I'm a Wife. And a Mom. And a partner.

I like to be gone, and mostly I like to be gone backpacking. However, I am not single, I have a partner (husband) and a young daughter (3 years old). I generally take care of my daughter at the end of the work day and most days get her to school in the morning. So it is tough for me to be gone for more than a week or for too many weeks a year.

Part of the issue is that my husband needs help taking care of our daughter, and the rest is that I miss my daughter. Since I gave birth, there is a moment in the evening of every day of every backpacking trip where I freak out a little or a lot. I miss her. I can't check on her, I can't hug her, i can't comfort her and she can't do the same for me. I don't even have the warm glow of FaceTime. Sometimes the feeling seems unbearable. My guess is that it happens in the evening because the work and distractions of the day are over. There is no more packing, cooking, walking, hefting. I am fed and watered and it will likely be time to try and sleep soon. It is when my whole self feels what is missing emotionally, when I don't have the distraction of surviving/living to comfort me and quiet my head. When this happens and I am with Rebecca, she points out that I would likely not be happy if I didn't miss my daughter. And she is right. I do want to miss my daughter. I want to feel that much love for her. Although I like to think that somehow one can feel that much love for another person and not get so...distraught.

I used to get that way about my husband, and sometimes I still do. And I would say that I have that much love for him, even after 15 years. But for people in LTRs, sometimes being apart is really awesome. Sometimes it makes the being together again when I get home even more awesome. And it adds so much to our relationship that seems immeasurable. Also, my husband and I used to travel a lot on business. As in 50-75% each. There used to be 6 weeks every winter when we would not see each other. I once flew to Paris for a long weekend so we could be together during that timeframe. In a lot of ways we are used to being apart. My daughter is growing up and seemingly changes every day. When she was 3 months old I went back to work traveling 50%. It seemed like she would change so much every week I was gone, and she probably did.

She wants to come with me now on my excursions, which thrills me. But she is still too young. We took her on her first overnight backpacking trip to Pt. Reyes last summer solstice. It felt like a huge victory. 2.3 miles on a dirt service road each way. She walked part of it and sat in the jogging stroller for part of it. She isn't much for strollers though, so that ship has sailed.

This winter we went camping in Death Valley and it was unusually cold, even for the desert, at 2,000 feet, at the end of December. She amazed me with her ability to handle the cold and see the fun in the "scary" trail down Ubehebe Crater. I have hope that in the future I will be able to claim her as a hiking partner and that between the two of us we will get her dad back out on the trail.