NOTE: For the first half of this story, go here.
I called Dad, but my camera bag—with my driver’s license and credit card in it—wasn’t in his car. I thought through the last time I’d taken a picture. It was sometime before my stumble. I’d realized I’d taken it out of my bag to find my water, and in my exhaustion, I must’ve forgotten to put it back inside. And for once, I didn’t look back to double check that I had everything. That would’ve been somewhere between one and two hours up the trail.
The loss of it hit me like a boulder. I thought of the hour-long drive back to the trailhead. And the storm clouds. And the possibility of theft. There was the financial loss of something I use often for work and travel, during a time when we don’t have much margin for big purchases. And those pictures—all the pictures I’d just taken to remember a hike where I’d spent remembering my life—now possibly lost to me. Just as I was trying to make some sense of all that had happened, to gain some perspective, to face both the beauty and the struggles of our journeys, I’d lost the very thing that I’d used to capture what the hike had shown me.
And this loss—intruding on the hike in which I was attempting to process and put other losses behind me—seemed both unfair and yet, ironically, totally fitting. Like some kind of ancient saying that I didn’t want to believe, such as “loss begets loss.”
From my journal entries the previous year:
“I decided I’d wear a bloom from my plumeria tree (that my husband gave me years ago) every day until we have to go. The scent is lovely and reminds me of my kind, thoughtful, relentlessly supportive husband, and of how beauty grows when it enjoys an abundance of rich soil, rain and warm sunshine.
" ‘We kept things in this,’ my husband gently said this morning. We took a few minutes and listed things like: our integrity, our voice, our marriage, a healthy vision of leadership, and the respect of those we serve and work with on a daily basis.
“We'll need to pack up soon. I look around and know we can't bring everything we've accumulated in 14 years in the crate. I'm sure the choices will be so hard. A question comes to mind as I think about what my family most needs to build a new life. ‘What is worth keeping?’ The kids' favorite toys, traditional gifts from friends, a bamboo chair. Our integrity, our voice, love for each other, our faith based in truth and grace, and a heartbreaking experience that I hope, with time and healing, will give me bottomless compassion for others who feel losses like these too.”
Brad graciously offered to drive me back to the trailhead that evening. Sometimes other hikers will find lost items and kindly put them at the start of the trail. Maybe too, we could hike an hour or two back up the trail, find it at a bend next to the trail of pebbles that had followed me during my fall. We dropped the kids off at my parents’ house and drove back. I was pretty tough on myself in my head, beating myself up for my mistake. Brad wouldn’t let it rob me of my victory, though, encouraging me along the way.
But it wasn’t there, not at the trailhead, not in the dirt parking lot, not draped over the wooden fence separating the two. I asked a woman who was van camping in the parking lot if she could watch for it on her hike up the peak the next day. Then I nearly sprinted back up the trail. I was chasing after yet another loss, running from a failure, hoping for things just out of my reach and, though I was tired and my legs were weak and the rain was pelting us, and lightning was getting closer, I kept going.
“We have to go home,” Brad said after several minutes. “The storm’s coming. We have to get off this mountain.”
I didn’t want to stop. But he was right. For the second time that day, I stumbled my way back down the hill.
“Try to sleep and we’ll figure out what we need to do tomorrow,” Brad said when we got home.
I didn’t sleep well that night. I felt like I was back on that boulder field, stuck and little lost and about to fall and not sure I’d find my way to the top. I also remembered, as I do sometimes, things from our life in Indonesia that I don’t think about during the day, but sometimes come in dreams at night.
More from my journal shortly before we left Indonesia, as I wrestled with the reality of loss:
“One month to go until we leave Indonesia. We’re busy doing our ‘lasts’ and packing. My husband’s last float plane flight on these Borneo rivers (a very special day…so grateful we got to go along.) The last time to the orangutan preserve. Last meal at our favorite fish restaurant (with the most gorgeous sunset overlooking the river).
