~from the top of Mt. Sneffels and thinking about Norman's footsteps~

A few years back Mike and several of his buddies climbed to the top of Mt. Sneffels, a 14,158 feet high mountain to the south of us in Ouray County.  Through some hard work and perseverance, they all made it and managed to live to tell the story.  The photo below shows him at the top surrounded by a panoramic view of beautiful scenery.  He loved doing it and would like to try yet another 14'er in the future.

The area that we live in here along the Western Slopes of Colorado is surrounded by a ring of 14'ers.  The view outside of our kitchen window is of the San Juan mountain range, the largest by area of all the ranges of mountains in our state.  Already on this the 5th day of October, they have their initial cover of snow for the season and since it is not even really winter yet, their snowy peaks will get even snowier as the season progresses.  As a flatlander from the Sunflower State of Kansas, I will long remember how it felt to see that massive and magnificent geographical landform the first time I came here in January of 2013.

At our elementary school in Olathe the children participate in a walking club throughout the school year.  Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during our noontime recess period all of the students head for the walking track to walk at least a lap or two before they go to play on the equipment or with their friends.  It's an expectation of them and I am happy to see it be so.  They need exercise, to move about in the great outdoors.  Soaking in fresh air and sunshine is good for kids and by the way, one more thought.  It's good for grownups too!

This year I decided that when it was a walking day for "the 22" that I would join them every chance I could.  If I expected them to get out there, then why would I not join them?  So I have.  This whole walking club idea was the marvelous thought of our wonderful P.E. teacher at Olathe and this year she came up with the idea of turning physical exercise into a mountain climbing experience for the kids.  This year's walking club is referred to as climbing "Colorado's Flat 14'ers".  Eight 14,000+ mountains were chosen and the number of steps it would take to get to the top and then back down to the bottom again were calculated.  Then those footsteps were translated into laps around our school's walking track.  Essentially when walking club is completed in May of 2015, students will have had the "virtual" opportunity to climb all eight of those mountains.  The first one we are doing is Mt. Sneffels, a climb of 12,000 steps or the equivalent of 40 laps around the walking track.  When we finish with Sneffels, we can then go on to Mt. Democrat, Mt. Sherman, Mt. Lincoln, Huron Peak, Handies Peak, Wetterhorn Peak and finally Creston Peak.  If I did the math right, that's the sum total of 360 laps around our track and since we have the next 7 months to do it in, we should have no trouble at all.

I doubt that there will ever be a photograph of Peggy Renfro standing on top of the real Mt. Sneffels or any of the other peaks mentioned above but at least in a virtual kind of manner, I can and shall.  As of Friday's walking club time, I'd finally made it halfway to the summit of Mt. Sneffels and hopefully by the end of the week, I'll have made it to the very top.  Of course, once you get to the "summit" it will be necessary to come back down again so I may not get to Mt. Democrat for a week or two but it's not like it's going anywhere anyways.  Each of the kids in class know that they can find me out there on the track with them and as they "lap" me (hey, it happens a lot) they always stop and ask me how I'm doing.  Sometimes one of them will slow up a bit and take my hand as they ask "Do you want me to walk with you Mrs. Renfro?"  I always wonder if I really look that bad or if they just miss me or something.  So sometimes we walk together for a minute or two and then I send them off running so they can get in an extra lap before they go to play.  You know, there are always plenty of things that I could do inside my classroom while the kids are outside but to me, it just makes sense to get out there with them for awhile.  Adults need fresh air and sunshine and what better way to get it than to get out and move?

I think of my good friend Norman Horn who, in less than one week's time, will have walked over 3,000 miles across America.  The somewhere near 107,000 steps it will take to complete our walking club activity during this school year will pale in comparison to the millions of steps that Norman will have made by the time his journey ends in Atlantic City on October 11th.  Surely if one 30-year old man can brave the elements and be on the road for over 6 months, one nearly 59-year old school teacher and her students can climb some flat 14'ers.

I nearly chose this past Friday to not go outdoors and walk during the noontime recess.  In the moments before it was time to dismiss the kids to go outside, I was thinking of every excuse in the book as to why I should stay inside instead of going out to walk.  There were papers to grade, things to clean up, activities to ready for the afternoon.  How on earth could I afford to be outdoors walking for nearly 15 minutes of time when I had so much else to do?  I was just going to dismiss them to go outside and then hope they would not realize that I was staying inside.  As I was passing out the walking club cards, the ones that are checked off after each lap is completed, one of the little girls came up to me and said,

"Teacher, can I please walk with you a lap this time?"

So out the door I went.  

Walking along the alfalfa field adjacent to 50 Highway this past spring~

Mike and Sally like to walk together every day.  She always joins us on our walks together.

At the end of a walk last spring~