Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi everyone, this is Dawn Klemm and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and Monarchs.
[00:00:08] Today I'm going to talk about life lessons that all of us need to learn in our lives that make us become a better person.
[00:00:21] And the life lesson I'm going to talk about today has to do with my husband and the life lesson that he had to learn.
[00:00:32] The lesson turned out to be such a positive thing, but at the time it was very painful and you're going to hear all about it.
[00:00:45] So let me get started here.
[00:00:49] When my husband and I met, the first thing that he absolutely loved about me is that I was outdoorsy.
[00:00:56] I would walk his dog every day down the railroad bed two miles and back without any problem. I didn't even think anything of it. I love being outdoors. I've been outdoors most of my life. That was the first thing my mom said to my brother and myself. It's a beautiful day out, get outside, right? And. And so we learned how to be pretty self sufficient being outdoors most of the time.
[00:01:24] And I have just come to love that in my life. That's part of who I am. I have to be outdoors doing something.
[00:01:32] So he noticed right away that I started walking his dog. His dog became healthier, looked happier because he was so focused on work. He would go to work sometimes at seven o' clock in the morning and he wouldn't even get home till 10 o' clock at night.
[00:01:49] And the dog was neglected.
[00:01:53] So now you've got me moved in with him. We were just roommates to start out with.
[00:02:00] And I would work as a nurse, 7 to 3, 3 to 11.
[00:02:06] And so if I worked 7 to 3, I would take the dog out when I got home from work.
[00:02:14] If I worked 3 to 11, I would walk the dog all morning long before I went to work.
[00:02:20] So the dog was such a happy dog after I moved in there. And then I also rotated my days off so he was off every weekend. But I was off a lot of times during the week, maybe a day or two. So it all worked out great for the dog and it made him happy because the dog was with somebody that had him her outdoors all the time.
[00:02:44] I also had my bike when I first moved in with him and I was an avid bike rider.
[00:02:50] So I would ride my bike around our neighborhood. And we lived out in the country.
[00:02:57] We actually live 17 miles away from Portland where we both worked.
[00:03:03] And so it was way out in the country and it was very hilly. And I would ride this loop with him that had these humongous Hills. In the beginning, I could not even make it up one of the hills. But after I had been training on that with him, I started to be able to master that hill. And it was really good for me to be outside.
[00:03:27] So all that being said, he was ecstatic about it.
[00:03:31] He wanted to go camping. That was another thing. Well, I had already been camping so much with my ex husband. That was like, of course I'm going to go camping.
[00:03:40] That's part of my life now. Camping. I will definitely love to go camping with you.
[00:03:47] He worked for a semiconductor company as an electronics engineer. And so like all good HR departments, they would come up with activities for the staff that worked there to give them some downtime.
[00:04:06] And one of the activities that they came up with was hiking Katahdin Mountain in Maine.
[00:04:14] That is a mountain, and that's about the only real mountain, I would say, in Maine. But that's a mountain that's the part of the Appalachian mountain chain.
[00:04:29] So it's kind of interesting because I don't really think of the Appalachians in Maine, but there is one there and that's it. The elevation of the mountain is 5, 500 or 5,269ft.
[00:04:44] But the part that you can hike goes about 4,000ft.
[00:04:49] So as you can see, that's quite a rigorous trail to go hiking on.
[00:04:56] For most people, it would take 8 to 12 hours to climb that mountain to the top.
[00:05:04] And probably for us, I think it would have taken 12 hours. That's a. That's a tough hike there, believe me.
[00:05:12] So the mountain is very rural and they want to keep it that way. They're trying to preserve it. There's a lot of nature there. There's a pond in there.
[00:05:23] And there's only three trail heads that can access the trails on the mountain.
[00:05:30] And those three trail heads have limited parking lot, so they don't have a lot of people there all at one time. They also have campsites there with bunk houses, but that is limited as well.
[00:05:45] So his HR department or human resources department came up with a trip for people to join and go hike Mount Katahdin. He was so excited about it. I was excited about it. I. I thought it was going to be great too. I don't mind hiking. I love being outdoors. So this was going to be right up my alley as well.
[00:06:08] He got me a backpack, and if you've heard any of my other stories, you know that I've been backpacking before.