“Today I’m all dusty and sweaty from sorting. We have a couple of small crates we can ship. I open a drawer, try to decide what to try to sell, what to bring with us, what to give away. I’m doing my best to make the choices. But then when it gets too difficult from sentimentality or even just practicality. Do I keep the now well-used truck book a dear friend gave me for my firstborn? I abandon the drawer of stuff and move on to a different room, leaving piles all over the place.
“I know it’s just stuff. I could even buy that exact same book in the States soon, I’m sure. But here in our remote town in Indonesia, stuff has seemed to really matter. On stateside visits, we load up our bags with items we can’t get here. Plus, I’ve been my kids’ teacher, so all these books (in English!) I’ve accumulated were a part of our daily, sometimes isolated lives.
“We sold our ping pong table yesterday. It’s been a gathering place for our Indonesian friends (who are really good…it’s a big sport here). I was sad when I realized that we haven’t played it much as a family lately. We’ve been tired and stressed and slogging through our days. So, we stopped packing and played a last few games, laughing with all the crazy shots. Some other things make me chuckle, too. Our kids all learned to ride a bike on a bike that we’ve repaired again and again because here in Indonesia, you repair (as opposed to throw away) things that are broken. The bike’s pink pedals and green seat don’t match the original orange.”
I spent the day after my Pikes Peak hike working the problem. I called the credit card company and found out that, strangely, someone had used my card to buy something at a Wal-Mart in Georgia. So, I cancelled it. I figured out how to cancel my driver’s license, and then, for a fee, renew it online. “The good news is, you won’t have to get a new one for 10 more years,” the DMV guy said on the phone when I asked if I needed to do anything else to report the loss. Thanks. I’d just renewed it in October. I also called both the park service and the sheriff’s station in those small mountain towns, but no one had brought a camera into their offices. I texted the van-camper/hiker lady and asked if she’d seen it. Nope.
Brad and I talked about heading out to the trail again to look for it, but the possibility of finding it seemed slim, especially because of the Georgia credit card purchase. Maybe someone had found it and taken it for themselves, sold the credit card number. I resigned myself to the loss.
Then, mid afternoon, I got a Facebook message. It was from a woman who lived in Denver. She’d been hiking on part of the trail with her daughter—one of the people we’d passed near the end—found my camera, my driver’s license and credit card and was offering to mail it all to the address on the license. I couldn’t believe it. A few days later, I received her package, with everything intact, including the Indonesian money I’d put in there for my last bush airplane ride in Borneo. The credit card purchase, I believe, could’ve come from some other coincidental security breach, likely not from her.
In the whole scheme of things, her return of the camera didn’t save us from a life-changing loss. Though the pictures would’ve been lost, I could’ve eventually replaced the camera. But the choice she made to give and not take, to restore and not just walk away, means a lot to me. It also brought back memories—of kindness, advocacy, encouragement and sacrificial giving that others have shown me at other points of loss.
More from my journal:
“Yesterday, a dear, dear Indonesian friend brought me a gift. I don’t know how she could afford this gold ring—made from Borneo gold sluiced from the rivers on which my husband landed his float plane. She has little money of her own. It’s been our honor to welcome her and her kids into our home at various times through the years. She returned the favor at critical times, like sitting and massaging my shoulders when our critically ill 3-year-old son was waiting for emergency, risky surgery for appendicitis a couple years ago.
“I wanted to refuse the gift of her gold ring, to urge her to save her money for her family, to ask if she had food in her house to eat that night. For one crazy moment, I thought about just grabbing my wallet and asking if I could pay for it. But I thanked her instead, slipped it on my finger and hugged her tight. I look at my hand now through the dust and the memories and the boxes and the choices and the losses. And, despite how much this hurts now, I know I’m richer leaving here than I ever was when I first came.”
When I downloaded those now doubly-treasured hiking pictures, I realized I’d neglected to erase over a year’s worth of pictures from my camera’s memory card. To find my latest Pikes Peak pics, I had to comb through pictures of the last vacation we took in Asia before we left (Thailand! Beach! Elephants!), the last flight we took on the MAF plane that’s no longer there, pictures of friends and goodbyes and stuff we had to sell. Another chance to remember all that I loss, all that I gained, and all that I get to keep from a rich life in Indonesia.
