Marilyn Koolstra
Appearances
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
And I'm pacing in my office thinking, what am I going to do about this?
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
It was an evening, so, you know, I'd come home from work and that's, you know, sort of when it all, all eventuated.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
You asked permission if you could walk. That was very respectful, empathic.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
I called my assistant principal, and for some reason she had decided to come home early. She was in transit when I got her at maybe Rome Airport or somewhere like that. She said, I'll be back in. I'll be there on Monday.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Went to a travel agent because they can far easier find flights than me sitting on the computer trying to do it.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
It hadn't ever occurred to me that I would take somebody, but it was a great sense of relief and support and comfort to go with somebody.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
Within the time frame that he was walking, I woke up in the middle of the night here with an awful sense of being alone. I don't usually feel alone. I can be alone, but I don't feel alone and lonely. And I dismissed it because I needed to have a bit more sleep so that I could function well in the day.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
And it was not until Eric was missing that I felt I made a bit of a connection with this, linking it to my life. aloneness in the middle of the night. So whilst you're saying I went over to join the search, but I also went with a big empty suitcase because I thought, I felt I was not bringing him back alive. I just felt that he was gone. I didn't feel that I was bringing my warm-handed Eric back.
Uinta Triangle
The Tyranny of Distance
There was an emptiness, you know, once that phone call came through.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Trekkers on the JMT follow Muir's footsteps through the Sierra Nevada Range in the U.S. state of California, passing through three national parks, Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia. Hiking that entire stretch takes time.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Growing up in a low-income family in Scotland, birthday parties weren't a regular thing. And he'd made comment that he'd only ever had one birthday party before in his life. It was also significant, too, that his mother died fairly young. So that was sort of an anxious period for him in his life. I've got as far as my mother lived.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
And so it was a celebration, one of his life, his healthy life, but also the fact that he hadn't had a party before.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Typical Australian party with the barbecues on, the braziers out the back, and everybody comes and goes and your whole house is filled with people.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Every gift Eric received reflected his love of nature in some way. His friends all knew hiking wasn't just a fun holiday for Eric. It's what provided his life purpose. He told Marilyn he was going to retire, so he'd have the freedom to travel and tackle even more long trails.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
But Marilyn wasn't always available or interested in the more ambitious hikes Eric wanted to do. In her absence, he had turned to Alan as his trekking partner. That is, until their falling out on the JMT. Alan was making overtures, trying to patch up their differences. But stubborn Eric wasn't ready to mend the fence. Instead, he encouraged Marilyn to quit her job and join in his adventures.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
But I was still energetic, passionate, involved in my teaching chores, and I resisted his hints to retire.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
When she was ready, maybe in a few years, she would step away from her job and join him. But in the meantime, they came to an understanding. Marilyn gave Eric her permission to hike alone.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Every relationship fosters and grows well if people have their own space and their own interests and you're not tied to each other's apron strings or glued at the hip and you can go off and do things and come back and relate and enjoy and share.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
But they agreed Eric needed two new pieces of gear if he was going out solo. First, a handheld GPS unit. Remember, this was 2007, before everyone carried a smartphone. GPS devices were far less common. Eric had learned how to navigate with a map and compass, but GPS would be an important tool if he ever got lost.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
You could set in where you were going. You know, it recorded where he wanted to go and look how far I've walked and look how far I've climbed. And, you know, you could plot and plan on that.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
The second new piece of gear they bought was a big, chunky DSLR camera. So Eric could show Marilyn photos of the amazing places he visited. Retirement meant Eric didn't bump into his estranged hiking buddy Alan at work anymore. It was the lunchroom connection that started it all. And the lack of that lunchroom connection slowed their reconciliation. Eric and Alan were on speaking terms.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
It also takes planning, persistence and a good backpack. So Eric did some shopping before departing.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
I don't think there was a, I'm never going to speak to you again. It was, I'm not going hiking with him ever again.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Alan tried to break down that barrier. He invited Eric on a trip to New Zealand in early 2008. Alan wanted to climb the summit of Tititia, Mount Aspiring, the Matterhorn of the South, an imposing fang of grey rock.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
There was discussion beforehand of Alan encouraging Eric to climb Mount Aspiring.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Getting to the top would require crossing glaciers and making some steep, exposed climbs. That's mountaineering.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Eric goes, oh no, you know, in our discussion, I don't think I want to do that. You know, I'm not experienced in that. It's a young person's thing. It's Alan's thing. I don't really want to do that and hold him back.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
He instead made his own plans to go to New Zealand by himself to solo hike the Cascade Saddle, a challenging trekking route just to the southeast of Mount Aspiring. Marilyn felt apprehensive, but took comfort in the idea Alan would be close by if anything went wrong, which it soon did.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
It was time to get a new backpack because the other one had, you know, worn a few holes.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
They went off in different directions, or they arrived at different times, but the base was Blanica.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
The tourist town of Wanaka sits at the foot of a beautiful lake. There's a footpath along the shore. Eric and Alan bumped into each other there. Eric said he expected to be back from the Cascade Saddle before Alan left for Mount Aspiring, so they could grab a drink when their paths crossed again. Then Eric headed off on his trek, which brings us back to where our story first started.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Marilyn, receiving that phone call from Alan, letting her know Eric was overdue.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
He was confident that it was just a rain delay and instead of walking in the pouring rain, you would stay dry in your tent.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
But hours passed, stretching into a full day with no word from Eric. Marilyn wondered, what if he had slipped, fallen, and cracked his head on a rock? No one would know.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Eric didn't like the color red. I love the color red. I wear lots of red. I enjoy red, you know, and if I've got a high-powered day where I need to feel confident, I would wear something red. but not Eric. Marilyn expected her husband would buy the blue one. But it was red. And I said, oh, yeah, you've gone red. It's not red. Anyway, the argument went backwards and forwards. It's not red.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
So I called Department of Foreign Affairs and they liaised with New Zealand. The message went down the track and all the conservation department workers were on alert.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Still, no word came. Where was Eric? Every passing minute cast additional doubt in Marilyn's mind that her husband was simply sitting in a tent, waiting out a storm. But it seemed all she could do was wait and hope. A haggard hiker carrying a red backpack walked up to the aspiring hut on the side of the Matuketuki River around midday on March 2nd, 2008.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
And one of the workers, a Scottish lady, was standing at the door of the hut and Eric walked in and she said, oh, you're Mr. Robinson, I presume.
