No point going to the Dominican Republic without getting into the water for a snorkel. We recently spent five nights at Playa de Arena Blanca beach in Punta Cana, on the eastern tip of the Dominican Republic, with longtime friend Henry and his family.

When they signed up for a boat tour, we said, “Count us in!”

We queued up on the beach with some of the crew while the captain brought the double-hulled catamaran closer to shore and sent a water taxi to ferry us to the boat.

A staged photo. Thanks, Dimitri!

The captain wore a black tee shirt with the words, “Pain is weakness leaving the body,” a motto that will inspire me for the rest of my life.

The place our captain chose for a swim did not have as much sargassum as the water closer to shore, but it wasn’t seaweed-free. Seaweed, smeeweed, we said, and jumped in.

I don’t have any photos of us in goggles and a spout, which is just as well because the way those things push our lips around, nobody needs to see that. Really.

Punta Cana, at a tropical 18.58 degrees north of the equator, had the kind of swimming we loved so much in Belize and Nicaragua, and on Guam and Hawaii. Eye-popping blue and bathtub-warm.

At one point, over the pounding music and the roar of the engines, I got an earful from Dimitri about discrimination towards Haitians by Dominicans. For a few moments, I thought he was talking about Asians, because that is how he pronounced Haitians. “They think ‘Asians” this,” and “They think ‘Asians” that. Eventually, I realized he was talking about his experience, about coming to this side of the island seeking work and being underestimated and underpaid.

A California girl, through and through, Kelly loves sunshine and swimming.

PARASAILING: SOMETHING WE DID NOT SAY, “YES” TO

Bob and I said, “No thanks,” to parasailing. You can throw that into a bucket with bungee jumping, ziplining, and skydiving.

But it was fun to watch our very brave friends get dragged through the air. Have to admit.

Later, Henry described the main tether, how it appeared to be anchored in plexiglass on the tow boat, and I saw Kelly squeeze her eyes shut.

There’s a metaphor here I can’t quite nail down: The family that hangs together, stays together? One for all, all for one? Hang in there? Hanging by a thread?

Triumph!

Not sure what Henry was saying after their flight. Could have been something like, “You can mark that off our bucket list!”

It didn’t take a boat and a parachute to delight this man. Henry’s excitement was chronic. During our week together, I saw his face light up when he said, “There’s coffee in the kitchen,” or after hauling off the kitchen trash, or while guiding me to the Pharmacia to get my weepy eye back on track.

Henry’s enthusiasm signalled victory for all, every win a shared triumph.

During our stay in the Dominican Republic, we breakfasted together at the Villa Blanca Beach Club every morning. I was especially fond of their Chilaquiles.

After Kelly and I shared an early morning beach walk, she’d cool off with a swim, then join the rest of us for breakfast at the club.

There was usually a cat or two hanging around.

On more than one evening, we found ourselves at Enjoy Corales restaurant down the street.

Everything they served was delicious: pizza, pasta, Dominican dishes, seafood and salad.

Henry’s twin sister, Daisy, also attended The American School in Switzerland, so Bob has known them since he was fifteen.

Bob enjoyed a nice sole fillet with fries.

Ignoring the lettuce scare back home in the States, I often asked for salad. The raw vegetables always had that crisp, freshly-harvested texture, and I never got a hint of a bellyache.

Maya has a no-nonsense personality with a splash of spontaneity and a hint of wry humor.

It took a minute to choose a dish from the extensive menu unless you didn’t eat meat or fish. That made it easy for me—salad!—and then I’d turn into one of those people who yak at you while you’re trying to decide what to have.

What I love about the third world: signs that make no sense.

Me and Bob, Maya, Henry and Kelly, Nancy and Juan, and Daisy at (let me guess) table 31.

As a splurge one evening, we dined in style at the highly-rated Citrus.

A great smile starts inside, spreading to eyes and lips. Great smiles can be passed down from mother to daughter. From what I heard about Kelly’s mother, she is also golden inside and out. So that’s three generations of beautiful smiles, possibly more.

Turns out, the Villa Blanca Beach Club offered so much more than that: sprawling thatched palapas with cushioned seating situated between a great restaurant and the beach, with waitstaff offering cold drinks and warm food.

