The love affair that started it all

The first time I remember seeing Mount Rainier, I was driving north on I-5.1 I was moving to Seattle to start my first job after college. My old 2003 Jeep Liberty was filled to the brim with everything I owned, and my whole life was in front of me.

Suddenly, there she was. Towering in the distance, her snow-covered peak glowed in the fading light. She was massive, commanding, and beautiful. I was in absolute awe.

It was love at first sight.

At first, I thought my love with Mt. Rainier would just be an infatuation. I’d get over her beauty. I mean, she couldn’t always be this amazing? But she could, and I was obsessed.

I started checking for her every morning, looking out our window to see if “the mountain was out.” I would find myself gazing at Rainier from different spots around Seattle, mesmerized by her ever-changing moods. Sometimes, she would wake up happy, radiating a soft, pink light. Sometimes, she wouldn’t wake up at all, her peak hidden in mist and clouds.

The mountains I grew up with are gentler. I grew up in Georgia, where the trails are green and wind through dense forests. They are beautiful, but you rarely reach a point where you rise above the treeline. The mountains in Washington are different. If you hike long enough, you’ll eventually break beyond the trees and step into flower meadows. Hike even further? You reach jagged rocks and mountain tops.

I’d plan hikes and weekend getaways all with the goal of getting even more views of Mt. Rainier. It wasn’t long before I needed to see her up close. I’d go to Mt. Rainier National Park so I could walk through the old-growth forests and high-altitude flower meadows.

My obsession grew. I wanted more. And so I sought other mountains like her.

I looked in awe at the Grand Tetons in Wyoming. I wandered through the Himalayas. I hiked through the peaks surrounding Cusco. I summited Humphreys Peak, the tallest mountain in Arizona. I walked through the Sierra Nevadas. I climbed a volcano in Bali. I explored the mountains of Banff.

Each place offered something different. And I fell for them all. Each mountain, a new love.2

But like most epic love stories, my mountain love comes with heartbreak. Climate change is altering these places. Glaciers are retreating. Snow arrives later and melts earlier. Summers grow hotter and drier, raising the risk of wildfires that reshape entire landscapes.

It was impossible to ignore the effects of climate change on the mountains while standing in front of Mount Cook with my son.

It was my first time seeing New Zealand’s highest peak in person.3 From a distance, the glaciers looked vast and permanent, like something that would always be there. But up close, the change was undeniable. You could see it in the exposed rock, in the way the ice no longer stretched as far down the valley as it once had. What should have felt solid and enduring instead felt fragile.

I held my son as we took in the beauty of Mt. Cook. But alongside that awe, I couldn’t help but wonder: What did this look like ten years ago? What will it look like ten years from now?

Getting to share my love of mountains with my sons is one of the things that gives me the most joy. But it comes with responsibility. My love for these places is what drives me to advocate for The Great Salt Lake, to leave no trace, to lobby for policies that protect our environment, to teach my son not just to cherish the mountains, but to stand up for them. Because when you love something deeply, you don’t stand by as it disappears. You fight with everything you have to keep it alive.

Sometimes, I wonder what life would have been like had I not moved to Seattle and stared at Mt. Rainier every morning from my apartment. Would I still feel this love for the mountains? This need to lace up my boots and hike?

Yes. I think so. I loved hiking and exploring long before I moved to Seattle. And though Rainier was my first mountain obsession, she definitely won’t be my last.