Good-bye, Dorothy

"Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you've got till it's gone..."

 

-- Joni Mitchell

 

 

I'd apologize for the absurdly slow start this blog has gotten off to, were there any indications that anyone is actually reading it.  Well, I'll apologize anyway; someone may read it some day and wonder about the gap back at the beginning.  Unfortunately, there is a reason for that gap, as I will explain.

 

It was almost three weeks ago that a truly extraordinary woman named Dorothy Hoard passed away -- a woman who was a literal Living Treasure in northern New Mexico where we live, and in the bargain, happened to be the best mother-in-law a man could ever have.  Link du jour is here, which tells you quite a bit about her, not just in the text, but even more, in the way a community and a National Monument within the United States National Park System are remembering her.  Additional links for the Pajarito Environmental Education Center and the Friends of Bandelier National Monument might give you some idea of just why the memories, and the celebration, are as they are.  These, plus a little more about that Living Treasure designation, get much of the way to understanding Dorothy's impacts.  But the mother-in-law part -- well, for that, you're just going to have to put up with me.

 

I knew Dorothy for over thirty years.  Our first meeting came when she was dropping off her daughter Emily at the meet-up for a mountain climbing trip organized by the Los Alamos Mountaineers (link) to Mount Wilson, Wilson Peak, and El Diente Peak, "Fourteeners" in southern Colorado that I hadn't been up yet.  Some of us self-proclaimed hard young men were going to give a technical route on Mount Wilson and El Diente a try, while others in the party would go for the easier Wilson Peak.  Dorothy thought that second, easier peak might be a good thing for her daughter, home from college and having a hard time finding either gainful employment or fun things to do beyond the family, so she talked an incredibly colorful, eccentric (that's the polite word) old family friend who also had been a Mountaineers member for about thirty years (literally just about back to the foundation of the club) into taking Emily in hand, showing her some ice/snow climbing technique, and seeing her safely up the peak.  She counted on old Ken to see to Emily's well-being.  What she and Ken did not count on, however, was me.

 

I will spare the details of a courtship spent half climbing things, half performing classical music together (both passions that we retain to this day), and simply point out that within a couple of weeks of meeting the woman who would become my wife, I'd also started to realize what an incredible mother she had.  This was the same year as Dorothy's first book on the trails of our area, "Los Alamos Outdoors" (ISBN 0941232123) came out, and I knew at first reading that this girl I was starting to go out with was descended from someone who really loved this place.  And it wasn't long, as our relationship grew, before I was getting roped into Dorothy's adventures to check out this trail in Bandelier, that obscure old road on the rim of the Valles Caldera, and so on.  Those adventures continued through parts of three decades and as many countries.  Our last outdoor adventure together was to help chart a path for a Jemez Mountains Rim Trail that many of us hope will be her last, and lasting, legacy.  She may already have been suffering then from the disease that would take her life; if so, she certainly didn't show it.

 

So for the last six weeks, I have been recoiling from the sudden, awful realization that Dorothy, indefatigable hiker that she was, had finally encountered a summit she could not conquer; helping to bring about all the things she was doing to make her passing easier for her loved ones; mourning that awful morning of March 3, when she left us; and then, more joyfully, working with the great folks at Bandelier as they prepare to host the celebration of her life.  Joni Mitchell only had it about half right, I think.  Sometimes you do know what you have before it's gone.  You just don't realize how much you loved the person who made it all happen.

 

Miss you, Dorothy, and thanks for everything, not least, for your daughter ... and for accepting me as though I were your own son.