.

When I was a child, we didn’t travel very often.  I didn’t even board a plane until I was 11 years old. We would go to cabins in the woods for a couple nights or so, but they were always within a few hours of home.