Villa Blanca reminded me of my high school art teacher’s beach club in Long Branch, New Jersey. Idle hours swimming, my skin turned mahogany, that salt water smell mixed with board wax and French fry grease, hanging out with my friends, Crosby, Stills, and Nash pouring from the speakers, and after-dark arthouse movies projected onto a screen set up in the sand.

Tiger-patterned cats with white feet patrolled the club in search of dropped fish tidbits. I didn’t mess with them, especially the notch-eared Tom, lording it over his domain.

For me, the best moments of any day are dawn and dusk. Being a morning person, I wake with a fully charged battery—so full of energy I feel I could eat the world—and get myself outdoors to embrace a new, honey-dipped day. Twelve or so hours later, after the heated bluster subsides, I celebrate those amber tones again.

In 1998, while walking the streets of Tianjin, I made up this little poem:

Embrace the morning
Endure the day
Celebrate the evening
Cherish the night

If things that lit me up were currency, I would be richer than Elon Musk!

For the first hour after the sun emerges from the Atlantic, it is only beach walkers.

The whole day stretching ahead like a magic carpet.

Once the sun is up, maintenance crews arrive to push around the sargassum, a floating seaweedy algae currently in bloom.

Each day’s sargassum washes up against a darker, older layer. We’d find a cut in the algae berm and wade into clearer water to swim. Later, after a shower, I’d see a stray sprig on the bathroom floor and laugh.

The palapa situation was super cushy. It was real fine watching everyone relax. Such a busy world we’ve made for ourselves with precious little time for doing nothing.

One afternoon a carpenter bee circled our heads looking for a hole to drill or one that it had already drilled. Ceaseless circling. Honestly, they seem so clueless I want to point to the hole and shout, “It’s right here, silly!”

Annoyed, the usually unperturbable Maya, blurted, “It would be nice to be in a room without flying bugs!” “All right,” I said, standing up, and went after the bee, clapping my rubber sandals together loudly until it flew off to find another palapa to pester.

I loved the ritual of rinsing the sand from my feet before climbing the stairs to the penthouse.

Saltwater is baked into my childhood. It’s where I learned to swim and where I played with my brothers, cousins, and friends for most of my childhood and a fair bit of my adulthood. I revel in ocean water, and the presence of algae only makes me feel more connected to this beautiful, unscripted world. Were it too perfect, I might have felt out of place.

Bob was a birder when I met him thirty-six years ago, but in an act of charitable solidarity, he chucked his life list and started over with a joint list for the two of us. No bird gets added until we both see it. In some cases, we’ll settle for both hearing the bird, as in the Yellow Cuckoo, a migrant we hear in our woods every summer but will probably never see.

We had 480 birds on our combined life list when we boarded our flight for Punta Cana, excited to add a few more. It’s worth mentioning here that there are about 10,000 species of birds worldwide, and that avid birders have lists in the thousands.

Explora Ecotour sent a driver to fetch us at 7:00 AM to take us an hour west of Punta Cana to Cotubanamá National Park on the Caribbean side. His name was Eduardo, and he pointed out sights along the way, including his neighborhood where he grew up and still lives.

Eduardo told us that when he was younger, Punta Cana was called Punta Borracho, which is Spanish for Drunk Point, but they changed it for obvious reasons. It would be fun to see if tourism revenue spiked after Punta Borracho became Punta Cana.

The only thing I want to say about Doña Pula is that when you see a giant woman in an apron, you have to stick your camera out the window and take her picture. We did not stop there to eat.

Our guide, Manny, spoke American English, had schooled in Florida, and started Explora Ecotour with his wife eighteen years ago. Manny was a delight and, we soon learned, politically aligned with us as all educated people tend to be. Funny how that is.

We met Manny at the end of the road on the east side of the resort and walked down a service road on the Parque Nacional Cotubanama side of the Cadaques Caribe Resort and Villas, turning at the beach and continuing south, a total of 1 1/2 miles.

The clouds had been threatening rain, but didn’t open up until we reached the beach, where we happily took cover in a maintenance shed. After the brief shower passed, we continued hiking south along a forest trail with views of the beach.