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Aspiring
the door fell shut behind Eric. He shrugged off his pack and explained how he had sheltered in his tent atop Cascade Saddle for two straight days. When the storm broke that morning, he rushed to make a treacherous descent down to the hut.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
It all seemed a bit silly to Eric. He hadn't realized anyone was looking for him. Eric made it back to Wanaka a day later and called home to let Marilyn know he was okay.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Oh, he called. Yeah, what were you thinking? What were you doing? You're a troublemaker. Look what you've done. Caused a bit of concern. And we had a bit of a laugh about it, but we also talked about the safety angle of that.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Eric's safety was never in question, at least from his perspective. Marilyn saw it differently. Yes, Eric had come out of this situation okay, but getting stranded on Cascade Saddle highlighted how his choice to go out alone amplified the risks he faced. Marilyn told Eric how awful she'd felt during those uncertain hours. She didn't want to go through that ever again. So she said,
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
He shrugged her off, saying, don't worry so much. I'm fine. In fact, he was already repacking Ruby, getting ready to go out on another solo hike. He went to buy some food and ran into Alan.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
They crossed paths fleetingly because Alan held back in Wanaka to make sure that Eric was safe. I think maybe a day's delay. And they had maybe a five-minute, ten-minute conversation.
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Aspiring
Alan took an extra pair of crampons in case his friend would change his mind and they would climb together.
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Aspiring
But Eric said no. That would have been Eric's kind of last chance to say, OK, yep, I'm jumping and going up.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Yeah, I'm not coming. I'm not climbing. I don't want to delay you. I'm not familiar. I haven't walked in crampons. I don't want to hold the team up.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Alan slapped his friend on the shoulder and said he was glad Eric had made it back safe. They agreed to reconnect in a few days to swap stories. Then Alan dashed off to board the helicopter that would fly him up to the shoulder of Mount Aspiring.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Marilyn's plea to not hike alone fell on deaf ears, because Eric went right back out again, alone. He spent the next several days out of cell service, with no way of knowing the tragedy that was unfolding on the icy flanks of the mountain above. A blizzard descended as Alan Beck and his climbing partner Andy made their first attempt at the summit of Mount Aspiring on March 4th.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
They retreated to the safety of a hut, waited a day for the storm to die down, then made a second attempt. Once again, high wind and white-out snow drove them back. At the hut on March 7th, Alan talked to another pair of climbers, Cameron and Anna. They all agreed the weather made the peak too dangerous to climb, and the wind would prevent helicopters from retrieving them.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
That ruby red backpack made Eric easy to spot on the JMT. It stood out against the natural colors of nature. And Ruby later became a key target for searchers when Eric disappeared. My name is Dave Cauley, and you are listening to Uinta Triangle, an audio documentary from KSL Podcasts. This is Episode 2, Aspiring.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
So the two parties decided to join together and hike across the Bonner Glacier to a place called Bevan Call, where they could descend to safety in the Matuketuki River Valley. Cameron had a radio. He used it to inform friends back in Wanaka of the plan. He said if they didn't make contact again by Saturday, those friends should alert search and rescue.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
The four climbers then left the hut and started across the glacier. Progress came slowly. They were about halfway across the ice when the ever-changeable New Zealand weather took yet another turn. Heavy snow fell, cutting visibility, a treacherous situation when walking across an ice field riven with crevasses. They decided to stop and wait out the weather.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Alan pitched his tent on the ice, and the party of four huddled inside. They spent an entire day trapped in that tiny cocoon. Then, on the morning of Saturday, March 9th, with the storm still blasting outside, Alan told the group he was going to scout for a way off the glacier. He put on his coat and crampons, but left his climbing helmet and stepped out into a swirl of snow.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
The weather cleared a few hours later. The party was by that point overdue. A search and rescue team flew up to the glacier that afternoon to retrieve the stranded climbers. All but Alan, who they couldn't find. Eric arrived back in Wanaka that same day. He expected to find Alan there. Instead, he experienced a role reversal.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Now, Eric was the one making phone calls to let friends and family in Australia know Alan was missing.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Eric called me and he was extremely upset. You know, I had to keep asking, what did you say? Tell me that again. Explain what happened.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
It took two days for the rescuers to find Alan, his lifeless body tucked under an ice shelf at the glacier's edge. It appeared he had lost his footing and fallen on a steep section of ice. He'd probably flailed as he picked up speed, trying to stop the slide. But he couldn't. One of his crampons had come off. Alan launched over the edge, making a 10-meter drop onto bedrock.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
He was scooted back into a hollow, in a seated position, suggesting he survived the initial fall and sought shelter from the weather. But he had suffered severe chest and head trauma. A coroner later determined Alan died from internal bleeding.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
He was cremated in Wanaka. Eric went to that small ceremony or that happening with Alan's wife, Amanda.