[00:06:15] This was a softer backpack, though, and it wasn't so heavy and it was only for a day trip so it wasn't so going to be so hard for me to carry. So we got each got our backpack, we had all of our equipment. We were going to camp out for the night there.
[00:06:33] We were going to meet everybody there from his place of employment, camp out and then hike the trail the next day.
[00:06:43] Well, the one thing about my husband, I mean it's gotten easier the older we get but he is very focused now. That can be a good thing and that can be a bad.
[00:06:57] So by focused I mean when he's concentrating on something he blocks everything out.
[00:07:04] Every other thing out in his mind.
[00:07:09] For instance, if we had might have a doctor's appointment that we were going to together when I was trying to get pregnant, he would know about the appointment at 3 o' clock but he would never show up.
[00:07:25] Not that he deliberately didn't, but just that he's focused on what he's doing and he doesn't even think about nothing else is in his mind. That's how he is. One time we had taken my car and to get a tune up on it and I was working 3 to 11. He says well I'll come back and pick you up at 3 o', clock, no worries.
[00:07:48] So of course 3 o' clock comes and he never comes to pick me up.
[00:07:53] The other thing about him is that when he's focused and he forgets about you, it's harder than it was so hard to get a hold of him. I could never get a hold of him at work and it was before we had cell phones. I'm like ready to commit. Harry Cary. I'm so frustrated with him.
[00:08:12] So on the day when we're supposed to be meeting all of his co workers at at the trail head of Mount Katahdin, guess what? He doesn't come home on time.
[00:08:26] Totally focused at work, totally spaced the whole trip out.
[00:08:34] Finally he remembers it and he gets home at 6 o'. Clock. But by now they've already driven up there two hours. I think it was three hours from where we were living.
[00:08:46] So we were starting out two hours behind.
[00:08:49] Oh my gosh.
[00:08:51] I didn't have to get mad at him because he was so mad at himself. This was something so important to me. Him, not me, him. Although I did want to do it too.
[00:09:02] And he had messed up because he's so focused and he never thinks about things other than what he's doing at that time.
[00:09:14] So he comes home. Luckily we had a lot of stuff already pre packed and everything. We get the car all Loaded up and we start driving up there. And the whole time he is just so frustrated with himself, frustrated with the situation. I'm just trying to sit there. I'm thinking to myself, oh, they were really off to a great start here. I hope I'm gonna have a good time.
[00:09:40] Maybe he can walk some of his frustration off. Right?
[00:09:44] Finally we get up there and it's like it was late at night. It was, I mean, not late, but like 8, 8:30, I think when we finally get up there and the, the.
[00:10:00] It's closed, so you cannot get into the mountain at all that they've got gates up and there's nothing you can do. Oh, he was so angry. He was so, so angry.
[00:10:12] It wouldn't have done me any good to be mad at him because he was already mad at himself. So I wasn't going to waste my time being mad. I was just gonna let him blow off steam and work through it because really it was his issue, not mine.
[00:10:29] So we go, I go where we can. Well, where are we going to set up tent? Where are we going to camp out? Where are we going to sleep? What are we going to do? You know? And we hadn't eaten either, and there were so many strikes against us, but he did not want to turn around. He was going to go on this hike if it was the last thing he ever did in his life.
[00:10:51] So I'm like, okay.
[00:10:53] So he says, let's just park down the road from here a little ways and we can sleep in the back of the truck bed. We'll sleep in the truck bed. We can roll out the sleeping bags. It should be fine.
[00:11:06] So I'm like, okay, no complaints there. That might be better than sleeping on the ground anyway, you know? So I wasn't complaining about it.
[00:11:17] So we slept that night in the truck bed and it was kind of a fitful sleep because he was so frustrated with himself and everything.
[00:11:28] And we weren't exactly the most comfortable. But hey, that goes along with being outdoorsy. There's nothing you can do about it.
[00:11:37] So the next morning we get up and we get to the campgrounds and they don't open the trail heads up until 9:00'. Clock.
[00:11:48] Well, the people that were there from his workplace had been up since 6 o' clock in the morning and were already on the trail, so.
[00:11:57] So we missed him again and he's like, oh my gosh, he was having a little meltdown. Trust me.
[00:12:07] I said, well, we came this far, we're gonna hike.