One of the first birds Manny picked out was the Vervain Hummingbird, which, at less than two and a half inches long including its bill, is the second-smallest bird in the world.

The Hispaniolan Mango hummingbird has a curved bill and is twice the size of the Vervain.

Palmchat (Dulus dominicus)

This cute little lizard’s for you, Steph.

Manny helped us add sixteen new birds to our life list, the most colorful being the Tody, a tiny bird related to the kingfisher with a bright green back, yellow underparts, a red chin, and pink flanks that it fluffs in warning. As in “Don’t come any closer, or I’ll cute you to death!”

It was at least an hour before Manny could lure the Tody into lens range. I wondered why he was trying so hard, telling myself, No big deal; we saw plenty of other birds, underappreciating his determination, until I saw it. Seriously, the Tody was the highlight of my day!

We saw Hispaniolan Woodpeckers during our walk with Manny, but Bob snapped this photo during morning coffee on our penthouse terrace.

No trip to the Caribbean is complete without a glimpse of the Magnificent Frigatebird, even if they are pirates. So are Bald Eagles and Brown Pelicans.

The skies were still moody on our drive back to Punta Cana, and we noticed several rock walls that resembled bulldozed rubble.

On the way home, Eduardo pulled over so that I could get a picture of a resort with a fanciful name. I asked Eduardo and Bob, if they had to choose, would they choose Secrets or Dreams? For me, I’d choose Secrets because secrets are usually juicier, with a more intelligible storyline. Which one would you prefer?

We would be staying at the Ocean View Penthouse on Calle Pirata a block from Playa Arena Gorda in Punta Cana.

Bob and Henry have been friends since they were fifteen and roomed together at The American School In Switzerland. We knew we’d have a good time with him and Kelly because four years ago we’d celebrated Bob’s birthday with them at Kitty Hawk and had a blast.

To make this trip even nicer, they brought their daughter, Maya. Henry’s sister, Daisy, his brother, Juan, and Juan’s wife, Nancy, were also in town to attend to some family business.

We quickly discovered that Maya had a wonderful sense of humor and spoke flawless Spanish like her father. She ran interference between us and the locals and was also soon fixing all the old people’s smartphone issues.

Our daily routine looked like this: Henry, the provisioner, was the first up. He made coffee for the house. Next, Bob would pour himself a cup and join Henry on the terrazzo terrace.

About this time, the woodpeckers would start working their way up the palms outside the terrace.

Eventually, we’d all make it out there.

Next, Kelly and I would take a long walk on the beach, water swirling around our feet. Then we’d meet the others at Villa Blanca Beach Club. for breakfast. I was especially fond of the Chilaquiles.

By mid-morning we’d have a swim, followed by some world class lounging in a large thatched palapa with cushioned chairs and couches. Tough times.

Eventually Bob and I would leave the beach to siesta in our room. I would ground myself with some low level housework before lying on the cool floor to stretch. Then I’d join Bob on the bed to read Donna Tartt’s, “The Goldfinch” which, if you have not read it is most definitely a page-turner.

I enjoyed ducking through the Dutch door to the terrace to join the others or check the towels I’d left out to dry. It gave me the same secret thrill I used to get when I was eleven squeezing through a thin spot in the privet hedge between our house and the riding stables.

One day, after the tap water spurted and died, I took the blue mop bucket downstairs, dipped it into the swimming pool, and brought it back in case anyone wanted to flush a toilet.

We lost water twice, and Juan guessed correctly that it had something to do with the construction going on next door. Turns out they had broken the water main.

On about the third day, I ventured out in search of drinking water. I had been studying the foot traffic and felt I knew the formula that would paint me as a self-contained expat rather than a target for solicitation: boring green shorts, a baggy tee, money tucked into a pocket, nothing dangling from my shoulder, shoes and socks, a fast pace, and no gawking. It worked. Even the Poppi Express drivers ignored me when I hustled by with a bag of mangoes tied around one wrist and a gallon of water dangling from each hand. I was invisible!

You might say water was the overarching theme. Water for drinking swimming, and flushing.