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Aspiring
Alan's death weighed on Eric. His anguish poured out in phone calls with Marilyn.
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Aspiring
He was there, he was alone, he was clearly distressed, and I went to be with him.
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Aspiring
They met in Christchurch, then traveled to the small seaside town of Akaroa, where they quietly marked Eric's 61st birthday. It was a stark contrast to the big party a year prior. Eric showed Marilyn photos he had taken during his Cascade saddle hike with their new DSLR camera.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
One showed his red backpack at the top of the saddle, looking across the Matuketuki River Valley toward a fog-shrouded Mount Aspiring. The picture seemed ominous in retrospect. Eric couldn't stop thinking about what might have happened if he had accepted Alan's invitation. Maybe his friend would still be alive.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
There were many debriefings over that and processing everything that had happened.
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Aspiring
He kept expecting a call from Alan's wife, letting him know if and when she intended to hold a memorial service back in Australia.
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Aspiring
But he hadn't heard and that distressed him even more and he couldn't understand why.
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Aspiring
Marilyn finally called home and learned Alan's celebration of life was happening the next day. She and Eric rushed to the airport. The printed program for that service included two photos of Alan. Eric had taken them both during their trek in Patagonia.
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Aspiring
The program also included a quote from famed New Zealander and mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, who, along with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, was the first man known to have summited Mount Everest. You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things. To compete, you can be just an ordinary chap sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
To Marilyn, Alan's death highlighted the inherent dangers of mountain travel. She thought it might be an inflection point for Eric, where he paused to question the wisdom of going alone. But he rationalized it. Telling her what happened to Alan couldn't happen to him. He was a trekker, not a mountaineer. He avoided ice.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Different set of circumstances, too. something that Eric had experienced before and would not have been doing himself.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Eric Robinson and Alan Beck started their hike on the JMT in August of 2006, beginning from the bottom of the Yosemite Valley.
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Aspiring
Marilyn wasn't so sure. She had just endured having her husband go missing, followed by the death of his closest trekking buddy.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
We then started talking about strategies of, you know, what you would do, but preferably, Eric, not walking by yourself.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
As the initial shock of Alan's death started to fade, Eric settled back into his routine. But he soon found retirement left him with too much idle energy
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Every day he would walk up to the post office and along to the bakery, fresh bread, milk, and then back down again. So he had his cardio exercise, you know, just doing daily things. But he did get a little bit bored and ended up being a maintenance man at my school and a gardener.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Marilyn's kids joked about Eric turning into groundskeeper Willie, the cantankerous bald-headed Scottish school gardener from The Simpsons.
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Aspiring
But unlike Willie, Eric relished his role at the school. He accompanied Marilyn on school camps. She shared a video from one where a grade five student interviewed groundskeeper Eric.
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Aspiring
Alan and Eric were very social on that trip, and of course there are a lot of people coming onto the trail at various points along there.
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Aspiring
Eric had matured, so much so, I tend to forget the stories I've heard about how he struggled with fatherhood as a younger man.
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Aspiring
Marilyn's kids were by this point raising children of their own. They called him Granddad Eric. Many other men in Eric's place would start settling down in retirement, trading in their hiking boots for golf shoes. But Eric wasn't like many other men. He was an ordinary chap, sure, but a furnace of motivation still burned within him. Hiking had become his core drive.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
The experience in New Zealand didn't change that. But Alan's death meant Eric lost the chance to reconcile with the partner he had come to depend on for those grand adventures.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
He knew that he wouldn't be doing such trips ever again with somebody, you know, that really had the same passion. And he was hopeful that I would retire earlier, perhaps, and, you know, join him on some of those walks that he wanted to do.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
But Marilyn still wasn't ready to retire. Eric felt disappointed, even frustrated. He said if she wouldn't retire, he'd just keep trekking alone. Life had taught Marilyn the value of independence. She believed in Eric's right to autonomy as well as her own. But that belief was crashing like a wave against a wall of fear. She couldn't stand the thought of losing him.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
The act of loving Eric, by its nature, meant she did depend on him. Still, she forced herself to honor their agreement.