[00:12:12] He goes, you know what I think we should.
[00:12:14] We're not gonna get to the top of it like I was hoping we would, but we can at least go as far as we can and. And we can make the best out of this whole experience.
[00:12:27] And I said, yes, I think that's a great idea.
[00:12:31] Let us just hike. We'll meet people along the way. Let's just see how it goes. It'll be good for us to be outdoors. We're gonna love it. And he's like, okay.
[00:12:45] He was grumpy, though. I'm not gonna deny it.
[00:12:48] So, so we started out hiking and we had the. The truck parked and so we could go up one of the trail heads and they have Chimney Pond up there. You have to quite hike quite a ways to get up there. It's at least halfway, so probably 2,000ft you're hiking up.
[00:13:08] And we said, okay, we're gonna at least hike as far as Chimney Pond and let's see how it goes.
[00:13:16] So we start hiking up the trail.
[00:13:20] It was beautiful. It was so beautiful. It was wooded.
[00:13:25] There were.
[00:13:27] You'd walk through the woods and then you'd come to an opening. It just be like a field of wildflowers and a meadow and everything that you would want to see on that mountain, you got to see on that mountain.
[00:13:45] And we're hiking along and things are starting to go a lot better. He's starting to feel a little better about the fact that at least we got out and got to hike. We weren't hiking with his group, but he and I were having a great time and we were looking at all the scenery and taking lots of pictures. We had brought our camera with us and we made it up to Chimney Pond, which was absolutely spectacular. It's like a little pond in the middle of a mountain. It's even. So hard to even explain what it was like, but it's clear as glass in that pond.
[00:14:29] And we just looked at the pond and we sat down for a while and we ate a one of our packed sandwiches and, you know, we just enjoyed it.
[00:14:41] And he said, well, I want to just see if we can go just a little bit farther. At least. At least we made it halfway.
[00:14:49] And I was for it. I'm like, yeah, that sounds fantastic to me. I would love to continue on. I know we're not going to get up to the top of the mountain.
[00:15:01] And the thing you have to remember too is, you know, just getting halfway was like four hours for us, four or five hours.
[00:15:11] So we knew we couldn't hike much further because then we Would be coming down in the dark. And neither one of us were too keen on that.
[00:15:22] There it is, a rocky mountain.
[00:15:25] So there are rocks everywhere, and you. You've got to be wary about that.
[00:15:33] So we decided we would try to go a little bit farther, See if we can make it just up a little bit farther. And he had a map with them, so we were going to take a different trail back down the other side. So we thought, okay, yeah, this is. This should be good.
[00:15:51] So we start up the next trail, and we're in a wooded area.
[00:15:58] And we weren't very far from chimney pond, but far enough away that it was like a secluded wood wooded area.
[00:16:12] And we start walking in, and all of a sudden he goes, stop, stop. Don't go any further. And I'm thinking, what. What is going on here? I had no clue.
[00:16:24] I really had no clue. And he's starting to whisper to me, and I'm like, why are you whispering? Trying to figure out what the heck is going on.
[00:16:33] Well, there in front of us, maybe 10ft, it was not very far at all.
[00:16:41] Was a bull moose, a cow moose. So the male and the female and a baby.
[00:16:50] Can you believe that?
[00:16:51] Yes.
[00:16:53] Let me tell you something.
[00:16:56] That was the most fantastic sight I've ever seen in my life. And also it was terrifying.
[00:17:07] We were trying so hard to be quiet because we didn't want them to turn around and see us and think we were coming towards the baby and they would be so protective.
[00:17:20] But that moose, the bull moose, I swear to you, I probably was as tall as his thigh.
[00:17:28] That thing was gigantic. I had no.
[00:17:34] No idea.
[00:17:35] And just his antlers, the. The spread on those antlers. I mean, it was huge.
[00:17:43] It was huge.
[00:17:45] And her too. She's a little bit shorter than the. The male, but she was still tall like that.
[00:17:55] And then to have that baby moose right there. Oh, my gosh.
[00:18:01] We were too petrified to get her camera out. Isn't that awful?
[00:18:06] We were so close, and we didn't know if we would do anything to startle them. So we were just whispering and not even hardly moving.
[00:18:18] And we let them take the lead to be able to walk off without us disturbing them.
