My Neighbor Lynn

After my parents divorce my mother lived for about four years on Stockton St., in Palo Alto, CA. Next door there was old woman, Lynn, who would occasionally call me over to help her out, cut deadwood from her plum trees, rake the yard, or to just share some life tips. She was always talking to me over the fence. Lynn was a total character, humorous, crotchety, slightly irritable, but she seemed to love kids and was always kind to me.

Over time I learned of the many family members she had lost: husband, daughter, brother-in-law; I’m sure there were others. I came to believe she was tough as nails. She still lived with a smile on her face and was engaging whenever we saw her outside.

Over the four years my mother owned the home next to Lynn she became aware I had a keen interest in mountaineering. I had devoured every book about mountaineering in the local public library. She shared with me her family history in climbing, notably Jake, her deceased brother-in-law who had died while on the 1963 American attempt of Mt. Everest including a personal copy of Americans On Everest, the account of that expedition.

The piece about her stories of Jake that got me was how she described him as a hard living, hard charging young man, who, with his buddies, climbed, guided, and were enthralled with big mountains. In particular, Lynn shared a story about Jake who had repeatedly climbed a peak (that she described as being in the Pacific Northwest but which I later discovered was Mt. Owen in WY) that he never chose to summit, instead coming a few feet from its high point and stating to his buddies, “maybe next time fellas!” Apparently, this practice of “courting” the mountain was a piece of legend that surrounded him.

This sentiment of devotion, which I ingested with my then teenage brain, was what I believed climbing and mountaineering was all about. I took it to be about craft and gratitude, not conquering or dominating, nor just getting to a summit for a personal box-checking. I tired to imagine myself having such a vision, of being in wilderness and high places for the sake of the experience alone, for the apprenticeship of the mountains…considering that maybe my ego could take a back seat. This notion was so entirely different and novel than anything else I was being conditioned with in the Silicon Valley of my youth.

I wish I had stayed in touch with Lynn after I left for college. She wouldn’t know the impact that she and the stories she shared about her life and that of  her family members would have on me. Now, three decades on she and her brother-in-law are vivid for me. They are like many ‘teachers’ in one’s lifetime that seem like minor roles at the time, but leave an essence that lives on.

I wish to have the grace to appreciate the land under my feet and the goodness of being in wild places. I hope too to have that strength that Lynn had to see the goodness in my neighbors even if I’ve lost many of the people I’ve loved. That was Lynn’s Everest.