The Journey
Our adventure up Kilimanjaro started with an idea.
Craig had been the first one to mention Kilimanjaro. Back in 2012, when he was still in high school, he and I had hiked the Inca Trail, up and over the ridges of the Andes Mountains on the way to Machu Picchu.
“Mom,” he said, “I want to do Kilimanjaro someday.”
“You want to do what?”
“Mike said he and his family did it last year and that this Inca Trail is nothing compared to that.” Mike, an older teen, and his family were trekking the IT with us. “They climbed this really big mountain.”
“Oh,” I said.
“It’s supposed to be a lot more challenging,” he said.
Not that I needed anything more challenging. At the time, we lived near sea level in Texas and the highest point on our Andes trek was 13,828 feet at Dead Woman’s Pass, a crazy high altitude for us. I didn’t know what Kilimanjaro was, or where, but the seed got planted and it became a recurring conversation over the years.