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Aspiring
Understanding that you have separate interests or life journeys or stories or places that you want to pursue alone. You have your space to do that.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
About six months after Alan's death, Eric headed to Scotland alone. He hiked the Cape Wrath Trail, touted as the toughest long-distance walk in the UK. He went to Tasmania six months after that to hike the Port Davie and South Coast tracks. These two trails cross an extremely remote stretch of wilderness along Tassie's windswept southern coast. Again, Eric walked alone.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Both times, Marilyn caught herself wondering if something terrible might have happened during the weeks when her husband was out of contact. The anxiety felt corrosive. It ate at her like a cancer. So when Eric proposed his next big adventure, to Nepal, she refused to let him go alone.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Eric dreamed of trekking in the Himalaya, or Himalayas in colonizer speak, home to the highest mountains on Earth. Annapurna is the 10th highest mountain in the world. The circuit is a long trekking route around the massive mountain.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
You can do it by yourself, which was what Eric liked to do. He didn't want to take guides, so he didn't want to have to have that constraint and responsibility more of another person.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Completing the circuit would require three weeks, a much longer trek than any Marilyn had ever attempted. She wondered if she was up to the task. Altitude sickness is the biggest risk. It's a result of the body's response to lower oxygen pressure at higher elevations. And it can affect even conditioned athletes if they rush too high, too fast.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Julia was no stranger to long hikes. She had through-hiked the Appalachian Trail a few years earlier. That's a walk from Georgia to Maine, through the dense forests of the eastern U.S. Julia had spent a year in Japan afterward, but was now back stateside with no commitments.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
He hadn't really done anything of that altitude, neither had I. Crossing the circuit's highest point, Thurong Law Pass, would put Eric and Marilyn both at risk for altitude sickness. If left untreated, altitude sickness can cause cerebral or pulmonary edema, life-threatening conditions where fluid builds up around the brain or lungs.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
So we were very conscious that we had to monitor our bodies and act accordingly.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
Eric and Marilyn flew to Kathmandu that September, then took a long bus ride to the start of the track. It was hot to start, and as we got higher, it got cooler. They ascended into evergreen forest, gaining jaw-dropping views of the Annapurna Massif, its high summits brilliant white with year-round snow. They came to the village of Manang, where they paused for a day to let their bodies acclimate.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
One way to stave off altitude sickness is to hike to a high point during the day, then retreat down to sleep at a lower elevation. So on their rest day in Menang, Eric and Marilyn walked up a steep hill to Prakengumpa, a tiny Buddhist monastery chiseled into the side of a cliff.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
It was folklore that you went up there and got a blessing for safe passage. So we made that trek to get to the holy man.
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Aspiring
They each bought a good luck charm from the monk. A necklace made from a hand-plated string looped through an old coin with a hole in the middle. From Menang, they trekked west and north, climbing constantly.
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Aspiring
So it was steep, it was rocky, it was imposing. And then the night before we did the pass, it snowed. So everything was silent and it was a beautiful postcard picture of
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Aspiring
They started for the pass in the dim blue light of pre-dawn. Within a few hours, they reached the last outpost of civilization, a small stone hut where a Nepali man served hot tea.
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Aspiring
And the overpowering smell of kerosene, if I close my eyes, I can still smell that.
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Then they stepped back out and made the final push to the pass. At last, they reached the top. Strings of tattered Tibetan prayer flags came together at a large sign that said, Congratulations for the success, in painted yellow letters, along with the elevation, 5,416 meters, or 17,769 feet. That's more than three miles high, about halfway to the cruising altitude of a commercial airliner.
Uinta Triangle
Aspiring
This pass seemingly to me was the Mount Everest of my walking and probably the Mount Everest of Eric's as well.
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Aspiring
The Annapurna trek wasn't the only experience Eric and Marilyn shared in Nepal. They went to an orphanage school and saw how the staff there struggled to meet the needs of the kids.
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Eric was always confronted by the difference in treatment between the rich white hikers and expeditioners and the conditions that the Nepalese faced.
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He felt so moved. He pledged financial support to the school with a recurring donation out of his pension. Eric's understanding of the inequalities came into sharper relief a year later, when he received an invite to return to Nepal. He joined an expedition co-led by a mountaineer named Stuart Morris.
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Aspiring
Stuart was about 20 years younger than Eric, but he had hiked with both Eric and Alan Beck in the past. He's even been to where Alan died.
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Stewart and a buddy made plans to attempt a climb of a mountain in the neighborhood of Everest in 2010.
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Getting there would require a week-long trek. They invited several friends, including Eric, to join them for that part of the trip. They went expedition style, with a hired team of Nepali porters carrying most of their gear.
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Marilyn saw Eric off at the Melbourne airport, where he and the party posed for photos with an Australian flag. Eric also snuck in a Scottish flag to fly at their camps.
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That was a statement of, you know, this is the Australian Scottish expedition. That's what that was about.
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Even though I'd give him a journal, you know, when he went a second time to Nepal, I said, write it down. No, he didn't do that. He was not a writer. He was a talker.
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And increasingly, a photographer. Eric took many photos on this trek. Using the photos, I can trace the path of the party as they arrived in Kathmandu, then flew to Lukla, a destination familiar to anyone who knows the history of Everest.
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They landed at Tenzing Hillary Airport. It's sometimes called the most dangerous airport in the world because the runway's short, on a slope, and dead ends against the mountainside. It's often closed with no warning due to strong winds and low visibility.
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From there, the party trekked to a village called Kare. They paused there to prepare for the next leg of their journey up and over a glacier-covered pass called Mera La.
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One of Eric's photos show him doing this training, wearing crampons and a harness, roped up on an angled slab of ice.
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It's the closest Eric had ever been to a true mountaineering experience, but he never put the training to the test.
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In fact, Eric was 59 and Alan was 48. Julia took an immediate liking to Eric.
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I do wonder if crossing the glacier made Eric nervous, knowing what had happened to his friend Alan. Stuart told me he saw Eric overcome by emotion at several points on the journey.
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When the party made it to the foot of Shamlung, they split into two. Stuart and his climbing partner made base camp and prepared to attack the mountain, while Eric and the other trekkers turned around and started walking back the way they had come. This meant crossing Mara Pass again, and while there, the trekkers intended to visit a nearby summit.
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Aspiring
A trekking peak is one you can get to the top of without mountaineering skills or climbing gear. Mira is one of the highest trekking peaks in the world. Its summit is nearly 6,480 meters above sea level, or about 21,250 feet. That's higher than Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, higher than Denali in Alaska.
