Mountain Climbers

Update: An essay by RBM about a father and son's attempt to climb Mount Rainier, the most heavily glaciated peak in the continental United States, was published this year in LandEscapes, a literary journal of the Washington State University English Department.

Reaching the Far Side

A column by RBM appears this spring in The Murrow Communicator, a publication of Washington State University's Edward R. Murrow School of Journalism. An excerpt:

A dozen shivering young landlubbers stood around the shallow end, clutching paddleboards and trying to ignore parents waving encouragement from the second floor balcony (to my dismay, Mom assured me she would leap to my rescue, tennis shoes and all, if I started to sink). Chlorine wafted off the turquoise depths, making me slightly woozy. Then the roll call from Ron, a jovial, pot-bellied fortysomething with a jaguar tattoo on his backside.