Pre-wedding honeymoon: Adventures

Marilyn loved Phoenix. She took me to parks, desert museums, … , any and everything outdoors. We went over to the Lost Dutchman Mine Mountains. We hiked up Squaw Peak. While there, I went up on top of a rock that actually looked to be the highpoint, the peak, and she took my picture. When I offered to return the favor, she declined saying that such places were not for her.

Imagine my surprise when at the Grand Canyon, a place that at that time had no fences and the edge gave me vertigo, she went right out to the edge and looked down.

Our big adventure at the Grand Canyon was the one day, all day mule ride about two thirds of the down and back. Marilyn rode Shirley and I rode Shug. Now, these mules cannot be ridden side by side. They each had their special place in the long line with mine more toward the rear and Marilyn’s closer to the front. Furthermore, mule’s feet are not hard like a horse’s so every one of them walked on the softest part of the trail, the part with the most easily displaced soil, the outside edge. While I saw people leaning back toward the cliff side and people sitting very still and straight, I didn’t see anyone leaning out to look down, probably because you didn’t have to do so to actually see the bottom some thousands of feet below the edge your mule was on. Once we got down off the cliff onto the flatter stretch of trail another unique mule trait was on display: They all stopped one at a time at the same place and went to the bathroom. This led to a bottleneck that backed up the line and created gaps between mules that lasted until we stopped. Of course no mule would walk any faster to close the gap. They each knew where they were going and didn’t see any reason to use any more energy than they had to to get there.

One final mule story: A couple of the mules had diarrhea. This resulted in a green stream that shot out several feet behind them. When I first saw this I was grateful that I was at least two mules back from the problem mule and then I thought to check and make sure that Marilyn’s mule was also properly placed. I didn’t want this adventure to turn out to be a “shitty” one. That wouldn’t have helped the long-term plans that I was just forming.

Our drive to Crested Butte and skiing was adventure free. (The return trip wasn’t, but I’ll get into that later.)

This was my first time skiing so while Marilyn got individual intermediate instruction I joined the group of mostly small kids and learned how to fall and get back up. We did it enough that I was sore and exhausted and wondering whether or not this skiing thing was truly fun. When I was finally released from the training and we went out on nothing more dangerous than intermediate, I was glad for the lessons because I certainly put them to good use. Even Marilyn fell a couple of times but mostly she was waiting for me down the slope. Once when I caught up to her we both waited as my large knit cap, made overly large by the massive amounts of water it had absorbed from earlier falls, fell off well up slope. A nice skier, who didn’t fall, stopped precisely at the hat and easily brought it to me, nicely but unthreateningly showing me up.

It was on the last day on the very last run that I fell in love with skiing. We had already decided to go down the longer beginner slope for our last run. With the snow, it turned into a paradise. By this time I was parallel skiing and the limited visibility actually improved my technique because I wasn’t thinking about not falling, I was just enjoying. Of course, watching Marilyn skiing right in front of me was a great view, a great incentive, and most likely the primary source of my enjoyment.

The drive back to Phoenix began that very day. Remember we were a couple hundred miles further away than we had originally planned to be plus it was snowing. So, at the outset of our return I bought chains for the rental car in Gunnison. We discovered later that we were the last car to make it up the Million Dollar Highway before they closed the gates due to treacherous winds and snow. With our chains and a prudent speed we not only made it up the mountain slope but over the black ice that occurred later on a thankfully straight stretch of road. Did I mention that by this time it was full dark?

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Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.