“There’s no rush.”  Wise people counsel patience when I explain I’m trying to complete the Grid for the Catskill High Peaks, an obscure project that entails climbing the thirty-five peaks in each calendar month.  But the project is important to me, and I feel a sense of urgency to get it done.

February has been weighing on my mind.  To start with, it’s a month of challenging conditions — and not surprisingly, my log shows I’ve tended to steer clear of the Catskills during February:  only fifteen of the high peaks are complete, which means there are twenty to go.  That would be a lot for a full month, but with a trip to New Zealand scheduled for the first half of February, those twenty peaks will need to be climbed when I return, that is, within a two-week period, of which, after subtracting various commitments and appointments, only a handful of days is available.

Some nights I lie awake, reviewing different approaches for each of the twenty peaks, trying to devise the most efficient routes to get them done in the available time.  Be safe, I remind myself, it’d be fine to finish off February next year — but then I go back to calculating how to pull this off — and wondering whether I have the strength to do so —  and feeling vaguely uneasy.

And now the plane from New Zealand is touching down at JFK, and here I am back in New York…

Continue reading “Back to the Cats: Completing the February Grid” →