The phone rang at seven Sunday morning and it was sleepy-voiced Hilary.

“Do you mind if I don’t come? I don’t feel good and it’s going to be cold.” I was disappointed but told her that it was fine for her to stay home.

The phone rang again, five minutes later.

“How cold will it be?”

” I’d say forty to fifty with a warm sun.”

“Are you telling the truth?”

“Nope.”

“I talked to Matt and he is going to be soooo angry at me if I don’t show. I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

Hillary with sore throat, cramps, and carrying a bottle of Ibuprophen for gymnastics related injuries, walked into the kitchen at 8 AM, right on schedule. What a trouper, I thought.

Robby wearing a ski mask on his forehead, and layers of clothing hidden under a hooded gray sweatshirt, arrived minutes after Hilary. Hanging from his waist, of course, his trusty eighteen inch machete, which he always brings to Gilsum to chop things. Why not to the mountain to clear the trail? Daryl, too sick to attend a party at Chris’s the night before, was the only missing climber. I finished packing and we all hopped into the truck and headed off.

After an obligatory stop at Mr. Mike’s Convenience Store in Winchendon – a tradition created during years of trips to Gilsum with Matt and the now gone foster boys – we arrived at the trail head. Not Marlboro trail, my first choice, snowily inaccessible, but The Old Toll Road Trail, which began as a plowed road beyond a gate, and soon met the popular White Dot Trail.

Simply put. The climb was short but hard. I lagged behind and thought of my friend rakkity who takes arduous, multiple day hikes into rugged (real) mountainous areas with heavily loaded packs. Here I was, carrying a steel thermos of hot chocolate, a few turkey and mayo sandwiches, and three water bottles, feeling as if my heart were going to explode. I thought, Get me back to the comfort zone of my infirm camping friends. It didn’t help that Matthew scampered ahead as if he were in Hawaii, following his uncle Peter up the precipitous Pali Lookout.

It was also cold. I told Hillary we would sweat below the tree line and be thankful for our warm clothes above. I was wrong. The wind blew so hard I never unbuttoned my jacket and to keep my batteries warm, I tucked my camera inside my shirt, close to my pounding heart. Above the trees, completely exposed to the wind, my face felt red and stiff, and I began to think about those frost bite charts the Globe prints every winter. The treeless part of the trail is less steep, but it was here that Hil and Robby decided they had had enough. Matt lobbied for a return too, but I went on ahead, and looked back to see Matthew following.

When I crested the top, I should have, but didn’t stay and wait for Matthew. The wind was so strong – I’m not a human wind gauge but it must have been, fifty, sixty, a thousand miles an hour? – I could hardly stand upright, and the flying ice crystals meant that I had to lead with the top of head. Why hadn’t I borrowed Robby’s goggles? Why didn’t I have crampons?

The top of Monadnock is about the size of the infield of a baseball diamond but all rock. I knew there was a single upright boulder, a place to hide from the wind maybe fifty feet away, and that’s where I took shelter. I looked out now and then, but I couldn’t sit exposed where Matt might be able to see me, which is about the time I began to worry. If you didn’t follow the narrow snow trails and stepped onto the icy rocks, you might sail right off. Plus, when Matt got to the top he would have no idea where I was. That’s when I heard a loud, anguished scream, “DAAAAAAADDDDD!” The kind of sound a pillow chewing, Nancyboy of a father might hear as his desperate, abandoned son, plunged to his death. But I’d misinterpreted the scream. Instead, it was Matt worrying about me. I bounded from behind the boulder and motioned him over. We rested but briefly, and I removed my gloves for as long as I could to snap a single photo before we headed back down.

If Matt were editing this, he would want me to add that there were two trails off the summit on our side, and he, not I, chose the right one

The hike down was a fun series of rock dodging butt slides. As I stopped to talk to other hikers, Matt and company got way ahead of me. I didn’t catch up with them until the trail met the snow-covered road, and that’s when I pulled the thermos of hot chocolate from my pack on Matt’s back. Did I mention that I had much earlier swapped for his lighter pack?

We escaped the mountain before 1 PM, and instead of eating frozen turkey sandwiches sitting on the truck bed, we drove to Peterborough and had lunch in the green diner. It was there that I realized that the summit was totally unimportant to all three, the velvet Elvis blue sky framing the rocky white peak, a yawn (Hillary: “I’d rather be asleep”), and the sense of accomplishment, trivial (“I hate the cold, I’ll never come back in the winter.” Matthew). My plans to have them enjoy my world failed, which is okay, because it made me look at theirs.

Which is hard to describe, and I know I’ve struggled writing about it before, but those teenagers who’ve grown up together have seamless, supportive, and dare I say, loving relationships. It’s the way Hilary punches Matt in the shoulder and naps on Robby’s lap. And Robby’s huddling with Hillary to escape the wind and then giving up the climb (to be with her?). It’s the lack of assault, verbal or otherwise, you might expect from angsty, hormonally-driven adolescents. Or from any relationship. There are no sharp edges – they are just fun to be with. I know, once again, klugily written, but Matt’s a regular reader and I imagine I’m in trouble already.

After the mountain, the diner, and the art galleries, (take the photo tour) we piled into the truck, and with Matt at the wheel pulled out of the parking lot for our trip home.

Matt drove narrow, winding, back roads home. Routes like 124, 123 and 123a, past perfect New England farm houses, frozen ponds, pristine white clapboard churches, and stony graveyards encased in ice. With a following setting sun, and surrounded by my climbing buddies, I reclined my seat, turned the heat way up, and drifted off.