In 2014 I rediscovered an unpublished manuscript that my grandfather wrote in 1955 after he participated in the rescue of an injured mountaineer on North America’s highest peak, Denali (then Mount McKinley). I’d seen this manuscript years before when my father was alive, but it took on greater significance now. It was a tenuous connection to my father and my grandfather, like a rope tied across a glacial crevasse allowing me access to places otherwise impossible to reach.

I spent months reading and researching, digging through other papers my father had stored away. The next year I had a sudden thought to search for the injured climber, to see if he was still alive and could speak with me about my grandfather. The conversations that followed led me on a journey to Canada and Seattle, to meet this climber and then another survivor of that incident. They led me out of one story and into another, all the while shaping a story of my own.

This project is still very much a work-in-progress.