In mid-July, my sister Kristin and I backpacked the High Lonesome Loop in the Indian Peaks Wilderness outside of Boulder, Colorado. My sister, a teacher, has spent a lot of her summers over the last decade plus backpacking. She’s completed a number of long trails (the Colorado Trail, the John Muir Trail, the West Highland Way in Scotland, the Dingle Way in southwest Ireland, and a number of sections of the Appalachian Trail). The first - and last - time we backpacked together was during the pandemic when we spent three nights in early August 2020 backpacking in the Eagle Cap Wilderness in northeastern Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains.

I knew it’d be special to go backpacking together, just the two of us. I was both excited and a little nervous (it was my first backpacking trip in four years due to having twins three years ago… was I fit enough? how would my body feel hiking at altitude?). Mostly, I was just excited to spend a few days outside and have a brief reprieve from this beautifully wild season of life raising three young kids.