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A disappointment soon overshadowed when two members of the party developed altitude sickness. One was Eric's tent partner, Peter.
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Eric could only watch as Peter's condition deteriorated. He developed cerebral edema and pneumonia, a life-threatening situation. The party called for a helicopter to evacuate him.
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It was a race against time. A shored window of fair weather finally allowed a chopper to reach them. It flew Peter to a hospital in Kathmandu, where, thankfully, he recovered. But the other person who got sick, one of the porters, never made it off the mountain.
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Eric's pictures prove he spent a lot of time getting to know the Nepali team. He took the porter's death hard.
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When I picked him up from the airport, he was still in a great state of agitation and distress about the inequalities.
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The first stretch of the JMT carried them up past Half Dome, one of Yosemite's iconic landmarks. Julia marveled, seeing rock climbers clinging to the sheer granite walls. Eric compared it to Patagonia, where he'd hiked with Alan a few years earlier.
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Aspiring
Those inequalities come in many forms. Like, for example, I don't even know this porter's name and have no way of finding it. Mountaineering fatalities are tracked in Nepal, but this porter's death occurred on a trek, not a climb, so it wasn't reported.
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Eric felt shocked at seeing how the locals who shoulder the burden of the trekking trade in Nepal aren't treated as equals to the affluent outsiders.
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Eric wouldn't, or couldn't, see that his tent partner Peter might have died too, if not for the support of the team and a lucky break in the weather. Twice in the space of two years, Eric confronted death in the mountains. Still, he insisted it couldn't happen to him. Eric started planning a trip to North America in early 2011.
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He set his sights on two separate trails considered to be difficult, though he figured neither would prove as challenging as the places he had already been.
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He had asked if I wanted to come because he was always inclusive and hopeful that I would join in on these adventures. But it was the start of Term 3, which is a Very busy, intense teaching time and a lot happening in schools. And I said, well, you know, I can't or more, I won't.
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Marilyn's kids were also uncomfortable with the idea of their mom doing another big trek with Eric, given what had just happened.
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But he convinced them, you know, I've got the GPS. I've got a map. It's a trail. I'm just following the trail.
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He figured it would take him about a week to hike a trail called the Uinta Highline in the U.S. Then he would fly to Canada to tackle the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. Two epic walks done back to back.
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You know, he had a detailed Excel spreadsheet of days, dates, names, costs. It was meticulously planned.
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Since Marilyn refused to go, Eric reached out to his friend Julia Geisler from the JMT.
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He emailed Julia and said, I'm doing this. Would you like to join me? Feel free. I'd love your company.
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Julia shared updates about her life, too. She'd moved to a place called Park City, a ski resort town in the state of Utah. That's one of the landlocked western states. The Highline Trail Eric wanted to hike ran through a mountain range just east of Park City called the Uintas.
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If you don't live in a place with big mountains and strong seasons, you might miss the significance of a big snow year. Utah's mountains are like batteries. They collect snow from storms that blow in off the Pacific each winter. That snowpack builds until the weather warms in the spring, melting the snow and releasing the water into rivers and streams.
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And the highest parts of the Uinta Mountains, where the Highline Trail runs, are always the last to melt out. That means hikers usually have just a narrow window when the trail is snow-free in July, August, and maybe September. The trail's high elevation passes are packed with snow any time outside of that.
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Eric scheduled his trip during that window in July and August. But 2011 was an unusual year. The Uinta snowpack was the deepest on record, and a cold snap that spring delayed the start of the melt by several weeks.
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Julie had only lived in Utah a few years by that point, but she had been a skier her whole life and recognized how unusual these conditions were. It seemed like more risk than she wanted to tackle. But I'm not clear just how strongly she communicated that to Eric.
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She agreed to host Eric in Park City for a few days before he set off on his hike. But her decision not to accompany Eric left Marilyn feeling uneasy with her husband's plan. She applied pressure, telling Eric he shouldn't go without someone to watch his back. Her kids were more blunt, telling him what happened to Alan could happen to you.
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We want to have you having a safe trek, and we want to have you back home again.
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Some of these conversations grew heated, but Eric didn't budge. I've been in his shoes, I've heard loved ones grumble when I insist on going out into nature alone, and I've ignored them because I trust in my skills and abilities. But if I'm being honest, that's also landed me in trouble a time or two."
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Eric was a trekker or bushwalker, someone who travels on trails. Alan was a mountaineer. That's more specialized, a combination of hiking, scrambling, and climbing, often without a trail, sometimes over snow and ice. You don't have to be a mountaineer to hike the JMT, but keep this difference in mind because it will matter later in our story.
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Eric understood the concern, but he wasn't willing to give up on his ambition, so he came up with a compromise. He bought an EPUB. That's short for Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. In other words, a distress signal. If Eric ran into trouble, he could press a button. It would send an SOS message to search and rescue by satellite, along with GPS coordinates for his location.
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Eric Robinson loved to read. He spent his mornings in his garden with a cup of tea and a book, the Alaskan adventure fiction of Jack London, the mountaineering tales of John Krakauer, and the musings of naturalist John Muir.
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The beacon wasn't a phone. It didn't text. It could only send one message. HELP. Marilyn still felt uneasy.
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But he was determined to go and he had the EPIRB and he was well into his planning of being able to walk that solo.
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She had to make a choice. Forbid Eric from going or accept it. Refusing to let him go would violate their understanding and her own morals. It would tear the fabric of their love, perhaps irreparably. And he might just go anyway. So she made her peace. Eric's flight was scheduled to depart on Thursday, July 21st.
