I don’t know if we shared a sandwich next or some amazing culinary creation he had created and brought for us to picnic with on that mountain vista, but I do remember the climb up into those heavenly clouds full of hearts. “Beautiful, isn’t is Leeny? I am proud of you” he said. My lungs filled and I saw the clouds full of hearts, and ducks, and trains, and rabbits.
Step after step my small and sweaty hand stayed engulfed in his hand as he led me to the vista. I reached out with a hand half his size and placed it in his as he gently pulled my body upward and I released the fear of my hovering foot and stretched it upward, placed it upon the earth and pushed off my other foot so I could join him. “Come on Leenie, you got this, here, take my hand”, he said with his confident and suave smile. My left foot was placed rather unconfidently on the gravely mountain surface as my right foot hovered to step upward onto the rock a few inches further up the mountain. He wore Big sunglasses and was standing a few steps above me. The memory of his big smile, white teeth, black perfectly groomed hair, and mustache.
The feeling of worn denim upon my skin shifting up and down as I carefully took each step. I have certain smells from the desert air, the bloom of the desert cactus, the beads of sweat under the bangs on my brow.
I have glimpses of mental photographs and short video clips engrained in my mind. The hike on the White Tank Mountains was my first hiking memory I can recall.
When I was waist high I went hiking with Uncle Jack on the desert mountains of Arizona. I found the need to explore, create, and share at a very young age. I think I happened to inherit the gene for adventure, and an entrepreneurial life from them. My Uncle Jack was an adventurer, much like my dad. I decided puking would be better than sleeping through the entire flight and missing out on all those puffy animal clouds. I would then proceed to wipe it out with a sneeze or a cough and crinkle it in a Kleenex or gum wrapper. My mother would always want to give us Dramamine to get us to sleep and keep us from being airsick (which I had done my fair share of in those awesome little puke bags), I had learned to become clever and stick the pill to the roof of my mouth then take a drink. When the plane began ascending out of the Phoenix International Airport into the clouds I would loudly exclaim to my father “LOOK, A DUCK! LOOK, A TRAIN!, LOOK, a HEART!”, it seemed every cloud took on the shape of some incredible object. He was the adventure seeker, the entrepreneur, the successful businessman, and the one that ventured outside of the Pennsylvania homeland to set his stake in the west. Uncle Jack was my father’s eldest brother. My grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and everyone apart from Uncle Jack and Aunt Wanda stayed in Pennsylvania. When I was little we would take the plane from our home outside of Phoenix, AZ to Harrisburg, PA where my parents were born. Looking out the window of the airplane I allow myself to be transported back to childhood. Once prior to being diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, and again after a massive surgery to remove cancerous tumors, several chemo treatments, and many pounds of weight loss. My husband has his head back with eyes closed gently as he sleeps with what appears like a smile on his face.
As I sit typing at 30,000 feet with a box of my favorite Uncles ashes at my hip a lot of emotions whirl through my mind.