It was off season and there was plenty of renovation going on: next door and on the street below, men chipping concrete using shovels, saws, and pick axes.

A pigeon on a roof made me think about my grandfather Frank Illo, with his dream of raising white pigeons once he retired from show biz in New York City. Sadly, that dream was never realized.

Five days flew by and we found ourselves at the airport queuing up for a 3:30 flight. It was noon. Bob steered us toward a side office where he bought us VIP passes so we wouldn’t have to stand in a herd of travelers waiting to pass through immigration and customs, a process that could take two hours.

Believe you me, I felt like a rich person as they ushered me down a deserted corridor. Well worth the $35. It was a new program, he said when I asked how he’d heard of it, and he’d seen it on Reddit or TripAdvisor. Pays to have your own travel agent browsing for deals.

Thirteen hours later, we’d arrive home, porch light glowing, with its good well water, and cool summer hot tub, our heads buzzing with memories. No beach to greet us in the morning, no friends to share coffee with on the terrace. Just the finches clamoring for seed, the hummingbirds hoping for sugar water, and the garden sagging with unharvested fruit.

I first heard about this relatively new park four years ago from my friend, Amy. She also wonders if Cane Creek might be an epicneter of unusually good weather.

We always meet in the parking lot where we admire the forest green trees against that piercing blue sky with the white white clouds. I’m sure I’ve told her how some day I’m going to crochet an afghan in these colors because it’s the thing I usually say in situations like this.

After Cane Creek built the Monadnock Lookout Tower, Amy said, “Let’s go!” so we picked a date in May.

We were halfway up the 80-foot tower when Amy turned and told me that she has an uneasy relationship with heights. However, she pushed ahead and 70 steps later Amy was standing on top.

I scanned the horizon, trying to pick out landmarks and vowed to bring my camera with the big lens next time.

Six weeks later I returned with Emma, who when I told her about the tower, had said, “Let’s do it.” Once again, it was a perfectly crisp, dry morning. I swear this is some kind of Alamance County Park juju.

Emma and I head up the trail at what I think is a respectable pace until we are passed by a jogger, a thin woman who shouts over her shoulder, “Therapy!” in response to my, “You go!”

Emma confesses that she isn’t comfortable with heights, so I suggest she go first like Amy did in order to strike her own pace. “The platforms are the worst,” she says. “I don’t like how you can see through them.”

I consider this while staring through the metal grid, wondering what are the chances that two of my friends might express a desire to climb something that gives them the heebie jeebies.

I recently learned about the Visual Cliff experiments from the ’60s in which babies who would crawl across a platform to reach their mothers, refused when that platform was made of plexiglass. The hypothesis being that humans are hardwired to avoid the air space between trees lest we fall to our deaths.

My five brothers and I are all goats—we’ll climb anything—and I can’t wait to bring them here. Although they may not enjoy it as much as the towers they have to squeeze through locked gates to climb, those danger boys, now in their 60s and 70s.

Emma and I reach the big platform at the top with its sturdy rails and magnificent view, a giant American flag clapping for our triumph, and a nice breeze to wick away the sweat of our efforts.

I point out the nuclear plant some 40 miles to the south. I admire Emma’s courage, admire her for boldly pushing herself upwards to stand here in the breeze looking down into the overstory. She isn’t even holding on to the railing.

I point to the north, to a cluster of man-made towers and Emma says, “I think that’s Durham.”

After we’ve had our fill of thrill, we walk back down and take turns posing with the warning sign at the bottom. To wit:

Climb at your own risk. Falls from the tower may result in death or serious injury.
Tower may be used during park hours of operation only.
Do not climb on or lean over railing.
Visitors under the age of 18 cannot climb the tower without being accompanied by an adult.
Any visitors with health issues should be supervised while on the tower.
Park management reserves the right to close the tower at any time without notice.

We are nearly back to the lot when our jogger reappears. “Therapy!” I shout, and she laughs. “It beats housework!”

We stop to admire the way the sun is highlighting flora and fauna on the bank of a thin creek and crouch beside the wooden bridge to watch a half dozen damselflies flirt above the rocks.

