On 14 June 2023, I reached the summit of Kilimanjaro, the highest peak in Africa and the tallest freestanding mountain on Earth. It wasn’t my first time hiking a mountain, but it was my first time above 14,000 ft and my first time in Africa and the Southern Hemisphere. Maybe this doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d expect from an editor living in middle America. I get that. But my interest in climbing Kilimanjaro did not come out of nowhere. Nothing ever does.
My first mountain was Kinabalu, rising 13,400 ft over Borneo. I climbed it with my daughter, Danielle, while she was on a school break during what would become the last few normal weeks before COVID-19 changed everything in 2020.
There’s no way for me to think about my experience on Kilimanjaro without reference to Kinabalu. I consider reaching both summits to be among the most meaningful moments of my life, and those memories call up a curious cocktail of emotions. I’m terribly proud that we did it, and also a little chagrinned by how much it cost and how much ego it took. I’m aware of that. But I’m also dumbfounded that I had the nerve for it, specifically that the versions of me that existed in March of 2023 and January of 2020 made the call to go for it.
Good luck had an obvious hand in our successes, but I also know how hard it was to get there, and I know that at the end of the day I’m the one who made it happen. And making it happen was much more than just the planning and the preparation. What reaching the summit really required was the capacity–my capacity–minute by minute and step by step to be my own best friend and cheerleader, to believe I would not fail and that I could continue despite every difficulty. I did that for two days on Kinabalu and seven days on Kilimanjaro.
I’m proud of it in an out-of-body way, as though this story belongs to someone else. But it’s mine. I gave a presentation on this experience at the Ethical Society of St. Louis in August. A recording of my remarks is on their YouTube channel.