[00:18:28] But it was such an incredible, incredible sight.
[00:18:35] I think we were there probably 10 or 15 minutes before they just moseyed on. They were eating the grass and, you know, just grazing like horses or cattle would do. That's what they were doing.
[00:18:52] And we were just watching them the whole time in complete awe.
[00:18:59] There's no way I could have ever seen anything More spectacular than that site. It was just unbelievable.
[00:19:10] Really, really unbelievable.
[00:19:14] So finally they headed off on their own, and we went up a little ways farther on the hiking trail. But that was all we could talk about. I mean, we were just so excited that we got to see that. I was kind of disappointed that we didn't get any pictures. But on the other hand, I was petrified that we were going to make them angry or make them turn around and come after us. And that was definitely not something I was looking forward to.
[00:19:46] So it was just an incredible experience.
[00:19:52] We hiked up a little bit further and then we took turned around and took pictures of Chimney Pond from a higher up elevation.
[00:20:05] And that was just fantastic, too. We did get some great pictures while we were there.
[00:20:12] And Craig started to relax a little bit.
[00:20:16] I think he knew that even though we had been so late to the game, we saw something that nobody else was gonna see.
[00:20:30] So it actually worked out to our advantage that we had gone off on our own and that we were behind everybody else because there's no way that other people saw what we got the privilege of seeing that day.
[00:20:46] It was unbelievable.
[00:20:49] That's all I can tell you.
[00:20:53] So we get up there and. And we decide that we're going to turn around and come down a trail on the opposite side of the one that we had climbed up. Well, that trail, you would think coming down would be so much easier, but let me tell you. No, it really wasn't.
[00:21:12] It was all these big, huge boulders. So you're climbing down these big boulders and then walking a little ways and then climbing down another boulder. I think it took us longer to get down the mountain than it did to get up the mountain.
[00:21:31] It was a lot of work and my legs were so sore when we got to the bottom, it was unbelievable.
[00:21:42] But we have talked about going up there so many times after that because it was such a great memory we shared together.
[00:21:52] And it happened because he was late and he was so focused on work that he didn't keep time like he should have.
[00:22:05] And I tell him all the time, well, you got rewarded for being late.
[00:22:09] You got rewarded for hanging in there. Even though a lot of people wouldn't even have gone, you still went.
[00:22:18] You still said, I'm going to go on this trip no matter what.
[00:22:23] You still went. Even though everybody started hiking without us and left us behind the next day. Nothing against them either because we didn't have cell phones to tell them we were there. So they wouldn't even have known that we actually did make it there.
[00:22:40] So we still kept our promise and hiked up the site of Katahdin. I know you didn't get as far as you wanted to get, but you got to see something that I guarantee you, very few people get to see in their lifetime.
[00:23:02] And he goes, yep, you know what? You're right.
[00:23:06] You're right. We got to see the moose family.
[00:23:10] And you're right that we probably wouldn't have seen it if we had gone with everybody else, because, you know, we would have been talking, and it probably would have scared him away from us.
[00:23:20] And we were really quiet when we were walking up the mountain because he was still angry about missing everything.
[00:23:27] And I was just taking in the scenery, so we were quiet. And that's why we had the opportunity to see that moose family.
[00:23:38] But one of the greatest thing that came out of that trip, there are two things he started paying more attention to time.
[00:23:50] His mom would call me, go, did you get him a watch yet? And I'd say, no, I can't get him a watch. This is his lesson to learn. You can't impose yourself on somebody else's lesson. They have to learn the lesson on their own. If you impose yourself on them, they're never going to remember the lesson.
[00:24:13] They'll remember the lesson if they learn it on their own.
[00:24:19] They don't want to hear what you have to say.
[00:24:23] And so we still joke about it to this day, him being tardy.
[00:24:29] But what I did is I turned. Tried to turn it into something great. And so for Christmas that year, our first Christmas together, I got him a glass ornament with a picture of a moose on it in remembrance for our trip.
[00:24:51] And we hang it on the tree every year.
[00:24:54] And every year we laugh, first of all because we were late, and second of all because we were so happy we got to see that moose face Family, thank you for listening to my story today.
[00:25:14] I hope you enjoyed it.
[00:25:20] Until the next time.
