Darren and I hiked up the steep, talist flank of Mount Humphreys.

Within a few hours, we reached the snow-covered summit, the highest point in Arizona at 12,600 feet.

The view is clear that day. We could see almost every place we'd hiked together in the southwest

over the past two years. To the east of La Buckskin Gulch, Mount Taylor to the southwest,

Escalani, Root, and Grand Canyon and the Verdi Valley to the south.

The previous week we had camped there watching the mysterious ascent and decent of green striped

Aurora Borealis rays. I had never seen them before. Their electric curtains, rising and falling

in the theater of night. I felt that something important was happening.

Seeing the northern lights from Arizona is rare. I just didn't know what that something was.

I looked like some mountain man's girlfriend and sometimes that's all I felt like.

My blonde ponytail braided against the wind. My hair flying like dandelion fluff around my face,

my sunburned nose. It was easy to hide in Darren's shadow to let the world knock on his door first.

We met when I was 22 and he was 24. We both worked as ecology teachers at an outdoor school for sixth graders.

We lived in ratty trailers deep in the Redwood Forest of coastal California.

I loved his semi-feral look. He had big starry green eyes and a crazy thicket of curly brown hair.

And he wore the same pair of faded black climbing pants every day.

I was also attracted to his easy giggle and his staunch environmentalism.

Before, I had spent summers as a camp counselor and a state park docent, but Darren introduced me to a new life immersed in the outdoors.

We spent weeks at a time living out of our tent as we climbed, backpacked and explored the wilds of the western US.

Now, I was about to take my next step.

I had just completed an emergency medical technician class.

And later that summer, I would go to Alaska for five weeks to be trained as a wilderness guide.

...