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He cooked dinner for Marilyn the night before and in the morning loaded his red backpack into the trunk of her car.
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I took him out to the airport and he said, just drop me there. And I've gone, no, I'm parking the car. We'll go inside and we'll have a cup of tea once you've booked in your bags. And we did.
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When Eric stood to go, he took Marilyn's hands in his. She felt the warmth in them that she so loved. They kissed.
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Pulling back, he said with a smirk, Now, hen, you behave while I'm away. Then they broke the embrace.
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He went off through the gate, and I went home. And later that day, this beautiful bunch of flowers arrived.
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The afterglow of that departure lingered on Marilyn's lips for the next few days. She received sporadic updates from Eric by text message as he made his way to Utah.
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He was having a great time with Julia. Devin had come across from San Francisco.
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Eric, Julia, and Devin all felt Alan's absence from this reunion of their JMT Trail family, but tried not to let that overshadow the joy of being back together. Julia showed Eric and Devin around her adopted home in Utah, even taking them to a rock climbing wall in the Uinta Mountains. She invited Eric to try a pitch. He didn't climb. He didn't want to climb.
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But he took pictures with his DSLR, as Julia showed Devin how to clamber up the rock face. On the last night before Eric departed for his hike, Julia watched as he loaded Ruby, the big red rucksack.
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Eric had crammed all that food into one of those bear canisters I talked about earlier. And he had slapped an Australian flag sticker on the side. That way he would know it was his if a bear batted it away in the middle of the night.
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From the Yosemite Valley, the JMT travels to a place called Tuolumne Meadows. The trail turns south there and breaks out of the trees before crossing Donahue Pass. They were in the alpine, above timberline, where no trees grow. A very different environment from the places Julie had hiked before.
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That included his new emergency beacon. Eric was ready to go. He would depart for the Uinta Highline first thing the next morning. It's at least a half-day trip from where Julia lived in Park City to the start of the trail. To get there, he would take a Greyhound bus to the city of Vernal.
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Eric would then walk the length of the Uinta Range, emerging at the far end, where Julia planned to meet him ten days later. The plan was set. At 8 a.m. the next morning, Thursday, July 28th, Julia drove Eric to the Greyhound stop.
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Uintah Triangle includes immersive field recordings made in real outdoor locations. For the best listening experience, please consider using a good pair of stereo headphones. And if you'd like to build a better picture of the places we visit, you can find maps, photos, and video at UintahTriangle.com. That's Uintah spelled U-I-N-T-A Triangle dot com.
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Find us on social media using at Uintah Triangle. Bringing you this story has been an effort years in the making. To support this kind of work, please follow the show and share it with your friends. You can also help us by subscribing to Lemonada Premium right in your podcast player. It gets you access to exclusive bonus episodes. Here's producer Andrea Smartin with a peek at the latest bonus.
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Uinta Triangle is researched and written by me, Dave Colley. I also did the field recording. Andrea Smartin is lead producer and sound designer, with contributing producers Ben Kebrick and Jenny Amint. Our main score and original music are by Allison Leighton-Brown. Additional voices in this episode from Alex Keery. Uintah Triangle is a production of KSL Podcasts and Lemonada Media.
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My personal thanks to the following past and present members of the KSL Podcasts team. Aaron Mason, Amy Donaldson, Felix Bunnell, Josh Tilton, Nina Ernest, and Ryan Meeks. Lemonada executive producers are Jessica Cordova-Kramer and Stephanie Wittleswax. And for KSL Podcasts, our executive producer is Cheryl Worsley. Finally, from me to you, please remember...
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But the tall mountains of the Sierra are prone to bouts of bad weather. Bursts of wind and rain can lash hikers. Eric and Alan both came prepared.
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Getting soaked in the mountains can put a hiker at risk for hypothermia. Eric and Alan put up tents each night, attaching rainflies to make sure they stayed dry.
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Hanging a tarp with no trees takes ingenuity. It worked okay for Julia on this trip, mostly because the weather remained calm. Could have been a different story in a storm.
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But that's part of the fun of this kind of camping. Testing your skills, equipment, and spirit against challenging conditions. Sometimes scraping by with just the bare essentials. Julia could see her new friend Eric didn't compromise when it came to safety. But his ambitions in the outdoors were growing, along with the potential dangers.
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John Muir was a Scotsman who established trails and parks and part of the wilderness conservation in America.
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Day after day, she saw her new Aussie friend, Eric, on the trail. Always had this huge backpack on. She learned to recognize him from a distance by the backpack's ruby color. It was red.
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Eric brought such a big backpack because he needed space for a bear canister. The High Sierra is home to black bears, and hikers use canisters to keep their food secure. But they can only hold about a week's worth of food. That meant Eric and Alan had to leave the trail a few times to resupply. So they leapfrogged Julia and Devin.
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That's Eric's wife, Marilyn. She previously told us about a time when Eric disappeared while hiking alone in New Zealand.
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Over time, Eric, Alan, Julia and Devin merged into what some hikers call a trail family. And they weren't the only members. Another thru-hiker was named Jonathan McCauley, and he was a little bit ahead of us. Jonathan was hiking the JMT solo, but he sometimes hung back to socialize. When Devin celebrated her 25th birthday on the trail, Jonathan went to town and came back with pizza and beer.
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Trail magic takes many forms. It's a free ride for a hitchhiking trekker, or spritz of bug spray to a stranger who forgot their own. An act of generosity. Hiking's a funny hobby in this way. It can simultaneously be the most solitary activity and the most social.