I point out some chanterelles—Emma’s first—and she grows as excited as she did with the blueberries we’d been seeing along the trail. “We have to go foraging sometime!”

By the time we reach our cars, I am infused with friendship, endorphins, and hope. What a great use of tax dollars! What a great Country! This sure beats war and detention centers, ballrooms and arches. If Alamance County can do this, maybe the old U. S. of A. isn’t entirely broken.

Art is best shared with friends, so I invited Susan, a professional artist, and Tony, a published author, to join me on a walk across the pumpkin bridge.

I parked near Matt and Dana’s house up the hill, and we walked past the brightly decorated yards, joining a tide of costumed people, young and old, flowing down towards the river.

The sky was dark by the time we reached the bridge, pumpkins glowing brightly on their railing perches.

“I love this,” I thought, feeling like a tiny speck beneath the moon. It occurred to me that almost everyone on that bridge had likely carved into at least one pumpkin during their lifetime, no doubt taught to handle the sharp knife with care by their parents, who learned from their parents, and back across generations.

With the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program due to run out of funds tomorrow due to a prolonged government shutdown, I wasn’t surprised to see the words, “You can’t be pro-life and anti-snap.”

I clicked away, hoping to capture the Halloween-on-the-bridge vibe.

This elaborate fly carving was extremely popular, so I waited for my turn to photograph it.

We wondered how long it took to etch such an image.

I took a fancy to the birds as eyes and nose, and bat as mouth version, an innovation I have never seen before.

This one reminded me that it’s been too many months since I visited Tractor Supply Company with its rugged clothing, plastic farm animals, and horse notions.

I found myself trying to visualize the person behind each work of art. Perhaps I will come early next year and get in on the action.

Halfway back across the bridge, Emma and Soren stepped out of the darkness. Susan was talking and Emma said, “I know that voice!”

“Where’d you get that drink?” I asked.

“At the Community Center. Check it out.”

So, we did. Talk about warm fuzzies. There were bathrooms, baked goods, and an atmosphere of relaxed congeniality. Communal celebration is the antidote to political grief and uncertainty. True power resides in small neighborhoods!

We happily joined legions of white-haired leaf-peepers intent on inhaling Vermont’s colorful change of seasons. What I recall from a long-ago glimpse of Vermont was fall foliage, winding roads, white-steepled churches, and covered bridges.

Indeed, the leaves were changing, the roads winding, we saw a few quaint, white churches, and Bob found us a bridge. At 280 feet, the Scott Covered Bridge is the second-longest covered bridge in the state.

I’d like to take a minute and show you how Frank and I are related.

This is a picture of a picnic in the woods above Nana Helen and Grandpa Frank’s home in New Jersey from the late ’30s or early ’40s. Grandpa Frank, Nana, John, Frank, and Frank’s sons, Frank and Mark, were all in show business in New York.

Therefore, Frank and I are first cousins. He is my father’s brother’s son. Helen and Frank had two sons: Frank (Frank’s dad) and John (my dad).

When my Uncle Frank married my Aunt Kathy, Nana and Grandpa split off an acre for them to build on. So Frank and his younger brother, Mark, grew up next door to our grandparents. My parents and five siblings lived close enough to join everyone for Sunday dinner, which sometimes included both Nana and Grandpa’s extended family.

I often spent the entire weekend at Nana’s with one or two of my brothers. Aunt Kathy would take us all to the beach. We played make-believe games with the neighborhood kids, and climbed the hill through the woods with the dogs. It was a pretty sweet childhood.

Nana did all the cooking, likely prepping for days. In the summer, she’d make iced tea, potato salad, bake a poppyseed cake, and fry some chicken. In the colder months, she might make artichokes, a beef roast with potatoes, mashed carrots and turnips with sweet cream butter and kosher salt, and an orange cake with butter cream frosting and bakers’ chocolate melted across the top and dripping down the sides.

When we arrived at Frank and Shawn’s, Frank had dinner mostly prepped. It’s safe to say that Frank inherited his Nana’s culinary flair. Not everyone has a palate to please the masses, but he does, just like his Nana did. What tastes good to Frank tastes good to everyone else.

