kathy mitra

I love to sit on the dock and admire the mountains around me. They make me think of my mother because I know she did the same, and it brings her closer. The ancestors that you read about in the Parlin volumes, many of whom you will never meet, admired the same mountains.

 

I have made the pilgrimage to Lake George almost every summer of my life.

In the mid-70s Uncle Charles gave the Sanborns - his three nephews and their families - a great gift: the red barn that sits on Pudding Island Road on the way to Arcady. Each of the three families got a third of the summer, and I was always impressed with how well the barn was shared. Uncle Charles' gift gave three generations of Sanborns wonderful summer memories. Though my own children barely know their Sanborn second cousins, they undoubtedly have similar childhood memories of playing ping-pong in the creepy basement, climbing the second floor pole, and walking up the closet ramp.

 

Lake George has always been a special place to me, not only for the natural beauty, but as a gathering place. I am looking forward to reading the next volume of family stories. Nearly 30 years ago there was a call for chapters for the fourth volume of Parlin books, and I’ve decided to share part of what I wrote back then. I left it in my younger voice, as written in 1995. Here it is:

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I want to share with you one of the high points of my life both literally and figuratively. In the summer of 1986 I had the opportunity to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

 

When I was young, Grandma and Grandpa Sanborn took a trip to East Africa. I was fascinated by their stories of people seemingly so different from me, and their stories of animals on the Savanna. At the time one of my favorite television shows was “Jambo!” It was a children’s show about this part of the world. I remember once when we were vacationing with my grandparents in Florida, I introduced their slide show by singing the theme song of “Jambo!” It went like this:

          Jambo, Jambo means hello in a friendly kind of an African way.

          Jambo, Jambo means hello, have a friendly kind of an African day.

 

I was fascinated by Africa. A place I perceived as strange and mysterious. When I went to college and began studying Anthropology, I became interested in the cultures of Africa. I realized that I might have as much in common with someone from Kenya, as would a person from Zaire, Liberia or Egypt. It is a huge, diverse continent.

 

Anyway, that gives you some idea of how I wound up in East Africa, at the age of 24, for a month of travel in Kenya and Tanzania. I have chosen my trip up Mount Kilimanjaro to write about because I would like to take you with me. I will tell you what I saw, and hope you can conjure an image and take a journey.

 

The ascent and descent together would take 5 days - 3 ½ days up and 1 ½ days down. We followed the Marangu route which was 50 miles round trip. We would ascend the mountain in stages of roughly 3,000 feet a day.

 

We started the trip at the headquarters of the national park which was at an elevation of 6,000 feet. The first day we traveled through a beautiful, thick, green rainforest. Much of this hike was along a well-worn path, wide enough for vehicles to pass. The slope was gentle. The latter part of the day we walked through the forest. If you looked up to the tree’s canopy and in the bushes around you, you could see green moss that looked like an old man’s beard.

 

The second day introduced me to more of a climb. We began on a steep path through the rainforest. We used great, knotted roots and vines as grips to pull ourselves upwards. Very quickly we were at an altitude that could not support the rainforest’s heavy vegetation.

 

The terrain changed almost drastically to a gently rising moor of open meadows where we were the tallest things around. The slope was not strenuous, but we encountered peak after peak separated by vast meadows of scruffy, low-growing shrubs.

 

It seemed that each peak was hiding another. Until finally Kibo, the ultimate peak with its skull cap of snow, was visible. It was still miles away, but loomed large and gave us something to work towards. As Ernest Hemingway describes it in his short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro, “...and there ahead, as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun was the square top of Kilimanjaro.”

 

We had moved beyond the tree line and on the third day we would travel into the saddle and alpine desert between Kilimanjaro's two peaks. Kibo, the higher of the peaks, was the one we would climb. The other peak, Mawenzi, was a huge jagged rock. Scaling this peak is a risky technical climb.

 

The scenery was beautiful as we looked down on clouds in the valley below. Rounding a hill we were on a moonscape. This was the saddle area strewn with huge volcano-hurled boulders, some weighing hundreds of tons.

 

We began our last and fourth day of ascent at 1:00 a.m. so that we could see the sunrise over Mawenzi, but also to keep our time at this altitude to a minimum. We were far beyond any water source. Many people chose not to go any further. Altitude’s thinning oxygen has a great impact on some people and if you're feeling the effects, it is dangerous to go any further.

 

The night was beautifully clear and cold, but honestly all I saw at this point was pitch black. I concentrated on moving my body slowly, and breathing regularly. The guide was about two feet in front of me - I followed his lantern, his pace and his encouraging words.

 

The incline was steep, but the trail zigzagged over the mountainside to keep its gradient to a minimum. We were like a chain gang shuffling upwards. We could see the bobbing lanterns of people following below, who like us laced the side of the mountain.

 

Within sight of the top, the ground began to give way underneath us. This was “scree” - loose, small rocks. So that for every three steps we progressed we slipped back two. When the scree was behind us, we hit big rocks which were an effort to climb, but with Gilman's Point on the crater’s rim, in our sight we had reason to continue.

 

We stopped at 6:30 a.m. to watch the sunrise. It was the coldest I've ever been in my life. We huddled in a cave and the light of the sun eventually inched across the clouds below like spilled water across a floor.

 

At this point half the group chose to continue to Uhuru Peak. This trip around the volcano's mouth was breathtaking. We could peer into the snow-filled crater from its edge. We walked by blue, glistening glaciers with their peaked tufts of hardened snow. And there on the other side of the rim we stood, Uhuru Peak, Kilimanjaro’s crown and the roof of Africa.

 

Coincidentally Kaye Parlin was attending a conference at the same time in Nairobi, and invited me to dinner at her fancy hotel on my return from Tanzania. She graciously offered me a shower, and must have been relieved that I took her up on it. I don’t recall the dinner, but I definitely remember the shower and how great it was to see Kaye in this far-away place.

 

This was not my first mountain climb. In the summer of 1979 when I was in high school I went on a month-long trip with a YMCA group across the country. This trip culminated in climbing Mount Rainier in Washington state. I bring this up, not only because it fits my theme, but allows me to relay a fond Lake George memory.

 

That same summer Angie Parlin (you will have to check the family tree to see how we are related), always one to celebrate other people, baked me a Mount Rainier cake. To get from the Sanborn Barn to the dock, we cut through Chris and Angie’s yard, and passing that day, I heard Angie shout “avalanche.” I wondered what she was up to, but it was apparent when she presented me with this amazing cake at tea time (every day, 4:00 sharp!). You can see the delicious masterpiece in the photos below. I wish the artist/baker had joined me in the frame. However, you can see my Grandma Sanborn (aka Aunt Ruth), the tea hostess with the mostess and master of ceremonies, and Ken Parlin enjoying the event.

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