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Eric and Julia would have probably never met any other way. But their chance encounter on the JMT turned into a friendship that will have major repercussions later in our story. For now, just know Eric leaned into his role as the father of this ad hoc trail family.
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I'll remind you, Eric's friend Alan Beck was supposed to meet him at the end of that trek.
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Eric lived for this grand adventure. But he told Julia he wished he could share it with his wife, Marilyn.
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The JMT ends just below Mount Whitney, the highest point in the lower 48 states. Eric and Julia both woke early on their last day so they could ascend Whitney's summit for sunrise. As they approached the top, they passed behind a series of pinnacles.
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One night I got a phone call from Alan and he said he hasn't come in. We haven't met up yet.
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Returning to civilization after weeks in the wild, without cell service or news from the outside world, can feel jarring. After finishing the JMT, Julia and Devin headed to San Francisco.
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I flew over to San Francisco to meet Eric after he and Alan came off the trail. And the first thing I hear, we've been invited to a party tonight. It's across the bay. We're going across the bay to a party. It's Devin's birthday.
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We'll get back to what happened in New Zealand soon. But first, I think it's helpful for you to know a bit more about Eric's friendship with Alan. In particular, we need to talk about an experience they shared before the New Zealand trip. They walked the John Muir Trail. The John Muir Trail, or JMT, is one of the world's top hiking destinations.
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It was like stepping back in time to university, and there were people everywhere, and everybody was drinking, eating, chatting, talking, having a great time. Marilyn really hit it off with Julia and Devin, in spite of the age gap. So Devin and Julia are lifelong friends for both of us, you know, from that walk.
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And I guess he was a bit angry after a few, you know, differences there. And I'm not going to walk with him and I'm not going to do anything more again.
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You know, how they'd manage things along the way, or who did what, or whatever was the conflict there.
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Look, I've done long trips like this. Being stuck with people, even ones you like, can strain friendships. Little disagreements get under your skin, like a sliver in your thumb.
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I also wonder if Eric's irritation had to do with pace. Being older, he didn't hike as fast as Alan.
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I recall one instance where Eric would say, you know, he'd just charge off and I wouldn't know what was going on. And Eric liked to know what was going on.
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Whatever the case, Marilyn figured it would blow over. Eric's friendship with Alan and the adventures it enabled were too valuable to give up. Eric and Marilyn spent a couple days in San Francisco, then rented a car and drove to Yosemite. They went to an overlook called Glacier Point. Marilyn marveled at the view, listening to woodpeckers and jays busy in the trees below. I saw my first bear.
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We went through the Sequoia Forest. They visited Tuolumne Meadows, where a gurgling river runs through verdant fields bursting with birdsong. It was the first time Marilyn had seen a high elevation, subalpine meadow like this. There's no place like it in Australia. It felt magical. They left Yosemite late in the afternoon, driving east out of the park into the arid, empty expanse of Nevada.
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We drove all night to get to Las Vegas for a Celine Dion concert. We just made that.
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Eric relaxed in the driver's seat with one hand on the wheel. Marilyn held his free hand in her own.
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Eric had always warm hands. He could always count on that. I have cold hands, so it's kind of a thing that I liked.
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They'd burned a mix CD with some of their favorite songs to fill the time during the drive. The tunes were epic and intimate. The score from Dances with Wolves juxtaposed against Girl from Yesterday by the Eagles.
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We went then to Grand Canyon, and we camped and walked and explored Grand Canyon.
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The mixed CD played again as they drove to Los Angeles to catch their flight home. Marilyn sang along to the Carly Simon song, It Was So Easy. Now we're grown with debts and regrets and broken hearts and sentimental schemes. Now every tender failure seems to overthrow old dreams. Love can lead a normal woman to extremes. Eric turned 60 about six months later in March of 2007.
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You know, childhood memories, family memories, things growing up, all sorts of memories.
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There were four children aged from 8 to 18 in various stages of education. There were severe financial restrictions. We had to sell the family home. You know, I was renting for a while.
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No matter what was happening every night, we sat down for dinner and we had dinner together. You know, it wasn't an easy time, but it was a time that gave all of us different strengths whilst being very emotional and challenging.
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Helen died about the same time as my marriage broke down, so we were sort of timing, pacing together in that grieving process and getting your life back in order and sort of moving on.
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He enjoyed and he loved the fact that I was independent and not just in a relationship for support or, you know, financial support.
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His grandfather owned a few of the houses, and he would go with his grandfather to collect the rent. It was not a very wealthy existence.
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So they were offered assisted passage to Australia to join the growing needed workforce here, you know, as skilled professionals.
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And I think probably because of watching his mum and the challenges that she had faced, you know, he was a very strong advocate for women's equal rights, independence, respect.
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He was a mad keen surfer, so his first car was a little Volkswagen Beetle, and he'd put the surfboard on the car and sleep in the car down the surf coast each weekend and back again.
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That desire to retire at 60, I always thought was too early, but to achieve the walks and the places that he wanted to go, that was necessary.
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So he was an anti-conscription campaigner, protester, a hider of people who would not join up.
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Cup weekend. It's the only place in the world, I think, where the whole nation stops for a horse race.
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They had trips across Australia, through the Simpson and the Tanami Desert, up into central Australia. All kinds of off-road experiences.
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And his mantra was, I'm going to do as many walks as I can for as long as I can carry a backpack.
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Oh, there's a book out the back I could check. There's a thousand places to see and do before you die.
