No, not the one in Colorado, USA.
This Pike’s Peak is in Iowa. Zebulon Pike looked out over the Mississippi River in 1805 and saw a perfect site for a fort. One year later, he explored the southeast territory of Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase and bumped into the Rockies.
Iowa’s Pike’s Peak State Park is known as Little Switzerland.
This is Rebecca and me in big Switzerland in 2018.
OK, you get the point.
We walk a lot. My phone tells me that over the last 26 weeks, I’ve walked an average of 2.6 miles daily; that’s 6,761 steps per day.
On Sunday’s two-and-a-half-hour hike through Iowa’s Pike’s Peak, my Health app registered just under 12,000 steps. My body, at 74, told me 12,000 had become the step-ceiling. Rebecca is two years younger, but we were equally slumped in our chairs later that day.
My mother walked about two miles a day until a hip replacement at 89 cut that in half. Sadly, it’s no coincidence that five years later, when she was in the early stages of dementia, we moved her into a memory care unit because we couldn’t keep her inside the house she had lived in for 60 years.
What had kept her going was now a danger.
That walk in the Alps five years ago? We hiked for five hours, 10 miles, at 10,000 feet.
Could we do that hike today? Rebecca says yes, of course, we could. And more importantly, “we should think we can.”
I’m not so sure. I’ve started to become comfortable with slowing down physically. Thus, my 12,000 step limit.
Rebecca believes this kind of thinking is a slippery slope. Once you go down that path, it will be too easy to stop.
Two days ago, we hiked in Palisade Park. To get to the park, we walked outside our front door and took a right. I snapped this photo from the summit. The red arrow points to our home. Our round-trip hike to the 112-foot high point was about 7000 steps.
As we sat, huffing and puffing a bit, on a bench looking out over our town, I honed in on a cemetery close to our home. Too close. I’ve planted, Pike-like, a red flag on the sloped place for the dead.
Here’s a close-up.
The cemetery’s downward contour reminded me of Rebecca’s slippery slope worry.
It’s easy to slalom down to the inevitable when you’re on an upslope.
Alps: 10,000 feet & 52,000 steps.
Pike Jr.: 1250 feet & 12,000 steps.
Palisade Park: 112 feet & 7,000 steps.
Cremation urns
Yet, it’s possible to hold these two thoughts in tension.
Stay active for as long as possible. By doing so, it becomes a part of who you are. My mother kept walking out her dog-scratched back door even after she had forgotten who she was.
But accept the inevitability of the downward slope. The Alps to Pike Jr. to Palisade becomes a natural regression. You remain in control. You can flatten the imaginary hill so it’s not slippery.
And you accept that the no-step day will come.
Mom had it right.
Every day, you go out that door.
Rebecca has it right.
Be careful with the temptation to slow down.
Me?
Later today, I’m doing my 12,000.
Before I rake the leaves.