Here’s the story behind the orange rotary phone. Shawn told me that she and Frank were in a vintage store and didn’t quite find anything they liked until she spotted the shop’s landline in her favorite color. And even though the phone was in use, Shawn must have made them an irresistible offer, and now it lives in their kitchen.

We hadn’t seen Frank and Shawn’s daughter, Houston, for some years, so it was a treat to spend time with her. She recently moved across the yard into a newly finished home designed by Frank in the same contemporary style as the main house.

Frank jokes that their house resembles a double-wide on steroids. I wouldn’t go that far, but it does possess an unusual floor plan. Imagine a two-story, one-room-wide tower with windows on the long sides, and a walk-out basement that opens onto a patio. There’s a deck off the dining room, similar to their previous home. Upstairs are two bedrooms, one at each end. Simple and airy, with a large kitchen and a cozy den downstairs. We’d been to their New Jersey home a number of times, but this was our first visit to their Vermont home.

We slept like angels in a comfy bed beneath a delightful cross breeze with a full moon beaming outside. When I asked Shawn if she had chosen the warm wall colors, she said, No, Houston did.

The next morning, I joined Shawn for strength training with her personal coach. We hung from bars until our grip failed, did squats, lunges, jumps, and sit-ups. Her trainer cut me a break, giving me lower weights and a not-so-high jumping platform. Even so, my legs were sore for four days. She and her partner were very knowledgeable and happily answered all my questions regarding protein, hydration, and how to build stronger bones.

Shawn’s trainer had recommended Dr. Peter Attia’s book, Outlive, which Shawn had already read and generously passed along to me. So I went home with some notion of how to do what needs done if I want to be reasonably independent in my last decade of life. Attia calls this our marginal decade, when our capacity drops by 50%. You can view his interview on 60 Minutes here.

Between that workout and walking Houston’s dog, Lobo, with Frank, I left in better shape than when I arrived.

In the summers, Houston works at Kingland Bay State Park, a place we were eager to see. Sadly, Houston had to work at her winter job, so we retirees went without her.

Houston is a published photographer who posts compelling nature photos on social media—puffins!—many of them taken at this beautiful park. She truly has a gift for composition, and the patience it takes for brilliant nature photos. She and her camera are planning a trip to Alaska, and one to New Zealand.

Like cooking, photography runs in the family. My father had a darkroom in Nana’s basement and took many of our family photos. Nana’s nephew, Steve Wallace, was a professional photographer, as was my brother, John.

We snapped a photo of the wind playing with our hair and went out for lunch.

After coffee the next day, we said goodbye to Houston and walked over to see her new place.

The contractors had done a fine job of manifesting Frank’s vision of “elegant sufficiency,” a phrase often used by his mother. They had built an apartment with a separate room for storage and perhaps a pool table above a three-car garage. The outside of Houston’s house echoed the main house and, like the main house, was gleaming with glass.

I loved that they had installed a pulley, a beam, and a roll-up door outside the storage room. “That’s how we got all the materials up there,” Frank said. A backstage, showbiz trick to be sure.

And then it was time to hit the road. This time, Bob took a more direct route back to Jim and Kathryn’s, routing us through Montpelier, where we rejoined the river of tourists for a look-see at Vermont’s historic State House.

Bob couldn’t resist posing next to an enormous cannon. For the record, we are both pacifists.

This is not the Ethan Allen of furniture fame; this is Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary War hero and one of Vermont’s founding fathers.

It warmed my heart to see a woman with a sheaf of wheat atop the blinged-out Capitol dome. Agriculture is so often overlooked.

Speaking of bling, this was the brightest tree we saw in all our driven miles. You can see the State House peeking out from behind this funky sandstone house.

My parting shot is a montage of mass transit, a nod to the dairy industry, and a FedEx delivery truck. I don’t know what it means, but I think it’s art. The kind of art that makes you go, “Huh.”

After landing, Bob picked up the rental car we would use to drive to Vermont, and we spent a couple of nights with Jim and Kathryn. We had planned a pizza picnic with Kathryn’s daughter and her family, but that fell through when her husband came down with a killer sore throat.

Here’s a photo of the previous pizza party celebrating Jim’s birthday in July 2024.

