I remember when I turned thirty. I was living in Sula, Montana in basically a single wide trailer built on a foundation. The front door was a hollow interior door and the wood stove had holes in the stove and the stove pipe. This was not a warm home. We had a birthday party with Mark and Mindy and Charlie and Darlene and Stu and Karen and their daughter and of course me, my husband at the time and my six year old and four year old. What I remember from that party was the next morning. I woke up to the phone ringing;

“hel-lo”.

“Hi, Lisa, it’s Bonnie at the school. Is Zach home sick today?”

“Um…..yep, yes he is. Zach is home sick today; sorry I forgot to call.”

I don’t remember if I drove Zach the 25 miles to school that day or not; the kid did love school.

When I turned forty, we were living in a log home in downtown Darby, Montana. The house was not chinked and you could see daylight through the logs. The wood stove was an amazing big old stove but the stove pipe had lots of holes making the whole set up inefficient. The front door to the house was a large hard to move sliding glass door. This house was not very warm in the winter and hot as an oven in the summer. There was a car jack in the crawl space holding up the floor joist under the bathroom. My sister had come to visit for my birthday. I’d been divorced for two years. We spend the evening with Richard and Bruce playing pool and drinking beer at the Elks Lodge in Hamilton.

When I turned fifty I lived just outside of Darby, Montana tucked in the woods. The front door was an actual insulated door for the outside. The windows were double paned. The wood stove was efficient and there were no holes in the stove pipe. This was a very very warm house. For my birthday I planned a party at the Bitterroot Brewery in the upstairs dining area. I invited my friends, everyone from my job at the school and some people from my old job when I worked for a crook. I spent the day of the party on the floor balled up in a fetal position only getting up to take more Advil, hoping to deaden the pain of the period cramps that would not let me stand upright. I managed to make it to my own birthday party but it was a struggle to enjoy myself and be sociable. I was able to stand upright after many doses of Advil.

Tomorrow, I turn sixty. I still live in my warm house built by my warm husband. My plan is to summit Ward Mountain tomorrow. It’s about a six mile hike with a 5100 foot climb. It’s a bitch. The weather will be perfect. My fast friends are giving me a 90 minute head start. I’ve been doing everything I can this past six weeks to get faster. I’ve increased my weights in the gym, I’ve increased my protein intake, I started running. I’ve been climbing Goat Mountain for training every chance I get. It takes me about 65 minutes to get to the top of Goat Mountain. My fast friends do it in 30 minutes. Maybe I should leave before the sun comes up tomorrow. There’s also a good chance I don’t go at all. Wednesday when I was doing my run/walk I hurt my ankle. I’m not 100%. I don’t want to make my injury worse by climbing Ward. What do I do? If I don’t summit Ward tomorrow I’ll go mountain biking, so either way it is a good day. But I wanted to do something big for sixty.

Honestly, I’m 59 today, sitting in the sun in my front yard after a two hour ride on my gravel bike, watching the birds eat my new grass seed, my cat sitting in a planter box and my handicapped dog laying in the grass waiting for her afternoon one mile walk and writing my blog. Tomorrow is also the official start of my retirement. I’m so grateful for all of it. The decades that led me to this very moment. This is the real summit I’ve climbed.