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Yeah, we did expect to spend a long retirement together traveling and doing things.
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After he built the house, then he worked on the garden. That's always good therapy. And the back living area overlooks the garden, which seemingly goes on forever because it has a chain mesh fence that allows the outside natural bush in.
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I was most indignant about that. You shouldn't have taught her to drive. No, no, no.
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We did bring a change of clothes just in case we got wet, didn't we, Robinson?
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We had an understanding if he wanted to go and hike somewhere, he would do that.
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Eric said to me, come and look at this. This is magnificent. So I traipsed up behind, and across the valley below were mountains Many, many lakes. It was called the Thousand Lakes. And I said, rather glibly, flippantly, oh, look at all the puddles. And he was, they're not puddles, they're lakes. And I just laughed, laughed, laughed.
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It was a development of respect and understanding and shared interests and the time spent together.
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That love of walking, I think, really drew us into a lot of activities together.
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And so the two of them over lunch breaks would conjure up places that I want to go because Alan's wife didn't like doing those kind of adventures.
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The beautiful bunch of flowers that he'd always organized before he left on any trip, a loving gesture, but also the appreciation that I didn't tie him to the relationship, that he couldn't go off and do things himself. It was a very strong partnership in that way.
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I felt very independent and proud about that, and it was close to where I worked.
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I'd always jokingly said, well, I don't cohabit. It's marriage or nothing. And he just goes, oh, I don't know if I want to get married again.
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It's baptism by fire with four kids because they all had very vibrant personalities.
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And we're doing a rainforest walk at Warburton. So now you can say something.
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Here we are at the top of Mount Donabewang, and just like I said to you during the week, we've had our first fall of snow. This is the lowest area in Victoria that you'll find snow, and it's just little smatterings across the ground.
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By the time you get to see this video, you'll know that the whole story of Eric trekking has been a hoax and the whole surprise for you will have happened. But we've joked about bringing him up here to acclimatize him for the weather back in Scotland.
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And I was not able nor willing to take time out of work. I was happy to travel in school holiday times, which he was not happy about because being the canny Scotsman, that was more expensive.
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You know, I think they had a bit of a reputation in the lunchroom and in the workplace of being, you know, those nutter outdoor people. Alan was diehard outdoors.
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which was most unusual, and he said, I don't want to alarm you, but Eric is overdue.
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And they seemed to bond well, and they weren't always walking side by side, as I understand the recount.
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The area in Patagonia on the Chilean side was their destination, so they did the Torres del Paine.
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Alan, being younger, would walk faster and taller, had a longer gait. So there would be space and time to contemplate, not have to consider somebody else side by side.
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Growing up in cold Scotland, he wasn't a skier and he would not even contemplate a skiing holiday. He would prefer not to be hiking through snow or going through snow. He certainly would try to go around that.
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That was probably the highlight of their first foray into mountaineering, glacial snow places together. It was a stunning place.
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When he came back, he was so full of this beautiful place because the rock formations, the snow, the animals, the plains, the Chilean people. He was waxing lyrical about this for months on end.
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Eric said, so when I die, I would like you to scatter my ashes, some with my mum in Scotland, some in the Grampians in Victoria, and get Alan to take some ashes and scatter them in the Torres del Pane National Park. That's how significant that trip and hike up the Grey Glacier was with him.
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Glenn had moved out, gone to Queensland, and I think he realized that, yeah, okay, your company's fine for a while, but ultimately you're living on your own, and there's a relationship happening that maybe it would be much nicer to enjoy that together.
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We were out to a family lunch on a Sunday. We were having yum cha, and it was dripping rain, and underneath a tree in a busy suburban street in Doncaster, he proposed.
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He said, But I wouldn't worry. It'll be okay. I have a good feeling about this.
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We maintained that lifestyle for 11 years, much to the amusement of family and friends and, you know, what do you two think you're doing?
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You know, it filled that space of companionship and, you know, the touch and the warmth of another human being.
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Alan was worried about his friend, who was a little bit older perhaps than he was, and he said, I've alerted the Department of Conservation.
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Yes, he would plan in detail the hiking before departure. He was a minimalist person, but not minimalist on safety.
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I was excited to have somebody come to expand upon the story of two people who met later in life and enjoyed passions and places together.
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You know, it's a story of a missing person, but it's also a legacy to that person for the love of what they did.
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Eric didn't like to talk about this, but I was at a professional meeting and a lady spoke. She was part of an introduction agency and I signed up.
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Our first conversation was over the phone where we arranged to meet for a coffee at a little pizza place near the Rivoli Theatre in Camberwell, which is iconic.
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What stood out to me were his sparkly eyes and his Scottish accent, which he vows and declares is quite Australian.
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But the conversations that we had were the attraction to, you know, experiences, travel, reading books, enjoyment of theater and film.
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And so dutifully, maybe three weeks or so later, I called him and he said, oh, well, how about we go and see a movie? And I said, oh, yeah, I'd like to see that movie for weddings and a funeral. You know, I hear it's pretty good. And he goes, without hesitation, yes, that'd be great. And we arranged to go on a Sunday night. And so we met at the Rivoli Theatre.
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It turned out that it was the third time that weekend that he'd seen that same movie. Friday night, Saturday night, and Sunday night with me.
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Unlike when you're young and you fall in love, you know, first sight, so to speak, this was a longer, sort of more gradual process. You know, as we spent time together, developed our interests, got to know each other, and it just evolved over, you know, 12 months.