The weather was spectacular, perfect for rambling chats in Jim and Kathryn’s expansive yard.

I joined Kathryn in the kitchen to bake three “AB Cakes” from her Nan’s recipe book: one for the house, one for Kathryn to take to her friend with whom she would be making bread and butter pickles, and one to take to Vermont. It was a delicious, yet simple cake, involving only sugar, butter, eggs, milk, and flour.

Jim picked out a wonderful hike to Peppercorn Hill for just the two of us. It was supposedly one mile, but felt a whole lot longer due to the elevation gain.

We started inland with a view of Lake Maspenock before heading uphill to our destination.

Here’s Jim with one of many rounded boulders along the trail. Someone a long time ago might have thought, Hey, these boulders look like giant peppercorns, and that’s where we assume Peppercorn Hill got its name. No one actually knows.

“Funny story,” Jim said, “My last time here was with Joe, and we got lost. We took a wrong turn on the way down and ended up on a different ridge. Kathryn had to drive over and pick us up.” I wasn’t surprised. “For Joe, it’s not a real hike unless he gets lost,” I said, chuckling, but I spent the rest of the hike looking over my shoulder at every trail split, trying to memorize the way back to Jim’s car.

We eventually made it to Peppercorn Hill, one of the highest points in Hopkinton, to admire the spectacular view. I found it comforting to see tree cover all the way to the horizon in a world often scarred by construction.

I might mention that Jim is eleven years younger than I am. I, the oldest, and he, the youngest of six. Can you believe my mother had six kids in the span of eleven years? Holy moley.

Anyhow, I think I did a good job keeping up with that youngster. Jim went down in front of me, gallantly offering to carry my camera so I had both hands free to grab at small shrubs and prevent a plummet.

We swung by the grocery store on the way home, and Jim threw together chili and a salad in record time. We ate, talked about everything and nothing, and went to bed early.

Bob and Ned roomed together at Colorado University in the ’70s and have a long history of posing implacably behind their sunglasses.

We took Emily and John to lunch in downtown Denver at Park & Co, less than a mile from 1600 Glenarm Place, where I cooked and cashiered at Stouffer’s more than fifty years ago.

We spent two days with Rob and Sharyl, friends since 1990 when Bob and I worked with Rob at Data Entry Products (DEP). On Wednesdays, we’d leave work early and four of us would motor around  Horsetooth Reservoir in our shared boat, taking turns on a boogie board. I married Bob in July of 1994, and Rob and Sharyl married three months later.

Bob and Rob contentedly discussed many topics of importance in the shade of the big trees.

Bob and I threw in with each other in the spring of 1992 and began living together in my Loveland, Colorado apartment.

Eventually, we moved a few blocks away to a standalone house at 913 Franklin Avenue, which had a second bedroom for the girls. There was a basketball hoop outside the garage where we played many games of horse. We used the garage like a covered patio for cocktails with friends or to paint our daughter’s fingernails with pink polish. We called it the pallet house because our bedroom walls appeared to be constructed from pallets.

Next, we rented an old house on two acres with room for our saddle horses outside of town. This is where we stood on the porch and said our vows aloud in front of our friends.

That place was close to the Big Thompson River, and we rode our horses, Jesse and Penny, down there several times a week.

Now a medical clinic, this is where we worked until DEP sold to Lucas Varity, and we relocated to Williamsburg, Virginia.

Ten years later, we returned to Colorado, settling into a clean and airy apartment in Berthoud within walking distance to Bob’s new job at Biodiesel Industries, the grocery store, post office, library, and farmers’ market.

We did not miss having our own yard and gardens as we initially feared. The apartment was a short walk to nearby parks, all of Berthoud’s streets were lined with shady trees, and we had a roomy patio on the back of the building. We parked our bicycles and an under-driven 1995 Ford Escort in the back. At that time, Habitat for Humanity occupied the building next door, where I volunteered in their used book department.

Much remains of our old life along Colorado’s Front Range, especially our friendships. We fondly remember ice skating on Lake Loveland, riding our horses in the Corn Roast Festival Parade, hunting for wild asparagus, and happy gatherings. It was gratifying to visit places that were once part of our lives.