Maine Stories

Stories from the road
October 15, 2018
Brookline Village, Mass.

East Boothbay Harbor is as scenic as a Wyeth painting. We traveled there on our trip back to Boston. There were some beautiful homes on a winding road overlooking rocky inlets. The combination of cold weather, foliage, and low tide made for good viewing. Maine is such an interesting place and worth a lengthy visit.

I somehow ended up reading about Charlotte Fox today. She survived Everest in 1996 and was featured in Jon Krakauer’s book, “Into Thin Air. “A ski patroller for many years in Aspen, she actually rescued a friend of mine who jumped into a shoot and broke his ankle at the Snowmass Ski area many years ago.

She is best known for the Everest expedition, but she climbed numerous 8000-meter peaks, many which were more difficult than Mt. Everest. She was a bigger than life person, who lived in Telluride, Colorado. Known for her generosity, strength, and loyalty, Charlotte had known much tragedy, having lost a companion to a mountaineering accident and a husband to a paragliding crash.

At age 61 Charlotte was planning one more mountaineering expedition when after a dinner party, she fell over a balcony in her home to a landing thirty-five feet below. She died instantly. The irony of her death escaped none. Her friends had a hard time accepting the suddenness of her passing and the way she had died.

Today I met my friend Gary Joslow at Legal Seafood in Cambridge. Before lunch,


Vicki and I  watched a protest demonstration for a while. An Asian group is suing Harvard University claiming discrimination in its admission policies.

Over lobster bisque, Gary, who can greet people in 26 languages, filled me in on his life. Very interested in other cultures, he knows people from multiple countries as diverse as Uganda, Viet Nam, and Israel.

Tomorrow we fly to San Diego and our six-week journey which began in Nantucket will come to an end.