There’s a special charm in seeing someone honestly and appropriately awed by someone else. Like watching a kid walk up to the mall Santa, or a young football player shaking hands with Peyton Manning. We read a bit of that same enchantment in a recent story by Scott Williams in the Martinez (CA) Patch.
Williams was hiking in Washington’s Alpine Lakes Wilderness when he had a chance encounter with Helen Thayer—the first woman to have trekked alone to the North Pole—and her husband Bill. Even though Williams is a self-described geezer, he’s not too old to be swept away by the 73-year-old Thayer and her 85-year-old husband. (He also does a fine job of describing the beauty of the Alpine Lakes.)
Helen and Bill are a well-matched pair of phenoms who are remarkably active even today. “They still regularly hike the Cascades,” Williams writes. “They set a goal for themselves to hike faster each time, and so far, they’ve bested themselves on every hike.”
He does a good job of outlining some of the high points of their adventurous lives (including a 1,600-mile hike across at the Gobi desert when they were 63 and 74); he also references her publications, which are available on Amazon. And he credits her with giving an overly confident hiker (trail name Crazy Mother, ‘nuff said) the talking-to needed to persuade him from attempting a reckless trek into the frozen North Cascades.
Photo of Ingalls Lake, Washington, by Jeffrey Pang via Wikimedia Commons.
